News Brief

04/09/13

Maine Education Chief Wants to Make All Districts, Not Just Local Ones, Responsible for Charter School Funding

Bangor Daily News (Maine) (04/09/13) Cousins, ChristopherMaine Education Commissioner Stephen Bowen has unveiled the framework of a program to fund charter schools that would spread the financial responsibility to every school district in the state. Charter schools would be treated similarly to other school districts within the state's funding formula, and lawmakers believe the idea shows promise. Currently, school districts that lose students to charter schools contribute a per-student amount to the charter school based on the state's Essential Programs and Services program. Bowen's plan would spread the cost of charter schools across every school district and minimize the impact on individual schools, though he says individual schools would see subsidies shrink over the long term along with their student enrollment. "It would work just as if they were school districts. They would get state subsidy from us just as school districts do. ... You're not going to have a disproportionate impact on any single district. This is a state level initiative," Bowen says. Areas that need additional work include the flow of funding in the first years after the law's implementation and how to deal with special education funding. "The goal here was 'let's not reinvent the wheel. This is taking advantage of existing structures," he says.
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