OP-ED: The assault on Pennsylvania public schools
Last February, I was privileged to interview Washington School District Superintendent George Lammay. He explained how the small “Prexie Pride” district with a low tax base was doing, surrounded by large suburban school districts.
On one subject Lammay pulled no punches. He said cyberschools have been disastrous for school budgets. He was concerned that the $1.5 million that Washington must spend on cyberschools leaves the district with tough choices on providing education for its students.
A year later, three events have brought Pennsylvania cyberschools (and other private schools receiving public funding) back into focus. First, Donald Trump was elected president. His administration has begun dismantling the U.S. Department of Education and has promised to make public funds available to private as well as religious schools in every state. Republicans have assailed America’s public schools by supporting vouchers. School choice is now the law in 33 states.
In 2024, over one million students in the United States used school choice programs, as reported by Ed Choice, an organization supporting these alternatives to public education. This is a significant increase from 2019, when only 540,000 students participated.
According to a citation from MIT Press Direct, Education Finance and Policy, “Pennsylvania cyber charters enrolled over 175,000 students or 2.1% of the total public-school population, second only to California in terms of total cyber charter school enrollments. It is also second only to Oklahoma in terms of the percentage of public-school students enrolled in cyber charter schools.”
In addition, Education Voters of Pennsylvania, an advocacy group for public schools, reports that “more than one billion property tax dollars are taken out of classrooms in our local public schools annually to pay for cyber charter tuition costs that are not tied to the actual expenses of online education.”
The second event centering attention on school choice occurred when Republican Pennsylvania Auditor General Timothy DeFoor recently released the findings of his audit on the funding of five of the 14 cyber charter schools in Pennsylvania. These online charter schools receive taxpayer funding from the school districts where the students live. However, cyberschools are not accountable to the school districts that fund them.
DeFoor concluded that the state funding formula for cyberschools, based on per-pupil budgets rather than actual educational expenses for cyberstudents, created “uncommon” savings rates and spending practices. The cyberschools he examined were awash in so much excess funding, they simply could not spend the money. He urged Pennsylvania to make major reforms to the state’s nearly 25-year-old funding formula.
The audit found that the five cyberschools have increased their savings accounts by 144%. DeFoor pointed out that “reserves are meant to assure there is no interruption in a child’s education – and not meant to sit in a bank account of a cyber charter school year after year.”
These large savings accounts were not accumulated because the cyberschools were frugal. On the contrary, all five schools spent taxpayer dollars liberally, if not irresponsibly, on staff bonuses, gift cards, vehicle payments and fuel stipends. In one eye-opening discovery, Commonwealth Charter Academy spent $196 million to buy and renovate 21 buildings. DeFoor’s comment on the buying spree, “This seems a bit out of the ordinary for a private school that is based on online instruction,” was a pointed understatement.
In his Feb. 4 budget discussions Gov. Josh Shapiro noted that “the amount school districts send to cyber charters per student is inconsistent, ranging from $7,659 to $28,960.” His budget proposal is to set a flat rate of $8,000. That would save the state’s public school districts and its taxpayers $378 million a year.
As to the cyberschools’ questionable spending practices uncovered in the audit, only the Pennsylvania Department of Education can authorize and reform charter agreements. The department must review the Charter School Law and its current regulations to further clarify the appropriate use of taxpayer money.
The topic of school choice is examined in an excellent 2024 book, “The Privateers: How Billionaires Created a Culture War and Sold School Vouchers,” by Josh Cowen. Cowen was a former evaluator of state and local school voucher programs. He explains how these programs have expanded. He then presents a detailed evidence-based case against voucher programs.
Cowen points out that traditionally, most Americans were not in favor of the government underwriting the cost of private or religious schooling. The practice started in the South as a racist response to school integration in the late 1950s. Eventually conservative billionaires “invented a rationale for school privatization largely from nothing and out of nowhere.” They funded Republican candidates and spent millions spreading the message that “school choice would heal American education.”
In fact, Cowen points out in study after study, school choice has failed students and exacerbated income inequality. Voucher programs returned poorer academic outcomes, including lower test scores on state exams. Cowen concludes that the continued advancement of school choice is an unwarranted assault on public education.
Pennsylvania’s public schools are struggling to provide essential resources for its students. Property taxpayers face increasing financial pressure. The diversion of public money to cyber and private schools has undermined the integrity of the public school system on which America was built.
It is time for concerned citizens and stressed taxpayers to take note and to speak up for public education.
Gary Stout is a Washington attorney.