Public charter schools are requesting 79 percent more per building from the federal E-rate program than traditional public schools are, according to an Education Week-requested analysis from Funds for Learning. The Oklahoma-based company, which consults schools on the E-rate, conducted a review of all requests for funding submitted by schools and districts in 2014—about 21,000 applications in all. The anaylsis shows that smaller applicants generally have to pay more for their services, “likely due to their inability to tap into the economies of scale that bigger applicants benefit from,” said John Harrington, CEO of Funds for Learning. “Usually they’re paying higher per-unit prices,” so they are likely to request more funding. At the same time, charters are generally better positioned to leverage newer and faster technologies “simply because it’s easier to roll out and successfully integrate new technology to a single school than an entire school district,” he added. The average request for the 2014-15 school year from a traditional school was $19,263 per building for non-charter schools, compared to the $34,437 that was requested per school building, on average. Read more…
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