Pa. House passes cyber charter reform again; Senate lawmakers take another run at vouchers

Yahoo

a day ago

Cyber charter school reform tops education agenda as budget negotiations take shape.
Legislation to reform Pennsylvania's quarter-century-old cyber charter school law and return to taxpayers hundreds of millions in excessive tuition payments passed in the state House on Wednesday with bipartisan support.
The bill now heads to the state Senate where a favorable vote would ratify one of Gov. Josh Shapiro's budget priorities by capping cyber charter tuition at $8,000 per student next year. It would also establish a statewide formula for special education tuition.
That would save school districts an estimated $616 million a year according to a House analysis of the bill's fiscal impact.
The upper chamber, however, is moving forward with bipartisan legislation that would allow parents in poorly performing school districts to spend tax dollars on private school tuition. That's the solution Republicans prefer — and that Shapiro, a Democrat, has previously endorsed — to give students an alternative to traditional public schools.
As lawmakers in Harrisburg buckled down this week for the month-long push to negotiate the state budget by the June 30 deadline, education funding, as always, will be a subject of prolific debate.
The General Assembly must decide how much to spend on the second installment of a $4.5 billion multi-year commitment to fair education funding. That's in response to a state court ruling that said students in less wealthy communities have suffered a disadvantage for decades because of the state's reliance on property taxes to pay for education.
Layered on that is the debate over whether and how much taxpayers should spend to provide educational alternatives for students in poorly performing schools or for whom the traditional public school setting is not working.
'It is not a conversation any longer about Ds versus Rs or conservatives, moderates or progressives. It's not a conversation any longer about who has and who hasn't,' state Sen. Anthony Williams (D-Philadelphia) said last month. 'This is simply the divide in America that says we're all in the same boat, and if we don't educate our children … we are in big trouble.'
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Shapiro's proposed $51.5 billion spending plan calls for $1.5 billion more for education including $526 million in fair funding. But in his budget address, Shapiro said controlling how much cyber charter schools are paid by students' home school districts would maximize the impact of education funding increases.
Sponsored by Rep. MaryLouise Isaacson (D-Philadelphia), House Bill 1500 would amend the charter school law that was first passed in 1997 and amended in 2002 to allow cyber charter schools. It passed with a 104-98 vote, including the support of Republican Reps. Thomas Mehaffie of Dauphin County and Kathleen Tomlinson of Bucks County.
In response to the House vote on cyber charter reform Wednesday, the CEOs of five public cyber charter schools said the reduction in funding would be debilitating.
'Every member of the PA House Democratic Caucus voted today in support of the largest proposed cut to public education in nearly 15 years — a cut that would further disenfranchise some of our Commonwealth's most vulnerable children,' the leaders of Esperanza Cyber Charter School, Reach Cyber Charter School, PA Virtual Charter School, PA Cyber Charter School, PA Distance Learning Charter School said.
Marcus Hite, executive director of the Pennsylvania Association of Public Cyber Charter Schools, described the tuition cap as 'arbitrary and unrealistic.' He added that it does not take into account the real costs of educating students, particularly those with disabilities and unique learning needs.
'This bill is not about fairness or accountability—it's about eliminating school choice for thousands of families,' Hite said. 'H.B. 1500 is rooted in the dangerous belief that if we just throw more money at failing school districts and take options away from families, everything will magically improve. That's not how education works, and it's not what families want.'
Shapiro made news in 2022 as a candidate for governor by saying he supported private school tuition vouchers. Such programs have been a goal of conservative lawmakers across the country and one is outlined in President Donald Trump's 'Big Beautiful Bill' that the U.S. House passed last month. It includes $5 billion for a national school voucher program.
Shapiro proposed a $100 million scholarship fund 2023 that passed the Republican-controlled Senate, but it was shot down by House Democrats. He endorsed the proposal again in his 2024 budget proposal, and although rapper Jay-Z joined in support of the program, it wasn't in the final budget. Shapiro hasn't said one way or the other if he still backs the idea, but it wasn't part of this year's proposal.
Pennsylvania already has two programs that allow individuals and businesses to contribute to private school scholarship programs in lieu of state personal income and corporate net income, and other taxes. The programs provided $340 million such tax credits in 2022-2023, according to watchdog group Education Voters PA. The group has criticized the program, claiming it funds schools that are free to discriminate on the basis of religion, disability and LGBTQ status in their admissions policies.
Senate Bill 10 nonetheless resurrects the Pennsylvania Award for Student Success (PASS) scholarship proposal from 2023. It would allow parents of students in the bottom 5% lowest performing school districts to apply for scholarships ranging from $2,500 for half-day kindergarten to $10,000 for high school students each year. The bill passed the Senate Education Committee 8-3 last month to be considered by the full Senate.
Isaacson said her bill, which also passed the House last session, is the result of 'repeated and urgent calls' to update the law that remained unchanged as the number of cyber charter schools grew and enrollment swelled to 65,000.
'This proposal is about fiscal responsibilities and aligning tuition to the actual cost of providing cyber education,' she said.
Republicans who opposed it said it denied a voice for families that choose cyber charters.
'It will close real schools, displace real students, strip families of the very choices that they depend on to give their children a chance at success,' Rep. Martina White (R-Philadelphia) said.
School districts must pay tuition for each student who chooses to attend a cyber charter school instead of their local public school. For regular education students, it's based on the district's per-pupil spending minus costs that don't exist for cyber students, such as transportation and facilities.
For special education students, the tuition is calculated based on the district's overall special education spending divided by 16%, the presumed proportion of students requiring special ed service. Critics say that formula is flawed because it underestimates the number of special education students and skews tuition toward the cost of services for students with the most intensive needs. And students with individualized education plans are 27% more likely to attend cyber charter schools, according to the Pennsylvania School Boards Association.
Education watchdog groups say that results in a windfall for cyber charter organizations because the tuition they get has little relation to the actual cost of providing an online education. It also opens the door to waste and abuse, according to Education Voters PA, which catalogued spending by the state's largest cyber charter, Commonwealth Charter Academy (CCA), that included a posh social club membership and the purchase of a luxury SUV.
Republican Auditor General Timothy DeFoor released a report in February during House and Senate budget hearings that examined the finances of five cyber charters and found they had amassed excessive budget surpluses. The five charters' fund balances grew 144% from 2020 to 2023, when they held a combined $619 million in unencumbered funds.
DeFoor's report also highlighted 'uncommon' spending practices such as purchasing gift cards, paying bonuses to teachers and the acquisition of 21 physical properties by the state's largest cyber school.
House Education Committee Chairperson Peter Schweyer (D-Lehigh) listed claims from those reports as reasons to reign in payments to cyber charter schools. Majority Leader Matt Bradford (D-Montgomery) called it a 'damning indictment' of the institutions.
'We would all get in trouble if we were taking gift cards as part of our compensation … that's a pro tip for anybody who's in the room, don't do that,' House Education Committee Chairperson Peter Schweyer (D-Lehigh) said.
In addition to capping tuition, HB 1500 would establish the Cyber Charter School Funding and Policy Council to recommend changes in how cyber charter schools are funded and how they operate.
Isaacson's bill would also require cyber charters to return money to the state, if its general fund surplus is more than half of what it spent in the previous year or its capital fund surplus is more than 20% of what it spent in the previous year. That money would be available through the Commonwealth Financing Authority for public school building improvements, with 25% earmarked for the Solar for Schools program that lawmakers and Shapiro created last year.
'We've all heard stories about asbestos, mold. We had a school district that had a high school that was completely flooded out. It would be great to be able to reinvest those dollars in the children and the teachers that we see each and every day in our actual physical public school buildings,' Schweyer said.
Cyber charter schools have also drawn scrutiny for poor student proficiency rates. Schweyer noted only 4.7% of CCA students scored proficient in math on state assessments.
'If any of your public schools had a 95% failure rate for math proficiency, would you be satisfied?' he asked. 'Better question, would we be getting what we're paying for?'
HB 1500 would limit increases in enrollment for cyber charters that face 'significant challenges related to academic achievement, student growth, graduation rate and other areas.' And it would place a moratorium on new cyber charter applications through 2030.
Republican Leader Jesse Topper (R-Bedford) argued passing the bill would amount to eliminating lifelines for students who are unable to thrive in traditional public schools.
'Outcomes and statistics can be tricky,' Topper, who shared that his parents chose to homeschool him when the noise and disorder of public school proved to be too much.
'Many of the students who are falling through the cracks and who are attending these cyber charter schools are doing so because they are struggling,' he said, adding that success for some might be simply earning a high school diploma. The COVID-19 pandemic showed the value of cyber schools to the point that most school districts have added their own cyber programs, Topper noted.
'We need to continue to talk about how we can do better in all aspects of public education, including funding, including formulas,' Topper said. 'But the toxic nature of this conversation must end, and we must look at ways to move forward together as an entire system.'
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