Voucher caps and MPS, Part III

Sarah Carr and Alan Borsuk report this morning on the effects of the voucher caps on choice schools. They particularly make the point that the impact would be greatest on well-established schools, since they would be least able to exaggerate the likely number of students.

Until reading the article I had forgotten that there were a large number of schools that never opened, but whose 5,500 claimed spaces would have been included in the count. After the reduction to stay within the cap, these schools would have been assigned about 2,500 spaces. Presumably at some point when it became clear the schools would not open the DPI would reallocate these spaces to schools likely to open. Thus MPS schools might find themselves losing an additional 2,500 students shortly before schools open in the fall. Added to the numbers mentioned in the earlier post, almost 4,000 students could disappear from projected enrollment well after school budgets were completed and staffing levels set.

Another way of looking at this is that about 200 teaching positions would suddenly disappear. MPS has always had a challenge hiring the right number of teachers for the fall. This would only make the situation more difficult.

The article makes a couple of other interesting points:

1. DPI is clear that it will not try to verify the estimates supplied by the schools.
2. DPI is not clear as to when, or whether, it will reallocate unused seats.