At a meeting Tuesday Park City School District officials laid out their concerns that there is uncertainty about whether a new charter school in the Park City area will impact their budget.
The Weilenmann School of Discovery will initially teach students grades K-6. Parents will not pay tuition for their kids to attend the charter school because it uses monies from public schools where their children would have gone.
“For every student that attends the charter school that normally would have come to the public school, the weighted-pupil-unit dollar amount travels with that student to the charter school,” said Michael Boyle, a member of the Park City Board of Education, about funding the district receives from income tax. “The public school district will lose $2,577 per student.”
But the district will also lose a share of property tax revenue, about $363 per child, when a student transfers to the charter school, Boyle said.
“It’s a little under $3,000 per student that the school district would lose total,” Boyle said. “If it’s 400 students, then obviously that’s $1.2 million that would leave the public school district and travel to the charter school.”
However, proponents of charter schools claim the schools do not siphon money from districts because serving fewer students means less expense.
Boyle countered that argument in a telephone interview Thursday.
“Obviously the public school district would have some reduced costs for each student who leaves, but not the full $3,000, because of overhead,” Boyle said. “Just because a classroom loses three or four kids, you don’t lay off the teacher and spread those kids around. You are out that money but you still have almost all the same ongoing costs.”
The district pays about $7,000 per year to educate each student in the Park City area, Boyle said.
“If indeed we could reduce our costs exactly by the amount that’s leaving us, then the advocates would have a true argument,” Boyle said. “To have $3,000 leave, obviously we still have a lot of costs that remain and we’re not made whole.”
Charter schools are public schools started by parents or educators who see needs for services an existing school district is not providing, according to Marlies Burns, state director of charter schools in Utah.
Burns addressed members of the Park City Board of Education and answered their questions about charter schools at a meeting on Tuesday. Weilenmann is not part of the Park City School District.
“They are held to a contract, a charter if you will,” Burns said.
According to the charter for the Weilenmann School, the institution’s mission statement includes “instruction aligned with core standards and authentic assessment infused with inquiry, innovative technologies and media, artistic expression, and the awe and beauty of nature and the world.”
The roughly 55,000-square-foot school is under construction on about 11 acres in Pinebrook.
“Charter schools have to market,” Burns said. “It is a school of choice. Students are not obligated to attend.”
The Weilenmann School will likely recruit most of its students from the Park City School District, said Kim Carson, a member of the Park City Board of Education.
“There is a lot of uncertainty as far as how many students will go and when we will be notified of that,” Carson told Burns.
Weilenmann School officials estimate the school could have 550 students this fall. The curriculum will eventually expand to serve seventh- and eighth-graders, Burns said.
Park City School District officials say they expect to be notified in April about how many of their students will be attending Weilenmann next year.
“We’re certainly in a wait-and-see mode until we receive information from the charter school as required by the state regarding how many of the current public school district students will be attending,” Boyle said.
But the charter school should not impact the Park City School District’s budget in the first year, Boyle said.
“The pubic school district is held harmless the first year so the public schools will continue to receive the WPU dollars for those students for the first year as if we still had them,” Boyle said. “This allows us to make staffing decisions and plan for the future without being hit the very first year.”