This month, Gov. Gretchen Whitmer of Michigan, announced that she vetoed a line item of the state budget and removed “nearly $10 million in resources from Detroit students who attend charter schools.” Due to this veto, Kyle Smitley, founder of Detroit Achievement Academy, said her charter students wouldn’t be receiving a significant amount of their proposed budget, even though the traditional public schools were still set to receive a significant budget increase.
Do charter schools hurt traditional schools?
Misunderstanding of charter schools at their governmental level is one of the biggest hurdles charter schools must jump. Claims from the opposition range from favoritism to theft from the school system. But transparency, auditability, and fairness are at the core of charter schools, and software like Lotterease exist to ensure equal opportunity for all who apply.
So why the pushback? Why the attacks on charter schools and the parents that chose them?
Children are worth the investment
We see every year that children benefit from charter schools. From smaller classroom sizes to newer teaching techniques, students at charter school are positioned to succeed as an individual within a community. Isn’t that exactly what we want schools to do?
So when budgets are cut, resulting in fewer Detroit students able to receive that type of high-quality education, we must ask, along with Kyle, “Are [charter students] worth less because their parents exercised their right of educational choice? The same educational choice that many of our peers (with resources, of course) chose to make by moving to a school district in the suburbs?”
