Pa. has a chance to reform our struggling schools. Will the legislature let it happen? | Opinion

Pennsylvania has a real chance to change its worst-in-the-nation reputation when it comes to education funding. It is a reputation we should run from — the most inequitably funded education system and the worst charter school law in the nation.

Gov. Tom Wolf has proposed putting Pennsylvania on a new trajectory with $1.5 billion in additional education funding and a plan to make the most underfunded districts whole. He also called for comprehensive reform of Pennsylvania’s 24-year-old charter school law — to eliminate wasteful charter school spending and set higher standards to improve performance.

With this budget, Pennsylvania can move from the back of the class to the best in the nation. The General Assembly should not pass up this opportunity to right these two wrongs.

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You don’t have to agree with the precise distribution of funds in the governor’s proposal to admire the boldness of the idea — students in Philadelphia, Norristown, Pottstown, Bensalem, and other inequitably funded districts getting the resources they need to compete and succeed next year, not in the next decade.

Charter schools and funding adequacy are two sides of the same coin. To break this cycle, a comprehensive reform bill must address both funding reform and accountability.

Superintendents watch every dollar and justify every expenditure to our school boards and our taxpayers. We know we are overpaying for charter school services.

Cyber charter schools are the clearest example. School districts offer robust cyber schools with real-time instruction for less than $5,000 per student — while paying $7,400-$21,600 or more per student for cyber charter schools that provide less instructional time and require more parent supervision.

All 14 cyber charter schools are on the list of lowest-performing schools academically, yet are awash in tax dollars. Commonwealth Charter Academy is now a real estate developer, purchasing an old Macy’s building it was leasing in Pittsburgh — and collecting rent from other tenants. CCA already spent $15.3 million for a 106,000-square-foot office park in Malvern. The Scranton Times-Tribune reported that Pennsylvania Cyber Charter used federal CARES Act funding on cell phones and gift cards for students.

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The time has also come to apply the state’s special education funding formula to charter schools. This exemption is costly for school districts who pay an average of 25% per student more statewide for the same services. It creates a perverse incentive for charters to recruit students who need lower-cost services while systematically excluding students with significant disabilities.

The worst part is that dollars intended to educate students with disabilities are instead used to pay administrators, build lavish new buildings, and pay exorbitant private management fees.

Former Education Secretary Betsy DeVos gave a Pennsylvania nonprofit $30 million to open new high-quality charter schools, an impossible task given our ineffectual charter school law.

States with high-performing charters, like New York and Massachusetts, have strong laws that set high standards for new schools and allow swift closure for chronic low performance. Pennsylvania’s charter law sets a low bar for new applicants, lacks performance standards, allows charters to avoid public scrutiny, and fails to protect against financial mismanagement and misuse of taxpayer funds.

Our state is littered with charter school failures, costly experiments that could and should be prevented. As school superintendents, we see these children all the — they come back to us behind in their learning and confused by the years of turmoil.

State lawmakers will be tempted to see the federal stimulus as an excuse to kick the can down the road on these issues once again, a temptation they should resist. Federal funds to school districts are meant to be temporary and to pay for COVID-related expenses.

The General Assembly led the way in creating the fair funding formula with a bipartisan commission and came close to passing charter reform legislation before. With their help, Pennsylvania can emerge from the pandemic with a stronger public education system that leads us to a more secure and prosperous future.

Frank Gallagher is the superintendent of the Souderton Area School District and the chair of LEARN, a coalition of Pennsylvania school superintendents working to improve charter school accountability, limit school privatization, and encourage youth to choose public education as a career.