Once charter schools are open, their ongoing expenses resemble those of regular public schools. Namely, almost all funds go to pay the salaries and benefits of staff or contract employees. The primary difference be- tween a charter school's budget and that of a regular public school is the charter school's independence from a school district. Instead, central school district bureaucracies expend these funds on behalf of individual schools. School administrators may re- ceive some discretionary funds, but these tend to be a small percentage of the total school budget.
Fiscal independence has both a negative and a positive impact.
On the negative side, charter schools lack economies of scale. They tend to be smaller than conventional public schools, and more to the point, they are almost always smaller than public school districts. And they have more difficulty than school districts arranging for lower-cost bulk purchases. Their per-pupil costs, then, tend to be higher than those of conventional school districts. On the positive side, charter schools have flexibility to spend their money as they see fit.