by Jessie E. Chen

The city’s superintendent of public schools accused Union Square’s Prospect Hill Academy, a local charter school, of inflating enrollment projections, forcing unnecessary cuts in public school programs.

Because Prospect Hill miscalculates by 100 students, the funds are taken from public schools which then never see the money, said Albert F. Argenziano, who is leaving his post at the end of the school year.

Charter schools are private schools where the students tuition is paid by the public school system the student would attend if they attended public schools. The tuition reimbursement formula is based on the respective school system’s per student costs with some adjustments to account for the extraordinary tasks the public schools perform that the charter schools do not, such as special needs, said Paul Dunphy, a policy analyst with Citizens for Public Schools, a public school’s advocacy group founded in 1982 to oppose public funding for parochial school textbooks.

“It’s not fair and unjust,” the superintendent said. "The charter school has been miscalculating its enrollment of Somerville students by 25 percent. If I made that kind of mistake, I’d be on the front page of the paper,”

Argenziano said that the aid funding amounts should be rectified in August or September when the school is sure of its enrollment numbers, but throughout his 12 years as superintendent, he has not once seen a check come in that rectified the miscalculation.

“For the past several years, Prospect Hill has overstated its enrollment by more than 100 students, resulting in hundreds of thousands of dollars in unwarranted tuition payments," said Dunphy.

"The overpayments are supposedly rectified later in the year but the flawed projections raise havoc with public school budgets and planning,” he said.

Unlike public schools, charter schools don’t receive aid based on previous year enrollment. Instead, Prospect Hill, along with Massachusetts’s 51 other commonwealth charter schools, are expected to file their projected enrollment figures in March for the coming school year, he said.
   
“The source of projected and actual student numbers is on the Department of Education Web site. You will see that most schools have fewer students than they projected, but Prospect Hill is distinct for the size of its over-reporting,” said Dunphy.

This past year, Prospect Hill projected 842 students and had only 732 students actually enroll, overestimating by 110 students, he said.

The Prospect Hill Academyreceives approximately 450 applications for their 90 openings per year, said Jon Drescher, the  school’s headmaster.

The applicants go through a lottery process approved by the Department of Education, but the school is never really sure how many of those students will actually attend, Drescher said.

“We don’t know where else these students are applying. We don’t know how many families will move to other parts of the country, or even out of the country,” he said.

“Sometimes it’s just like an airline. They overbook so that they know when a plane takes off, it’s full.”

“Everybody makes mistakes. It’s not a biggie. Just correct it,” Argenziano said.

Drescher said, however that Prospect Hill is different from most other charter schools. “We accept students from 35 other cities beyond Somerville and Cambridge. Our finances are audited every year, an annual report is filed, and everything’s done on the up and up,” Drescher said.
   
He also said that quarterly payments are made yearly and the first one occurs at the end of September, the same schedule used by public schools. The first payment may be higher if they’ve overestimated, but the amount will be adjusted in the other three payments in December, March, and June,” he said.
   
“We never get more than we need,” he said.

Dunphy said that it should be kept in mind that the charter funding formula and regulations have been crafted by strong charter school proponents who have served either on the Board of Education or in successive Republican Administrations since the beginning of the charter initiative in 1995.

“Essentially, the owners of the home team are refereeing the game,” he said.

“It is financially more advantageous for them [charter schools] to
use projected figures. There is some legitimacy to the practice when a charter school first opens and is adding grades for its first few years,” said Dunphy.

“However, when a school has been operating for almost 10 years, there is no valid reason for using projections. I strongly believe that for schools opened more than four years, the policy should be changed, and first quarter payments should be based on the previous year’s enrollment.”

Drescher, a veteran in education for over 30 years, said he agreed that funding policies need to be discussed because they are not particularly clear right now. Even though he said he doesn’t know about Citizens for Public Schools or what the bases of certain claims are, he understands that the fact that Prospect Hill gets so many applications can cause concern for advocates of public schools.

“It’s a hot political topic,” he said. “But maybe public schools should reflect on themselves. Ask families why they are leaving public schools, and what charter schools have done to keep them here.”

Drescher continues to say that his school has never had an issue before and that complaints about funding issues should follow the process laid out by the DOE.

This March, Prospect Hill Academy estimates that 852 students will enroll in the upcoming school year. How many students will actually attend is unknown, he said.

“The bottom line is we follow DOE procedure,” said Drescher.