A Maryland high court decision this week will force the Prince George's County Public School system to reallocate funds from elsewhere in its budget to the county’s four charter schools, schools spokesman John White said.

“We will need to increase the funding and that will require money to move … with the goal of not impacting classroom instruction,” White told The Examiner.

According to White, the school system is still evaluating exactly how much more the ruling will require the system to pay per charter school pupil.

The per pupil expenditures for regular public school students and charter school students for the upcoming school year had been projected to be $12,474 and $6,847 respectively, White said.

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Andrew Nussbaum, an attorney for the Prince George’s County Board of Education, said the Court of Appeals of Maryland ruled Monday that charter schools are entitled to up to 98 percent of a per pupil allotment formula, which basically calls for the school system budget to be divided by the total number of students.

“It’s not going to cost Prince George’s County any more money than they would have already been spending,” said Richard Daniels, an attorney for Lincoln Public Charter School in Marlow Heights that was involved in the court case.

“If the students were not in public charter schools, they would have been in a traditional public school.”

This spring, the county approved a roughly $1.66 million school system budget for fiscal year 2008.

dfowler@examiner.com