Sep 13, 2023 By Bob Renzi 3 min read

I agree with many who advocate that every student is entitled to a quality education from the many available choices. Many parents choose private and other nonpublic schools instead of the public schools where they reside and are willing to pay the necessary tuition.

Others may choose cyber charter schools for whatever their personal reasons may be.

These cyber charter schools are a type of online public schools that are funded by the local districts. Basically, the public school districts pay a standard fee to these cyber schools out of their district budgets. This really hits the poorer districts hard, such as those in Fayette and Greene counties.

A recent op-ed stated that districts are receiving money for students that don’t even attend our local school districts. Just a point of clarification, our districts pay out much more than they receive for these students. For example, if a district received $20,000 per cyber student, they keep $5,000 for themselves and pay out $15,000 to the cyber charter school. That is a major loss to our local districts to pay for students who choose not to attend. Multiply that by the total number of cyber students, and you get payouts to over $1 million to many districts.

If these families truly want a cyber school education, most local districts offer their own in-house cyber programs and the districts don’t have to pay the cost of the Pennsylvania cyber charter academies. The money stays within the home district. It’s a choice whereby both parties benefit.

Cyber charter school students score on average about 20% lower on tests than traditional public schools and graduate about 54% of students, as opposed to 87% graduating from their local school districts.

Our school district administrators and school board members are asking for reform of the present funding mechanism to provide some relief, especially from having to raise property taxes to pay their share to the cyber charter schools. We are asking our state legislators to make some needed changes to how these schools are funded to alleviate the burden of increasing costs of all public schools. Some possible solutions are having the state pay tuition directly to the cyber charter school or to reimburse the local districts for what they are paying out.

Public school education of students should not be a political football that our legislators use to satisfy the agendas of their political party. The time to reform public school funding is NOW, especially with the end of the COVID-19 relief money next year.

Bob Renzi is a member of the Connellsville Area School Board.