There’s been a lot of chatter about the role of charter and traditional public schools sheltering students from hurricanes. In general, that task falls to district schools. The Gradebook recently explained why.
A few charter schools, including Lakeland’s McKeel Academy, are available as hurricane shelters. But most of them weren’t built with that task in mind. And until this year, the state gave them a fraction of the funding district schools received for facilities. That changed under a new state law. Now, charter schools and district schools will receive closer to equal funding per student for building needs.
If charter schools get close to equal funding, perhaps the state should state requiring newly constructed charters to meet shelter requirements. The Gradebook floats that idea. Districts suggested another option to the state’s Office of Program Policy Analysis and Government Accountability. Perhaps the state should consider funding shelters and schools separately.
District staff told us that using their funds to build schools to serve as public shelters can make it more difficult to address other educational priorities. While the school districts generally acknowledged the communitywide benefit of schools serving as emergency shelters, they would like the state to provide a separate funding source to cover the additional costs to pay for needed upgrades.
Irma could put a dent in the state’s already-tight budget. The chance some new funding source will emerge is probably remote. But this discussion reveals an important dimension of the new definition of public education. Until recently, there was one system of publicly funded schools. Government officials (such as emergency planners) could treat that one system as part of the public infrastructure. Now, it’s gotten more complicated. There are nearly 650 charter schools. In some communities, the majority of the new schools that open are charters.
It might make sense to start treating schools outside the traditional district system as part of that public infrastructure, as Polk County’s emergency planners have done with McKeel Academy. Or it might make sense to start planning emergency shelters and schools separately. Or maybe the current system works fine, and there’s no need to attack charter schools for doing something they weren’t designed to do.
