In this post, we share news from a federal General Accounting Office report about charter schools and facilities. Bottom line: charter schools face numerous challenges when it comes to finding facilities and funding them.
Kim McCabe, senior director of communications at the National Alliance for Public Charter Schools, has written an excellent blog post about the report. One school, she writes, could “not grow its middle school programs because they did not have enough space—even though the district had a suitable facility available. The report noted that school districts will sometimes designate extra facilities as ‘swing space’ rather than make them available to charter schools.”
A federal entity affirms charter challenges
GAO identified four key challenges for charter schools:
- Limited access to state/local funding and affordable private loans
- Limited access to buildings and amenities
- Inconsistent local support for facility needs
- Limited capacity for managing facilities
Read about these challenges in the GAO report here.
