The NE School District’s Battle with Cyber Charter Schools Heats Up

Cyber charter schools from the NESD perspective

Over the last two NE School District board meetings, Assistant Superintendent Brian Emick presented a great deal of information about cyber charter schools. The presentations emphasized how expensive cyber charter schools across Pennsylvania are and how any student in our district choosing to attend one of those schools created an obligation on the NESD to pay their tuition. He illustrated the cost of cyber schools outside our district, approximately $12,000 per year for a regular student or $25,000 per year for special education, compared to $3,000 per year for North East’s own cyber school option.

He talked at length about how the cyber charter schools use their funds for things other than education and then he also showed the difference in academic performance comparing cyber schools outside our district as inferior to the NESD. Business Manager Jeff Fox indicated a preliminary estimate of a two percent tax increase coming our way due to these extra costs from cyber charter schools. Some school board members were obviously impressed with the presentation and wondered what could be done about the issue with both Superintendent Hartzell and Asst. Superintendent Emick asking everyone to contact their PA legislators to support HB 1422 which would limit cyber tuition payments to $8,000 per student per year.

However, if you examine HB 1422, you’ll find it does a great deal more than limit tuition payments to $8,000. If you want to contact your legislators, be sure you know what you’re advocating for before you do so.

The complete presentation given by Mr Emick can be found here and will be very useful as a reference when reading the various points below.

A few observations on this complex topic

There was no time available to check facts or formulate questions during the board meetings, but with the presentation now available on the district website, it’s worth taking a closer look.

North East Virtual Academy
Since the North East Virtual Academy (NEVA) was highlighted as an alternative to the cyber charter schools outside our district, I asked Mr Emick for some additional information. He stated there are currently 38 students enrolled in NEVA. With the performance of the other cyber charters shown in comparison to the NESD schools, I also inquired about performance at the NE cyber school. He said they were still working to compile student performance data for the previous two years.

Reasons for attending a cyber school
On slide 11 of the presentation, there are a number of anecdotal quotes received by NESD in response to their questions about why students decided to enroll in a cyber charter school. All of the quotes put the students in a decidedly unfavorable light: “I don’t feel like getting up early in the morning …,” “It will be easier for him,” “I can’t stop him from getting into trouble ….” and similar reasons. In researching this topic, I found responses that were quite different related to concerns about the NE school curriculum, resources offered in the cyber schools unavailable in North East, concerns about bullying and more. Anecdotes prove very little either way, but it seems like there are many reasons other than those presented in the slide.

Performance comparisons
On slides 18, 19 and 20, performance of the three NE schools was compared to the two largest cyber charter schools. The measure was against the standardized tests, PSSA and Keystone, but not mentioned was that cyber students can opt out of those tests, so the data can be incomplete or skewed as a result. It would require a much closer look at the data to be able to come up with a meaningful comparison.

Another possible reason for poor cyber school performance
On slide 23, a quote appears from an interview with Brian Hayden, the CEO of PA Cyber Charter School, when asked about declining assessment scores. He said it could be due to poor performing students transferring in. This was criticized during the NESD presentation because he was seemingly blaming the students, but he explained cyber schools often have a large percentage change of students during the year compared to a local school district so a student’s performance may not reflect the long term performance of the cyber school. That seems to be a reasonable answer which does not justify the criticism.

Cyber charter school advertising expenditures
On slide 24 there is a list of expenditures related to advertising and gift cards. It’s hard to know if the individual expenditures are in line without seeing the detail, but advertising for cyber charter schools is absolutely necessary. Cyber charter schools can serve students all across Pennsylvania and without advertising, many students and their parents would never know some of those schools even exist, plus they have competition from other cyber charter schools and must differentiate themselves in some way and advertising is an opportunity to explain what makes them a good choice. Local public school districts don’t need to advertise because they are a government monopoly. Everyone knows they exist and where they are. As to gift cards, anecdotal statements from some local parents of cyber students say they have never received any gift cards. So simply listing advertising and gift card expenditures does not prove any mismanagement of funds.

Group listed as source of cyber school data
Also of note on that slide, the source is shown as “Education Voters of Pennsylvania.” That is an organization that describes itself as non-partisan which simply means it is not affiliated with a political party, but it does NOT mean it doesn’t have very specific opinions on various issues. Their website shows them to be pro public education, but very anti cyber charter school and anti school voucher. In other words, their position is one closely aligned with the education establishment. It’s not surprising what data they choose to highlight. Their data may be correct or it may be misleading, but you should be aware of their positions before forming any conclusions. The same group, Education Voters of Pennsylvania, is also the source of the data for many of the slides in this presentation.

Why cyber charter school tuition varies
Slide 29 is especially interesting and really misleading. The number 499 is shown as the number of school districts in PA followed by the statements: “Tuition Rates To Cyber Charter Schools Throughout The Commonwealth – Same Educational Programming Offered At Markedly Different Tuition Rates,” which leads you to believe that the cyber charter schools are just charging whatever they wish, but that’s not true! If you go to this page on the PA government website, you’ll see this, “The amount a charter school receives is based upon a statutory funding formula.”

Charter school tuition is the result of a calculation based on this form and the result for each school district is shown on this spreadsheet. Links are Excel spreadsheet downloads. The tuition amount is set by a formula provided by Pennsylvania.

Incentive payments and internet access payments
Slide 31 has a number indicating approximately $200 is paid to families to attend cyber schools. Are those incentives paid anywhere? Possibly, but anecdotal evidence suggests it isn’t happening here.

The payment for internet access seems obvious and justified since it’s how cyber students get to the cyber school. North East spends massively more, they buy school buses, hire bus drivers and bus mechanics and maintain the buses in a bus garage, they buy fuel and maintenance items and pay for insurance all to transport students to and from school and those expenditures are also paid for with taxpayer dollars as the slide points out when referring to internet payments. Paying for internet access seems logical for cyber school.

Again, the full presentation is available here so you can see the slides referenced above.

There’s more to consider than tuition costs

When speaking of the low cost of the North East Virtual Academy compared to other cyber options, that means low cost to the school district. The cyber charter parents don’t pay out of pocket either way, so when choosing to go elsewhere, perhaps the cyber charters offer something for their student the NESD or NE virtual academy does not.

A more open conversation is necessary

If cyber charter school tuition payments are again going to be used as an excuse for raising taxes, the school administration needs to have a more open conversation with the public. The current highly structured and controlled board meetings with very limited opportunities to ask questions and receive answers is not enough.

There are many more questions to be answered on this very involved topic and cyber charter schools may require more oversight and changes may need to be made, but there is far more to consider than how much the district is being charged for student tuition. Hopefully, these observations will help get the conversation started and draw attention to several points in the slides that may be confusing.

If anyone from the school administration has something to add to the above article or wishes to correct anything as written, they are very welcome to do so in the comments below.

Information page on Pennsylvania charter schools

Board meeting video

The video below by Erin Beckes-Reese is a record of the board meeting of March 6th, 2025 which includes part 2 of Mr Emick’s presentation. Her videos of the meetings provide a great service for the North East community, especially when the school board voted 7-2 NOT to video record their meetings, even though equipment to do so is already in place and the cost is essentially zero.