Ducey: Arizona delegates should oppose bill threatening charter school funding
(The Center Square) – On Tuesday, Gov. Doug Ducey wrote a letter to Arizona’s Congressional Delegation, requesting that they oppose federal legislation which would withdraw federal funding from public charter schools if they contract with a private company for any reason.
Section 314 of the Fiscal Year 2022 Labor, Health and Human Services, Education, and Related Agencies Funding Bill holds that “none of the funds made available by this Act or any other Act may be awarded to a charter school that contracts with a for-profit entity to operate, oversee or manage the activities of the school.”
Ducey wrote to Arizona’s two U.S. Senators and nine U.S. Representatives that this provision “could have catastrophic effects on public charter schools in Arizona and throughout the nation.” He said charter and district schools often employ private entities such as “transportation service providers, school meal preparation services, technological solutions, classroom management tools, social and emotional health providers,” and many others.
The governor wrote that the legislation would endanger the existence of Arizona’s public charter schools.
“They educate over 21% of all public K-12 students in Arizona, the highest percentage in the country,” Ducey stated. “It is unthinkable that support for public charter schools could be put at risk at all, much less as we are emerging from over a year’s worth of academic disruption brought on by the COVID-19 pandemic.”
Lisa Guisbond, executive director of Citizens for Public Schools (CPS), told The Center Square that CPS “enthusiastically supports” section 314.
“CPS believes taxpayer-funded schools should be accountable to the public, i.e., elected school boards and the communities that elected them, not run by privately appointed charter school boards and/or related for-profit management groups,” she said. “We’ve seen powerful evidence that charter schools across the country have misused federal funds, to the detriment of students and families in those schools and the sending school districts.”
In 2016, the U.S. Department of Education’s Office of Inspector General audited 33 charter schools in six states and uncovered examples “of waste, fraud, and abuse” due to charter school nonprofit boards “ceding fiscal authority” to management companies to decide how federal education funds are spent.
The U.S. Chamber of Commerce wrote in their letter on the FY 2022 and Health and Human Services appropriations bill that they opposed section 314, which would “decreas[e] funding for charter schools as well as prohibit funding for charter schools that contract with a for-profit entity to operate, oversee, or manage the activities of the school.”
For the 2020 school year, a record 213,822 students attended one of 556 Arizona charter schools. Each year over the past decade, Arizona charter schools have increased enrollment by adding 10,000 students, the members of the Arizona state legislature wrote in their letter to Chair of the House Committee on Appropriations Rosa DeLauro.
They urged DeLauro against the bill, saying it would largely harm minority students. During the 2019-2020 school year, 59% of Arizona charter school students identified in racial and ethnic groups other than white, they said.
The legislators wrote that the most recent U.S. News and World Report rankings of public high schools in Arizona determined that 8 out of Arizona’s top 10 public high schools are charter schools.
“We hope you will not diminish Arizona’s successes to advance a political agenda which reduces parent empowerment and puts the interests of children behind that of school union leaders,” they wrote.
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