This week, a cyber charter school reform bill passed the Pennsylvania House with a 104-100 vote. The bill comes weeks ahead of the state budget deadline of June 30th, and parts of the bill could be included in budget negotiations.


HB 1500 sets a consistent, statewide tuition rate of $8,000 for public school students who choose to attend a cyber charter school. The bill also has governance and transparency measures.

Republican Auditor General Tim DeFoor released a report earlier this year saying cyber charters have unreasonable reserve funds, among other concerns.

House Democrats hosted public hearings this spring to discuss different aspects of reform. For example, Democrat Rep. Pete Schweyer, chair of the House Education Committee, said in floor comments that in one cyber charter school, ~4.75% of their students are proficient at math.

House Democrats gave less than a week for lawmakers to read the final bill language before it was brought for a vote on the floor.

Most Republicans say reform is needed, but protested that the 30 page bill had harmful details— such as not allowing any new cyber charter schools to start for the next five years.

Cyber charter school advocates say that $8,000 as the tuition rate is an arbitrary number that does not actually capture how much it costs to operate a cyber charter school.

"You limit the number of cyber charters now in existence. You choke off its funding and eventually you can kill cyber charter,” Rep. Craig Williams said, a Republicans from Chester and Delaware Counties. “60,000+ students in our school system finding another way to learn. And we're going to choke it off with this bill."

"We heard from experts school boards, association school business officers. We heard from teachers,” said Schweyer, when describing the public hearings held in the spring. "We invited a number of cyber schools to testify... they declined those invitations."

Tim Keller, a spokesperson for Commonwealth Charter Academy, said the Education Committee reached out through a third party. He said the academy declined to testify because the hearing topics were unspecific, and for concern there wouldn’t be healthy discussion because of relationship tensions.