I’ve been playing around a little bit more with Eddy Jeans’ table that details the revenues and expenditures for Statewide Correspondence Schools (SWC). (I’ve also shown the table below.) Mr. Jeans is the Director of Finance for the Alaska Department of Education and Early Development (DEED)and he presented this data at last month’s work session for the State Board on SWC issues.

As I mentioned briefly in a previous post, the SWC schools make considerable profit running these schools. The 800# gorilla is Galena City Schools’ IDEA. They have 3443 students that bring in $14.1 million in Base Student Allocation (BSA). This allocation amount is generated by the foundation formula and then granted by the legislature to local districts through the DEED. IDEA spends $9.7 million on their students; this includes student allotments, teachers, staff, administration, travel, paper clips, everything. It’s not hard to see they spend a lot less than they take in.

So, I made another little column on my spreadsheet. It’s the amount of money left over per student. Or, I could call it the money that is not put into student allotments. Or how about the amount of money in services denied to each student but kept by Galena City Schools. Or the amount of money taken from students who live out-of-district because their families have no political influence in the Galena City School District.

Here is Mr. Jeans’ Revenue and Expenditure table for each SWC with my added column of calculating the amount taken from each child enrolled:

Wow! Galena City Schools keeps for its local district $1,266/student of the money granted by the Legislature per student. The Denali Borough School District wins the skimming prize for keeping $1,731/student. Again, that is money that is not in any way designated to benefit the students in the SWC. It is money granted by the legislature per student but because there is no local control it is taken away from the students.

So, what is to be said? I have a few points to make:

• SWC’s have been very good at molding their image as being pro-homeschool and stating that they operate their schools because they care. They will make it easier for a family to homeschool than an in-district program. Gimme a break. A SWC is motivated to have as many FTE’s as possible. (An FTE is a full-time equivalent, a full-time student.) They have to maximize enrollment; that’s why they exist. That’s why they make it easier.
• Politically, they have been effectively able to make the issues with the state about freedom. That is, groups such as AHEA want equity for all students statewide. Where is the equity in the chart above? Especially, if you know that in-district charters allocate all the funds for the student in allotments and services? In-district schools are accountable to the community they are in and thus have the greatest freedom in spending subject to their local district policies.
• AHEA advocates that the money should ‘follow the child.’ In other words, they should be able to spend the allotments the same way in-district programs are able. This is an incredible argument. They should be hollering at their SWC’s that the money should go to the child as the legislature has designated it. Why should a SWC be granted more freedom when they are clearly not serving the best interests of their students?
• Make no mistake, this will draw attention from legislators because the dollars they grant are not being spent as intended. That is, about $6.7 million. Their reflex will be to cut the funding to correspondence schools from 80% to maybe 65% or 40%. No charter school can be started on funding that low and very few SWC’s can operate on that funding. Effectively, the homeschooling programs will be gone, over, no more. Hello, Alyeska Central School and its limited options which operated at 65% for many, many years.

Comments RSS TrackBack Identifier URI

Name (required)

Mail (will not be published) (required)

Website