MD High Court Hears Charter Case

In all the hubbub about the Baltimore School Budget, this item slipped past me, but it is just as important. With 17 of the state authorized 24 charter schools located in Baltimore, this case has more than a passing interest for the budget morass.

The state's highest court heard oral arguments yesterday in two charter school funding cases with major financial implications for Baltimore.

Charter schools are public schools that operate independently under contracts with local school boards. Seventeen of the state's 24 charter schools are located in Baltimore, and the city school board has approved six more to open in the next two years.

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Yesterday in Annapolis, the judges on the seven-member Court of Appeals indicated in their comments that charter schools deserve the same funding as regular schools. But determining how much regular schools get proved tricky.

"The theory is that a charter school is a public school and therefore should not get less money for its operation," said Chief Judge Robert M. Bell. "It's entitled to the same amount. ... The question is, how do we get there?"

Lawyers debated finer points such as whether charters should receive average or actual costs of student transportation, how much responsibility they have for central administrative costs and how much grant money they are eligible to receive.

The Court of Appeals is hearing the case on appeal from the lower Court of Special Appeals. The case has many implications beyond the actual financial calculations. Charters are quite successful in Baltimore and getting more and more popular amoung that city's population, which has struggled under a city public education system in disarray. If the funding question is answered in the same way that the Court of Special Appeals ruled (that the charters entitled to roughly equal funding, minus a discount for centralized services like payroll, etc.), then there may be a push among parents and education activists to expand the charters and a counter push by the Democratically controlled legislaturs and the anti-chater crowd to further limit charters based upon the notion that "charters take away funds from public schools."

Related: Maryland Charter Schools to Get Same Funding as Public Schools