Archive: Around Town

When the New Roots Charter High School opens its doors in the Fall about 125 students from at least 14 school districts will attend.  For these students the school promises an exciting new way to learn, with more individual attention and hands-on experience.  The school is funded with federal and state dollars, as well as money from the students' home districts.  This has fostered some concern in those districts, which will be responsible for paying tuition based on the Per Pupil Expenditure that they average for each student in their own schools.

While that will just become part of the budget process in future years, the unknowns involved in this first year have made it hard to gauge the short-term impact of the new school on the home districts.  "Looking at over $100,000 of new expenses is quite a bit," says Lansing School Superintendent Stephen Grimm.  "It will be an initial shock to the system, but once we start to incorporate that into our yearly planning it will be another program.  Which is what it is."

As of last week, New Roots School Executive Secretary Melissa Mueller reported that nine Lansing students have signed up.  The school will only have 9th and 10th grades in its first year, and will add 11th grade in its second year, and 12th in its third. The nine students represent about 4% of the Lansing freshman and sophomore classes.  Lansing has the highest tuition of all schools from which students will come, at $12,850 per student.  Grimm says these numbers can be used to roughly extrapolate about 15 students next year and 20 in future years, which will give the district more to go on for future planning.

Enrollment in the new school has been ongoing for months, and so far the school has received more than 100 applications.  The school has begun to bring their students together with meetings, activities, and even involving students in hiring the new faculty.  Officials say they are on track to meet their enrollment target for their first year.

"Optimally we will have 125 students, and it seems that we are on track to be there or even beyond," says New Roots School Founder and Principal Tina Nilsen-Hodges.  "We have some flexibility to take some more students if we feel that we can accommodate them with our facilities and our staffing.  But we could also have fewer students and be perfectly fine as well.  So we're in good shape now.  We know that we're in that zone where the numbers crunch, and we have a school."

Grimm says that the timing is also good for Lansing because of a combination of issues that came together to turn what threatened to be a disastrous budget year into an advantageous one.  Expected cuts to the district budget were significantly less than originally projected, and it is expected that there will be zero change this summer from last year's tax rate. 

At the time of this writing Lansing was second highest in the number of students enrolling in the school, with the Ithaca School District the highest.  Ithaca (tuition $12,113) will be sending 56 students, which accounts for about 6.5% of its freshman and sophomore classes, and 56% of New Roots' first year population. 

Dryden and Trumansburg each had seven students enrolled, Candor and Newfield each had five, Groton two, and other students from Harpursville, Horseheads, Moravia, Romulus, South Seneca, Southern Cayuga, and Spencer-Van Etten.  The tuition levels range from Lansing's high of $12,850 to Spencer-Van Etten's low of $8,771.

That amount or tuition per student that each district must pay to charter schools is determined by the New York State Education Department.  The Fire Island district pays the highest at $105,135 per student, and Marathon pays the lowest at $7,853.  Lansing's $12,850 falls below the state average of $13,233.

"Given New York's financial crisis the State made the decision to freeze charter school funding at this school year's level," Nilsen-Hodges explains.  "Where we benefit is that since we're just starting up we can just plan for that amount of money coming in.  We don't have to make any cuts or adjustments.  We're not losing an expected increase.  We're simply planning for the actual amount of money we will receive."

Grimm says that calculating the exact dollar impact to Lansing is close to impossible at this time because of complicated formulas the State of New york uses in calculating aid.  Other expenses such as special education and transportation are also variables that can't yet be quantified.  New Roots shares that uncertainty in that the exact number of students that will end up being enrolled, and the districts they come from isn't set.  Families that have enrolled may change their minds, and other families may opt to enroll.  In that sense it won't be possible to calculate the exact budget until the first day of school. 

"We're a school of choice," Nilsen-Hodges notes.  "Students can decide to enroll up to the first day of school and beyond that if we have space.  They can also decide to go back to their home school districts at whatever point they choose, as well.  When kids walk in the door on the first day that will be a point where we hit a milestone on our enrollment where we can assume that they are planning to stay, at least for a while."

Lansing and the other districts are no different from New Roots in terms of budget to population planning.  The impact on their budgets is in flux until enrollment for the year gels.  "We lose 20 students, gain 30 in one year, gain 20, lose 30 the next... kids are constantly coming in," Grimm says.  "For nine students it's hard to plan a reduction unless they have specific programs."

Taking four or five students out of the mix could have more of an impact on the Lansing budget than taking 20 from each class would have.  The reason is that those numbers are too small to statistically affect class sizes.  If 20 students were gone you wouldn't need as many teachers, thus reducing expenditures for the district.  But with only five, something else will have to give. 

"I think that there will be some impact, but I really don't know what it will be yet," says outgoing Lansing High School Principal Michelle Brantner.  "Until the number of students is sure and the money that follows them is sure and we see where we are at, the financial impact may be not being able to have some of the extras."

But Grimm says that the money will come out of the general budget, not the high school budget.  The Government Accounting Standards Board (GASB) rule 45 has reinterpreted the rule school districts used to collect money to pay retiree benefits, and that has freed a significant amount of money for current expenses.  On top of that federal stimulus money has replaced cuts in New York State aid to schools.  Grimm says that all came at a good time relative to a charter school opening at this time.

"For Lansing it did," he says.  "If anything this was a great time for having the reinterpretation of the GASB 45 and freeing up over a million dollars of liability funds.  That's when we needed it the most.  Then to have federal stimulus dollars coming helped us to not have to use the liability funds right now.  Now we can plan conservatively and still keep the respectable tax rate."

The impact of New Roots on the school district will not be solely financial.  Parents and students are attracted to the school because of the promise of more attention to students with a more advantageous student to teacher ratio, mentoring, and its different approach to teaching.  Academically State requirements are the same for charter schools, and families who have decided to make the change feel the New Roots approach will provide a better fit for their children to succeed.  Taking this population out of their home schools may take some pressure to serve them off of home districts.

Placing these children in a different environment is not an indictment of their home school districts.  There is always a sub population of children whose way of learning is at odds with their school's way of teaching.  Families with the means have traditionally dealt with that by enrolling their children in private schools, which also affects State aid to school districts to some extent.  In that sense New Roots will be providing a service to local students whose home schools can't effectively serve them.  But the jury is till out -- once the school has its first year under its belt the benefits, like budget planning, will be more quantifiable.

Another impact may be ways in which New Roots and Lansing schools help to shape each other.  Once the school is accepted as a part of the educational community there will be opportunities for partnering or at least some back and forth between the public schools and New Roots.  New Roots has already reached out to local green businesses and organizations, as well as colleges.  Grimm doesn't rule out similar connections between the charter school and the Lansing school district.

"A lot of what they want to do is very admirable," Grimm says.  "We are always trying to use a combination of best practices, so when we see a good idea and think it might work, we try it.  If New Roots is breaking some intellectual boundaries, we're watching for best practices that we can incorporate here.  We're constantly looking for ways to partner with other organizations, whether it's colleges, other schools.  When we do that, and we do it in a lot of areas, it's wonderful.  There are so many wonderful possibilities for us in this area that we can't do it enough."

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