By Jarreau Freeman
The Mercury News
February 16, 2015
Pennsylvania charter schools can be a sore topic for some, and the answer to repairing the public school system for others. Either way, it’s an issue that elicits fervent discussions in school districts across the commonwealth.
And a recent annual report released by The National Alliance for Public Charter Schools ranking Pennsylvania’s charter school law 25th out of 43 states is also generating some discussion.
The ranking was based on 20 criteria that examine whether the state charter school law is charter-school friendly based on things such as quality, equitable access to funding and no caps on charter school growth.
The report gave Pennsylvania high marks for being a state with a healthy public charter school movement, but made a few suggestions on ways the state could improve its law.
The Pennsylvania Charter School Law was established in June 1997 to allow for the creation of charter schools — publicly funded but independently operated schools — in the state, according to the Pennsylvania Department of Education. They were created to give parents another educational option within the public school system.
As of the 2014-15 school year, there are 173 charter schools operating in the state — 149 are brick and mortar schools, 14 are cyber and 10 are regional, according to the charter school listing on PDE’s website.
Out of the 173 schools, three are located in Montgomery County — Pennsylvania Virtual Charter School in King of Prussia and brick and mortar schools The Laboratory Charter School in Bala Cynwyd and the Souderton Charter School Collaborative in Souderton Borough.
According to the report, Pennsylvania earned 133 points out of 228 regarding its charter school law, but the report suggested a few tweaks such as prohibiting district-mandated restrictions on growth, allowing multi-school charter contracts or multi-contract governing boards, ensuring equitable operational funding and equitable access to capital funding and facilities and expanding who can authorize charter schools.
In Pennsylvania, school boards of directors authorize charter schools. By expanding who can authorize a charter school, it would allow entities independent from a school district such as a municipality, college and university, or a state board of education to approve charter schools, according to a 2011 policy update issued by The Center for Education Reform.
Thirteen states, some of which include New Mexico, New York, Arizona, Ohio and Texas, have allowed for multiple authorizing bodies that can approve charter schools, which was outlined in the National Alliance’s report.
Once a charter is running, authorizers typically monitor charters and make sure they are meeting state rules and regulations, according to The Center for Education Reform.
Some critics believe multiple authorizers would allow for charters to pop up more rapidly across the state and outside of the urban areas where they are mostly found.
However, Wendy Ormsby, co-founder and director of organizational development at SCSC, believes multiple authorizers are needed.
“Pennsylvania absolutely must move to multiple authorizers,” she said in an email. “It’s inexcusable that districts with deep pockets have the ability to block charter schools through endless legal maneuvering. This puts money in the pockets of lawyers rather than into our children’s classrooms.
“As long as the funding comes directly from districts and they are the sole authorizers of charters, the contentious and litigious atmosphere will continue to prevail and cost taxpayers money.”
The funding formula seems to be the center of much of the debate when it comes to charter schools. In fact, the National Alliance’s report dropped Pennsylvania down from 24th last year to the 25th spot this year due to data released in 2014 by the Department of Education Reform at the University of Arkansas that showed increasing funding disparities between public charter schools and traditional public schools across the state, particularly outlining ways that charter schools are poorly funded.
But Souderton Area School Board President Scott Jelinski said that’s not necessarily the case.
Jelinski called the National Alliance’s report “poorly written” and said that charters and school districts aren’t on “the same playing field.”
Using Souderton Area School District as an example, Jelinski explained that Souderton has a higher number of economically disadvantaged students, deals with higher teacher-student ratios, while working to educate “everyone.” Charters, he said, don’t have to deal with the same challenges.
The Souderton Area School Board believes the state’s charter school law needs to change, but the changes it has proposed are different from changes suggested by the National Alliance.
The school board recently approved a resolution calling for charter school reform and urging legislators to change the charter school funding formula by altering tuition and pension costs, reinstating charter school reimbursements to school districts and passing legislation that will provide school districts the ability to negotiate the terms of the charter school renewal application, according to the resolution.
In December, SCSC had its school approved for another five years by the Souderton Area School Board, which appeared to be a difficult decision for several of the board members who expressed how torn they were about the vote.
About 260 students in the district are enrolled in some type of charter school, and last year the district spent $3.1 million on charter school education with $1.9 million of those funds going to SCSC. Charter school costs are estimated to increase by $200,000 next year, district officials had said.
Charter schools receive most of their funding from the resident school district of each enrolled student. Ormsby said 96 percent of SCSC is funded through school districts and about 2 percent comes from the state and federal government combined with donations.
In a 2012-13 PDE annual report, charter schools received approximately 85 percent from local sources that include school districts, 4.5 percent from state sources and 6.8 percent from federal sources, according to PDE.
Each resident school district pays a nonspecial or special education tuition rate to the enrolling charter school; special education tuition rates are higher than nonspecial rates.
For the 2015-14 school year, the expenditures per average daily membership for the North Penn School District were $11,405 for nonspecial education and $26,890 for special education; for the Pennridge School District, it was $10,006 for nonspecial and $21,677 for special; and for Souderton it was $9,897 for nonspecial and $23,898 for special, according to PDE.
Jelinski complimented SCSC for being a good school, but said the problem isn’t the school, but the charter school funding formula.
North Penn School District Assistant Superintendent Diane Holben shared similar sentiments, saying that she doesn’t believe the district has adopted a specific view on the state’s charter school law as a whole, but said school districts across the state seemed concerned about the charter school funding formula and if it accurately captures “what it costs to educate a child in a charter school, opposed to costs just being a percentage of a district’s per pupil spending.” She said some districts feel that it’s not a simple per pupil calculation.
North Penn School District is up against another charter school legal battle after rejecting a second charter school application from the SCSC.
Ormsby and co-founder Jennifer Arevalo have been working to establish a new charter school — the Collaborative North Penn Charter School — in the North Penn School District. They first submitted an application in 2012, which was denied by the North Penn School Board in 2013. They appealed the decision and are waiting for that case to be tried in county court. The pair decided to move forward and submit a second application, which the school board denied last February. They were able to collect the required 1,000 signatures, which have been certified, for a petition to appeal. They hope to go before the Charter Appeal Board in the spring, Ormsby said.
According to PDE, if a charter school application or application renewal is denied by a school district, the applicant can appeal the decision.
“Whether or not we like what the law says, we have to work with what the law says we need to (do),” Holben said.