School districts going cyber
By providing online education they can save tuition paid to state charter academies
Andrew McGill, The Morning Call
June 19, 2009
East Penn is joining forces with the Parkland School District and Lehigh Carbon Intermediate Unit this fall in a cyber school pilot program they believe could jump-start online education in the Lehigh Valley's public schools. They're part of a rising tide of school districts in Pennsylvania considering or implementing online education, including Quakertown and Northwestern Lehigh.
Cyber education comes in several forms: Some programs allow students to work on projects independently and on their own time; others emphasize virtual classes and teamwork. Cyber learners are similarly diverse, ranging from homeschoolers looking for other options to athletes too busy to attend traditional school.
Germansville parent Kathy Cydis has both. A committed homeschooler, the 39-year-old mother of three also has a wrestler in her oldest son, Cody. When Northwestern Lehigh School District said he couldn't wrestle for the high school team as a home-schooled student, she enrolled him in the Pennsylvania Cyber Charter School, where state law requires districts to admit students into extracurriculars. He's never looked back.
''Academically, I think it's prepared me pretty well. I've gotten good grades,'' Cody, 18, said. He'll enter Kutztown University as a computer science major this fall.
Robert Keegan, executive director of the intermediate unit, first floated the idea of a unified online program past superintendents in November. While much of the program will be fleshed out this summer, the plan could bring big savings for districts, some of which pay more than $1 million yearly to educate cyber charter students.
By law, school districts are required to pay charter schools a percentage of their normal per-pupil tuition for each student attending those schools, amounting to about $8,600 per student at the average district.
In 2008, Pennsylvania school districts paid more than $100 million in tuition to cyber charter schools, according to the National Center for Education Statistics. Such reimbursements constitute more than 95 percent of the average cyber charter's revenue.
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