The New Castle News Reports: While the state budget increased funding for public schools — and boosted by $40 million the number of tax credits available for those who donate to scholarship funds to help children pay for private school — the General Assembly declined to act on the controversy over the way the state’s cyber schools are paid. Proponents have argued that if cyber schools’ tuition payments — from the traditional public schools — were more closely aligned to the cyber schools’ costs, it would save school districts about $250 million a year. A total of 407 of the state’s 500 school districts have passed resolutions urging the General Assembly to tackle the issue.
“I’ve been banging my head on this thing for 22 years. I testified before the House Education Committee back in 2007. And I could just basically read the same testimony now, except that numbers are bigger, you know,” said Lawrence Feinberg, director of the Keystone Center for Charter Change, an initiative of the Pennsylvania School Board Association.