Charter school reform remains long overdue

Funding for education is perennially the sticking point in state budget talks in Harrisburg as negotiations this year dragged on more than a week after the July 1 start of the fiscal year.

As we noted in a recent editorial on the budget process, school funding is a dance every year between Republican legislative leadership and Democratic Gov. Tom Wolf. At the top of the dance card is how to address funding inequities and get more resources to poorer districts with a hold harmless clause that protects the level of funding for more well-off districts, or those with student populations that are stagnant.

Fortunately, the budget process this year is winding up with a plan that pushes more money to education and tax relief and addresses funding inequities with Level Up money to poorer districts. All good news.

But still unaddressed as of this writing is a commonsense proposal for charter school reform that would benefit public schools without costing a dime.

According to a recent report, Pennsylvania has the highest cyber charter school enrollment in the country with numbers “soaring in 2020-21 due to concerns related to the COVID-19 pandemic,” writes Research for Action.

“School districts paid over $1 billion in tuition for students enrolled in Pennsylvania’s 14 cyber charter schools in 2020-21, a $335 million increase over the prior school year,” according to the report.

Boyertown schools saw cyber tuition jump by $5.4 million in one year, followed by Norristown, with $2 million and North Penn with $1.6 million.

A part of Wolf’s budget proposal to the Legislature this year was H.B. 272 to enact comprehensive charter school reform, saving $199 million by setting a data-based statewide cyber charter tuition rate and $174 million by funding special education in charter schools through the tiered, need-based formula used for public schools.

Several legislators from both sides of the aisle spoke out in favor of the bill at a June rally at Perkiomen Valley High School. And, 433 of Pennsylvania’s 500 school boards have adopted a resolution calling for charter school tuition reform.

“Their students are not graduating at the same rate as brick and mortar schools, and why is that?” asked state Rep. Tracy Pennycuick, R-147th Dist., speaking at the rally about cyber charter schools. “We don’t know what’s going on in their school board meetings. Those are not publicly elected school boards at cyber charter schools. Their meetings are held in private, and yet they’re spending taxpayer dollars.”

School boards “are not calling for the elimination of charter schools,” said Lawrence Feinberg, director of the Keystone Center for Charter Change at the Pennsylvania School Boards Association. “Rather, they are calling on the General Assembly to meaningfully revise the flawed charter school funding system.”

Another study by the Pennsylvania Charter Performance Center, an arm of the advocacy group Children First, shows that tuition increases have been accompanied by accumulation of budget surpluses among charters.

For their part, charter officials say they need surpluses because their finances operate differently than traditional school districts.

Last year, taxpayers spent $2.1 billion on charter schools, including more than $600 million on cyber schools. This year, the burden on taxpayers will increase by more than $400 million. Between 2013 and 2019, 44 cents of every $1 of new property taxes went to charter schools, according to the Pennsylvania Association of School Business Officials.

Education officials are not disputing that charters have a place as alternatives to public schools. The issue is the drain on taxpayers without public accountability.

Each year, reform proposals that make common sense as improvements to charter performance and cost control are offered, and each year, they go nowhere with charter proponents crying foul. But it is the taxpayers of Pennsylvania who should be angry. They’re paying local taxes for high payments to schools that operate outside their local areas.

Of all the education funding arguments that Harrisburg endures, this one should not still persist. Charter reform in Pennsylvania is long overdue.