We've taken the eight questions from Exploring Charter Schools in Kentucky: An Informational Guide, and developed "Answers for Senate Bill 8" to summarize key features of the new bill. The new summary available in a public DropBox folder, along with the earlier summary of House Bill 174.
Check it out, and do share questions if you have them!
--Posted by Susan Perkins Weston
If a charter school is authorized by the new commission and not the local school board, does it get state and local funds?
ReplyDeleteYes, it does. Those provisions are in Section 14 of the bill, and say that for commission-authorized schools, the Department will send state funds and the district will send local funds.
ReplyDeleteFor SEEK-geeks, those rules look like they create some uncertainties.
On the state side, SEEK allocations require information on taxable property per pupil and on whether the district has set a tax rate at the Tier 1 maximum--and I don't know how that will be figured for a charter school.
On the local side, SEEK dollars from all sources are treated the same and school allocations don't have a local part and a state part--so I don't know how a district to do an allocation that's like what other schools get but doesn't include state SEEK dollars.
Or, more briefly, Kentucky school funding isn't set up to allow simple calculations using state dollars and local dollars as separate pots of money.