It may, to some degree, prove to be a matter of semantics.
But the resolution regarding charter school funding passed last week by the Gloucester School Committee and being brought to the City Council for endorsement deserves a good look, both locally and especially on the state level.
The resolution, as outlined by committee member Kathleen Clancy, calls for the state to set aside a separate budget line item to allocate money for charter schools, including the Gloucester Community Arts Charter School, which last week got the state Board of Education's green light to go forward for a second year in fiscal 2012.
Currently, state money to support the Gloucester charter school's operating budget comes from steering a portion of the city's Chapter 70 aid to Gloucester Community Arts. In fiscal 2012, that's going to be some $560,000, and there are similar scenarios across the state.
Currently, if the state were to follow the resolution in fiscal 2012, it would simply mean the $560,000 would not be included in Gloucester's Chapter 70 aid at all. School officials, after all, cannot realistically expect the state to fund Gloucester's charter school and kick the $560,000 back into the school district.
Yet creating a separate state budget accounts for charter schools outside the Chapter 70 box could at least accomplish two things:
It would allow the state to make adjustments to the charter school funding formula without otherwise affecting traditional aid to local school districts. Plus, it could subtly — and finally — put a halt to the incessant drumbeat from critics claiming that the charter school is taking away money that was meant for the local school system once the three years of diminishing charter school reimbursements run out.
From the start, the loudest complaints regarding the launch of a charter school — most pronounced in Gloucester, but in other communities as well — have always centered on the state's charter school funding mechanism.
This School Committee resolution would bring a very basic but potentially very healthy change.
