There have been some comments about how public charter schools take money from our local independent school districts.
In fact they do.
If we look at EPISD this year they will get about 560 million dollars in funding. Roughly 379 million will come from state and federal funding. Another 182 million will come from local property taxes. About 32.5 percent of the district’s funding comes from local property taxes.
If a child leaves EPISD and goes to a public charter school the district loses their state and federal funding for that child.
However it keeps the local property taxes.
While the district loses about 66% of their total funding for that child they get to keep the 32.5% that comes from local property taxes.
Since the child no longer attends the district this is free money and actually helps pay for things that the remaining children in the district get.
We deserve better
Brutus
elpasospeak 
Brutus,
Your reasoning is not the process that was envisioned when property tax for public education was started. The money you pay in property taxes has nothing to do with an individual’s children’s education. The money is used as a tax for public education and should not be used for Charters or Vouchers or Private education
The State money is actually supposed to be used in the same manner according to the Texas Constitution however it passes through legislative hands and therefore is often misappropriated
.Public education is a giant piggy bank that many businesses would like to break and take advantage of. Most of them are “Non-Profit”, can you think of anything more un-American than Non-Profit? We pay taxes that support a County Hospital, Police and Fire departments, and many other things. If you get sick and choose to go to Providence should be able to ask for the money you paid for the County Hospital to be refunded to you or paid to Providence? Of course not but people think differently about education.
In America, if you choose something other than what is made available to you normally then you should PAY for that Choice. If public education is really;ly has broken then we need to fix it not place Charter school or voucher bandaids on it. Charter schools suck
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Property tax payer only pays 12% of county hospital budget. Bad analogy.
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If they didn’t overpay their executives they might not need our property tax money.
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Dan – In case you haven’t noticed, the taxpayer is not getting their money’s worth in public education now for at least a couple of decades. Taxpayers have been repeatedly conned that “it’s for the kids”. It’s all about the Benjamins!!! How many dollars are spent per student in the classroom now than was spent in 2000 or 1980? How much has administration been bloated and personnel overpaid for under-performance? Any decent parent wants their child to be as prepared as possible; hopefully able to read and write. I’m not throwing any shade at the in-classroom teachers. I have a couple in my extended family and listen to their good, bad and ugly stories at each family gathering.
Perhaps EPISD, and others, will get their heads out of their fourth point of contact and start making effective, positive changes…but I doubt it.
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