In 2019, Ed Voters filed our first Right-to-Know request focused on cyber charter expenditures for advertising and promotion. Since then, we have filed annual requests with all cyber charter schools; cataloged tens of thousands of receipts, invoices, and other documents; and exposed extraordinary waste of taxpayer dollars by the cyber charter industry.
In 2024, the legislature passed Act 55, which requires all public school entities to disclose total expenditures for paid media advertising and sponsorships of public events beginning this year.
The Pennsylvania Department of Education recently published this data from the schools’ annual financial reports for the 2024-2025 school year.
We took a look, did a little math, and found that for the 2024-2025 school year:
- On average, each school district in the commonwealth spent $6898 on advertising and promotion costs.
- On average, each cyber charter school that reported this data spent more than $1.6 million annually.
Public reporting on advertising and promotion expenditures is now required by law!
We applaud Pennsylvania lawmakers who supported legislation creating additional transparency for cyber charters’ outrageous waste of tax dollars on advertising and promotion. This is real progress!
We also encourage lawmakers to support the additional $75 million in tuition adjustments proposed as part of the 2026-2027 state budget to continue to rightsize tuition paid to cyber charter schools with the actual cost of educating students at home on a computer. Pennsylvanians’ tax dollars should be spent on resources that support student learning, not wasted on TV ads, agency fees, social media campaigns, and so much more
The statutory deadline for the budget is June 30th. We will update you with any new information we have on how the state budget is progressing in Harrisburg.
The document pictured here is the response to our first Right-to-Know request in 2019 that sought a cyber charter’s advertising costs.
It is a victory for Pennsylvanians and for transparency that state lawmakers now require all public schools to publicly report their spending on advertising and sponsorships.
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