We the undersigned support reforms to Pennsylvania’s charter school law that will protect taxpayers, improve educational quality, and ensure that charter schools do not exclude vulnerable students.

Each year, Pennsylvania school districts spend $1.8 billion in taxpayer money on student tuition bills for charter and cyber charter schools. In order to pay these bills, school districts must raise property taxes, cut teachers, or eliminate programs for students.

Pennsylvania's weak charter school law has allowed the flagrant waste, fraud, and abuse of taxpayer money in the charter sector while many charters underperform academically and struggle to operate efficiently and ethically.

Under the current law

• Local taxpayers pay twice as much for cyber charter schools as they pay for district operated cyber programs. Cybers use the excess funding on advertising, contracts with PR firms, lavish CEO salaries, and more.
• On the whole, Pennsylvania’s charter schools serve disproportionately fewer of Pennsylvania’s vulnerable students than traditional public schools.
• Charter schools represent 6% of student enrollment in the state, but fully 25% of the lowest performing schools in Pennsylvania.
• Pennsylvania’s weak law fails to prevent financial self-dealing and conflicts of interest and creates vast opportunities for the waste, fraud, and abuse of taxpayer dollars.

We are asking you to support reforms to PA’s charter school that will:

• End wasteful spending on cyber charter schools by matching cyber school tuition rates with the actual cost of educating students at home on a computer.
• Apply the state special education funding formula to charter schools to eliminate the profit that charters reap off of payments for students with disabilities.
• Create strong protections against conflicts of interest, nepotism, and financial self-dealing among individuals in the charter sector to prevent the excessive profiteering that has occurred in the past.
• Strengthen local control by limiting the power of the Charter Appeals Board so that it cannot overturn sound decisions made by school boards and mandate the expansion of charter schools into communities that do not need them and cannot afford to pay for them.
• Create automatic or non-appealable closure for schools that fail to meet baseline academic standards or whose leaders engage in fraud or misappropriation of funds.
• Guard against charters cherry picking students by holding charters accountable for educating children who match the demographics of the districts from which they draw students.

These reforms would strengthen local control, improve education quality for students in charter schools, and help guard against the waste, fraud and abuse of taxpayer money. They deserve your support.