Financial Abuse by Cyber Schools Targeted in Tax Proposal

Ron Wilshire

Ron Wilshire

Published June 17, 2021 4:50 am
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CLARION, Pa. (EYT) — Cyber charter schools charge Clarion Area School District $12,000.00 to $15,000.00 for each Clarion Area student they enroll. That amounts to $300,000.00 per year for Clarion.

(Pictured: Clarion Area School Board Meeting)

That didn’t sit well for Clarion board member Todd Bauer who proposed a new tax to pay the fees and bring attention to the financial drain on school districts throughout Pennsylvania.

“We should consider new taxes to cover the financial abuse of cyber charter schools,” said Bauer at a Tuesday meeting.

“The new tax would be for what State Senator Scott Hutchinson and other legislators are letting cyber schools get away with under the current system.”

Clarion charges $8,500.00 per year in tuition for students from outside of the district attend, but cyber charter schools can charge the district’s total costs per student cost.

Superintendent Joe Carrico explained that cyber schools use a very simple formula and take all of the costs of the school district to educate a child.

“They use that figure, even though they do not actually have expenses such as buildings and travel. They put all that into a pot to do simple math for an average. For example, a school in Forest County may pay $20,000.00 educating a student because of very high travel costs.”

A technicality in Pennsylvania Law recognizes them as charter schools that have less accountability.

“Pennsylvania is one of a very few states that they have this arrangement,” continued Carrico. “That’s why all of these companies come to Pennsylvania because it’s a billion-dollar industry. There is a lot of money in charters.”

Couple that with no caps on contributions to politicians, and cyber companies have donated millions of dollars to legislators who support them.

Cyber schools can also assign a caseload of 60 students to one of their instructors.

“I think there are a lot of people like myself who don’t really understand the difference between this and school choice,” Bauer said. “I believe in school choice, but I consider that as going to an actual school in person, and I don’t consider cyber a school choice.”

Several board members such as former teacher Todd MacBeth also objected to the many television advertisements stating that cyber school was free and at no cost to parents.

“This is not free, and very few things in life are free,” said MacBeth. “The ads are very misleading.”

This year, 25 to 30 Clarion students were enrolled in cyber schools at some point, and students went in and out a lot this school year. Last year there were from 12 to 15. Although payments were $300,000.00, Clarion spent $200,000.00 during Pre-COVID.

Clarion expanded its virtual schooling during the past year, even when open with face-to-face instruction. As far as reasons for students moving to cyber school and outreach by Clarion showed various reasons, according to Carrico.

Reasons ranged from disgruntlement, accountability “stuff,” homeschool, parochial or private schools,

“They were not happy with our system for whatever reason.”

“We worked pretty hard to do some cost savings in the past year,” said Carrico. “We pretty much gave our all, even off the backs of our faculty and administrators, working with our virtual options.

“Despite everything we did, we still had double the number of kids going to cyber schools, and we still had to transfer $300,000.00 on top of what we budgeted for charter cyber schools last year.”

“ESSER (Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief) Funds were a tremendous help, but I think the three largest benefactors of ESSER funds in Pennsylvania were charter schools this year. One got like $11 million or $12 million.”

The overriding advice was to contact legislators and let them know the concern related to cyber charter schools.

No action was taken to institute a new tax, but it got a lot of people thinking at the meeting.

“Put on a cyber school tax, and I’ll bet you have more people show up,” said Bauer. “If our school district did it, can you imagine the number of other school districts that would follow? I think it would bring a lot of attention to it.”

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