Charter School Moratorium Urged Over Funding in Pennsylvania (PA)
October 6, 2010
A state watchdog Tuesday issued a report warning of inequities in funding for charter schools, but supporters of alternative public education denounced the report as off the mark and "hypocritical."
Auditor General Jack Wagner suggested a moratorium on creation of charter and cyber charter schools until the state fixes a funding formula that causes school districts to pay widely varying rates for children attending such schools. The formula is based on costs of education at school districts, not the actual costs to operate the charter or cyber schools, which tend to be less, Wagner said.
Gov. Ed Rendell will review the report but had no plan to issue a moratorium, spokesman Gary Tuma said.
Nick Trombetta, CEO of PA Cyber, the largest cyber charter school in the state with nearly 10,000 students, rebutted the premise that online schools don’t have the same costs as brick-and-mortar schools.
The Midland-based school has 18 buildings, teachers with health care benefits, and increased educational costs, just like other schools, he said. PA Cyber borrowed $21 million to operate this year, he said.
"The moratorium would have no effect on us, but it would have an effect on what charters are for: to bring competition," he said. "Competition is what makes us better."
Jeremy Resnick, executive director and founder of South Side-based Propel Schools, said charter schools are "a great deal" for taxpayers.
"We are spending much less than school districts, and we’re delivering something better," he said. Propel recently received $3.4 million in federal grants to open five more schools in Allegheny County.
Propel spends about $12,500 per student, he said, compared with Pittsburgh Public Schools’ reported expenditure of about $20,000 per student.
"Charter schools are working and are educating children with success," Resnick said.
Matthew Brouillette, president of the Commonwealth Foundation, a policy group supportive of charter schools, said "parents are voting with their feet" in urban areas as they seek out charter schools. Thousands of students are on waiting lists, he said.
"The idea that we should have a moratorium on choices for parents? That’s ludicrous," Brouillette said.
A researcher with Brouillette’s organization fired off an e-mail to Wagner after he released the report, stating it was "hypocritical" for failing to point out the funding inequities described by Wagner are a result of differences in spending by school districts.
The funding formula for charters is the per-pupil spending by districts, excluding "fixed costs" and federal money, researcher Nate Benefield said.
Taxpayers spent $936 million on 116 charter and 11 cyber charter schools in Pennsylvania that enrolled 74,034 students in 2008-09, the report said.
States reimburse school districts on average about $3,122 per pupil for students who leave to go to charter and cyber schools, the report said. "That’s the real inequity: Public schools get money for children they don’t educate," Brouillette said.
Wagner said based on the state formula, 10 Allegheny County school districts pay different "tuition" rates to Propel Charter School in Homestead. Clairton, for example, was on the high end at $11,337 per student, compared with $7,201 for a student from East Allegheny.
Guy Ciarrocchi, executive director of the Pennsylvania Coalition of Public Charter Schools, said charter schools operate with about 70 cents of every dollar spent on students in district-run schools.