Dear Lincoln residents,
At our October 6th meeting, the Lincoln School Committee voted unanimously to recommend a “no” vote on Ballot Question 2 (you can read our resolution here). Ballot Question 2 would lift the current charter school cap and allow up to twelve new publicly-funded charter schools each year. Also, each year it would allow charter school enrollment to expand by 1% of total statewide public school enrollment. We believe that there are two main reasons for rejecting this proposal and keeping the current limits:
- Additional loss of town/city revenue—“Chapter 70” is the Commonwealth’s law that governs state funding for public education, and it provides a significant portion of the local aid package that cities and towns receive from the Commonwealth to support schools and other municipal services. When a child is enrolled in a charter school, the municipality in which the child lives is charged a per-pupil cost that is determined through a three-part formula. The resulting amount is then paid to the charter school, and is subtracted from a city’s or town’s local aid. Currently there is no impact on the town of Lincoln’s local aid, but many cities and towns, including our neighbors Bedford, Concord, Sudbury and Waltham are already experiencing a loss in local aid due to charter school tuition.
- Lack of local accountability—Although cities and towns pay for each student that attends a charter school, there is no local oversight. Despite receiving public funds, charter schools have no accountability to locally elected officials such as school committees or selectmen. In town such as ours, where we govern through Town Meeting, the charter school accountability and funding structures represent a distinct departure from the direct oversight we, as Lincoln voters, currently have over public education and municipal finance.
For these reasons, we, the members of the Lincoln School Committee, voted to join the Massachusetts Association of School Committees and over 180 school districts in urging a “no” vote on Ballot Question 2.
Sincerely,
Jennifer Glass, Chair
Tim Christenfeld, Vice-Chair
Peter Borden
Jena Salon
Al Schmertzler
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