Eileen Sigmund, president and CEO of the Arizona Charter Schools Association, sat down with 3TV to discuss school funding cuts and how the cuts will affect the state’s charter school movement and future school openings.
Story Published on KPHO/KTVK on June 29, 2015
While Arizona’s charter schools are facing $6.3 million in budget cuts, and millions more over the next two years, school leaders say the 20-year movement to provide parents with additional education choices is “on pause.”
Eileen Sigmund, president of the Arizona Charter Schools Association, said right now, there are 87,000 students at more than 200 schools that will be impacted by the upcoming budget cuts. Sigmund said those cuts are causing many schools to rethink their plans.
“Some leaders that were going to open, not in 2015 but in 2016, are saying we need to wait a little bit and see what happens from the state of Arizona,” Sigmund says.
Schools that were planning to expand are putting those plans on hold. Other schools with wait lists likely will not be able to accept any additional students.
“Since there’s huge demand, it is disconcerting,” Sigmund said.
The smallest charter schools and charter school networks, serving less than 600 students, were spared from the budget cuts.
“When you’re a small school, you’re wearing many hats and you need every dollar,” Sigmund said.
She said if those schools had been impacted, it would have been “cataclysmic.”
http://www.azfamily.com/story/29436499/charter-school-movement-on-pause-as-cuts-loom
