Last week, we hosted a short debate on Question 2 on this year’s Massachusetts ballot. That’s the measure to allow up to 12 charter schools to open or expand in the state per year. Charters are publicly funded schools that operate independently of school committees. During the debate, two conflicts arose that we wanted to fact check.
LISTEN: Full debate on Question 2
District Reimbursements
The first issue is about how local school district funding is impacted when students leave for charters. When that happens, the money follows the student. But that lost funding for the public schools is supposed to be reimbursed by the state.
In our debate, Rachel Romano, the founder of Veritas Prep Charter School in Springfield, represented the pro-charter side. She argued that school districts are sufficiently reimbursed.
“The reimbursement is real and it happens,” Romano said. “The school committees need to learn how to adjust to that because the reality is families need choices.”
Barbara Madeloni, head of the Massachusetts Teachers Association, represented the opposition to the charter question in our debate. She had a different take.
“The reimbursement doesn’t happen. In fact, we haven’t had full reimbursement for the last four years,” Madeloni said. “We have a budget that’s underfunded by a billion dollars already for public education.”
Here’s the reality: Reimbursements do happen, but like the rest of the state budget, they are at the mercy of the legislature. According to state data, school districts were nearly fully reimbursed through fiscal year 2014. But in the past two years, the reimbursement dropped off significantly. It was 69 percent funded two years ago and 62 percent funded last year.
Students Served By Veritas Prep
The second conflict in our debate was over the kind of students served by Rachel Romano’s school, Veritas Prep in Springfield.
“Ms. Romano’s own school serves half of the number of ELL (English Language Learner) students, and fewer special education students and students who are economically disadvantaged than the Springfield Public Schools,” Madeloni alleged.
“What you said about my school is not true,” responded Romano. “So look up the data, it supports itself.”
We did look up the data. Madeloni exaggerated a bit when talking about English Language Learners, but she’s right that Veritas’ student body does include a smaller percentage of ELL students than Springfield Public Schools as a whole. Last school year, 9.8 percent of Veritas’ students were categorized as ELL, compared to 16.3 percent of the district’s population.
The most recent numbers available also back up Madeloni’s claim that Veritas serves a smaller percentage of special education and low income students than the district. 14.5 percent of Veritas’ students were in special education in the 2014-15 school year, while the same category of students made up 19.5 percent of Springfield Public Schools. Low income students were 59.6 percent of Veritas’ population in 2015-16, while they encompassed 67.1 percent of the entire district. The differences aren’t huge, but they are there.
There’s much more to both these issues. You can listen to the full debate here.
___________________
Correction: earlier on-air and web versions of this story mistakenly referred to the charter school measure by the wrong ballot question number. It is Question 2.