Charter advocates are trying to pressure the New York State legislature to expand the charter school cap in New York City and has the support of the Governor. However, charter friendly Chalkbeat has an article on whether charter schools drain resources from traditional public schools and the answer is yes!.
The article looked at various studies and concluded that charter school expansion added to the financial stress of traditional public schools. Moreover, an analysis of the Los Angeles and San Diego school districts found similar results.
Charter schools drain students and resources from traditional public schools and try to claim that they alleviate overcrowding in school districts that see a population influx of students. That might be true to some degree in Florida and Arizona but overall it causes financial stress for the school district. These school districts must either raise taxes, increase class sizes, or reduce staff, usually a combination of all three.
The bottom line is that charter schools are a negative factor when it comes to funding traditional public schools in a school district as every student who leaves the traditional public school takes the funding with the student to the charter school.
