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Pennsylvania House of Representatives
05/13/2024 04:55 PM
Pennsylvania House of Representatives
https://www.legis.state.pa.us/cfdocs/Legis/CSM/showMemoPublic.cfm?chamber=H&SPick=20130&cosponId=12706
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House Co-Sponsorship Memoranda

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House of Representatives
Session of 2013 - 2014 Regular Session

MEMORANDUM

Posted: May 6, 2013 03:17 PM
From: Representative Stephen McCarter
To: All House members
Subject: Funding Reforms & Academic Accountability for PA Charter Schools
 
As an individual who cares deeply about the quality of public education and what that means for students in Pennsylvania, I believe reforms are needed related to the governance, academic accountability, and financing of charter and cyber charter schools in the Commonwealth. While there are a number of positive legislative proposals already in circulation on this topic, including several of which I have cosponsored, there are several key revisions to the current charter school law that have not yet been addressed in these proposals.

My legislation will incorporate various provisions from other legislative proposals already introduced, particularly House Bill 934 introduced by Rep. James Roebuck, such as:
  • Increased PDE responsibility to monitor charter schools, including the ability to investigate complaints of fraud, waste, and mismanagement;
  • Removing pension “double dip” in tuition rate to charter and cyber charter schools;
  • Requiring the audit of charter and cyber charter school expenditures; limiting calculation of tuition to school’s reasonable expenses and requiring exclusion of advertising, lobbying, and bonuses from calculation of such expense; and capping the tuition that can be charged a school district at the district’s selected expenditures;
  • Limiting charter and cyber charter school fund balances; and
  • Improved transparency and accountability by applying state ethics laws to charter and cyber charter schools and improving transparency for the for-profit management companies under contract to charter and cyber charter schools.

Building on the strong foundation already present in bills like House Bill 934, my proposal provides for several unique and distinct recommendations focused on making sure that students across Pennsylvania that choose to attend charter and cyber charter schools receive the quality education they deserve, while also ensuring that Pennsylvania taxpayers are treated fairly. These key recommendations are:
  • Create greater academic accountability for charter and cyber charter schools by requiring more specificity about the education program and measures of program success by which charter schools will be held accountable;
  • Ensure students with special needs receive the services they require by assigning responsibility for providing such services to students enrolled in charter schools to the IU of the student’s residence. This also greatly reduces, if not eliminates, any financial incentive for charter schools to over-identify students as having special needs or on the other end of the spectrum, financial disincentive from accepting students with severe physical and intellectual disabilities; and
  • Provide much needed relief to our local taxpayers by creating a “cyber-charter school district” (with an aid ratio of 1) only for funding purposes and make the state responsible for funding cyber charter schools directly from the basic instruction subsidy appropriation.

Introduced as HB1730