Whether a charter school is succeeding or failing in meeting its students educational needs, there is one component that is undoubtedly in play that does not exist at most regular public schools – parental involvement. In order for a child to be attending a charter school, a parent or guardian had to make a conscious choice and effort to get their child into that school. And, in the end, if they are unsatisfied with the results, they can move their child out of the school and to another.
This is a good thing. In fact, parental involvement in a child’s education is one of the key factors in improving student performance. Yet, the Albuquerque Public Schools (APS) wants to shut down opportunities for more parents to take an active role in their children’s education:
Albuquerque Public Schools wants lawmakers to place a moratorium on new charter schools until existing schools are fully funded.
The request is one of the items on the district’s legislative wish list, and it aims to help APS deal with a budget crunch.
“We need to stop putting in place new programs or schools that take away from the pie of money,” APS lobbyist Joseph Escobedo said.
The theory that moving dollars from one education environment to another is “taking away from the pie of money” is absurd. It is a redistribution of money, but it doesn’t shrink the overall pie. Kids are still going to be educated using the same amount of dollars. Actually, maybe I should reword that to say some kids will finally be educated using the same, and quite possibly less, dollars.
Why is it that government entities always support redistribution of wealth from taxpayers to their budgets, but fight tooth and nail when the redistribution is from their budgets to another public entity budget? When that is proposed, it makes the pie smaller. Of course, we all know that it doesn’t shrink the pool of money, it just allows it to move to potentially more productive uses. Something that really ought to be the focus of the upcoming legislative session as opposed to taking more from taxpayers. But, I digress.
This is yet another reason that taxpayer dollars allocated for educating our children should follow those children as opposed to making the children follow the dollars.
Disclaimer: Our kids attend a fantastic charter school, Family School. So, I’ve got an inherent bias here. Plus, it would be highly hypocritical of me to take advantage of school choice for my children, but say from this point forward other people’s children should not be afforded the same opportunity.