This story is part of our ongoing series, Ask INDY, in which INDY staffers put their expertise (and impeccable taste) to use answering your questions about navigating life in the Triangle.
Wow, thanks for all of your Durham Public Schools (DPS) questions for our first Ask INDY installment. And thanks for asking us instead of some shitty AI chatbot. We promise we are real people who spend a lot of time sitting through municipal meetings so that you don’t have to.
In the 60-plus submissions via Reddit and our survey, you were most interested in:
- The impact of charter schools on DPS funding
- The plan for DPS facilities, including sites like Old Northern and the soon-to-be old Durham School of the Arts
- School lotteries/the Growing Together redistricting plan/how to get your child into the best possible school
- The shortage of after-school care service and what the district is doing to address it
Any of these topics (and many that we didn’t list) could be the subject of a 3,000-word investigation, and we’ll continue looking into your DPS questions for future stories. We’ll look at charter school funding here, because it’s particularly relevant in the ongoing budget season.
Reddit user LadyKnight33 asked: How much funding is diverted from public base schools to public charter or magnet schools annually? How does this affect budgets for children at base schools?
Short answer: In the Durham County budget, taxpayers are set to pay about $221 million into the DPS operating budget and about $47.5 million of that total will go directly to charter schools.
Long answer: North Carolina forces local districts to give an equal amount of per-pupil local funding to charter schools, which, while publicly funded, operate outside of their local school districts. Durham County has about 31,000 students in DPS and about 7,700 in charter schools. The numbers are a bit screwy depending on what exactly you’re including, but basically that means that charter schools get about 20 percent of any money that the county gives to DPS. Durham is home to 16 charter schools and 57 district schools.
Supporters of charter schools say that such schools give families more options, while critics say they lack oversight and divert funding from the public education that the state is mandated to provide to its youth. I’ll avoid characterizing the local impact of charter schools except to say that, well, $47.5 million is going to charter schools instead of helping DPS deal with ballooning bills, teacher demands for better pay, and a stock of aging buildings.
If you’re interested in the origins and growth of charter schools in North Carolina, I’d suggest that you check out this recent report from Public Schools First NC and this charter schools guide from EdNC.
A new Ask INDY topic is posted weekly. Send us your questions at indyweek.com/ask-indy or [email protected].
Reach Reporter Chase Pellegrini de Paur at [email protected]. Comment on this story at [email protected].