NC charter schools challenge capital funding rules

North Carolina charter schools want a court to force counties and school districts to consider their requests for the same funds traditional schools receive for buildings, new buses and equipment.

Seven of the alternative public schools and more than 50 students and parents who filed suit this week in Mecklenburg County Superior Court believe the state and federal constitutions give them the same right to access to capital money.

Without the opportunity --the charter schools contend -- they must raise funds privately or borrow money, or watch their facilities suffer.

"What we're trying to do is get a place at the table to be heard, and to ask the question should all students who attend (public) schools be funded," said Michael Pratt, headmaster at Rocky Mount Preparatory School. He spoke Tuesday, a day after the suit was filed in Charlotte.

The 1996 law creating charter schools and a 1998 opinion by state attorneys say the schools essentially can only receive money from state and local governments to hire teachers, buy textbooks and other operating expenses.

Although some public funds can be used by charter schools to lease buildings, a dedicated capital outlay fund held by counties with county and state funds, such as proceeds from a share of corporate income taxes and North Carolina Education Lottery profits, is off limits.

The lawsuit contends this disparity runs counter to the state constitution's requirement that the Legislature create "a general and uniform system of free public schools" that all state and local school money be appropriated to that end.

"Charter schools are public schools. Yet, they receive disparate and discriminatory treatment in North Carolina by and through a discriminatory funding policy permitted and enforced by the defendants," the lawsuit reads.

The plaintiffs want a judge to declare the current charter school funding laws unconstitutional and give charter schools the opportunity to be "uniformly considered" for capital funds.

The state Attorney General's Office, which represents the state of North Carolina in the lawsuit, had no immediate comment except to say the lawsuit was under review.

Charter schools have open enrollment and don't charge tuition. But they are run by private boards and are exempt from many rules imposed on traditional public schools. Thus they have more flexibility to test innovative learning techniques or focus programs more on at-risk children. Only 100 charter schools are allowed to operate at any time.

Mecklenburg, Union, Nash, Halifax, Edgecombe, Rutherford and Cleveland counties, as well as seven school boards in those counties also are defendants because the charter schools who sued are within these areas.

Counties and school boards will be wary of offering additional funds to charter schools when the Legislature or Gov. Beverly Perdue this year took money or suspended transfers earmarked for local school construction.

The funding formula approved in 1996 was a compromise to get the charter school concept off the ground, said Wib Gulley, a former state senator and the bill's primary sponsor.

It was thought that "charter schools should be a community-based effort and that if it was the community that wanted the charter school that needed to step up to the plate and come up with the (capital) funds," said Leanne Winner, a lobbyist for the North Carolina School Boards Association.

At Rocky Mount Prep, with more than 900 students in kindergarten through 12th grade, monthly debt payments on its 9-year-old building and spending on busing students to and from school eat into funds that could be used to beef up student programs and teacher salaries, Pratt said.

"It is a tough environment" for charter schools, said former state Supreme Court Justice Bob Orr, executive director of the North Carolina Institute for Constitutional Law, which helped bring the lawsuit. "It's really putting a lot of pressure on them."