Education (School Choice)

This bill modifies state law to exempt charter schools from a specific requirement that currently applies to public schools regarding student enrollment status. Under the existing rule, schools must identify students who are incarcerated or have unknown whereabouts to remove them from accountability calculations, but this bill adds that rule to the list of mandates that charter schools do not have to follow. The legislation directly affects charter school administrators by relieving them of the obligation to track and report these specific student populations for accountability purposes. By amending the statute, the bill clarifies that charter schools are not required to exclude incarcerated or missing students from their enrollment counts in the same way public schools must.

HB 303 modifies how Louisiana calculates per-pupil funding for certain charter schools by excluding specific state transportation funds. The bill targets Type 1, 3, 3B (non-self-governing), and Type 4 charter schools, excluding state-provided funds for transporting nonpublic school students (as defined in R.S. 17:158) when determining their annual funding amount. This change ensures those transportation dollars aren't counted toward the state’s minimum foundation program formula used to set charter school funding. The policy directly affects charter school funding calculations without altering the actual transportation funding or total state budget for schools.