PA: Pressure Grows and Cyber Charters Continue to Stonewall

There is a lot of noise these days around the issue of funding cyber charters in Pennsylvania. But cyber. charter operators are still betting that simply refusing to talk about the topic will save them.

Pennsylvania is the cyber charter capital of the country, and the reason is pretty simple-- cyber chartering in Pennsylvania is super-profitable. 13 or so cybers have banked over $600 million in extra dollars--dollars that they did not need to operate their education-flavored businesses. Those are all taxpayer-funded dollars, dollars that local taxpayers have to watch leave their local school district. The cybers bank it, spend it on box seats, car fleets, a mountain of marketing, and, in one case, a massive real estate empire. Many articles refer to the excess cyber money as "reserves," but the correct term is "profits." The reserves held by a public school system belong to the taxpayers; the reserves held by a charter belong to the business. If Commonwealth Charter Academy went belly-up tomorrow, its many real estate holdings would not belong to the taxpayers.

Some of the money being passed around is shady as hell. For instance, Commonwealth Charter Academy, the states largest, richest cyber-business, turns out to pay parents $550 a month to serve as "family mentors." That's a $10K annual reward for choosing CCA. 

There are plenty of things about cyber funding that make no sense to even the casual observer. For instance, the tuition cost for a student varies wildly depending on what district the student comes from. One student might be charged less than $10K and another over $20K for exactly the same service from exactly the same school. 

There were some incremental changes last year. The GOP, for whatever reason, stands tall for the cyber charters, despite the fact that virtually all GOP reps and senators go home to districts where school boards have passed "For the love of God, fix this" resolutions. The GOP seems to favor a plan in which the state creates a huge fund that can be used to replace the buttload of money that cybers drain from public schools. This is not a great solution. For one thing, it increases the amount of taxpayer money being spent on education in the state (and not in ways that address the court order to fix the commonwealth's education funding system). 

Bills exist that could fix the funding situation-- there's one just passed by the House that the Senate could okay. But to describe the cyber industry as Dragging Their Feet would be like describing the ethical qualities of the Trump administration as mildly impaired. 

What the cybers have effectively done is refuse to be part of the conversation. The House holds hearings on cyber finance reform, and the industry steadfastly refuses to send anyone in the biz. CCA has just announced that, after tons of pressure for more transparency, they will now become less transparent about their finances. 

Sometimes when a government is facing issues with a particularh sector, you can at least get players in that sector to offer lip service. "Yes, we can see there are real problems here and we are of course deeply concerned about truth, justice, and the American way, and blah bah blah we'd like to offer this meaningless solution that doesn't solve anything." 

But the cyber charter industry doesn't even do that. "No! No! If you do that, it will drive us out of busines! We couldn't ossibly survive that level of transparency and oversight and certainly not that number being proposed as a sensible tuition level for all students in the state," they cry out as they roll around on their Scrooge McDuck style pile of money. This despite the fact that every other state that allows cyber charters does some version of all the things that PA cybers claim would be existential threats. 

I would love to believe that this time, cyber charter funding reform will finally happen. But the cyber operators are c learly betting that it won't. CCA is building a new center just up the road from me, and wbhile local school board members and even some taxpayers are upset about the state of things, I'm betting. not one of them would make our local elected GOP reps suffer any electoral consequences for their failure to protect local taxpayers. 

Until some set of GOP lawmakers in Harrisburg look te cyber industry in the eye and say, "We are doing this, with or without you," it seems unlikely that cyber operators will do anything other than protest loudly every single possible action that might be taken to fix this insanely wasteful (but profitable) payment system.If you're in PA, call your elected person, especially if they're a Republican.

The current proposed flat rate for tuition is $8,000. It's unsurprising that cybers say that's too little, but it's telling that they have nev er proposed a number that they think would be better. This is not, as some suggest, a stalled debate in which both sides are dug in; this is a stalled debate in which one side refuses to even participate because they don't think they have to.