The exterior of the Pennsylvania Capitol in Harrisburg.
Amanda Berg / For Spotlight PA
Education advocates pressure Pa. lawmakers to include cyber charter reforms into late budget
-
Jaxon White/WITF
Amanda Berg / For Spotlight PA
The exterior of the Pennsylvania Capitol in Harrisburg.
HARRISBURG — A dozen education advocacy groups sent a letter to state lawmakers on Wednesday urging them to reform the cyber charter funding mechanism as part of a deal to finalize the state budget, already a month overdue.
The advocates, who have repeatedly urged changes to how the online schools are funded, referenced reforms proposed by Democratic Gov. Josh Shapiro earlier this year to cap cyber charter tuition at $8,000 per student, with an increase included for students with additional needs. Shapiro’s office estimated that those changes alone could save school districts roughly $378 million annually.
Public school advocates have long argued that the state’s method of funding cyber charters, adopted in 2002, forces them to overpay per pupil. Under that system, online institutions are funded using a formula mirroring that used for in-person school districts, despite the former’s relatively lower costs.
The latest letter, co-signed by such groups as Education Voters PA, Alliance to Reclaim our Schools and Education Law Center, said cyber charters are creating budget pressures at the district level that left school boards with no option other than to raise taxes.
“As a result of these legislatively mandated overpayments, Pennsylvania’s tax dollars are swelling cyber school fund balances and paying for waste on expenditures unrelated to educating students,” the advocates said. “Meanwhile, the school districts forced to make these tuition payments struggle to provide basic and essential resources that students need to be successful academically.”
The letter cited Republican Auditor General Tim DeFoor’s audit of five of the state’s 14 cyber charters from February, which showed the schools benefited from spiking revenues during the COVID-19 pandemic to increase their reserves by 114% from 2020 to 2023.
DeFoor’s office also noted some “out of the ordinary” spending by cyber charters, including Commonwealth Charter Academy’s purchase of 21 buildings at a total tab of $196 million, and Pennsylvania Cyber Charter School’s purchase of $4.3 million in gift cards for students and families.
The public education advocates denounced those purchases in their letter.
“Pennsylvanians cannot afford another year of inaction that will simply guarantee higher school property taxes, allowing cybers to further balloon their fund balances and engage in wanton spending on items unassociated with providing students a quality education,” the advocates said.
The audit by DeFoor’s office boosted agreement between Democrats and Republicans that the funding system needs to be addressed. How to do so remains among the many points of contention in this year’s budget debate.
House Democrats, with buy-in from two House Republicans, passed a proposal in June that they estimated would save public schools $616 million annually and included accountability measures favored by Senate Republicans. Among them are regular wellness checks on students of the online schools and requirements that public schools obtain proof of residency for those students.
Senate Republicans have not advanced the proposal through committee.
But Senate Majority Leader Joe Pittman, R-Indiana, said in June that any dollars saved for public schools should count toward the state’s efforts to address its funding disparity between low-income and high-income districts, which was found to be unconstitutional by the Commonwealth Court in 2023.
The accountability measures adopted by the House “could be beneficial,” Pittman said, and the “calculation for new students attending a cyber school also has value.”
In a statement Wednesday, Pittman said he met with Shapiro the day before and he remained “optimistic” that a budget deal can be struck.
A collection of interviews, photos, and music videos, featuring local musicians who have stopped by the WITF performance studio to share a little discussion and sound. Produced by WITF’s Joe Ulrich.
