Lawmakers will be in Harrisburg for just nine days before the end of the 2017-2018 legislative session. Any bill that isn’t passed into law by the end of this session will have to start all over again next year.

This means that House Bill 97, the charter school expansion bill that that is supported by the charter school industry, will die if it isn’t passed in the next month.

If HB 97 doesn’t become law this year, when lawmakers return to Harrisburg after the election, they will have the opportunity to start fresh on new legislation that will actually fix flaws in the current law and increase charter school effectiveness, accountability, and transparency.

Right now, House Bill 97 is in the House Rules Committee. In April 2017, the PA House passed HB 97 with a vote of 108 to 84. (See how your representative voted HERE.) The Senate then amended the bill and passed a different version of HB 97 in July 2017. (See how your senator voted HERE.) In order for HB 97 to become law this session, the House and Senate will need to reconcile differences in the amended versions of the bills and vote again to pass the legislation.

HB 97 does NOT:

• end the $100 million (and growing) profit that charter schools reap off students with disabilities each year because of PA’s  broken special education funding system.
• address the continued, abysmal academic performance of the state’s cyber charter schools—none of which have ever met the minimum proficiency standard on the state’s school performance profile. In 2015-2016, Pennsylvanians spent a stunning $463 million on student tuition bills for cyber charter schools.
• protect taxpayers. Instead, HB 97 continues to shield charter school operators from PA’s Right to Know and Sunshine laws. This allows charter schools to spend millions of taxpayer dollars with no public oversight and continues to give charter operators the opportunity to misuse and mismanage public funds.
• hold accountable charters that fail to equitably serve all children, including the most vulnerable students in our communities.

HB 97 DOES:

• unfairly stack the Charter School Appeal Board (CAB) by adding more pro-charter members to the CAB.
• fail to hold charter teachers and principals to the same accountability standardsas their district school counterparts.
• fail to hold charter schools to the same performance standardsas school districts.

Pennsylvania’s taxpayers and children deserve real charter school reform, not this flawed legislation that would allow charter schools to expand without any accountability, leading to higher tuition bills and higher property taxes for school district residents, who pay 100% of charter school tuition bills.

Education Voters of PA will be closely monitoring this legislation in Harrisburg. We will let you know if HB 97 starts to move so you can contact your state lawmakers and urge them to oppose this legislation. If you don’t already receive our email updates, click HERE to sign up.