What exactly are charter schools? Because here, they are public schools and they have to take anyone who applies if there is space (if there isn't, they hold a lottery). They have to do the State standards and they have to give the State tests. The main difference is that the school board is pretty much hand-selected rather than elected and if there is a property tax referendum (which can be as much as 15 percent of a district's budget, maybe more), they are not eligible for that. Kids are even bused to charters, if they live within the school district boundaries where the charter is located. I always find it ironic how public school districts claim they are going to have to cut basically everything if a referendum doesn't pass, yet charters do fine without that money. Many charters don't have a lot of extracurriculars though, the way most public school districts do.
Our public district was threatening all sorts of cuts if voters didn't approve the latest levy...like cutting special ed, teachers, increasing class sizes (many elementary classes now have more than 30 kids, even though they DID pass the levy), eliminating music programs, eliminating sports, etc. etc. Most of those cuts ended up happening even though the voters gave them the money. Our Super is paid about $230,000 if you include benefits, which is ridiculous considering how much they gripe about their budget issues. With salaries like that, then it makes sense they can't afford to have school 5 days per week and need to put 40 students in a class if a levy doesn't pass. So even public districts are subject to corruption. Ours is a classic example and there are multiple lawsuits from a parent group currently pending against the district for conflicts of interest, violating open meeting laws, closing school buildings even though they don't have a valid reason and financially don't need to, etc. People complain about laws and mandates but I would actually like to see more. For instance, they can't give themselves salary raises if they are cutting programs, cutting teachers, increasing class sizes, closing schools, etc.
