Letters: Time for a tougher Pa. charter school law

In this year's budget debate, Gov. Wolf, I, and other Democratic legislators pushed for a larger restoration of school funding that had been cut under former Gov. Tom Corbett ("Pa. has more to do on school funding fairness," Aug. 25). That restoration would have sent more school funding through the new, fairer formula.

That formula is the product of difficult, bipartisan compromise. We must restore and increase education funding so the share distributed through the new formula continues to increase.

We also need reform of Pennsylvania's nearly 20-year-old charter school law. That would increase accountability and oversight and provide hundreds of millions of dollars of savings for school districts, especially many lower-income districts such as Philadelphia that were hit hardest by the Corbett-era cuts.

While recent charter school oversight changes are helpful, there is only so much the Wolf administration can do unless the legislature changes the law. I have introduced a strong, bipartisan bill, H.B. 1328, that would do exactly that (http://is.gd/PACharterReform2015).

Some charter schools are well-run, but we shouldn't overpay for any of them. In light of reports from the auditor general and last month's guilty plea of former Western Pennsylvania charter school head Nick Trombetta, we need reform like H.B. 1328.

|James Roebuck, Democratic chairman, Pennsylvania House Education Committee, Philadelphia