School Finance: Charter Schools

Memorandum

The deadline for submitting the Charter School Pre-Enrollment Report for the 2008-09 school year is 5:00 p.m. on Wednesday, March 19, 2008. The Charter School Pre-Enrollment Report is used by the Department of Elementary and Secondary Education to collect projected enrollment data in order to determine each charter school's first quarter tuition payment for fiscal year 2009. This report represents the maximum number of students on which each charter school's tuition calculation will be based for the upcoming fiscal year. It is also used to notify sending school districts by April 1^st, as required by law, of the number of students enrolled in charter schools for the upcoming school year.

Information included in this memorandum includes:

1. Instructions for 2008-09 Charter School Pre-Enrollment data submission

2. Instructions for 2008-09 Charter School "Significant Expansion" data submission

3. Regulatory Notification of 2008-09 "Near-Cap" Sending Districts for Commonwealth charter schools

1. Instructions for 2008-09 Charter School Pre-Enrollment data submission

   The web user interface for the Charter School Pre-Enrollment application for this year remains unchanged from the 2007-08 school year.

   Complete instructions will be located within the Charter School Pre-Enrollment web application itself, which will be accessible through the ESE Security Portal beginning March 1, 2007. In addition, a web/phone conference training on the use of the Charter School Pre-Enrollment online application will be conducted at 10 a.m. on Monday, March 10, 2008. If you would like to participate in this training, please register at http://www.doe.mass.edu/conference/?ConferenceID=264 by Friday, March 7, 2008. All charter schools are required to submit pre-enrollment data for the 2008-09 school year by Wednesday, March 19, 2008.

2. Instructions for 2008-09 Charter School "Significant Expansion" data submission

   The deadline for submitting significant expansion information to the Department is 5:00 p.m. on Thursday, May 1, 2008. Federal entitlement grant formulas usually rely on prior year data. For new or significantly expanding charter schools, this data is often very inaccurate and does not generate a revenue stream that serves the school's current year population. The Charter School Expansion Act of 1998 addressed this issue by amending the Elementary and Secondary Education Act to require that state educational agencies take measures to ensure that charter schools receive the Federal-to-State formula funds (e.g., Title I, Title II, and IDEA funds, among others) for which they are eligible within five months of opening or expanding their enrollment. See http://www.uscharterschools.org/pdf/fr/sea_guidance_main.pdf  for more information.

   Federal regulations define significant expansion of enrollment as a "substantial increase in the number of students attending a charter school due to a significant event that is unlikely to occur on a regular basis, such as the addition of one or more grades or educational programs in major curriculum areas." Minor increases in enrollment caused by normal turnover are not considered significant expansion. In Massachusetts, the Department's criteria for determining whether a charter school has experienced a significant expansion of enrollment are:

   1. The charter school's enrollment based on Oct. 1 SIMS is at least 10% greater than the previous year; and

   2. The charter school is expanding for one of the following reasons:

      1. adding one or more grades according to a growth plan;

      2. a Board of Education approved amendment to the school's charter to increase enrollment;

      3. relocation to new space that allows for approved expansion previously restricted by inadequate facilities.

   In order to ensure that the Department has accurate enrollment numbers from which to calculate allocations for entitlement grants, new or significantly expanding charter schools must provide the projected enrollment data for the 2008-09 school year for Low Income (SIMS Data Element ESE 019), Special Education (SIMS Data element DOE034), and Limited English Proficient (SIMS Data element DOE025) students. New or significantly expanding charter schools should make every effort to submit accurate projections based on information collected via student enrollment/registration forms after offers of admission have been extended to prospective students or by using data from students' sending districts.

   Data will be collected via the Charter School Sig. Expansion web application, which will be accessible through the ESE Security Portal in late March. The deadline is 5:00 PM on Thursday, May 1, 2008. Instructions will be available within the web application itself. Please note that FY08 final allocations may be adjusted to reflect actual enrollment data collected in October 2008 via the Student Information Management System (SIMS).

3. Regulatory Notification of 2008-09 "Near-Cap" Sending Districts for Commonwealth charter schools

   Charter school regulations state "the Department of Elementary and Secondary Education shall notify each Commonwealth charter school no later than February 15 of any limitation on the number of students from a district that may be enrolled in charter schools for the upcoming year" (603 CMR 1.06(4)(c)).

   The charter school statute, M.G.L. Chapter 71, Section 89(i), stipulates that no school district's total charter school payments shall exceed 9% of the district's net school spending (NSS cap). Using projected FY08 enrollment numbers for charter schools, projected FY08 tuition rates, and required FY08 NSS figures, the School Finance Unit has calculated preliminary projections of each sending district's FY08 enrollment against the 9% NSS cap, which is contained in the attached Projected FY09 FTE Remaining under the 9% Charter School Net School Spending (NSS) Cap spreadsheet  .

   Based on the Department's understanding of charter school growth plans for FY08, the attached analysis projects the number of "seats" that will remain for charter school enrollment in each sending district, after the FY08 enrollment process has been completed. Based on this analysis, the Department has determined that the following school districts are "near-cap" districts (projected to have either less than 10 FTE seats remaining or to have charter tuition assessments above 8.25% of NSS):

   LEA #	Near-Cap Sending District	LEA #	Near-Cap Sending District
   89	Edgartown	253	Rowe
   98	Florida	263	Savoy
   121	Hancock	296	Tisbury
   221	Oak Bluffs	337	Whately
   230	Pelham	340	Williamsburg
   234	Petersham	632	Chesterfield Goshen
   242	Provincetown	774	UpIsland

   As described in the November 7, 2005 Department memorandum entitled "Managing Charter School Enrollment and the Net School Spending Cap," for these districts-and only these districts-charter schools may exercise the option to skip over students who apply for enrollment in accordance with 603 CMR 1.06(4)(d). After charter schools have submitted their pre-enrollment data, the Department will release FY08 tuition projections in mid to late April, at which time the FTE Remaining Under NSS Cap analysis presented above, as well as the "near-cap" district list, will also be adjusted. If seats become available, charter schools should enroll students from the waitlist-some of whom may have been previously skipped-if a particular sending district is no longer on this "near-cap list. Please note that in the event that a sending district's tuition assessment exceeds the 9% NSS cap, the Department will prorate equally that district's tuition assessment among all charter schools enrolling students from that district.

   Please feel free to contact me at 781-338-3228 or cchuang@doe.mass.edu with any questions or concerns regarding the information contained in this memorandum.

   Attachment: Projected FY09 FTE Remaining under the 9% Charter School Net School Spending (NSS) Cap