Lawrence Feinberg, a veteran school board member and head of the Keystone State Education Coalition, warns here that the charter industry is trying to slip a bill through the legislature that would vastly expand charters while reducing accountability.
Pennsylvania currently has one of the most corrupt charter sectors in the nation. The number of prosecutions for theft and misappropriation of funds is rivaled only by the rapacious charter industry in Ohio.
But the charter industry wants more charters and less regulation.
Feinberg warns that HB 530 is a trick on the public and a treat for the charter lobby.
“With only a few days left on the legislative calendar, lawmakers are trying to push through charter expansion with HB 530. Those in favor are dressing it up in the best costume they have and passing it off as charter school reform. It is anything but. The state’s most recent School Performance Profile scores show that only 22 percent of charters achieved a score of 70 or higher, the level that state education officials view as acceptable. So why are legislators so quick to allow unchecked expansion of these schools, wasting of tax dollars?
“There are many good charter schools out there. They serve as a valuable piece of the education puzzle in our state. But the lack of accountability and transparency is something that taxpayers should not tolerate. If HB 530 becomes law, charters would be able to ignore enrollment caps, hold higher fund balances than their traditional school counterparts, open schools in more than one location without permission from the authorizing entity, and avoid participating in the state evaluation system for teachers and principals required of other schools.
“Authors of HB 530 also made sure to stack the decks in favor of charters through a new Charter School Funding Advisory Commission that the bill creates. The purpose of the commission is to explore issues related to charter schools and make recommendations. Its members include representatives from charter schools, the secretary of education, legislators and members chosen by legislators, and school business managers. Oddly, school directors who are charged with authorizing charter schools (and who are responsible for raising local revenue from their neighbors to support education) have no seat on the commission. Also, the current six-member Charter School Appeal Board is expanded to nine. Two of the three new positions are reserved for charter school administrators and trustees.
“As schools consolidate and populations continue to drop, many schools are finding that they need to shut down school buildings. Currently, schools can work within certain parameters to sell or lease these buildings. HB 530 requires schools to first offer these buildings to charters on first right of refusal, simply ignoring the wishes of the local taxpayers who paid for these buildings and may have other desired uses for them.
“One final concern I wish to mention is a new performance matrix created by HB 530 that would be used to measure the academic performance of charter schools and to assess renewal terms. This matrix is the only measure that may be used by school boards for evaluating charter schools. In current law, charters can be revoked for poor academic performance. Additionally, under case law, if a charter school does not meet specific, measurable academic benchmarks required under federal law, it may be subject to charter revocation if the sending school districts are performing better. House Bill 530 eliminates the ability to compare charter schools and their sending school districts and undermines the original intent of the Charter School Law to create schools that provide something above and beyond what is provided by traditional public schools. Oh, and guess who creates this matrix? The previously mentioned commission that is weighted in favor of charter school representatives.”
Call your representative. Stop HB 530.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
HB 530 is a horrible amendment that gives charters access to local tax dollars without any oversight and accountability. It essentially underwrites taxation without representation. It is written by and for the charter industry giving them blank checks of local money without any limit or control. If passed, it could destroy the public schools 90% of the students attend. It also divert $25 million dollars for private and religious schools under a scheme called Educational Improvement Tax Credit program. This proposal is harmful to all public schools, taxpayers and democracy in Pennsylvania.http://thenotebook.org/articles/2016/07/11/25-reasons-to-vote-no-on-pa-hb530-charter-school-reform
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They renege on that all the time.
In Ohio they just did a clever work-around, where they claim local dollars don’t fund charter schools but they take a larger share of state dollars out of each school than the state puts in- that means local dollars are funding charter schools. Obviously. The shortfall has to be made up and it’s taken out of local funding.
They all pretend not to understand this although it’s not at all complicated- if the state puts in 5 and takes out 7 that 2 is coming from somewhere. It comes from local funding.
This isn’t magic. 5-7= -2. Unless they’re innumerate they understand this.
Have to hand it to state-level ed reformers in Ohio. They started a state school system and then refused to fund it.
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“With only a few days left on the legislative calendar, lawmakers are trying to push through charter expansion with HB 530.
This is always a favorite tactic for legislation designed to limit public voice and objections.
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IT’S UP TO EACH OF US NOW AS INDIVIDUAL CITIZENS TO SPREAD THE WORD to our state and local lawmakers and social media friends everywhere because they need to know right now that the Office of Inspector General of the U.S. Department of Education has issued a warning that charter schools posed a risk to the Department of Education’s own goals. The report says: “Charter schools and their management organizations pose a potential risk to federal funds even as they threaten to fall short of meeting the goals.”
The report documents multiple cases of financial risk, waste, fraud, abuse, lack of accountability of federal funds, and lack of proof that the schools were implementing federal programs in accordance with federal requirements.
Throughout our nation, private charter schools backed by billionaire hedge funds are being allowed to divert hundreds of millions of public school tax dollars away from educating America’s children and into private corporate pockets. Any thoughtful person should pause a moment and ask: “Why are hedge funds the biggest promoters of charter schools?” Hedge funds aren’t altruistic — there’s got to be big profit in “non-profit” charter schools in order for hedge fund managers to be involved in backing them.
And even the staunchly pro-charter school Los Angeles Times (which acknowledges that its “reporting” on charter schools is paid for by a billionaire charter school advocate) complained in an editorial that “the only serious scrutiny that charter operators typically get is when they are issued their right to operate, and then five years later when they apply for renewal.” Without needed oversight of what charter schools are actually doing with the public’s tax dollars, hundreds of millions of tax money that is supposed to be spent on educating the public’s children is being siphoned away into private pockets.
One typical practice of charter schools is to pay exorbitant rates to rent buildings that are owned by the charter school board members or by their proxy companies which then pocket the public’s tax money as profit. Another profitable practice is that although charter schools use public tax money to purchase millions of dollars of such things as computers, the things they buy with public tax money become their private property and can be sold by them for profit…and then use public tax money to buy more, and sell again, and again, and again, pocketing profit after profit.
The Washington State and New York State supreme courts and the National Labor Relations Board have ruled that charter schools are not public schools because they aren’t accountable to the public since they aren’t governed by publicly-elected boards and aren’t subdivisions of public government entities, in spite of the fact that some state laws enabling charter schools say they are government subdivisions.
Charter schools are clearly private schools, owned and operated by private entities. Nevertheless, they get public tax money. Moreover, as the NAACP and ACLU have reported, charter schools are often engaged in racial and economic-class discrimination.
Charter schools should (1) be required by law to be governed by school boards elected by the voters so that they are accountable to the public; (2) a charter school entity must legally be a subdivision of a publicly-elected governmental body; (3) charter schools should be required to file the same detailed public-domain audited annual financial reports under penalty of perjury that genuine public schools file; and, (4) anything a charter school buys with the public’s money should be the public’s property.
NO FEDERAL MONEY SHOULD BE ALLOWED TO GO TO CHARTER SCHOOLS THAT FAIL TO MEET THESE MINIMUM REQUIREMENTS OF ACCOUNTABILITY TO THE PUBLIC. Hillary Clinton could, if elected President, on day one in office issue an Executive Order to the Department of Education to do just that. Tell her today to do that! Send her the above information to make certain she knows about the Inspector General’s findings and about the abuses being committed by charter schools.
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Lecture about increase charter oversight and here is the reply that I received:
As to misspent money at charter schools, I would merely make reference to Scripture where Christ says don’t worry about the splinter in your neighbor’s eye when there is a log in yours. There is a hundred times, or more, money being misspent or spent inefficiently (contra our Constitution) in our brick and mortar public schools than in charters.
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Sorry for the typo. I emailed my legislator about charter oversight…
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The answer you got was full of bias against public education. There are many fine brick and mortar public schools in Pennsylvania. No taxpayer in his right mind should support this proposal. It eliminates any local control over public tax dollars. Under this proposal charters have the right to as much of the money as they can grab, and the local boards have nothing to say about it. That is why it is taxation without representation. It is like saying give me your savings account information so I can rob you. You have no control over how much I grab, and you have zero power to control or monitor what I do. It is a license to prohibit local democratic authority and steal local public tax dollars.
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