MYERSTOWN - The Elco School District superintendent told the school board Monday he is frustrated with paying for charter schools…
The district has no way of knowing how many students are going to go to a charter school every year. The list of students Elco pays charter schools for include those who are homeschooled or private-schooled, and switch to charter schools. The students may never have set foot in a public school.On Oct. 5, Pennsylvania Auditor General Jack Wagner called for a statewide moratorium on the creation of new charter and cyber charter schools. A release from the auditor general said that the cost of charter schools is accelerating at unaffordable rates and that Pennsylvania charter schools received $1 billion from taxpayers during the 2008-09 school year. The private schools netted a profit totaling $108 million - a total of 11 percent of their earnings, according to the release.Public schools are restricted to about 8.5 percent profit, according to Assistant Superintendent Randall Grove. All of those profits go back to the taxpayer, while charter-school profits, which have no cap, go into the pockets of the company…
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PA AUDITOR GENERAL JACK WAGNER SAYS FLAWED CHARTER SCHOOL FORMULAS COSTING TAXPAYERS MILLIONS; CALLS FOR MORATORIUM UNTIL GENERAL ASSEMBLY, RENDELL ADMINISTRATION CLOSE LOOPHOLES, October 5, 2010, PR Newswire
HARRISBURG, Pa., Oct. 5 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- Auditor General Jack Wagner today called for a statewide moratorium on the creation of new charter and cyber charter schools until the General Assembly and the Rendell Administration fix a flawed funding system that bears no connection to the actual cost of educating children and is costing taxpayers hundreds of millions of dollars a year in additional questionable spending.In a special report issued today, Wagner said the funding problem was accelerating at an unaffordable rate. As more Pennsylvania children enroll in these alternative public schools, the more it costs taxpayers in additional millions of dollars each year. Taxpayers now spend about $1 billion a year on the approximately 73,000 children enrolled in Pennsylvania charter and cyber charter schools…Wagner said that he voted for charter schools as a state senator and that he supports them as a positive force in education reform. However, he believes that the funding method for charter and cyber charter schools is a bad deal for taxpayers.Wagner's report is available to the public at www.auditorgen.state.pa.us.Wagner said that Gov. Rendell, the Department of Education and school districts have the legal authority to impose a moratorium on authorizing new charter and cyber charter schools, and he noted that several states, including Ohio, Delaware and New Hampshire, have imposed moratoriums to address charter-school issues. Wagner said the moratorium would apply to charter and cyber charter schools that have not yet been authorized…Wagner's special report found that taxpayers spent $936 million on 116 charter and 11 cyber charter schools with enrollment of 73,054 students during the 2008-09 school year. Wagner's auditors found that, during the 2008-09 school year, the charter and cyber charter schools reported $108 million in excess profits, euphemistically called "reserve funds."…According to Wagner's report, the difference among tuition rates becomes more significant as the number of school districts sending students to the same charter school increases. For instance, the Pennsylvania Virtual Charter School received students from more than 425 school districts in Pennsylvania during the 2008-09 school year, all paying a different tuition rate to the same cyber charter school…
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