Charter Schools and Athletics

I sat in the Wharton County Junior College gym last night watching our varsity girls’ basketball team play a charter school in the bi-district playoff game.  We won, so you would think I’d be happy.  I’m not.

Charter schools are taxpayer funded schools of choice.  What that literally means is that any parent or student regardless of the public school attendance area in which they live, may apply to enroll in a charter school.  Charter schools receive state funding from taxpayers based on the number of kids enrolled.  They must hire certified teachers and they are held accountable for the state’s accountability system.  Yes, they take TAKS, STAAR, or whatever iteration of standardized testing is currently mandated.  But, there are crucial differences in charter schools and public schools.

Charter schools are not required to educate every kid within a certain geographical area.  They are not required to accept every kid or keep every kid.  They can filter, screen, and kick kids out.  The kids that are kicked out must return to the public schools.  If a student is a behavior problem, he or she can be kicked out.  If a student has learning difficulties and is academically challenged, he or she can be kicked out.  So, not only do parents have choice, the charter school has choice!  Public schools must educate every child within their attendance area.  Public schools do not have choice.  It doesn’t matter if the child is disabled, dyslexic, non-English Speaking, obese, mentally disabled, emotionally dysfunctional, behaviorally belligerent, etc., etc.  If they live here, we teach them.  We do not kick them out.

Every student enrolled in a charter school has a home public school where they could attend.  Every parent who has opted to take his or her son or daughter out of the public school and enroll them in a charter school has shifted tax payer money from the public school to the charter school.  Charter schools are free enterprise institutions funded by public tax dollars.  Public schools are public, governmental institutions funded by tax dollars where policies and procedures are set by a publicly elected Board of Trustees.  We are transparent, we are accountable, and we serve all the kids.

The Texas Legislature ruled that publicly funded charter schools may compete with public schools in UIL competitions.  Few have opted to play football.  Most opt to play volleyball, basketball, softball, baseball and track.  Public schools now are assigned multiple UIL districts to accommodate the charter schools.  We have a football district, and an "everything else" district with charter schools.  The charter schools not only cost us lost revenue for the kids enrolled, they cost us more travel expense in athletics.  I do not know that it is happening, but it could happen that a charter school could recruit athletes from public schools, much as private schools can do.  That is patently unfair.  We field teams based on the kids in our attendance area.  They do not.

I am not angry at the kids in charter schools.  It was a Legislative decision to create charter schools.  It was a parental decision to withdraw a student from the public school and enroll them in the charter school.  Why parents would opt to do so baffles me as the research is pretty clear:  charter schools do not outperform public schools.  They pay their administrators much more and their teachers less, but they do not outperform us.  They simply take tax payer dollars from public schools.  They are schools of choice, both for the kids and the school.

I am very proud of our Cowgirl Basketball Team.  They whooped Yes Prep Charter School.  I am not happy that we played a charter school.  I am not happy that charter schools exist and that they are allowed to compete in UIL.  From where I sit, that’s just not right.