Hard to tell what to call it besides fishy. Here’s the backstory. After attempts at a negotiated settlement, several Charlotte-area charter schools have sued Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools for some $800,000. The charter schools claim CMS has shortchanged them by that amount by understating how much the district spends per pupil.
In theory, charters are entitled to the same amount of county money CMS spends — around $2,200 per child — to provide alternative educational options for taxpayers. But CMS has never been exactly forth-coming with that number, not overall and certainly not with regard to how much extra spending, per pupil, goes to what were once called Equity Plus schools.
To that confusion add the so-called High School challenge, some $6 million a year in additional county funding for CMS. When the challenge was adopted just six months ago it looked to be just that, a challenge to CMS to hit certain performance goals in order to receive more county money, a kind of performance bonus.
But a memo handed down last week by county budget manager Harry Jones blows that all up. Jones said that when county commissioners voted for the three-year challenge plan they voted for the added funding whether or not CMS hit those goals. In effect, the county’s says the annual $6 million number is not contingent on anything.
But if that is the case, then the charters must be entitled to figure in that added annual, non-contingent funding when calculating what CMS spends per pupil. CMS has held the challenge is a special grant, which just does not square with what manager Jones has decreed.
This matter is far from resolved, but the upshot is clear: Control of funding far out-ranks actual education in Mecklenburg.
