Wagner: Charter Schools Funding Formula is Flawed

Pennsylvania Auditor General Jack Wagner is calling for a statewide moratorium on the creation of new charter and cyber charter schools. Wagner says there are tremendous inequities in the funding of the charter schools and they need to be corrected by the General Assembly and the governor.
Wagner says Pennsylvania taxpayers are now spending about $1 billion a year on 73,000 children enrolled in charter and cyber charter schools. Wagner says the problem is districts are paying different per pupil costs. For example, Wagner says at the Propel Charter School in Homestead, the Clairton School District pays a non-special ed tuition rate of $11,337 per student while East Allegheny pays $7,201 for special ed students. Wagner says this is an inefficient use of taxpayer dollars for charter schools and school districts......"We can't afford to be wasting precious financial resources on schools whose costs have absolutely no basis whatsoever on what is actually needed to educate our children."