Charter schools: funding.

Existing law states the intent of the Legislature that each charter school be provided with operational funding that is equal to the total funding that would be available to a similar school district serving a similar pupil population, and requires the Superintendent of Public Instruction to annually compute a general-purpose entitlement, funded from a combination of state aid and local funds for each charter school. Existing law requires revenue limit funding that is computed in the general-purpose entitlement to be based on the statewide average revenue limit funding per unit of average daily attendance received by elementary, unified, and high school districts, as specified. Existing law requires that the general-purpose entitlement for certain conversion charter schools to be determined, instead, based on the amount of the actual unrestricted revenues expended per unit of average daily attendance for that school in the year before its conversion to, and operation as, a charter school, adjusted as specified, and for subsequent fiscal years, based on the prior year allocation, adjusted as specified, including for any state general-purpose increases. This bill, commencing with the 2013–14 fiscal year, would require the general-purpose entitlement of a charter high school that is established on or after January 1, 2013, through the conversion of an existing public high school within a unified school district to be equal, for the first 3 years of operation, to the current year base revenue limit per unit of average daily attendance of the sponsoring unified school district, adjusted as specified. Commencing with the 4th year of operation, the bill would require the charter school to generate general-purpose funding based on the statewide average revenue limit funding per unit of average daily attendance received by high school districts. These provisions would become inoperative either on July 1, 2018, and repealed on January 1, 2019, or on the effective date of a measure enacting comprehensive school finance reform, whichever occurs first.