Finance experts in Pennsylvania warned that the costs of charter schools and cyber charters threaten to bankrupt as many as 500 school districts.
Finance experts with the Pennsylvania Association of School Business Officials (PASBO) said lawmakers must change the way charter costs are assessed to local school districts or accept that some school districts are not going to be able to continue to bear the cost of paying hundreds of thousands, and in some cases millions, of dollars in charter school tuition.
The call for change comes as the General Assembly weighs a variety of bills aimed at altering the way the state regulates and finances charter and cyber charter schools that now enroll about 140,000 students in kindergarten through 12th grade.
Hannah Barrick, of the Pennsylvania Association of School Business Officers, said charter school costs, which are borne almost entirely by local school districts, totaled $1.8 billion last year and accounted for 37 cents of every new dollar raised in local property taxes.
In some school districts, the costs are even higher.
Enrollment in Pennsylvania’s charter schools grew dramatically over the last decade, increasing from about 78,000 students in 2009-10 to 140,000 this year.
Along with that growth, school districts have seen the bill for charter school tuition grow by double digits five out of the past eight years.
Charter schools, promoted as a free option for public school students whose families wish to look outside their districts, are funded by the students’ local school districts. Tuition is calculated using a complex formula that requires each district to pay charter school fees based on the local district’s cost per student per year. Across the state, those figures ranged from $7,600 to $18,500 per mainstream student to $15,100 to $48,000 per special education student.
Pennsylvania has about 1.7 million students. Supplying choices for 140,000 students (8%) in schools that are of mixed quality threatens to bankrupt the state’s school finance system.
Has it occurred to the lawmakers in Pennsylvania that running a dual school system, both publicly funded, is an insane idea?
Diane Ravitch's blog 
How can someone be fiscally conservative and accept this system?
It’s easy when you are personally benefitting from it.
My senior year I college, I worked part time at what was effectively a home-study charter school that was getting the same per student money as all of the public schools in the state The students would often just show up once a week (if that).
And here’s the kicker. The school was owned and operated by a sitting state Senator, who paid himself quite handsomely as school head.
But there was nothing illegal about it, which really should not be surprising when the ones who benefit are the ones who passed the laws to begin with.
This happened decades ago, but i’m pretty sure that this situation is nothing out of the ordinary, particularly not in the current wild west charter environment.
There are undoubtedly lots of state legislators who are benefitting either directly or indirectly from these sorts of arrangements.
Nailed it, SDP.
Were you in Florida?
time to stop saying ‘fiscally conservative’ and start saying ‘fiscally wily’ ?
Governor Wolf should cut a deal with the vandals in the legislature. The old reimbursement formulas are holdovers of the Corbett administration, and they must change for the sake of the financial health of the commonwealth. The governor cannot do it alone. He needs the support of the legislature to make the necessary changes.
This doesn’t include the western part of the US – which I don’t know that much about- but I would say the states that took the brunt of lousy ed reform policy and practice are Ohio, Michigan and Pennsylvania.
It was a disaster in those states and all three are retreating from it, which should not be a mystery to ed reformers.
It isn’t dependent on a change from Republican to Democrat either- Ohio remained Republican and they are quietly moving away from the echo chamber agenda too. In Ohio they’re doing it SO quietly it’s like they hope no one remembers they all enthusiastically backed it for 20 years. I guess we’ll never mention that again 🙂
Just on the most basic level they must know that Ohio, Michigan and Pennsylvania all dropped in ranking under lock-step ed reform governance. It’s a blatant failure. It may or may not be successful other places – they could argue that- but the results are IN here and they’re not good.
They do know it, I think. It’s why DeVos never points to her work in Michigan when she’s selling the agenda nationwide. All she talks about is Florida. That’s just weird.
I can say as a public school parent it’s kind of a respite. We haven’t had an ed reform gimmick imposed in two years. On balance their complete and utter abandonment of public schools is a plus.
But what does that say about this “movement”? Not good things. The BEST we can hope for is they don’t actually harm the 90% of students in the public schools they don’t care about and work to replace. They want to be paid for that? Um, no. No thanks. Instead we could just cast a wider net and see if there’s anyone left who has some interest in public schools. I bet there are people like that we could hire.
“Has it occurred to the lawmakers in Pennsylvania that running a dual school system, both publicly funded, is an insane idea?”
The lawmakers in Pennsylvania that support legislation that supports charter schools know what they are doing and their end goal is to help destroy public education through takeovers and bankruptcy.
The reason they won their elections is because of the money billionaires like the Waltons, Gates and the Koch brothers (and their ALEC machine) funded their campaigns.
Here’s a question:
How are the Waltons, Bill Gates, and the Koch brothers et al, different than Trump?
They don’t Tweet and hold hate rallies.
“Along with that growth, school districts have seen the bill for charter school tuition grow by double digits five out of the past eight years.”
This reminds me of a business property I know of that has had a new renter storefront every three to five years, going back decades.
Prime corner business real estate right at the center of all transportation. So how could a business possibly fail there?
Three year lease. Then the rent blasts off to the moon. If you haven’t made it big (real big) by the end of that first lease…
These shysters in PA know exactly what they’re doing. They got the changes they needed through the state legislature in order to gain a financial foothold in the education budget. Then they started jacking up the rent. But not EVERY year. No. Too obvious. Gotta lay low and leave a year out here and there.
Next thing you know the costs have gone through the roof and it’s all been done “legally” through tax funding.
Unreal.
PRIVATE charter schools!