Mar 6, 2021 3 min read

It’s been almost a quarter-century since Pennsylvania enacted its charter school law, and there have been numerous calls in recent years to reform it. When Gov. Tom Wolf said last week that “it’s time to fix our charter school law,” he might have been more accurate had he said, “It’s past time to fix our charter school law.”

Why is reforming the commonwealth’s charter school law so crucial? The way it is currently set up, public school districts have to hand over their share of per-pupil funding to a charter school when a student enrolls in it. That deprives the district of money. It’s been a source of particular frustration for school administrators that cybercharter schools get these tax dollars when they don’t have to shoulder the everyday costs that brick-and-mortar districts do, like building maintenance, buses and cafeteria staff.

And, to rub salt in, this money flows to charter schools when they frequently perform no better than their public counterparts, and sometimes do much worse. Also, the resources have flowed on without the level of accountability that is accorded to public schools.

Wolf is supporting legislation being co-sponsored by state Rep. Joe Ciresi, a Democrat from Montgomery County, and state Sen. Lindsey Williams, an Allegheny County Democrat, that would change how charter schools are funded and, it’s estimated, save school districts more than $200 million every year.

First, cybercharter schools would be paid a flat rate of $9,500 per student, rather than the current fluctuating rate that can go as high as $22,000. The special education funding formula for charter schools would also change. Right now, they receive funding on the assumption that 16% of students would be enrolled in special education classes. That’s the same as public schools, but critics of the charter school law say the number of students in charters needing special education classes is probably much lower, hence the schools are receiving funding for services they don’t provide. To wit, a Penn State University study found $550 million in excess funding went to charter schools for special education between 2009 and 2014. It called the generous special education funding “a disguised subsidy for general operations.”

Donna Smith, a retired teacher who serves on the school board for the Bellefonte Area School District in Centre County, said during Wolf’s press conference that her district can educate a student in its cyberschool at 25% of what it hands over to cyber charters.

Smith asked, “Who pays the price? Our kids do. They pay the price when we have to cut programs, which we have, activities, services, staffing and opportunities, in order to pay for those inflated bills.”

The proposed changes to the law would also create performance standards for charter schools, limit enrollment in cybercharter schools until their performance improves, require that charters have policies in place preventing conflicts of interest and nepotism, and require that officials at charter schools follow rules set down by the state’s ethics commission.

The proposed reforms have support of groups like the Pennsylvania School Boards Association and Pennsylvania Association of School Administrators. Lawmakers in the General Assembly need to get behind it, too.