Victory for Charter Schools

From the Examiner:

Local school boards must give charter schools the same amount of money as traditional public schools, Maryland’s highest court decided Monday.

“Public charter schools are public schools, not prep schools or parochial schools,” said attorney Richard Daniels, who represented two of the charter schools. “They cannot force charter schools to take funding in services, instead of funds.”

This is great news for the charter school movement and for all parent with children in public schools. The case involved, suprise, surprise, the City of Baltimore trying to screw several charter schools (complete decision here) out of funding the State Board of Education had decreed they were entitled to. Baltimore attempted to do this by decreasing the per student payment for all manner of things. As the court noted:

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Under that funding model, the city board advised that the per pupil funding for FY 2006 would consist of $5,011 in cash and $2,943 in s ervices, some of which City Neighbors did not seek, did not need, and did not desire. In calculating the per pupil allocation, the city board excluded Federal entitlement funds, system administrative costs, fun ds for special education, transportation expenses, expenses for health services, expenses for utility services, and the cost of food
services.

Monopolies are an inherently bad thing. We see the outcome with utilities and we see it with public school system, both tend to respond to inefficiency and ineptness with a demand for more taxpayer money. This case should be cheered by everyone.