A University of Washington study on implementing Washington's charter school law calculated the cost at about $14 million over 5 years, which is $1 per student - a fraction of the $100 million the anti-charter crowd are using.

The Center on Reinventing Public Education in the Evans School of Public Affairs did an in-depth study - the report is 14 pages. Author Amy Berk Anderson found that the cost will be low due to several factors. Mainly, the number of schools is limited to only 5 schools per year at first and only 45 after 6 years. I don't recall how many schools this state has, but 45 is only a couple per cent.

Also, charters in other states use lower cost facilities.

The main cost impact is drawing more students into our public schools. A lot of the students attracted to charter schools left the public schools for private schools or home schooling, because the public schools didn't provide sufficient options for them. So these students would be entering the state's school system and raising the costs. Isn't that what the public school crowd wants - to serve more children?

But the talk of fear of high costs is a smoke screen. What the opponents fear is breaking the monopoly. People will realize that the "one best system" doesn't take care of everyone's needs, that a lot of instructional ideas are not being tried because they don't fit into the Washington Education Association mold. And some of the schools might not have union teachers.

Note that the Referendum is trying to kill a bill that already passed the Legislature and was being implemented. The government school people just couldn't stand the tiniest competition, so Ref. 55 would cancel the bill that was passed with bi-partisan support. A "yes" vote is for charter schools.