Durham County school officials are complaining that charter schools “are depleting some of the resources that we need to address the student population at large.” A new charter school in Durham will open in the fall, and the school system will be required to pony up $800,000 on top of the $6 million they already send to charter schools in the county. They would like nothing more than to nifong all of the charter schools in the county and will probably try to find some creative way to do so.
Durham school officials began to complain about the drain last fall, “when enrollment in traditional public schools in Durham increased less than 1 percent and charter enrollment soared by almost 22 percent.” School officials do not get the message that people are unsatisfied with the school system and want to leave. By the way, this is an exodus of minority families, not white flight. Around 80 percent of students in Durham charter schools are minority students.
