New Report Suggests ‘Pennsylvanians Cannot Afford to Wait Any Longer’ for Cyber Charter School Funding Reform
From the Bucks County Beacon
The Pennsylvania Department of the Auditor General under Republican Auditor General Timothy DeFoor has released an audit of five of Pennsylvania’s cyber charter schools. There’s good news and bad news, and once more, evidence that Pennsylvania’s cyber charter laws need to be updated.
A cyber charter is a privately owned and operated school, funded by taxpayer dollars, that delivers instruction over the internet via computer. Pennsylvania is currently the nation’s leading state for cyber charters, with 13 charters serving nearly 60,000 students. The five schools chosen for the audit represent more than half of the state’s total cyber charter enrollment.
State audits of the cyber charters have been relatively rare and infrequent, so this new audit is the first look in many years at how the cyber charter businesses use the taxpayer dollars they collect.
It’s about time.
The Good News
The good news is that the cyber charters have not done anything illegal.
That’s actually not nothing. In Ohio, the Electronic Classroom of Tomorrow (ECOT) was behind the state’s largest cyber charter network, until the Ohio Department of Education determined that ECOT had been lying about the number of students enrolled and over-billing the state, triggering state and federal investigations that ECOT owed the state over $100 million; some analysis showed that they have overbilled the state by almost twice that amount.
The Pennsylvania auditor’s finding that the five cyber charters studied have billed districts correctly and appropriately for the students enrolled is welcome news. The audit set out to look at the finances of the cyber charters (sources, expenditures, and current standings), and it found nothing actually illegal.
The Bad News
The bad news is that the cyber charters have not done anything illegal.
The auditor general, based on the audit findings, recommends that the state assign a task force to develop a funding formula that is “equitable, reasonable, and sustainable,” which suggests that the current formula is none of those things.
Pennsylvania’s cyber charters are soaking Pennsylvania taxpayers. The audit adds some numbers to just how much soaking is going on, and how current cyber charter law fails to be equitable, reasonable, or sustainable.
The audit covers the period between July 1, 2020, and June 30, 2023. The five cyber charters are Commonwealth Charter Academy, Pennsylvania Leadership Charter School, Insight PA Cyber Charter School, Pennsylvania Cyber Charter School, and Reach Cyber Charter School.
Read the full article, complete with findings from the audit, here (no paywall).