<p>If she wants to get her backpay, I’d hire an attorney and not go public until obtaining legal counsel.</p>
<p>She could get countersued for slander or libel, or it could cause other issues.</p>
<p>Again, this is a time not to worry about the student body at large, but about her own financial needs.</p>
<p>I wonder if the facts will show the administrator and his friends received an excessive amount of the value of the vouchers.</p>
<p>Can someone explain if a ‘voucher’ school is any different than a ‘charter’ school? I thought that vouchers are for use at private schools so am not sure why state dept of ed should care about OP’s D’s plight. Shouldn’t she be talking to the tuition paying parents and the Board of Directors? I suppose a ‘charter’ school would have to answer to the state DOE to some extent. My state doesn’t have vouchers but is considering charters, so I’m interested in how accountable these schools are to the state and who is in charge of overseeing them.</p>
<p>I was thinking it was Indiana. They recently expanded the voucher program and private schools are cropping up all over, with little oversight and few requirements.</p>
<p>This is a private school that opened in September. The only source of funding is the voucher money. Under NCLB, students can opt out of their underperforming schools and the district must pay the private school $5,500 for that student. The jerk of an administrator had visions of grants and donations, so did not charge any tuition over the voucher money.</p>
<p>The department of education is involved because of the voucher money. They are the ones who decide which schools can qualify for voucher money.</p>
<p>My kid survives through savings, an understanding landlord, and barely eating. Other teachers have employed spouses. Some live off credit cards, figuring that after surviving this year they can teach elsewhere next year. There are less than ten teachers in the entire school.</p>
<p>Since anyone can do a google and find this anyway, the teachers did go public. The school responded by sending a scathing letter to the parents disparaging the teachers and the press. </p>
<p>And, Cartera - Pennsylvania isn’t the worst state when it comes to vouchers!</p>
<p>Michigan does not have vouchers, but we have plenty of charter schools. They do not charge tuition. The state foundation grant follows the student, and the school has to make do with that money (like school districts do).</p>
<p>Charter schools are public schools that are run independently of the local school board or school district. Typically, some local group organizes itself to form one, and raises the money, or some outside chain (which may be for-profit, but is most likely to be non-profit) comes into the market to create one or more. They get charters from whatever the proper authority is (either the local district, or some state-level body, or both), and then they operated as a public school. How they select their students is part of the plans they file to get their charters. Funding is usually determined under state law on a per-student basis. They may be exempt from some, all, or none of the state’s education regulations. They may be outside or (rarely) subject to the local district’s collective bargaining agreement. But no one is charged tuition to go to a charter school.</p>
<p>A voucher school could be a charter school, but more likely is a private school approved for the program by a state authority. It will charge tuition, but accept the voucher as full or partial payment.</p>
<p>Translation – A school run explicitly as a religious school could not be a charter school. But every Catholic, Evangelical, and Orthodox Jewish school in the country is salivating for vouchers.</p>
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<p>I guess a required donation isn’t technically tuition:</p>
<p>[Taxpayers</a> Get Billed for Kids of Millionaires at Charter School - Bloomberg](<a href=“http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-11-15/taxpayers-billed-for-millionaires-kids-at-charter-school.html]Taxpayers”>Bloomberg - Are you a robot?)</p>
<p>Its simple math, isn’t it?</p>
<p>Either the voucher payment is not high enough, or there aren’t enough students, or too many teachers, or the teachers are being paid too much, or there is theft, or mismanagement. Or some combination of the above. </p>
<p>Isn’t 5,500 far below the cost of education per student. I’m looking at a news report that said the national average expenditure per student was 10,500 in 2009. That alone tells you that to be viable, everyone at the charter school has to make about half their public school counterparts, and that’s if you have the same base of students. In some states the expenditures per student are lots higher than the national average.</p>
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<p>With the use of vouchers and privately financed charter schools, the state is at the forefront of systematically dismantling public education.</p>
<p>Pennsylvania also has a Educational Improvement Tax Credit Program that allows business owners to donate part of their state taxes to their own children’s private schools. AND it pays for busing for private schools.</p>
<p><a href=“Scholarship Funds, Meant for Needy, Benefit Private Schools - The New York Times”>Scholarship Funds, Meant for Needy, Benefit Private Schools - The New York Times;
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<p>Very, very sore subject around here. This is the dark side of charter schools. While in theory they’re a way to give students in under-performing schools an option of “better” education, they’re also a way to create an organization that is completely unaccountable to the local school district. In the Bullis case the local district refused to grant the charter so the group of parents took their case to the county school board and won. The result is a local school that has basically no oversight and has made a game of suing the local district for all perceived slights. Parents are strong-armed into donating the “suggested” donation of $5000, and the local district is losing money fending off lawsuits, having to pay for facilities to house the charter, and paying for out-of-district students who choose to attend. This has been a very divisive issue in the area for more than seven years with no sign of reconciliation in sight.</p>
<p>I didn’t say that Pennsylvania isn’t awful (I live in PA). It’s just that Wisconsin is even worse.</p>
<p>There is no oversight of charter schools, or of private schools. That’s why there should be no voucher system, period. Just remember which side of the political aisle is bound and determined to steal your money, take it away from teachers and public school students and give it to whomever they please, in the name of school reform. Your vote really does matter.</p>
<p>Quote: Pennsylvania also has a Educational Improvement Tax Credit Program that allows business owners to donate part of their state taxes to their own children’s private schools. AND it pays for busing for private schools.</p>
<p>The above is equivalent to stealing from the public coffers, legally. Absolutely disgusting.</p>
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<p>Since you put it that way, yes, Wisconsin is hard to beat. Florida is knocking on the door too.</p>
<p>Pennsylvania doesn’t have vouchers.</p>
<p>Indiana now gives a tax break for home schooling and private schools but public school parents pay $100-$300 annually for book rental, has vouchers with almost no school requirements, and is taking over underperforming schools by giving the contract to Edison even though they have a bad track record for high schools. We also crippled our teachers unions this year. Can’t we be listed in the Top 5 for awful?</p>
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<p>This varies greatly from state to state. There’s a lot of oversight in our area.</p>
<p>Yes, Indiana makes the top 5. Congratulations.</p>
<p>collegekidsmom: PA doesn’t have vouchers, yet, but Harrisburg is working very hard to find a way to get them. In the meantime, school districts in PA are required to send whatever they spend per student to charter schools within the district, effectively draining money from the publics. Most districts have made drastic cuts – everything from kindergartens, to busing, to PE, art, library, …you name it, because their charter fees run into the 6 and 7 figure range. School boards have almost no means to deny charters, have little to no oversight, and they’ve become a great way to make money. If the district sends me $6,000 per student, and I can figure how to only spend 4K, there’s nobody to stop me. </p>
<p>Our governor’s education advisors are also execs with testing companies. The new Keystone exams (supposedly like NY regents) will be administered by those companies. After backpedaling on having so many, they’re working on having more. Gov Corbett was quoted in an interview last week (or maybe the week before) as saying it was “a waste of time” training teachers when what we really need is more vocational programs. (And I’m all for vocational training, but now teaching is a worthless profession?)</p>
<p>About 8 years ago, the PA Senate voted themselves a substantial payraise. In part to cushion the blow, they also voted to defer payment into the state retirement system – a law that also took teachers’ retirement payments from the state offline for years. Now, those payments are due and districts have to come up with the money. And the teachers’ union is taking the blame for that, somehow. (And no, I’m not a teacher)</p>