Below is an excerpt from an opinion piece from a member of the Upper Dublin School Board that ran in late June on Pennlive.com.
In May, the PA School Boards Association announced that more than 400 of PA’s school districts have passed a charter school reform resolution asking lawmakers to change how PA’s charter schools are funded.
The current funding formula was established in 1997 and has not been modified since – resulting in drastic overpayments to charter schools – from almost $13,000 for regular education students and by $35,000 for special education students. Each.
School district tuition payments to charter schools have risen by 253% over 12 years and are now nearly $2.2 billion. In that same time, charter school enrollments have only grown 118%. Currently, more than six and a half cents of every dollar that school districts spent in 2019-20 went to charter tuition payments, which is more than double what it was 10 years earlier!
Cyber charter school payments are a major pressure to public school budgets – and we need reform. Now.