NEWPORT, Ky.-- River Cities Academy is a charter school in Northern Kentucky that exists only on paper, and in the minds of its founders. The parents behind the school are looking for ways to fund their dream, since the General Assembly for the second year in a row failed to allocate any state dollars to the cause. While these parents push for the help in public funding, advocates of more traditional public schools are pleased at the lack of money to charter schools, hoping that all public schools receive more state dollars to operate and improve.
- Although charter schools can exist in Kentucky under a state law, there's again no public funding allocated to pay for them to open.
- Parents pushing to start their dream charter schools are heartbroken, hoping for some state dollars soon.
- Meanwhile, advocates of more traditional public education are pleased with the lack of state dollars. They want all schools to be better funded.
Sarah Strauss and Evelyn Pence are a pair of parents in Newport, KY, that has worked to try to establish River Cities Academy. However, their dream of opening this charter school cannot come to life without a funding source.
"I can hope for funding, but I don't think that's going to do much," Strauss says.
As they work to find an alternate means of funding the open of the school to serve grades K-8 in Kenton and Campbell counties, they explain the hard work that's gone into consulting educators and writing a charter.
"To finally be at the finish line, to have finished the school... I mean, this school is so real that you can taste it. We get excited just talking about it. Fiishing it has been an amazing experience, but finishing the school and now knowing that there's no funding for it that's heartbreaking," says Strauss.
There's been much debate on the concept of charter schools. Not all agree there should be public money given to school that select students.
"Ed- choice and charter schools really is a conversation that just shouldn't happen," Pam Thomas of the Kentucky Center for Economic Policy says. "[Lawmakers] reduced revenues and they also spent more money. They appropriated more money. There is no more money. So, it you think of money right now that goes to public education as a pie, and it serves all of these people and there's not enough to serve all the people already, if you add more people then that's just less for everybody."
Thomas is concerned that public schools across the state would suffer from charter schools pulling funds and resources away.
"That's your constitutional responsibility, is to provide an adequate education for all children, not just some children. And the charter school system by its very nature is not open to all children," Thomas says.
But Strauss and Pence claim that that's not their agenda. Strauss says their model pulls very few students from multiple schools, allowing those who need a different approach to learning more choice on where to attend classes.
"The impact to any one school will be very minimal, and they will not be hurt because we're taking kids away from them," she says.
The Kentucky Public Charter Schools Association is "cautiously hopeful" lawmakers will appropriate money to charter schools next year.