Interest up in charter schools
Traditional Lehigh Valley public schools seeing exodus
Veronica Charles feels torn about where her children should learn next year.
When Easton Area School District announced at the beginning of this year that it would choose hybrid instruction, she made the snap decision to enroll her seventh and fifth grader in a cybercharter school, Commonwealth Charter Academy.
Initially it was because she feared exposure to the virus; then because she desired consistency, rather than a constantly changing hybrid schedule. Plus, CCA is a virtual learning program with nearly 20 years, rather than a couple of months, of experience.
For her 12-year-old daughter, the experience has been so positive that, even when the pandemic subsides, Charles is
considering not sending her back to Easton. Before the pandemic, she hadn’t even known that cybercharter school was an option.
“It just blew my mind,” she said. “For me, I just needed a solution, and luckily someone told me about it.”
In a year of upheaval, a significant number of families have sought alternatives to their traditional public school district’s pandemic offerings, whether to fulfill a desire for more in-person learning or more specialized online learning.
For public school districts broadly, that has meant a largerthan-usual exodus of students to charter schools, in particular cybercharters, as well as to private and parochial schools, and homeschooling. Students who left to charters took state dollars with them, leaving districts in the lurch as they try to budget for next year without knowing how many students will return.
A statewide trend
The increase in charter school enrollment is statewide.
More than 25,000 students in Pennsylvania enrolled in public charter schools for the first time this school year, with 20,000 of them in cybercharters, Pennsylvania Coalition of Public Charter Schools CEO Lenny McAllister testified before the Pennsylvania House Education Committee on Feb. 23.
“They’re bursting at the seams now,” said Bob Lysek, president of the coalition and CEO of Executive Education Academy Charter School in Allentown, referring to cybercharters.
That 25,000 is the largest emigration of students to Pennsylvania charter schools in one school year, in terms of raw numbers, according to McAllister. In terms of percentages, it was a 15% spike, which last happened in 2011-12. The unusual pandemic emigration included, charter enrollment has increased by 87% since 2010-11.
Last year, taxpayers spent $2.1 billion on charter schools, including more than $600 million on cyberschools, according to Gov. Tom Wolf ’s office. This year, the amount will increase by more than $400 million, the state says.
Philadelphia School District saw 32% growth in the number of students attending cybercharter programs in one year, Uri Monson, the district’s chief financial officer told the state House Democratic policy committee at a March 2 hearing. District leaders from other parts of the state shared similar stories of increases in cyberschool enrollment.
Even though schools everywhere pivoted quickly to come up with their own online learning programs, cybers already had the built-in expertise, Lysek said.
“We’re living in their world now,” he said. He said this pandemic-related surge in interest inspired Executive Action school leaders to pursue their own cybercharter school.
Locally, cybercharters have claimed the greatest portion of students who have left public school districts. Though the extent varies, the uncertainty of whether those students will return makes budgeting for next year a challenge.
“In my opinion this is probably one of the largest unknown variables in our budget,” East Penn Business Administrator Robert Saul said. “The question is: Will they come back to the school district next year, thereby lowering the tuition expenditures? Or will they remain another year and beyond, again making it difficult to project?”
In Bethlehem, for example, a net increase of 111 charter school students this school year costs the district an estimated $34.3 million, $4.4 million or 14.8% more than in 2019-20. Parkland saw 92 students leave for cybercharters this year — greater than the typical 25 or 30 — costing the district an estimated $1.5 million more than last year.
“It’s a lot of money. There’s no doubt about it,” said Rodney Troutman, Parkland’s assistant superintendent.
At East Penn, district officials are budgeting a 29% increase in cyber and charter tuition based on current enrollment, increasing the amount from about $5.5 million to $7 million. Nazareth is budgeting an extra $1 million in tuition expenses next year.
Allentown School District saw a 27% increase this year in students enrolled in cybercharter schools, up to 630 from 496, according to a recent presentation to the School Board’s finance committee. That was a much steeper increase than in previous years, and it’s pushed the district to exceed the $58 million budgeted this year for charter school tuition. Now, officials are projecting higher costs, which could get up to $67 million, and vary depending on the district’s reopening plan, a consultant said.
Nazareth is 63 charter school students and $800,000 over budget this year; Northampton is 40 students and $600,000 over budget. Both counted an increase of several dozen students leaving for private or parochial schools this year.
Though federal coronavirus relief money cannot be used to pay for charter school tuition, it helped districts offset the cost. But should this trajectory of departing students continue in years without federal relief, it would be unsustainable for districts, Troutman said.
“There’s no school in the valley who could continue to eat $1.5 million each year,” he said.
Choosing charters
Unlike most cybercharter schools, The Pennsylvania Cyber Charter School has an enrollment cap, set at 11,677 students.
At its prepandemic peak, the school had about 11,200 students. But it started this school year with a waitlist of about 2,300 students, said Brian Hayden, the school’s chief executive officer.
Enrollment at the school changes throughout the year, and while the school doesn’t currently have a waitlist, enrollment is around 11,500, and there was a waitlist in January, he said.
Families who joined the school this year said their No. 1 reason for enrolling was for the health and safety of their children, Hayden said. Their second reason was because they weren’t satisfied with the remote learning options their school districts offered starting last March. Unlike most districts last spring, the cybercharter offers live instruction.
Enrollment at Agora Cyber Charter School, in King of Prussia, had been declining for five years, until last spring.
Initially, there were a couple of hundred students who came on board. By the end of last school year, the cyberschool had 5,900 students. During a feverish period of August and September, enrollment rose to 7,300, then leveled out to 7,100 in October. The school instituted a wait list for elementary school and hired 50 teachers, CEO Rich Jensen said.
In the past, families have come in search of greater flexibility, special needs services, or because a child was dealing with bullying. This year, there was a heavy focus on the family’s previous school’s adjustment to online learning, he said.
That was what drove Judy Pena to switch her third and fifth grade daughters out of St. John Vianney Regional School in Allentown, a Catholic school they’ve attended since preschool.
During virtual learning last spring, she found herself playing teacher often, stepping in to help her daughters manage the work, which was often assignment-driven rather than live instruction.
Concerned about the pandemic, she knew she wanted to keep her daughters learning virtually this year. She enrolled them in PA Virtual Cyber School in August, and was impressed: the vast majority of instruction is live, and at the slightest sign of struggle, the teachers contact her.
“I am so amazed at the type of education they provide academically,” she said.
While she originally thought she’d go back to private school for 2021-22, she decided to enroll her daughters in the cybercharter school for another year.
Going private
After a spring of forced virtual learning, Tracey Wrobel Hammel had planned to put in applications at multiple private schools for her three elementary age boys. When Parkland School District announced it would pursue a five-day in-person model in the elementary schools, she decided not to, eager to keep her boys in the traditional public school.
Two weeks before school started, amid constantly shifting state guidelines, Parkland pivoted to a hybrid instruction plan for all grade levels.
But by that time, the private schools Wrobel Hammel had looked at were full. Her boys are on waitlists, but are set to go to St. Joseph the Worker next year, a Catholic school in the Allentown Diocese, even though many school districts intend to return to school full time by then.
“There is not anything that they can do to make me trust them again,” she said.
The exodus to private schools — in some districts, a couple of dozen more students than usual — has mostly to do with the desire for full-time in-person learning, which most of them offer.
That’s the primary reason the 700 families new to the Allentown Diocese’s 38 schools gave when switching this year, said Paul Wirth, director of communications.
Nineteen of those schools had waitlists at the beginning of the year, he said, when the demand was greatest.
But even with the newcomers, the Catholic schools had a net loss of about 450 families, owing in part to economic issues wrought by the pandemic.
The new families have come from both traditional public schools and brick-and-mortar charter schools that haven’t brought students back for in-person instruction.
Independent private schools like Moravian Academy and Swain School, which have had five-day, in-person instruction all year, have seen increased applications at all grade levels, said Jeff Zemsky, Moravian Academy’s head of school.
However, across private and parochial schools, increased demand has mainly added to waitlists rather than increased actual enrollment because the schools are strictly adhering to 6 feet social distancing guidelines.
Seven of the diocese’s 38 schools are in hybrid learning because they weren’t able to accommodate 6 feet, Wirth said.
To accommodate more families next year, St. Anne’s School in Bethlehem is adding classrooms, but is at “COVID capacity” for this year.
At Moravian and Swain, too, administrators plan to keep 6 feet distancing in place until official guidance says differently.
“Six feet is one of our four pillars,” Zemsky said. “I think that would be the last to go.”
A key difference in private schools’ ability to achieve 6 feet is one of its preexisting features: small class sizes.
At Moravian and Swain, for example, class sizes were not much larger than 16 or 17 students, and “COVID capacity” is only a few students less than that, depending on the room, said Erica D’Agostino, Moravian Academy’s assistant head of school.
Administrators worked all summer to rearrange building space and make room for everyone who chose to learn in person. About 90% have.
They converted libraries, old gymnasiums, even cafeteria spaces into classroom space using dividers; hallways are lined with red and gold instructional arrows, and every door is either an entrance or an exit, D’Agostino said. Windows are cracked open in every room, even during the winter.
“We were really good at wiggling around to make things fit,” she said.
And as an independent school — Moravian and Swain merged over the summer — it has less bureaucracy and greater flexibility to be nimble, said Armistead Webster, head of the Swain School.
Swain, for example, has just 270 students to worry about.
“We are a single, a one-school district, and we get to figure it out for ourselves,” he said. “We’re so small, we know each other well.”
But like schools everywhere, they set the stage with teachers that adjustments might be an ongoing process, and had plans in place to go entirely virtual if needed.
“If you had told me [in August] we’d still be open at Thanksgiving, I’d have been thrilled,” Webster said.
Neither school system has experienced coronavirus outbreaks spread in the schools, directors said.
Bringing them back
Most of the families that left Parkland for cybercharters did so in the beginning of the year, when the district made the switch to hybrid and, for the first time, expanded its own cyberacademy, called Parkland Online, to elementary students. The district hired 12 teachers on one-year contracts specifically for that program.
“When this all happened, it happened so quickly that people didn’t have a lot of confidence that we would have a good online program,” Troutman said, noting that hybrid and online students ended up performing similarly this year on reading and literacy benchmarks. “Do I blame them? No.”
The district has been making phone calls to the families of the 92 students who went to cybercharters to see if they plan to return to Parkland next year. So far, 26 have said yes. The district hasn’t reached everyone yet, so is hopeful that number will grow.
Northampton’s in-house cyberprogram has served all grade levels for about a decade, which helped the district retain families, Superintendent Joseph Kovalchik said. At the beginning of the school year, when parents were pulling their children out, the district contacted each of them to let them know about Northampton’s cyberacademy.
“Many parents were just unaware of it,” he said.
A significant chunk returned, and the program enrolled 100 students this year, more than the usual 70.
By and large, it’s too soon to tell whether these moves reflect a permanent change. Many parents, seeing constantly changing pandemic guidelines and conditions, might not know their next move.
“Right now, the focus is to finish out this year,” Kovalchik said. “I think a lot of them might be just waiting to see where this all goes.”
Bethlehem Area Superintendent Joseph Roy said the sudden increase in cybernumbers — both the district’s own program and charters — lead him to believe students left because of the pandemic and suggests they will come back when it’s over.
That’s true for Cara Lacerna, who put her kindergarten-age son in Agora Cyber Charter School this fall to reduce the risk posed to her mother, who lives with her family. She figured it would be smoother to pursue virtual school in a program that has been well established for 15 years.
Though his education there has been comprehensive, and even more work than she expected, she plans to switch him back to public school as long as trends continue positively and vaccines continue rolling out.
“Us choosing a cyber had nothing to do with the school we’re in,” she said.
Roy said the district will reach out to students who left to let them know that if they plan on coming back they need to register and select their courses so the district can plan staffing accordingly.
Charles, the mother in the Easton Area School District, said she’s gotten home visits, phone calls and mailers from the district asking her to come back. Though she remains undecided about her daughter, who is flourishing in cyberschool, she’s leaning toward sending her son back.
“I feel like I’m in a purgatory. ... Of course eventually I’d love to get them back into 5 days a week,” she said. “If everything goes back to close to normal, I’m considering it for one child. But my other child is having a better situation. It’s [cyberschool] been a blessing in disguise.”