5B Charter Allocation

Good afternoon:

I find it hard to fathom that even you believe your response to my previous letter to the Board regarding the use of the District’s 5 year average Funded Pupil Count to calculate the Charters’ allocation of 5B funding.

1. Your response stated: “One of the main goals in the distribution of bond funds has been to keep the shares to our charter schools understandable to the public” – Do you honestly believe that using the 5 year average of the District’s Funded Pupil Count to calculate the allocation is “understandable”? Tell me, where can anyone easily find the numbers that were used? Do you think that the goal of “understandable” is achieved when the District is essentially non-responsive to 2 CORA requests asking for the numbers used to calculate the Charters’ allocation (see my April 19, 2019 letter to the Board)? Can you honestly find one member of the Charter community who would, in their wildest dreams, think that the District was going to use the 5 year average of Funded Pupil Count to calculate Charters’ share instead of the October 1, 2018 enrollment? The answer to all of these questions is a resounding “No”!

2. To say that “The calculation that has been used has been consistent in allocation of bond funds and other per student costs as in previous years” is immaterial, and just diversion and deception. The fact of the matter is that the Board passed a Resolution for this year’s allocation that specifically stated “The Board of Education will allocate a percentage of the bond proceeds equal to the percentage of full-time district students enrolled in district-authorized charter schools”. The resolution’s wording did not state anything related to using past distribution formulas. Your resolution wording did not talk about using funding formulas based on 5 year averages. Your resolution specifically stated “enrolled”. That word has a pretty specific meaning. A meaning that was even clear to the District’s finance staff who used the phrase “October 1, 2018 Official FTE count (audited).“ not once, but twice, on the spreadsheet they distributed to the Charters to document how they calculated the distribution. Again, why would anyone have any reasonable expectation that 5 year average FPC numbers would be used based on the Board’s resolution which explicitly stated that enrollment numbers would be used? They wouldn’t!

Do you know what I find to be the most disturbing? The fact that instead of admitting to and owning up to what even I could chalk up to be a legitimateand understandable math mistake, you and the District are engaged in what seems to me to be a deceptive and retroactive changing of the rules. And, instead of doing the right thing and truly being equitable, as you so resoundingly claim to be, you’re not. For the relatively small amount of money involved, I just don’t understand your actions here.

I’m proud of the fact that no one can question my ethics and integrity.

Can you say the same?