Board Of Aldermen - Minutes - 10/11/2016 - P3
Board of Aldermen Page 3
October 11, 2016
rent because right now they pay the full share of the taxes on whatever they rent. That all seems unfair
really, | mean the public schools have buildings and don’t pay any taxes. Now, there was a quote made
when this first came up on 10 May on page 12 of the minutes where Alderman Clemmons is quoted as
saying when talking about charter schools, “I think that they syphon money off of the district for the
benefit of the few and then the rest of the population that’s left behind have fewer resources to invest in
the public schools.” That is a complete fabrication. There is no loss to the public schools from the
charter schools. If you look at the cost data and | did this once before and | think | sent it the Board
before, | won’t go through the details because it gets a bit complicated to stand here and go through the
mathematics but if you consider the average cost of a student in the public school is $13,000 per
student/per year and the average teacher in the Nashua School District, loaded, the current union
contract, makes $89,000 per year. There are a little over 1,000 teachers in the district and 11,500
students in the district. The ratio of teacher per student is 11.4 students per teacher. If you look at the
number of charter schools that are off-loaded, kids are off-loaded into charter schools. There are 257
kids off-loaded to the Academy for Science & Design. There are 464 children that were off-loaded totally
in all charter schools in the region. If you do the calculation of what the off-loaded cost is, what the
benefit of that is; by not having as many teachers necessary because the students are off-loaded. In
order to bring the charter school kids back into the public school you have to hire more teachers and if
you go through the calculations the ratio of teachers to students. The savings is $2 million if you look just
at the Academy of Science & Design. The savings to the taxpayers is $3.6 million if you look at all of the
charter schools. That’s based on off-loading teachers from the public schools. There is another way to
look at that calculation and that’s to look at the education aid from the state. The state, through the
budget, granted $40.1 million to Nashua. There’s a lot of debate and statements that some people think
it’s too much, other cities are complaining like Dover. If you look at that and spread that over the cost not
going to the charter schools, that’s an average cost of $3,490 per student state aid. That’s a cost to the
taxpayers. Bringing the students over to the charter schools you don’t get that aid. That’s a savings of
$2.62 million for the Academy of Science & Design and $4.4 million in charter schools. There’s two
different ways to calculating and they come to the same result. The results are the savings is between
$2 million and $2.6 million looking at the Academy of Science & Design and $3.6 million to $4.4 million
looking at all of the charter schools. The paper mentions that there are some costs for special ed.
Charter schools have to accept special ed kids and they do, a few. | haven’t had any time to look into
what the cost savings is. | don’t exactly know what it costs Nashua for special ed. Let’s assume its
$40,000 for special ed, | think it’s a high figure. Let’s assume there are 20 kids total from the charter
schools that’s still $800,000. Nowhere near the $3 to $4 million savings. | think that number is high.
Look at the results that the charter schools give us. First of all, Alderman Clemons is just plain wrong. If
you look at the ranking of schools, the Academy of Science & Design is rated number 1 in the entire
state. North High School is ranked 57 out of 77 high schools, that is 20 from the bottom. There are 56
high schools doing better than Nashua High School North and for that we pay $13,000 per student. | see
the Spofford School is going bankrupt and the federal government is questioning what value we are
getting for the money. If you think North is doing bad, South is number 76 out of 77 in the ranking.
There is only one more high school worse than Nashua High School South. The Academy of Science &
Design is number 1. The Nashua School District is 100 out of 125. There are 99 school districts rated
higher than the Nashua School District. Surely charter schools are an enormous benefit. Not for
everybody, two of my grandchildren went to charter schools. One went for two years and one went for
one year. My daughter, for reasons of her own, decided to switch them back to the regular public
schools. There is quite a bit of shifting back and forth actually. Kids go into them in the 7" grade and
leave in the 9" or they decide it’s not their thing. That’s okay but you don’t denigrate your other schools.
We have a proposition and this costs $80,000. | think Alderman Dowd asked that question and it was
answered, $80,000 is the total cost to ASD and the other $45,000 was the cost for all charter schools.
That’s the cost of the tax offset. That’s not in the financial analysis by the way but that’s the number that
came up at the Personnel/Administrative Affairs Committee meeting, if | am correct. It is enormous value
and | wish Alderman Schoneman was here so he could take it off of the table. Somebody here should
take it off the table and Pete’s sake, vote on it. Thank you.
PETITIONS — None
