Pennsylvania’s cyber charter schools are raking in massive taxpayer-funded overpayments thanks to a broken law in Harrisburg that mandates school districts send cyber charters far more money than they need to educate students online.

Cyber charter schools are wasting tax dollars that are intended to be used educating students on luxuries like gift cards, dining, entertainment, and hotels. And they are making advertising and marketing firms rich on our dime.  

Meanwhile, school districts are forced to cut programs and services for students in our communities and raise property taxes to cover these inflated cyber charter tuition bills, which total more than $1 billion each year.

It is past time for the General Assembly to take action to rein in hundreds of millions of dollars in overpayments to cyber charter schools each year by enacting a flat rate of $8,000 for tuition for each regular education student who attends a cyber charter school. This is a long overdue and commonsense solution that will align payments to cyber charter schools with the cost of an online education and help to curb the profiteering and waste in the cyber charter sector.

Tell your state lawmakers to put an end to gross overpayments to cyber charter schools this year. Pennsylvanians cannot afford for this waste to continue.

Each week, we’ll highlight a new example of obscene cyber charter spending to show exactly where your tax dollars are going. Check out https://edvoterspa.org/cyber-charter-waste-of-the-week/ to see the full list of wasteful expenses so far.

Additional references:

Auditor General Tim DeFoor's report on cyber charter school audits and his call for a major overhaul of the funding system.

Ed Voters’ report on how one cyber charter school uses our tax dollars as their slush fund.