Does Albany hate Rochester’s charter school kids?

Elected officials often hear constituent complaints, some trivial, some substantive, around legislative “fairness.” Judge for yourself the fairness of Albany’s treatment of Rochester’s 8,900 mostly low-income and minority charter school students who comprise 30 percent of the city’s public-school enrollment.

Unlike school districts, whose annual budgets aren’t directly tied to enrollment changes, New York reimburses public charter schools on a per-pupil basis, with the reimbursement rate per child varying from district to district across the state.

City of Rochester students will bring $14,277 per pupil in state taxpayer funding to the charter schools they choose to attend next year. That’s $189 per pupil above this year’s rate—but $39 below the 2023-3024 funding level because Rochester’s charter funding rate was actually cut this year.

Special education students are funded at a higher per-pupil rate, with the premium determined by the amount of additional assistance each student requires.

In addition to that $14,277 per pupil of state funding, charter schools also receive federal title dollars for technology, school meals and other services that support the low-income students they serve. That works out to an additional $900 to $1,000 per student.

Contrast that with the Rochester City School District, whose 2025-2026 budget provides an additional $46 million to educate 1,172 fewer students than this year. That’s approximately $5,000 per student of incremental public support in just one year.

But Rochester’s per-pupil charter school funding doesn’t just pale in comparison to the RCSD. It also lags the charter school per-pupil funding rate in every other sizable upstate district in spite of Rochester’s higher poverty rate. Sadly, poverty isn’t an input to the funding formula.

If this were just a one-year phenomenon, that would be one thing. But Rochester’s charter school children have been shortchanged for a long time.

Since the start of the 2019-2020 academic year, the per-pupil charter school reimbursement rate for city of Rochester residents has only increased 2 percent versus a 25.3 percent increase (and counting) in the Consumer Price Index. But the really stunning statistic is that next year alone the RCSD’s $5,000 per-pupil funding increase will exceed the cumulative increases provided to charter school students since the 2008-2009 school year.

From the end of the 2019-2020 academic year through this spring, the per-pupil charter school reimbursement rate for city of Rochester residents has only increased 0.7 percent versus a 24.4 percent increase (and counting) in the Consumer Price Index.  But the really stunning statistic is that next year alone the RCSD’s $5,000 per-pupil funding increase will exceed 17 years worth of cumulative increases provided to charter school students since the 2008-2009 school year.

How does this happen? Well, the year-over-year change in charter school funding is determined by a formula tied to the rate of growth in each local school district’s expenditures, which is why you see variation among New York’s cities. Even within Monroe County, the differences are stark. This year, students residing in the Churchville-Chili school district bring just $11,856 per pupil to the charter schools they attend while for East Irondequoit residents, the amount is $14,391 per pupil. You can find your district’s current funding rate here.

When districts like Rochester’s experience steadily declining enrollment, partially due to demographic trends and partially due to increased charter school demand, they don’t see much aggregate expenditure growth. But New York’s “hold harmless” policy stipulates that no school district should see a state funding reduction even in the face of significant enrollment declines. So, while a district experiencing declining enrollment may hold total spending flat, when its reduced student count is factored in, their per-pupil spending continues to move ever-higher

For charter schools, that creates a classic “no good deed goes unpunished” dynamic. As more and more parents choose to entrust their children to charter schools, the flatter that district’s total expenditure growth trend and therefore the more modest its per-pupil charter reimbursement rate increases.

So, as charter schools provide an educational product that attracts increasing numbers of district residents, they get punished with minimal per-pupil reimbursement rate growth.

The formula also excludes multiple district expense categories from the calculation, things that cost real dollars like facilities expenditures. Even charter schools require buildings to teach in.

To be fair, comparison of per-pupil expenditures between Rochester’s charter schools and the RCSD isn’t a black-and-white exercise. That’s because:

1. The RCSD enrolls a higher proportion of English Language Learner and special education students than most charter schools and those student populations are much more expensive to educate.

2. In addition to the $14,277 New York will spend on each Rochester charter school student next year, the city school district also provides several “in-kind” services, such as school bus transportation, school nurses and some special education services, to charter school students. The RCSD also foots the transportation bill for private and parochial students as well. While the cost of providing these services shows up in the district’s budget, those dollars aren’t spent on RCSD students.

So, an apples-to-apples comparison of RCSD versus charter school spending requires removing the cost of those in-kind services from the RCSD budget and adding them to the charter schools’ numbers. But, given that different charter schools enroll different percentages of ELL and SPED students, coupled with the fact that the RCSD budget doesn’t break out the proportion of those line items that accrue to its own students and which portion is dedicated to serving charter, private and parochial school students, the calculation becomes challenging.

The best way to compare the two is to remove both SPED and transportation spending in their entirety from the RCSD’s budget numbers for comparative purposes. Doing so eliminates the need to estimate the dollar value charter school students receive from the RCSD for these in-kind services. Here’s what the numbers look like after those adjustments:

Dividing $737 million by the RCSD’s 2025-2026 projected 20,423 student enrollment yields an adjusted RCSD per-pupil expenditure of$36,086.

Contrast that with the $15,277per pupil Rochester’s charter school students will receivenext year ($14,277 from New York, plus approximately $1,000 per student in federal funds).

Admittedly, this resulting $20,809 per pupil funding gap ($36,086 minus $15,277) excludes the incremental cost the RCSD incurs to educate its larger ELL student population along with various other expenditures such as the cost of teaching incarcerated youth and the cost of educating significantly disabled outplacement students.

So, that $20,809 per pupil differential isn’t precise. The true funding gap is somewhat smaller. But those additional adjustments don’t remotely approach $20,809 per student, which is more than what most states spend per pupil in total.

Given that sizable resource differential, how does Albany expect charter schools to provide competitive compensation packages in today’s very tight recruitment market for teacher talent? It’s a talent competition in which Albany’s fingers are clearly on the scale.

Elected officials love to talk about “equity.” And yet, Rochester’s public charter school students receive less than half the adjusted per-pupil taxpayer funding garnered by their RCSD counterparts. They also receive materially less than their fellow charter school students residing in other, less-impoverished communities across the state.

What’s equitable about that?

Geoff Rosenberger is retired co-founder of Clover Capital Management Inc.

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