Aug 27, 2023 By Karen Mansfield staff Writer kmansfield@observer-Reporter.Com 4 min read

I think the first from foniaical standpoint it would give more stability and consistency to the process. Every district in commonwealth pays cost based on budgetary structure, no uniformity to it at all, your transportations costs aren’t considered in that cost, but with that being said, the costs being sent to cyber schools is inflated, that’s the kindest word I can use. $9,000 for gen ed kids is what they’re saying, it would help us some, and USC and PT enormously. So it would help certainly all districts across commonwealth. 

SE piece is vital. for any child with iEP there’s a set number we pay, significantly higher than gen ed kid, whether speech or whatever, that’s unreasonable, if you have a multiple child, emotional, the money a SD puts into ti, it’s more than speech, cybers benefit uniquely.

There’s a 3 tier thing, the irony form me is that multiple disability kids, I don’t know what cybers do. It would help us from that perepcticte to give us clear idea of what it will cost for kids out of didctorc. 

TRANPSARNCY pierc….the first point that comes out is I don’t know many districts the advertise come to such and such a place beaches its’ free, it’s free to parent but not to district of residence. 

Parent said it’s free, but its not free to districts, whether I live in ways or trinity or wherever it docents matter but it does mater, SD bears the cost. Those entities don’t provide information, they don’t share info about children repay for to go tohreir schoo, we don’t get grades, we had a student who attended cyber and did virtually nothing, if they go in 89th grad they come back to 9th grade, transparency is important, they don’t show fund balances which I do as a superintendent, cyber schools are public schools, they’re not transparent. They don’t have to share that at all, I’m not anti-school choice, I can support school choice but you come to Washington and you get all the firnoamtion you need, every district should be transparent about costs and expenses, all public school administrators.s..

the pressure to put vouchers in place grows yearly, vouchers would be next extension, was we took at that., public schools need to stick tougher, the idea of choice creates interesting dilemmas. 

If you give a child, some states have open enrollment where you can go to whatever shock you want to. We have parents here who would choose to move their kids and some who wouldn’t, legislative body thinks by creating At some point the public educators have to educate all of our children. Jefferson said an informed electorate is what makes a democracy function well. Sdistsiatct sthat have stuffed struggled acabemliclay, public

Charter movement in cyber they’ll take kids out of here because they don’t think it’s a good place, but many won’t move because of poverty, they don’t care, who educates those kids? You can’t treat a kid like a widget from a factory. Whoever chooses to leave district, 60 to 80 kids are out of school, cyber kids, for kids who are here who’s going to Education them? If you never worked in this evnivorment you just don’t understand ti. If you said you could all go to Trinity tomorrow you could, a majority wouldn’t. We can’t afford for our poor kids in this district not to get an education, making it harder for people who live in shrinking ….and you give us tough kids, our country can’t survive. Complexity fo student population here, I wanted to bring things to the table. 

Cyber school costs us, it galls our business manager daily…..I’d say last year we had 100 kids out of district, we eliminated cyber internally from k-6, we had that during pandemic. we thought it was best for our reading. 100 kids at minimum it was $10,000 per kids, $1 million for cyber kids. Woodland Hills at one point had 20% of possible community went to cyber schools. It’s just unbelivealb.e We worked hard we’re going to ramp up attendance this year and parents escalate. 

one of the greatest losses we had was mike Reese, undrstood the cyber problem, republican, Trying to bring around a fair way to change things, advocate, a

KEVIN MONAGHAN Central Greene – 

The House has passed a bill to put major reforms in place for how the Keystone State handles cyber charters.

Pennsylvania spends the most (currently about $1.4 billion annually) but has the “weakest systems to ensure students and taxpayers are getting their money’s worth.” And taxpayers are not; reports repeatedly find that the cyber charters are underperforming.