GOP Geniuses -- School Funding Scheme Favors Charter Schools

(I routinely flog the Columbus Dispatch for being an amateurish conservative tool -- which it is -- but today writers Bill Bush and Mary Morgan Edwards told me something I didn't know.  Did you know this?  Now that I know it, I don't like it.  An excerpt follows.)
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The Ohio General Assembly has a formula for determining the per-student amount each district and charter school should receive.

The formula says that Columbus schools and all the charters that serve students who live in the district were owed a total of $387.2 million from the state last school year, or $5500 per student on average.

But the state doesn't have that much, so the GOP-dominated General Assembly capped the total at 296.9 million, with the twist that charters still get their full per-pupil amount, and the district gets anything left over.  Columbus City schools got less than $3000 per student; charters got $7866 per student.

Today, Columbus charters get $142.4 million to teach 18,000 students.  The Columbus city schools get $154.4 million to teach the remaining 52,000 kids, many of whom rank among the poorest in the state.
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I've never liked the concept of my tax dollars going to charter schools -- essentially public funding of private enterprise.  Now I really don't it.  This is despicable.