Pa. charter school law is old and broken — and it’s time we fix it
Investing in our kids is investing in the future of the state for everyone, but right now we’re letting our kids and taxpayers suffer — and it’s time to make a change for the better.
Our charter school law is colossally out of date, and it’s hurting kids and hurting taxpayers, while letting private company middlemen siphon away money intended to teach students.
It’s a law written in 1997. The only major change made was five years later to allow charter schools to go fully online – to have students learn from home, but the cyber charter still collect the same tuition dollars.
That was in 2002, which, amazingly, was almost 20 years ago. Think about how much technology has changed. It’s time to have a charter school law built for the future, not the past.
Today, 20 cents of every dollar paid in property taxes goes to charter schools, and just 14 charter schools are being paid more than a half-billion in tax dollars every year. It’s not sustainable, and we’re seeing kids suffer as a result.
If we’re going to treat all schools fairly — and put kids and families first — we need charters to be partners with our traditional public schools, not competitors for dollars taken from long-suffering homeowners.
We need to be tough on the schools failing our kids when it comes to academics, ethics and cost. We need to reward solid performers who are innovating, while still delivering on the state’s obligations.
We can do it. We can save taxpayers a quarterbillion dollars each year and make our current system better, and there’s a plan to do that — the Charter School Reform Act of 2021, H.B. 272.
How will it work?
It will protect your right to know by demanding charter schools operate by the same reporting standards public schools do and make sure their meetings and their financial records are open to the public — the people paying the bills.
But that’s not all it will do when it comes to protecting the taxpayer. It will make sure cyber charter schools will calculate their tuition using a single, statewide, data-driven rate, will use the state’s existing cost-driven Fair Funding Formula to determine special education payments, and protect families if the charter school closes or the parent company goes bankrupt.
Most important, though, is making sure the students are getting the education they deserve to prepare themselves for a lifetime of success.
It will make sure charter school missions are standardized to focus on what works and help parents and school districts make needed changes. It will identify high-performing charters to give them more opportunity to innovate and help low-performing charters get back on track.
Finally, it will put a temporary hold on new cyber charters until the existing cyber charters get on track and deliver the quality education our kids and taxpayers deserve.
This bill can help kids, help communities and save the taxpayer some money at the same time.
This plan has bipartisan support and is part of the state’s budget plan going forward. Please contact your local lawmaker and ask them to sign on to the Charter School Reform Act. Our kids have waited long enough.