EDITORIAL: Property taxes fund charter school ads
As always, public education funding will be a centerpiece of the impending state budget battle. And, as always, many legislators will lament the negative impact of rising school property taxes, and then decline to do anything about it.
One element of school financing they should and easily could address was rendered obvious recently in a report by Education Voters of PA, a public school advocacy organization. Using data gleaned from Right-to-Know requests, it found that online charter schools alone used at least $16.8 million in public funds during the 2021-2022 school year for advertising and promotion.
Charter schools are public schools, funded with public money. They do not charge tuition directly to students. But their claims in their advertising that they are “free” are misleading, at best. Each public school district pays tuition for each of district resident who attends a charter school, based on its own cost-per-student rather than the cyber school’s actual cost-per-student, which typically is less than the school district’s.
The Scranton School District this year pays charter schools $12,805 for each student, and $28,149 for each special education student. The Lower Merion School District in Montgomery County pays $22,608 per student, and $60,000 per special education student. Since cyber charter accept students statewide, the two districts illustrate the wide range of tuition payments cyber charters collect, regardless of their actual costs.
According to the state Department of Education, school districts pay 90% of charter school funding – about $2.5 billion statewide.
The new study found the Commonwealth Charter Academy, a statewide cyber charter, spent $3.4 million on advertising in the first quarter of 2022, and another $150,000 on Major League Baseball tickets and various events. Reach Cyber Charter School spent $125,308 on Target gift cards for students.
Numerous bills have been introduced to reform charter financing, including for a requirement to include in charter ads a notice the ads are funded with tax money. The most effective reform would be to fund charter schools according to their own costs, thus forcing them to use their public funds for education rather than for ads, sports events and gift cards for students.