My school tax is being spent for what?

Pennsylvania has over 170 charter schools and 28 Cyber school providers.  Tens of thousands of k-12 students are enrolled. What seemed like a solution for school improvement has evolved into an educational and financial boondoggle. Only one of six charter schools meets minimal PA standards, and fewer than half of students enrolled in cyber schools do.

On the web page Penn Wharton Public Policy, Kevin Werbach wrote:

“James Roebuck, chairman of the Pennsylvania House Education Committee found in his report that, the “average SPP [School Performance Profile] score for traditional public schools was 77.1 but for charter schools it was 66.4, while charter-cyber schools came in at a low 46.8”. A score of 70 is considered a minimum level of academic success–and not a single cyber charter school had a score over 70.”

The charter/cyber choice looks quite reasonable at first glance.  Parents and some Wall Street Hedgers believe that there is a stream of money going to public schools, which any parent can divert to their personal choice for their children.  They believe that their own public school has failed and they need a way to ‘save’ their children.  

We can be grateful that PA has not as yet adopted the evils of ‘for profit’ charters or school vouchers. However, the companies who ‘manage’ our non-profit charter schools keep very large sums.  Vouchers would benefit the newly enriched parochial and college prep private schools from tuition paid out of public funds.

Perhaps we need to remember why we have public schools.  Most states decided at some point that society would benefit from compulsory education.  Therefore almost all young persons from about age 5 to 18 were required to attend school.  But what schools? It was decided that locally defined areas would create the schools and the state would jointly fund them.  Local school boards would insure that taxpayer dollars would be used as efficiently as possible.  That is why individual class size and teacher loads remain high. In fact that is one reason given for some opting for school choice. Even with these numbers, quality education for as many students as can be reached is a continuing product of devoted and inspired teaching.

Since the advent of public schools, some parents have always opted out--some for religious reasons or for home schooling or to trade up to prep schools.  Until recently parents have done this on their own nickel.  Now the idea has emerged that school districts owe something to students who choose not to take advantage of what local schools offer.  This is false.

The compulsory school law dictates that all young persons attend the school that is provided or prove they are being educated up to the standard that a school would have required.

The idea of the opt-out students is that they are not using his/her place in the public school, so the district must fund whatever alternative they choose.  Why?  Taking funds away from students in schools which are available to all must necessarily diminish resources provided for them. Not fair.

The Pennsylvania charter school law requires that in the Gettysburg school district, every cyber school opt-out student gets $11802.10 paid to a cyber school provider.  How many households in our district pay an $11802.10 school property tax?  Almost none do and it’s very unlikely that the household of the cyber school student does.  That means that all the rest of us are subsidizing the opt-out student several thousand dollars just because he or she opted for something other than what is provided. 

It gets worse. If a provider can designate a student as ‘special needs,’ the required amount more than doubles. Researchers have shown that many charters do not provide the quality of special education instruction routinely supplied in public schools.

No one seems to know very much about who influences our legislators to take the side of the Opt-Out students, to the great detriment of existing public schools.  Even with this financial burden, public schools are not failing.  Gettysburg is also fortunate that our VIDA charter is seen as very successful. However this year we school tax payers are laying out well over $2,400,000 for the Opt-Out schools and students.

Finally we have the new Secretary of Education, Betsy DeVos. She has said and written her belief that “government” public schools—as she calls them--have failed. She favors any and all of the alternate choices for our young people.  As the numbers in Pennsylvania show, charter schools and so-called cyber charter schools benefit the operators more than the students. The secretary will likely use subtle threats of withheld federal funds to move Pennsylvania toward her dream of empty public school buildings.

R. B. Lasco is a retired teacher and member of the Education Task Force of The Gettysburg Area Democracy for America group.