Pa. charter bill gets mixed review

HARRISBURG - A proposal to update Pennsylvania's rules for charter and cyber schools could bring them more oversight, but critics said Thursday that it still would not resolve issues about how those schools are funded.

Among provisions to lift enrollment caps and disclose more school data, the measure from Senate Education Committee Chairman Jeffrey Piccola (R., Dauphin) also would create a state commission to regulate and authorize charter schools.

Currently, a local school board can accept or reject a proposed charter school. Appeals can be made to the state Department of Education. Agency officials said they support "streamlining" those applications through a state panel while giving boards the option of continuing to run that process.

While some senators at Thursday's committee hearing also said they support that change, Sen. Daylin Leach (D., Montgomery) questioned whether a state panel would consider whether a district can afford to have a portion of its funding directed to the charter.

"What they're all saying to me is that they can't survive," he said, adding that some of those schools lost funding this year and face new restrictions on when they can raise property taxes.

"The question that these public schools refuse to ask is, why are the children leaving?" Piccola responded.

Pennsylvania has 159 charter schools and 13 cyber charter schools with more than 90,000 students enrolled. They receive funding from local public school districts.

Philadelphia will operate 80 such schools this school year at a cost of $525 million.

Thomas Darden, deputy chief of the Philadelphia School District's Office of Strategic Partnerships, urged that a charter's expansion be tied to whether it meets targets for academic success and enrollment.

He also urged that charters be required to be transparent in their financial practices so that "no individual or entity is receiving inappropriate gain from operating a charter school."

In recent years, administrators or board members of four Philadelphia charters have faced federal fraud charges. The schools are among at least 18 area charter schools that have come under federal investigation since 2008, sources have said.