Charter and cyber charter schools are privately-managed public schools. Pennsylvania law allows any student to apply to attend any charter or cyber charter school in the state. Students’ home school districts are mandated by state law to pay tuition to the charter schools for these students.

In the 2020-2021 school year, Pennsylvania taxpayers spent more than $2.6 billion in tuition payments to charter schools, including more than $1 billion on cyber charter school tuition payments.

The state no longer provides a reimbursement to help districts pay for charter school tuition costs, so charter school tuition payments are funded primarily through property taxes. AND, flawed calculations in Pennsylvania’s outdated charter school law mean that school districts often send charter schools more money than they need to educate children.

Charter and cyber charter schools can spend excess funding from school districts on anything, so your property tax dollars can end up paying for expensive cyber charter school advertising, lavish charter school CEO salaries, exorbitant contracts with management companies and more.

Ed Voters has created a fact sheet for each school district so you can understand how charter school tuition payments are impacting YOUR district.

Click HERE to find a fact sheet for your district.

Only state lawmakers can fix the charter school law to align tuition payments to charter schools with their actual costs to save tax dollars, relieve pressure on districts to raise property taxes, and curb wasteful spending by charter schools.

Click HERE to find your state senator and representative’s contact information. Give their offices a call and ask what they are doing to reform charter school funding to reduce pressure on property taxes and help curb wasteful spending by cyber charter schools.

Share this information with your friends, neighbors, and network and get them to call your local lawmakers.

We have limited funding available to make copies of these fact sheets and mail them to you. If you can attend a school board meeting or speak about this issue in another forum and would like us to mail you color copies of these fact sheets to distibute to people in your community, please fill out this form.