If a consideration for closing a school is whether it would make a nice facility for a homeschool program, as has been done, then this is a clear statement that homeschool students are more important than the current students at that facility. When the district asserts that children who attend a charter school cause a budget deficit in the regular schools, as FNSBSD is currently doing, that is a statement that noncharter school students are more valuable than charter school students.

In the latter case, the district has stated in its budget balancing tool that a charter school student is literally worth less than the district’s other students (northstarbudget.abalancingact.com): the alleged cost to the district for adding a charter school is listed as $8,200 multiplied by the number of students.

No justification for this $8,200 number has been provided; board member Burgess says we should just trust the district’s “award-winning” accountants (Enron and Lehman Brothers had award-winning accountants, too, but I digress). The ethical issues would not end with stovepiping (e.g., see also the valuation of urban over rural students), but it would at least be a start down the right path.

The recent actions by Pearl Creek parents and staff in putting forth both magnet and charter school proposals have highlighted this ethical problem. In response to those actions, district administration and current and former board members (in some cases the same person) have asserted the following: 1) There is nothing special about Pearl Creek; current students will acquire the same quality of education elsewhere. 2) Pearl Creek as a magnet school will not attract new students to the district, so the cost to the district of opening it as a magnet school is a complete negation of the cost savings from its closure. 3) The Pearl Creek magnet school proposal is so exceptional that the intellectual property contained within should be used to create magnet schools elsewhere in the district in the coming years. 4) As a charter school, Pearl Creek will attract no students other than current attendees of regular (noncharter) schools and BEST enrollees; it will, however, be so successful that it will attract 500 such students and each of those students should be counted as revenue loss to the district. I leave it to the reader to identify inconsistencies in logic and reasoning between these four items.

As a piece of accounting voodoo and pure chutzpah, the district’s Budget Balancing Act software is truly exceptional. Contained within it is the assertion that if Pearl Creek were to operate in the coming year as a charter school with the current staff, in its current building, with the same number of students generating the same amount of revenue for the district, then it would cause a budget deficit that is nearly double the savings the district claims is being generated by closing the school ($8,200 x 386 students = $3.2 million versus $1.7 million for closing the school). In other words, the simple act of rejecting Pearl Creek’s charter application will double the monetary benefit to the school district from its closure! Big, if true (Note: It’s not true).

To illustrate the nonsense being promulgated, consider that within the borough there are already a few thousand children who are either current charter school enrollees, private school enrollees or nonBEST homeschoolers. Why are these children also not counted as causing a deficit for the school district? Why aren’t their parents chastised for their selfishness and characterized as wanting to increase the district’s pupil-teacher ratio? Why are only the Pearl Creek students and parents who wish to join their ranks viewed as deficit-causing demons? The Pearl Creek community has asked that the district’s Oct. 1 charter application deadline be waived. They believe that they can get the school stood up in a shorter-than-normal time period because many of the people involved have already successfully operated a school in the current location. Ethically, whether this short time frame is viable is the only consideration that should currently be before the board with respect to Pearl Creek.