Smith, a former State Charter School Board member, noted that for charter schools to succeed there has to be a collaborative effort not only between the State Board of Education, the Utah State Office of Education and charters schools but an inclusion of the districts as well.
According to Smith, one issue that has created a wedge between charters and districts has been the money that is allocated to the charter schools from the districts. The question of how fairly money was divvied up between charter and district schools was brought up in a 2016 study from the Utah Foundation. The report indicated that while data from October 2015 showed a gap of 9.9 percent between the two sets of public schools, it is closing. Statistics revealed charter schools had previously fallen behind districts by 13.9 percent in 2004.
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