[Local-Maine-Schools] Public charter schools and local taxpayers

[Dick Atlee]

The BDN article two days ago about the now-much-amended charter-schools 
bill mentioned the following tidbit, which might be of interest to local 
taxpayers, even with the limits set by amendments on how many kids could 
desert their town schools for charter schools.

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http://new.bangordailynews.com/2011/05/22/politics/charter-schools-boosted-by-strong-support-on-education-committee/

The Legislature’s Office of Fiscal and Program Review, which estimates 
the cost of proposed bills, said that the state-level administration of 
charter schools could be absorbed within existing resources by the 
Department of Education, but flagged potential financial losses for 
local school districts in a fiscal note for the original bill.

“The requirement that excepts up to 1 percent of state and local 
operating funds follow each student to the public charter school the 
student attends may result in a significant redistribution of state and 
local per-pupil allocation,” reads the fiscal note. “The impact to 
individual school units cannot be determined at this time.”

The fiscal note also states that there will be costs to the state 
associated with teachers who take leaves of absences to teach at charter 
schools, but did not estimate what those will be.
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[That last bit is interesting -- is it only the state that gets hit with 
such a cost?]