By Elizabeth Benton

A state Board of Education committee met Wednesday to review proposed changes to charter school funding, including a model long backed by charter advocates that would transfer state money from local districts to charters, based on student enrollment.

The committee took no action Wednesday, and is not expected to propose immediate changes to the full board. Instead, the board appears poised to back its initial proposal to boost funding for charters from $9,300 per pupil to $10,306, without impacting funding for local districts. While appearing to back that proposal in the short term, board members expressed a desire to review comprehensive funding reforms in the future for charters, magnet schools and traditional public schools, now paid for through a complex tangle of grants.

Board Chairman Allan Taylor called the current funding system “irrational and unsustainable,” and pushed the board to consider a “more equitable funding system.”

Exactly what a more equitable funding system would look like remains elusive and controversial. The state board had asked education experts to propose improvements to charter school funding, and Wednesday reviewed the sole proposal submitted, from New Haven-based school reform advocates Connecticut Coalition for Achievement Now.

ConnCAN has proposed a phased-in “money follows the child” model, in which per-pupil state education cost sharing grants would be transferred from a local district to a charter should a student enroll in a charter school.

Connecticut charter schools currently receive state grants. When a student leaves a school district for a charter school, the district does not lose its state funding, and remains responsible for transportation and special education costs for the charter student.

But determining how much money should follow each child is an equally complex question, with a patchwork of federal, state, local and other dollars going toward charters and traditional public schools, often following different patterns from district to district and charter to charter.

ConnCAN has suggested looking at net expenditures per pupil in traditional public schools to determine how much money should flow to a charter school. But that model would include federal grants received by local public schools, for which both districts and charters are eligible, according to state Department of Education Chief Financial Officer Brian Mahoney. The model would cost the state $81 million in the 2011-12 fiscal year, substantially more than the $53 million the state had expected to spend on charters, according to Mahoney.

Once phased in, the plan would shift much of those costs to local districts. According to a ConnCAN estimate, New Haven would owe $27.2 million to charters operating within its district. Hamden would owe $1.36 million and West Haven would owe $420,000.

The “money follows the child” proposal has been a favorite of charter advocates, while vigorously opposed by teachers unions and traditional public school advocates.

Patrice McCarthy of the Connecticut Association of Boards of Education said the proposal “seems rational” but would ultimately pull resources away from students who choose to remain in traditional public schools. As individual students leave, school costs do not drop proportionally, she claimed.

“When a small number of students leave, there isn’t a savings to that school,” she said.

But Achievement First charter network president Dacia Toll claimed opposition to charter funding is fueled by union, not educational, concerns, as the majority of state charter schools are not unionized.

ConnCAN CEO Alex Johnston has pushed for charter funding reform in the upcoming legislative session, claiming changes are needed for the state to be eligible for as much as $175 million in federal grants for school reform.