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Pass reforms for charter schools

Pennsylvania can generate $365 million for public schools - without raising taxes. This is more than four times what Gov. Corbett proposes to restore in his recent budget proposal.

Pennsylvania can generate $365 million for public schools - without raising taxes. This is more than four times what Gov. Corbett proposes to restore in his recent budget proposal.

The General Assembly can produce these savings, including an estimated $175 million for Philadelphia, by passing my bipartisan charter and cyber charter school reform bill (H.B. 934).

I support charter schools as a way to produce innovations that can be duplicated in other public schools. That was the intent of the 1996 law authorizing these schools in the commonwealth.

However, I believe Pennsylvania needs major reforms in the governance, financing, and accountability of charter and cyber schools. The estimate of $365 million in savings is conservative - the increased transparency and accountability requirements in this bill may reveal further savings.

We appear to be overfunding some charter and cyber schools. My bill would return those overpayments to school districts. State funding cuts have cost an estimated 20,000 education jobs, reduced early-childhood education programs, tutoring assistance, and summer school, and increased class sizes, resulting in lower student achievement scores for the first time in several years. State funding cuts also have forced many districts to raise property taxes.

My bill would:

1. Strengthen local school-board and taxpayer ability to approve and have authority over charters. Some other bills would weaken local authority and result in higher costs.

2. Establish a commission to determine the actual costs of charter and cyber charter schools.

3. Provide better accountability for these schools, including greater transparency, conflict-of-interest protections, and financial accountability of their boards, administrators, and for-profit management companies.

4. Address immediate, specific financial concerns about the funding of these schools, including:

Limiting surplus fund balances. State law already limits surpluses for traditional public schools to 8 percent to 12 percent of their budgets. This bill would apply those limits to publicly funded charter and cyber charter schools.

Removing the "double dip" for pension costs in the charter tuition calculation, saving an estimated $50 million per year.

Reforming special-education funding so that many charters and cybers no longer get thousands of excess dollars for overidentifying students with mild disabilities.

Requiring the state Department of Education to do an annual year-end final reconciliation process of tuition payments against those actual costs of educating a charter-school student.

While many talk about reducing state mandates on schools, these measures would provide financial relief to districts from specific mandates right now.

This legislation is all the more needed because the 2011-12 state budget ended the partial reimbursement to school districts for charter school payments. At that time, the $227 million reimbursement only covered about one-fourth of the school districts' cost.

The contracting out of Pennsylvania charter and cyber charter schools to management companies has increased significantly - 42 percent of cybers and 30 percent of brick-and-mortar charters paid management companies to manage their schools. However, lack of transparency and oversight has led in many instances to excessive management fees, increasing schools' administrative costs and resulting in less money available to educate students.

Charter schools were meant to be schools of innovation, not tools for corporate profit. H.B. 934 would help restore some balance.