Current News
HB 446 as amended, a summary analysis
HB0446 PN0494
Amendment Summary A03964
Cyber Charter Schools
Rep. Beyer
Overall: There are 31 distinct points in this proposed “amendment” to HB446. The majority of them are new, which in essence means that this legislative proposal is not an amendment, but rather, a new bill. This analysis shows that while there are a few points that are helpful to cyber charter schools and their relationship to school districts, for the most part, this is an attempt to limit the operations of cyber charter public schools as a viable choice for Pennsylvania’s public school children. The most harmful intent is to further reduce funding per student to below what is already a significant reduction. Another overtly harmful intent: it does not allow teachers the professional credit due them by time spent teaching in cyber charter schools, relegating cyber charter schools to second class public school institutions.
Aside from the two major points describe above, this proposed legislation as a whole is “death by a thousand cuts” for cyber charter public schools. Part of what makes Pennsylvania’s cyber charter public schools work is a trade-off of more accountability (results: higher student interest leads to better educational outcomes) for de-regulation (“You aren’t going to get anything different by doing the same thing.”). This adds up to more freedom to do things that specific to the unique mission of each particular school.
So, one of the effects of this major attempt to re-regulate and over-regulate (many proposed points of the legislation are redundant with current practice) charter schools is akin to “Death by a thousand cuts” in the disingenuous name of “Cyber School Legislation.”
Section 1703-A (Definitions)
Adds definitions for “Cyber charter school fund balance limit”, “Cyber education real cost level”, “Cyber special education real cost level”, “Employment cost index”, “Statewide average weekly wage”
Defines “real cost” by not including actual expenses that cyber charter schools have for marketing, facilities and recruitment.
Section 1724-A (School Staff)
Requires criminal history checks for cyber charter school employees who will have electronic/Internet contact with students; Cyber schools are currently required to, and do have to do criminal history checks and child abuse clearances on all school employees who have electronic/Internet contact with students.
Section 1725-A (Funding for Charter Schools)
Creates a new single statewide cyber charter tuition rate based on the most efficient and effective cyber charters school’s actual expenditures;
Most importantly, a low “one-sized” fits all tuition rate discriminates against the most resource-poor school district. Line Mountain School District will not save anything, while Lower Merion school district will save $7,000 per student. So, this approach ends up with the whimsical effect of only saving wealthy districts money (in other words, those districts that can most afford to send the tuition, don’t have to send it)
Like school districts cybers have varying costs: salary costs, benefit costs, program costs, portal costs, facility costs and more vary according to location and other site specific factors.
No other type of public schools in the state are limited by one artificially determined lowest number based on the “most thorough and efficient” school or school district.
Requires school districts to pay a 3% penalty if the school district fails to make a payment and causes the cyber charter school to seek its monthly payment from PDE, however this does not apply to students who the school district is disputing their residency; the Secretary must rescind any penalty paid to the cyber charter on behalf of a student in the case where billing was inaccurate;
Without also making an allocation to staff a department in PDE in the Division of Subsidy Data and Administration to implement this provision this legislation cannot be implemented. A 3 percent fine requires individual verification of each student (more than 250 school districts are not sending money now for more than 10,000 students who attend cyber charter schools). Additionally, these small per student fines would have to calculated individually and deducted from each school district’s state subsidy unipay. A manpower intensive prospect.
PCCS suggests simply that districts who do not pay in a timely manner simply not receive the current 30 percent state reimbursement.
Provides limitations on unreserved, undesignated fund balances consistent with school district requirements;
Unlike school districts, cyber schools cannot raise taxes. The limits on undesignated fund balances were placed on school districts because several districts carried fund balances of over 20 percent and still continued to raise taxes. The reason behind the recently enacted undesignated fund balances (raising taxes even though a large fund balance exists) does not exit for cyber schools.
Requires any unreserved, undesignated fund balances in place on June 30, 2008, that exceed the limits, be distributed by the cyber charter towards professional development, student supplies, technology, instructional activities to increase student performance, to provide discounts to school district of tuition rates for enrolled students or other approved activities by the Secretary, funds cannot be used for bonuses;
The application of tuition rate discounts to sending school districts based on undesignated fund balances in place on June 30, 2008 is currently illegal under Act 88. Cyber schools are not allowed to receive a “selected expenditure” per student that is less or more than that determined by the formula stated by law in Act 22 of 1997.
Requires any remaining funds to be refunded on a pro rata basis within 90 days of the effective date to all school districts that paid tuition to the cyber charter school in the 2006-2007 and 2007-2008 school years; any remaining funds to be refunded on a pro rata basis within 90 days of the effective date to all school districts that paid tuition to the cyber charter school in the 2006-2007 and 2007-2008 school years;
This actually encourages cyber schools to engage in non-efficient “government style” fiscal practice, e.g. spend the money or lose it!
Requires any unreserved, undesignated fund balance in excess of the cyber charter fund balance limit for the 2008-2009 school year and each school year thereafter to be refunded on a pro rata basis to all school districts that paid tuition to the cyber charter school in the prior school year;
Cyber schools will simply designate the fund balances, as they are currently doing.
Does not require School Districts to pay for students who enroll in a cyber charter school if they are younger than the entry age for students in the district of residence; This violates the provision of Act 22, which allows all charter schools to determine their own entry age with the range allowed by law (must be five by a date between Sept. 1 and Jan. 15 of the school year in which they enter). This detracts from the charter school’s ability to be a Local Independent Agency (LEA).
Does not require a school district to pay for full-day kindergarten in a cyber charter school if the district of residence only offers half-day kindergarten (in that case, payment would be ½ the standard rate);
This provision also detracts from a charter school’s ability to be an LEA and make it’s own program decision on half day or full day (all school districts, which are LEAs) have this power.
Section 1729-A (Causes for Nonrenewal)
Requires student records to be forwarded to the district of residence within 10 days after a charter is revoked or not renewed (current law does not specify a time frame); Not practical. All charters that are revoked go automatically to the Charter Appeals Board (CAB). When a revocation is upheld, the CAB determines when the school closes. Records should be required to be returned to the school districts of residence within a reason timeframe of the ending date of the school set by the CAB
Section 1741-A (Powers and duties of department
Provides PDE the power and duty and requires them to promulgate regulations to ensure that cyber charter students are receiving the appropriate number of hours of education; and cyber charter schools must demonstrate in their annual report due August 1 of each year to PDE that the minimum number of online and offline hours have been attained by each student;
Cyber charter public schools currently file the same reports on hours of operations and minimum days of operation as due all school districts and brick and mortar charter schools. Since students may spend many hours working on their own computers or doing field research, the online requirement minimum hours is not a valid measure of student activity and teacher instruction.
Section 1742-A (Assessment and evaluation)
Provides a timeline for PDE’s annual assessment of whether each cyber charter school is meeting the goals of its charter (current law does not include a date for the assessment to be issued) and require that it be posted online no later than October 1 of each year; PDE must provide each charter school with a written report of the results no later than November 1 of each year;
This provision is burdensome to both the schools and PDE. Person power in the PDE is currently not adequate to review the annual reports (where all the information is contained that can be found by any school visit). The PDE should review these reports, which are extremely comprehensive and follow up with suggests. An annual assessment is irrelevant, cyber charter schools can only be revoke for six specified causes listed in Act 22 and cannot be non-renewed unless there is cause for a revocation.
Section 1743-A (Cyber charter school requirements and prohibitions)
Requires approval if a cyber charter wishes to increase enrollment above the maximum approved in its charter; This imposes caps on cyber charter schools. Caps have never been a part of any Pennsylvania charter school legislation, which placed a premium on family educational choice charter schools of all types
Requires PDE to provide a copy, upon request, of a cyber charter school’s charter, application and annual reports; Charter schools’ charters, application and annual reports are public documents. PDE should currently be supplying them.
Requires cyber charter schools to provide, upon request of a school district, a list of each student enrolled from that school district; This list is currently being supplied by every charter school every month to each school district whose students’ of residence attend the cyber school. This is part of the regular PDE formulated billing procedure.
Specifies that any hardware/software and internet connections purchased by the cyber charter remains the property of the cyber charter school and must be returned in usable condition upon discontinuance of enrollment in the cyber charter school or pay a civil penalty;
Current law and practice currently dictates that all hardware and software be returned to the cyber school if a student dis-enrolls. A specific penalty for non-returned items would be a helpful addition to legislation.
Requires cyber charter boards of trustees to comply with the Public Officials Act (designed to ensure filing of financial interest statements); Currently, cyber charter boards of Trustees comply with Public Officials Act (financial interest statements are filed and available for local and state audits).
Prohibits conflict of interest (i.e. business dealings) between management and board of trustees of a cyber charter school; Like school boards, cyber boards of trustees members currently recuse themselves from voting on any business matters involving them or their places of employment. Cyber charter school boards of trustees members are held, currently, to the same standard as all school members (whose firms may do business with the school district if they recuse themselves form voting on the matter or actively soliciting the business).
Prohibits any person affiliated with the management of the school from sitting on the board of trustees; Cyber Boards of Trustees are not school boards. They are, rather, 501 c3 non-profits. So, like all 501c3’s, depending on their bylaws, cyber school CEOs, leaders, teachers or parents may have a place on the board. Placing restrictions on this violates a very tenet of being organized as a 501c3.
Provides PDE discretion to decide whether a teacher’s service in a cyber charter school should give them credit toward earning the next level of certification (currently law give the discretion to the teacher); requires the teacher to petition PDE for such a request and for PDE to establish guidelines governing acceptable criteria for approval of a petition;
This is the most major provision of the bill in rendering cyber charter schools as “less professional” than other public schools. This relegates public cyber charter schools to second-class schools incapable of providing educators with valued teaching experiences.
Prohibits cyber charter schools from expending any funds provided by the Commonwealth or by a school district on the education of any non-resident of Pennsylvania; This opens the doorway to counting hours “in the house” for government employees, including the military who own a residence in the state. This is an approach that has been avoided by the legislature up to this point.
Section 1744-A (School district and intermediate unit responsibilities)
Requires, upon request of services, an agreement between the cyber charter school and an IU or school district before the IU or school district is required to provide assistance to the cyber charter school in the delivery of services to cyber charter students with disabilities; Legislation already requires IUs to provide special ed. services at the same cost that they provide them to the school districts within their own boundaries.
Section 1747-A (Cyber charter school application)
Requires a cyber charter schools application to include a maximum level of enrollment during each school year of the proposed charter (currently they provide an anticipated enrollment level);
In combination with the proposed Section 1743-A (Cyber charter school requirements and prohibitions), this amendment imposes, for the first time, in statue, “caps” on Pennsylvania charter schools.
Section 17-48-A (Enrollment and notification)
Requires the parent and cyber charter school to notify the school district of residence of a student’s enrollment within 10 days of the enrollment in a cyber charter school (current law requires notification by the parent and cyber charter school within 15 days of enrollment);
This provision increases the pressure on the cyber school to process enrollment quickly and make errors. The current 15 day period is reasonable, especially when the school districts (in the following point) are asking for 20 days to determine whether or not the student enrolled in a cyber school is a resident of the district.
Allows school districts 20 days to determine whether a cyber charter student is a resident of the district after the district has been notified of the student’s enrollment (current law allows 7 days);
To keep enforcement procedures evenly balanced on the receiving and sending side of things, the current 7 day provision should be increased to 15 days.
Requires school districts to notify cyber charter schools if a student who enrolls in the cyber charter is truant; requires the cyber charter to provide proof on a monthly basis that such student is receiving instruction during the first three months of enrollment, if the cyber charter school fails to provide proof, the school district is not required to make payments for that student during that time; require the cyber charter school (not the district of residence) to enforce truancy provision in the school code;
To avoid red-tape the language of “proof that the student is receiving instruction” should be changed to “proof that the student is attending.” Currently, school districts retain funding in their budget (they don’t send this to the cyber school) to pay for attendance enforcement. Plus, since truancy proceedings are local, requiring parents to attend truancy proceeding in Cumberland Co. where Commonwealth Connections Cyber Charter School is located from a hypothetical residence in Erie, is so impractical that it is impossible.
Section 1749-A (Applicability of other provisions of this act and of other acts and regulations)
Subjects cyber charter schools to the same budget timeline and use of funds provisions as school districts;
School district budget timelines and hearings are in place because possible tax increases must be announce to the public and vetted. Cyber schools and charter schools do not have and do not need these timelines. All charter schools, regardless of type, must adopt their budgets and submit them to PDE on the PDE-2028 by June 30 at the end of the school year calendar.
Subjects cyber charter schools to the same bidding requirements as school districts; With fixed budgets and without the ability to raise revenue, charter schools are currently more economical to operate than regular public schools. Most do already follow a bidding procedure.
Removes the applicability of section 755 of the school code, as this section was repealed by the General Assembly.