The Rochester City School District is still reeling from the fallout of a budget shortfall last year that led to the layoff of hundreds of educators, the closure of 4 schools, 3 programs, which touched all of the 26,000 students of the RCSD in some way.
How did this happen? Many still believe mismanagement but my position is that the district’s budget shortfall was the also the result of sabotage, plain and simple.
There are actors in this city, Mayor Lovely Warren, for example, who have been championing privatization as a solution to our district challenges. Championing privatization—in the form of charter schools—as the solution. In the 7 years Warren has been Mayor, the charter industry in Rochester has doubled.
Each time a charter is granted, the budget of the RCSD is thrown into further instability. The budget cannot predict how many students and families will be drawn to the glossy advertisements of the charter lobbyist sent constantly to families in Rochester. To date I have gotten no less than 12 magazines or handwritten letters or door knocks from local charter school lobbyists. Each time a student enrolls for a local charter school that money follows the student, but how does a district predict how many students it will lose? The budget shortfall was $60 million dollars. Charter schools took $90 million dollars from the RCSD budget that same year. You do the math.
Here are ten reasons why all Rochestarians should support a moratorium on charter school expansion:
- Charter schools are funded by your taxpayer dollars but you are given no right to oversee how those dollars are spent.
- Charter schools are able to pick and choose their students by counseling out, mandating family involvement, or providing other discriminatory practices that have concentrated the needs in the RCSD while creating an uneven playing field for the charters.
- The per pupil spending that follows students from the RCSD budget to charter schools is mandated by the state. This amount was $14, 915 in 2019, and only two schools in the district were able to spend that much on their students (RISE and East, both of which have outside funding in addition to district funding).
- Genesee Community Charter School, one of the highest rated charter schools in the city, has repeatedly been cited by the state for lack of diversity, and yet is looking to expand to a second location in the city next year. They are flagrantly disregarding one of the few rules imposed upon them, disproportionately harming ELLs, students with disabilities, and Black and brown students, and yet are being given the opportunity to expand.
- Charter schools at large have been found to push out students with disabilities. This concentrates the expenses of providing special education services on the RCSD, even as they face budget instability by the ever increasing charter school industry. (Are suburban and charter schools pushing special ed students to RCSD’s door?)
- Charter schools show no better academic outcomes than public schools.
- Charter schools and the ensuing instability are disproportionately harming Black and brown students in Rochester. Only one other suburb has any charter schools, Greece, and this suburb has the second highest percentage of Black and brown students in the county. Why is it we are so willing to experiment on these students when no predominantly white suburb is allowing it? The charter school industry preys on parents and families who want the best for their children selling promises they are not keeping.
- Uncommon Schools, which is the umbrella company for Rochester Prep, and for which Joe Klein, the hugely problematic RCSD school board candidate is affiliated with, has an entire instagram account dedicated to its harmful no-excuses disciplinary practices as well as hundreds of allegations of racism.
- Capitalist profiteers are looking to privatize one of the last bastions of public goods, education. Your health care has been privatized, your heating and cooling, your food. The one area left for vultures looking to steal your tax dollars to profit off of them is the charter school industry. We can’t let them.
- A moratorium on charter school expansion would not harm students currently attending charter schools. Moratorium on expansion means no NEW charters would be granted, and that stability would be achieved for the RCSD budget. No child, and no community should have their school closed. All children thrive off of stability.
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About Claire
(she/her/hers) Claire Labrosa is an English as a New Language teacher in the Rochester City School District, and a founding member of the Rochester Organization of Rank and File Educators (RORE) a social justice caucus in the RTA. Claire is a lifelong Rochester resident, a graduate of the RCSD, and a passionate advocate for equitable and fully funded public education.
One Response
Primarily White Suburban Schools do not participate in the Charter School “Experiment” because their districts are well funded and their public schools carry higher praise than even most private schools, let alone hit or miss Charter Schools. My Question is do we really need a white washed perspective dividing the City against Mayor Warren and Charter Schools while ignoring the Administrative Bloat that is the failing RCSD?
It’s not just NYS $ shortfalls it is total underfunding per student that has occurred as a direct result of redlining and systemic Oppression of Urban Folx.