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BOSTON (AP) — Massachusetts Democrats appear to be increasingly divided over a November ballot question that would allow more charter schools to open or expand.
The Democratic State Committee approved a resolution Tuesday night to oppose Question 2, saying it would siphon millions of dollars away from traditional public schools.
"Our local communities cannot afford to lose even more money to charter schools," committee member Carol Donovan, a Democratic state representative from Woburn, said in a statement. "Already, cities and towns forced to make budget cuts every year due to the state's underfunding of education and the money lost to charters.
Charter schools are public schools that operate independently from local school districts. Question 2 would permit up to 12 additional charter schools each year beyond existing state caps on the schools. Charter school spending is currently limited to 9 percent of a district's net education spending, except in the state's most underperforming school districts, which include Boston and Lawrence, where the cap is 18 percent.
The Tuesday vote came after Democratic state Rep. Frank Moran of Lawrence and Marty Walz, a former Democratic lawmaker from Boston who served as co-chair of the Legislature's Education Committee while on Beacon Hill, recently trumpeted their support for the ballot question.
In an opinion column in the Boston Herald, Walz wrote she previously opposed charter schools unless the state changed the way they were funded, but altered her view because of evidence of "extraordinary academic results" from the schools.
Liam Kerr, director of the Massachusetts chapter of the pro-charter group Democrats for Education Reform, blamed the vote on "a small group of Democratic party insiders who hijacked a meeting and passed a resolution with little warning and no debate or discussion."
Ballot question supporters, including Republican Gov. Charlie Baker, reject arguments that charter schools drain resources away from other schools. When a student leaves a conventional public school, the funding allocated for that student goes to the charter, and the state also provides a temporary reimbursement to the district.
Opponents of charter school expansion include teachers unions, which traditionally support Democratic candidates in Massachusetts. The Massachusetts Teachers Union contends that even with the state reimbursements, local school districts lost more than $400 million to charter schools in the last fiscal year.
The current Massachusetts Democratic Party platform makes no mention of charter schools. The national Democratic party platform supports charters as long as they don't replace or "destabilize" traditional public schools.
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