I was lucky enough to be able to interview one of my close friends, who was the principal of a

local high school for years. In fact, he was one of the founding members of the charter, which
was for the creation of a school focused on arts and sciences. This school has become one of our
towns treasures and produces thoughtful, creative, well-rounded graduates. Now that I think of
it, as I sit down to write out my notes from the interview, it is an interesting coincidence that not
a half hour before our meeting I ran into one of the schools most promising alumni at the
grocery store. He is now an art student at a California State University and seems to be doing
well. Knowing all of this, it is easy to see why I was so eager to talk to my friend the retired
principal. (For the purposes of this brief report, I shall refer to him as Mr. Brown.) I wanted to
know how a great school like this one, particularly a young charter school, negotiates budget
issues successfully.
Im afraid my first question was a rather nebulous one. I simply asked, How did you do it? Mr.
Brown laughed and then said without hesitation, Very carefully. We were off to a great start.
He said that the charter school budget was a difficult one to manage, especially because they had
no facility of their own. To this day, in fact, the school is still homeless in a sense. They pay to
use the back lot portables of another high school in town. Mr. Brown told me that looking to the
future and saving up for a home site had to constantly be balanced with the expenses of day to
day operations. Difficult choices had to be weighed and made. This reminded me of our studies
in class with regard to charter school funding. In Chapter 3 of California School Law by Frank
Kemerer and Peter Sansom, it was noted that state and federal aid is relied upon by schools with
just such a situation, providing they qualify. I asked Mr. Brown about grants and the like, and he
replied that the school was fortunate enough to have received support during his tenure.
We talked at length about the effect of the Local Control Funding Formula (LCFF) on the school
budget, and Mr. Brown basically said that he saw improvements in how much funding was
dispersed from the state. He said that quite a large percentage of the students at the arts and
sciences charter school were from difficult family situations. It was more common to see
emotionally disturbed students there then at the other schools in the district, and many of those
were of low SES backgrounds. I asked him why that was, and he pointed out that one of the
missions of the art school was to be as inclusive of individuality as possible a very attractive
setting for fragile young people with unique ways of expressing themselves. Mr. Brown said that
though the high population of special needs students was sad and made school operations
difficult at times, it did end up boosting the funding the school was given via the LCFF. This is
in line with the report found on the Ed-Data website, which notes that schools would have 20%
more funding per high-needs student.
I asked what it was like to deal with the budget of a brand new charter, and Mr. Brown told me
that it took a lot of courage to make hard decisions. For instance, he said that in the beginning
they were a nonclassroom-based instructional program but after a while it became clear that
they would need to decide if eventually growing into a facility of sorts was worth taking funding
cuts. He explained that, before making the move, they qualified for funding because they did not
meet the criteria as outlined by law. I was reminded of the four provisions discussed in Chapter 3
of California School Law by Frank Kemerer and Peter Sansom, which are briefly as follows.
First, educational activities led by a certificated teacher are being participated in by students.
Next, the school must offer at least 80 percent of instructional time. Naturally, the site of the
school must be used primarily for instruction. Lastly, students must be required to attend classes
at least 80 percent of the instruction time determined by law for the grade level of the students.
When the school Mr. Brown helped build met these four criteria after moving into a rented
facility, they no longer received support as a nonclassroom-based instructional program.
However, several members of the staff turned out to be prolific grant writers, and much of the
funding they receive comes from that source.