In Pennsylvania, everyone wants cyber charter reform– except the cyber charter operators and the legislators who won’t stand up to them. Writing for The Morning Call, Allison Mathis, president of the Pennsylvania School Boards Association, tries to make the case one more time.
Cybercharter schools were created in 2002 and the law creating them remained largely unchanged until the state Legislature passed Act 55 of 2024. Act 55 implemented several critical reforms related to accountability, transparency and ethics that advocates have been asking to see for years. Act 55 also made one small change to the way school districts pay cybercharter schools for special education students.
These changes were truly historic. And local school leaders are thankful for these much-needed reforms. However, there’s still much work to be done, especially as it relates to cybercharter school funding.
State Auditor General Tim DeFoor, a Republican, became the third consecutive state auditor general to call for changes to the way cybercharter schools are funded. Although DeFoor did not use as colorful language as his predecessor, Democrat Eugene DePasquale, who called Pennsylvania’s Charter School Law the “worst charter school law in the United States,” he did recognize several of the same cybercharter school funding flaws local school leaders have known about for years.
First, cybercharter schools receive 500 different tuition rates from school districts because the current funding method uses a school district’s expenditures to come up with a tuition rate. This calculation includes several expenses that cybercharter schools don’t have, such as tuition payments to charter schools, which inflates what school districts pay. The result is huge variations in tuition rates — varying by as much as $18,000, despite the cybercharter school providing the same virtual education program. There’s simply no rational basis for this method of funding.
Second, even after the reforms of Act 55, cybercharter schools receive another 500 different tuition rates from school districts for special education students without any consideration as to the needs of the student. The current funding method assumes that all special education students in charter schools have the same needs and that those needs are equal to those of special education students in school districts. However, we know for a fact that vast majority of the students with the greatest level of needs are educated in school districts while the vast majority of special education students in charter schools have the lowest level of needs. Every special education student should have the services and supports they need. Funding for those students should reflect their needs rather than be based on assumptions.
Finally, these funding flaws impact you whether you have kids in school or not. The flaws outlined above force school districts to overpay cybercharter schools. As those costs continue to rise for school districts whose primary source of funding is property taxes, your property taxes continue to rise. For school districts that choose to limit, or not increase property taxes, those increased costs force cuts to programs and services that impact district students. We can do better.