By SALLIE SATTERTHWAITE
ssatterthwaite@thecitizennews.com

Public, private, charter, vouchers — what do they mean? Here are a few basic definitions.

Public schools — funded by a combination of state and county taxes. In Fayette, property taxes pay for schools. Voters turned down a special purpose local option sales tax for school construction last year.

Jim Stephens, finance director for the Fayette County Board of Education, says school taxes go straight to the Board of Education, and the cost per pupil in fiscal year 1999 was $5,788. “Of that, $3,162 was state, $2,626 local.”

Private schools — paid for entirely by tuition fees, fund-raisers, or the infusion of funds from sponsoring organizations, typically religious bodies. Church schools usually incorporate religion classes and devotional periods along with traditional curricula.

Tuition fees for church schools run around $4,000 here as well as nationally. Why does it cost so much more to educate kids in public schools? “Private schools get contributions and support from whatever institution they're part of,” Stephens said. Public schools must provide transportation too: “We spend $2.5 [million] to $3 million a year on transportation. And special ed programs — in some the ratio is four students to one teacher.”

Charter schools — defined by parent organization U.S. Charter Schools as independent public schools, designed and operated by educators, parents and community leaders. Sponsored and monitored for quality and integrity by designated local or state educational organizations, they operate free from “the traditional bureaucratic and regulatory red taped that hog-ties public schools and are held to the highest accountability,” according to USCS.

Funded with public money according to average daily attendance figures, just as traditional public schools are, they buy autonomy with proof of meeting requirement goals as well as fiscal and operational responsibilities, and give communities their greatest range of educational choices, according to the organization.

Home schooling — may be undertaken by parents or legal guardians with a high school diploma or GED. States typically require proof of hours engaged in study, and may mandate periodic testing.

In a hybrid of home schooling, underway now in Peachtree City, parents pay a certified teacher to hold tutorial sessions for several students to augment their own home schooling programs. Georgia law requires a baccalaureate degree, but not necessarily a teaching certificate, to home school children other than one's own.

Another proposed variation on the theme would have parents home schooling two or three days a week, and bringing their children to a church school setting the remaining days. This would permit courses of study that may be difficult to effect at home, such as science labs, and would provide the socializing that home schoolers sometimes miss.

A voucher system is defined loosely as a system whereby tax money is used to fund students attending schools either private or public, and possibly anywhere in the state. Beyond that very basic definition, vouchers can take many forms, such as early HOPE scholarships now pending in the legislature, and have many applications.