SCHOOL DISTRICT FACT SHEETS

How much would your school district save with charter school funding reforms?

Pennsylvania law allows any student to apply for admittance to any charter or cyber charter schools in the state. School districts are then mandated to pay a tuition bill for each student from their district who attends these schools. 

The state no longer provides funding to help districts pay for charter school tuition, so these costs are funded primarily through property taxes.  In the 2020-2021 school year, Pennsylvania taxpayers spent more than $1 billion on cyber charter school tuition bills.

Under Pennsylvania’s charter school law, cyber charter schools are paid the same as brick-and-mortar charter schools even though they do not have the same costs. Cyber charters do not have gym, recess, libraries, laboratories, or music and art classrooms. They do not need to employ security or maintenance/custodial staff or maintain school district facilities and grounds. 

Cyber charter schools receive so much excess funding that they can afford to waste tens of millions of dollars each year on advertising. And student academic performance is abysmal in these schools. The average graduation rate at a cyber charter school is just 58%. 

Setting a flat tuition rate of $9,500 for cyber charter schools and applying the special education funding formula to all charter school tuition calculations would provide charters with plenty of funding to educate students and help curb the wasteful spending of school funding by cyber charters.