Would a cyber-charter school help Pottsgrove's finances?
POTTSTOWN PA – If you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em.
That’s the tentative thinking among some members of the Education Committee of the Pottsgrove School District Community Budget Task Force, who have floated an idea that the district may want to create its own charter or cyber-charter school to recover tax dollars by attracting students enrolled in similar programs elsewhere.
It’s just one of several proposals offered during the committee’s first meeting and revealed in the minutes of that session, which were made available Wednesday (March 2, 2011) to the public on the district’s website, here. The committee also kicked around thoughts to lower the cost of teacher in-service days, reduce reliance on outside consultants for staff development, and earn new revenue by opening programs to students outside the district.
None of the proposals have been researched or more fully developed. Some may be later discarded as unworkable or unprofitable; some may be embraced and promoted. They and other suggestions emerging from all six task force committees, however, provide a peek into how its participants are approaching the thorny issue of trimming Pottsgrove expenses by as much as $6 million in coming years.
The task force is Pottsgrove’s attempt, modeled after a similar exercise in West Chester PA, to get public input on how the Board of School Directors might cut costs and lower property owners’ tax burden. It was motivated, in part, by a roughly $1.5 million deficit the district faces in its preliminary 2011-2012 budget.
Committees next meet March 15 (Tuesday) at 7 p.m. in Pottsgrove High School, Kauffman Road, Pottstown PA, and are open to the public. More than 70 people are reported to be involved in the effort; their initial work sessions were held Feb. 23. Minutes for all six groups – educational programs, energy and facilities, extracurricular activities, student services, technology and transportation – are available online.
The notion to create a Pottsgrove charter school arises just as Pennsylvania’s newly inaugurated governor, Tom Corbett, and some state legislators are talking up plans to allocate millions of dollars for alternative education vouchers. A voucher program would give money the district might otherwise receive to some parents as tuition credits, allowing their children to attend different schools of their choice.
Pottsgrove relinquished thousands of dollars per student in revenue to bricks-and-mortar charter schools and their cyber, or online, counterparts last year. Business Administrator David Nester said he anticipates losing even more to them in the future. Establishing its own charter school might recoup some money, but also could be accompanied by different and possibly additional costs.
Perhaps more importantly, to be successful among its competitors a Pottsgrove charter school likely would have to demonstrate to parents and potential students that its programs were sufficiently different than, and maybe even superior to, those offered at the district’s five school buildings.
Education committee members posed 16 different questions and information requests to the district to be fulfilled before their next meeting. They included “How can we bring the cyber/charter students back?,” “What is the quality of the cyber/charter school education compared to the district?,” and “Would it be possible to purchase online textbooks rather than hard copies?”
Related (to the Pottsgrove School District 2011-2012 budget):
- Idea: Pottsgrove Might Prosper With Own Charter School
- Pooling Resources Could Save Pottsgrove On Special Ed
- Like Pottsgrove Task Force, Outsiders Weigh Cost Vs. Value
- Task Force Crowd Packs Into Pottsgrove For First Session
- School Budget Task Force Kicks Off Its Work Tonight
- Does Western PA School Tax Uprising Foretell Mood Here?
- Pottsgrove Schools Budget Short Another $400,000
- Pottsgrove, As Expected, Adopts Budget First Draft
- Pottsgrove Tentative Budget Adoption Expected
- Weather Postpones Pottsgrove Budget Meeting
- Still Time In Pottsgrove For Budget Volunteers To Enlist
- Challenge To Pottsgrove Budget Advisers: 10 Percent
- Best Guesses, Deficit Launch Pottsgrove Budget Season
- Senate Education Chair Preps For Voucher, Choice Battle
- School Board Questions Pottsgrove Recreation Costs
- Pension Reform Vote Could Benefit Pottsgrove, Others
- Notebook Worthy: News Reporters Made News Tuesday
- Pottsgrove Isn’t Waiting In Search For Budget Volunteers
- If You’ve Got A Budget Idea, Pottsgrove Says It’ll Listen
- Pottsgrove Seeks More Public Input On District Budget
Related (to education tuition vouchers):
- Idea: Pottsgrove Might Prosper With Own Charter School
- Choice Amendment Would Remove Vouchers’ 3rd Year
- Teacher Unions Say Budgets, Vouchers Top Their Agendas
- Poll Claims Public Opposes Tuition Vouchers
- Senate Education Chair Preps For Voucher, Choice Battle
Photo from Clipart.com
It seems we will argue forever about school vouchers in Pennsylvania ad nauseum and ad infinituum. I can remember the same arguments and debates back in the 1980s. But the Cyber Schools were created more-or-less spontaneously during the Internet Boom of the late 90′s without much debate that I recall. At first it seemed they weren’t too popular, but now they are just popular enough to generate screams in certain quarters. Those quarters being School Board Meetings and School Adminstration Offices.
When parents decide to send their kid to a Cyber School, their local public school district must pay the Cyber School Tuition in-full. Predictably, the School Boards and Administrators cry “Foul!”. They don’t like the sting of “losing” approximately $10,000 everytime a parent decides to let their kid go to school in their own living room. (From what I hear, the kids love it because they get to go to school in their pajamas, munch potato chips and can keep the TV running in the background while they’re “learning”.) The schools claim they are not “saving” any money becasue they have one, or a few, less students, because the school’s infrastructure is not “scaleable”. That is, take away a few students from different grades in the school and the school still needs just as many classrooms, just as many teachers, and probably as many school buses as well.
The scalability argument is a bit disingenuous because the public schools have to deal with a variable number of students from year to year. The number of students who appear for enrollment each year do not appear in numbers which are evenly divisible by 22 (or whatever the preferred number of students per class happen to be for that school district). The school’s bump and squeeze, and the odd number of students are accomodated without much shouting “Foul!”.
On the other hand, when parents decide to send a kid to a local private school the School Administrators don’t cry “Foul!”. Doesn’t a loss of this student create just as much of an imbalance as the loss of the Cyber Student? The difference is that in this case the public school is GAINING revenue, not losing it. The kid’s parents have to pay the private school tuition out-of-pocket, but the school district still gets to keep the parents’ real estate, earned income and per-capita tax just the same in addition to saving the $10,000 it supposedly takes to educate oen student. Not too much school adminstrative yelling about “scaleability” when that situation occurs, is there?
Wanna create a lot of new revenue for the Pottsgrove School System? Use the already-proven method of the PSBM ( “Private School Bonus Method” ). Coax more parents into sending their kids to private schools. Each student dispatched to a Wyncroft, Coventry Christian, Hill, Montessori or Waldorf school SAVES the school distict $10,000 in expenses and GAINS the school district about $2,500 in the aforementioned taxes. A nominal net gain of $12,500 per-student for the Pottsgrove SD.
I’d suggest the Pottsgrove School District should host a “Private School Day” each semester in which the public school kids take a field trip to the local private schools to see what a great time those kids are having. On the same day the public school parents should be lured into a Private School Festival event with cookies and cake to hear presentations from all of the local private schools. Every public school kid who gets shuffled over to a private school would gain the Pottsgrove School District $12,500. If done correctly this “Private School Fair” could easily get 20 or 30 students to take the bait, thus netting the PSD $250-325,000 ($12,500 per student).
In fact, if the PSD administrators were smart, they would just give the parents their $2,500 real estate “contribution” to use for the private school and still save the $10K it would have taken the PSD to “educate” the lost student. In effect, granting a “partial voucher”.
Oh yeah, before I forget, make sure the Private School Festival event includes a scary documentary film about the anti-social consequences of Cyber Schooling. I’d imagine the Teachers Union is preparing just such a film as I write this e-mail.
2011 may well be the year in which a voucher program takes effect in Pennsylvania. That won’t end the arguments, but may create different ones.
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