The article directly addresses why it's a bad idea: "it makes little sense for the district to heavily subsidize schools [i.e. charters] serving less needy children that already have access to more adequate resources. It makes even less sense to make these transfers of facilities space (or the value associated with that space) as city class sizes mushroom and as the state indicates the likelihood that its contributions will continue falling well short of past promises."
Also, the article mentions that many of the charters have suspension rates between 20 and 50%, which suggests that either a.) the students at these schools do have behavioral issues and/or b.) the charters use aggressive suspension policies to get students to leave.
Heavily subsidize? Last year, the charter school my kids attend got $1300 less per student than the non-charters in the district. The school has roughly 1200 students. That means we probably saved someone (district? state? not exactly sure the break down of funding sources) roughly $1,560,000 that year over having all those students in the non-charter schools. At the very least, the other non-charter schools got more (per student) than they would have (assuming there isn't a magical $1.56M sitting around, the schools would have received somewhere in between the two numbers for ALL students).
Transfers of facilities space? The school recently took out a loan and bought an empty business complex to renovate as our new campus because the campus we were using was an old run down school that the district had already closed several years prior to us moving in. They closed it (and two others in the district) due to budget cuts. Closing these schools caused teachers to lose their jobs & class sizes at the remaining schools to increase.
Or c.) some public schools don't have high enough behavioral standards for their students for whatever reason and some students have problems adjusting to the new expectations.
If journalists are concerned about the quality of reporting around this issue, explaining the suspension rate seems like a great story. It would be hard work, though, since schools rightly don't talk to strangers about specific disciplinary incidents.
Also, the article mentions that many of the charters have suspension rates between 20 and 50%, which suggests that either a.) the students at these schools do have behavioral issues and/or b.) the charters use aggressive suspension policies to get students to leave.