I know you're not this dense. The first bolded is the status quo. It is not the possibility it is the reality. But your solution is to keep the status quo so that what .... those poor kids still can't get to the school because they don't have bussing?
The second bolded is just simply wrong, which is my main point. If no kids who need buses ever apply or attend, then the charter never gets the money in the first place. The money follows the kid, like disability funding or cross-county funding. How can the charter keep money that it doesn't get because the kid never goes there? The only way for the charter to get the money is if the kid attends, which requires the bus. Which is why your hypothetical is irrelevant.
Well, since you called me dense, I'm not going to let you have the last word after all.
Here's the deal. My wife works at Pilot Elementary in Greensboro right now. There is a busing zone for Pilot. We agree so far since you're constantly bringing up busing zones. The zone includes some middle class, blue collar, and low income housing, including some public housing.
A charter school gets set up outside the zone. The middle class and blue collar and a few low income kids get in. It doesn't bus, so only the ones who have cars can attend. The poorest kids with the crappiest home lives and no cars cannot attend, even if their parents could bestir themselves to apply. Pilot Elementary, therefore, now sees the average intelligence and behavior levels of its student population go down across the board. Pilot Elementary is not saving any money on the kids who have left and don't ride the bus anymore, because (a) they probably never rode it to begin with, and (b) those buses have to run throughout the zone anyway, and a few empty seats makes little difference. Pilot is still obligated to provide transportation, and rightfully gets money to do so.
Now, under the proposed legislation, the "money would follow the child". So those kids who left - who never rode the bus and don't need it now - lived in the zone. Money is to be extracted from that zone and allocated to the charter, following those kids. Under the legislation, the charter has no obligation to establish a bus system to go into the Pilot zone, or anywhere else, and provide transportation to students who live in the Pilot zone. They just get to use the money however they see fit - one of the legislators called it "seed money" - to improve the charter school. Pilot has less money to serve needier kids, because, again, zero money is being saved on the kids who left.
All I am saying is that the bus money should only follow a child if (a) the child needs transportation and (b) the charter school has an obligation to provide it. If the charter school your kid goes to wants to establish a busing system to reach low income kids, I think that is great. That problem could be solved in a number of ways, perhaps by the legislature establishing a grant program and allocating funds for charters to apply for by showing they have a plan to establish busing. The "money follows the child" scheme in the proposed legislation is simply a way to defund and disadvantage traditional public schools and increase economic and racial segregation.
I hope that is clear enough for you to understand. I am not the one being dense here. Neither are the people in Raleigh. They understand this quite well, and have done an excellent job convincing people like you that "money following the child" is just, fair, equitable, and the 'Merican way. They didn't get their way this time but I'm sure they will next session.
