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Health & Fitness

Charter Schools and South Brunswick, Part 2

More thoughts on charter schools in South Brunswick...Creating a "Better" School?

 

I've been keeping up with the debate about a proposed charter school coming to the South Brunswick area. I've already written one blog about it.

I'm actually not pro or anti charter school.  I think that in some instances, for example, in under performing school districts, charter schools could be a good thing.

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One of my problems with charter schools is not understanding why they use public funds but are treated essentially as private schools.  The township voters get no say in whether the charter school will exist in their town, and they get no say in how their money will be used, whereas the same township voters vote on their school budget every year, can go to any school board meeting and get up and make a public statement, and so forth.

Another problem I have is why charter school advocates aren't talking about the cost it takes to educate kids at charter schools.  It seems to take a lot of money to education just a relatively few kids as opposed to the ten thousand or so students South Brunswick educates on a yearly basis.  And I wonder whether in these difficult economic times if it makes sense to take even more money out of our already struggling school district rather then, say, having voters decide whether Mandarin Chinese is necessary to our schools.  If it is, why couldn't we direct funds towards creating a Mandarin language program?

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South Brunswick schools aren't perfect.  I'm not suggesting they are.  But it seems the majority of people committed to the schools are working very hard to keeping the district one of the tops in the state. With our graduation rate and rate of high school seniors who go on to a four year college, it's kind of hard to imagine that a charter school is going to be "better."  Because isn't that the goal of the charter school? To create a "better" school?

Or is it the goal of the charter school to create a "choice?" Because if so, that seems like a private school to me.  And that's fine, but then I ask again: why would we use public funds for it?  If it's a public school, why doesn't the public get a say in it?  I don't get it. Do you?

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