Charter school law changes coming

At city school, Wolf will reveal state’s plans

Gov. Tom Wolf will be in Allentown on Tuesday to discuss changes in the state’s charter school law, capping weeks of criticizing the charter funding system as unfair.

Wolf, who will be joined by Education Secretary Pedro Rivera, is expected to “announce improvements to the state’s charter school regulations and law, addressing accountability, cost, transparency, fairness, and quality,” according to a news release.

It’s not yet known what exactly Wolf plans to do, but in recent weeks, he has gone to battle with charter schools. Last week, he called charter schools “private.” Charter schools are publicly funded but operated by unelected boards.

His visit comes days after the Allentown School District asked charter schools to accept less in per-student payments during the coming year. It’s unclear if they will.

Wolf will speak at 10:30 a.m. at Harrison-Morton Middle School. He will then travel to Pocono Mountain West High School in Pocono Summit to also discuss the changes, according to the news release.

The charter school law passed in 1997 and has not been

updated since then. There has been much discussion surrounding charter school changes, especially funding for cybercharter schools. Cybercharters, which often perform low on the state’s standardized test scores, draw the ire of districts that are forced to pay tuition to them but have no oversight.

Districts must pay a per-pupil tuition fee for each student attending a cybercharter school. A 2018 survey by the Pennsylvania Association of School Administrators found districts pay $11,306 for each regular education student attending a cybercharter, and $24,192 on average for special education students.

Previous efforts to change the charter school law have failed. Earlier this year, Education Voters Pennsylvania, a project of the left-leaning Keystone Research Center, released a report calling for cybers to receive a flat $5,000 fee per student, with higher rates for special-education students. The $5,000 fee would save Allentown about $2.5 million. Allentown paid more than $5 million in cyber tuition for the 2017-18 school year.

Proposed legislation in Harrisburg in both the state Senate and state House would require parents to pay their child’s tuition at a cybercharter school if the student’s home district has an online program. But the bills aren’t expected to pass.

Allentown has seen its charter school tuition bill jump drastically in a decade. In 200910, it paid less than $10 million for 1,000 students to attend charters.

Now, more than 4,000 Allentown students attend charters, and the district is expected to pay $60 million in charter tuition this school year.

But Allentown, facing a $6 million hole in its budget, has asked 23 charters to take a voluntary 10% tuition reduction for 2019-20 that would plug the deficit. If all charter schools agreed to the reduction, it would balance the $341.8 million budget for 2019-20.

Allentown had students at 10 cybercharters during the 201718 school year.