Charter would lose 46% funding per student

One reason that the District may consider rejecting the charter petition is that the charter could not maintain the integrity of our Waldorf program with 46% less resources. That's right, if LWIP goes charter we would receive about 46% less money per student. This calculation comes from data I received from the District's budget officer Amy Prescott via email this week.

According to Prescott, the District now spends $9400.00 per student. If LWIP were to become a charter sponsored by the District its funding would drop to $5077.00 per student for K-3 and $5153.00 for grades 4-6. No new funds would come for any out of district transfer students who come from a so-called Basic Aid district (which ours is) and only 70% from all other districts paid to the district, not the charter. Since the strategy of going charter is to bring in more students this would drain funds from all the other students in the District while reducing even further the money per student in LWIP.

This seems to be nothing short of a race to the bottom in funding and quality.

There is no way our program could maintain the full Waldorf oriented curriculum while absorbing such a huge budget cut. The only way out is for the program to take corporate grants from such pro-charter foundations as Gates and the Walton Family Foundation which would be counter to our principles, cut teacher pay to the bone, avoid accepting students with special needs (which is common policy among charters), eliminate free and reduced lunches, and pressure us parents to donate even more money to make up for the shortfall. In short, any of these approaches would move our program even closer to becoming a tax subsidized private school—the very goal of the corporate funded charter movement and I sadly suspect of some of my fellow LWIP parents.