Examining the education shortfall in Pennsylvania
FOX43 took a closer look at education, funding and the people supporting Pennsylvania schools as a teacher shortage rocks the nation.
Why Pennsylvania’s teacher shortage is still a problem It's a well-documented problem that lawmakers are trying to address. The state doesn't have enough teachers, and school districts are having trouble staffing.
Many Pennsylvania classrooms are missing the one person they need the most, a teacher.
Pages and pages of openings are listed online. Local districts like Dallastown Area in York County have more than a dozen positions available, looking for educators and support staff to enrich the next generation.
“We have a lot of school districts that are grappling from across the state, with having enough teachers having enough staff to fill all the positions that they need, so that we can take care of our kids,” said Aaron Chapin, president of the Pennsylvania State Education Association.
Mifflin County High School Teacher Ashlie Crosson said educators saw the writing on the wall.
“The biggest issue that we need to figure out and we need to address related to funding is our teacher shortage,” said Crosson, Pennsylvania’s teacher of the year. “We all saw it coming and everybody just said, ‘Oh yeah, it happens every once in a while, but it will wrinkle itself out.’ I’m like, it’s not going to wrinkle itself out this time.”
Crosson said the pressures that come with the classroom have never been greater.
“We have real concerns about burnout. We have real concerns about the respect that we receive within our profession,” she said. “It doesn’t really matter what school you go to, you’re going to have teachers who say from a mental health standpoint or a workload standpoint or an expectation standpoint, there are some things that are unsustainable.”
“I met with some Camp Hill school teachers one day, and you had a teacher that was sort of the end of her career, who was saying ‘This is hard, I've watched it change that kids aren't as respectful that teacher the parents are involved in ways that aren't necessarily constructive,’” said Republican State Senator Greg Rothman, who represents parts of Dauphin, Cumberland and Perry Counties.
Rothman is a member of the Basic Education Funding Commission, the legislative body tasked with analyzing the state’s school funding needs every five years.
“We need to go back to looking at teachers as a noble profession,” he said. “You do it because there's a sense of pride. I'm not sure where that stopped with teachers.”
Penn State Professor Ed Fuller said both politicians and the public need to change attitudes if they want the problem to improve.
“We should be admiring these folks, we shouldn’t be calling them names or criticizing them,” Fuller said. “I was a teacher, it’s a really difficult job.”
A difficult job, and many are deciding to leave.
Last year, Fuller helped conduct a study on Pennsylvania’s teacher shortage.
The Penn State Center for Education Evaluation and Policy Analysis found that 9,587 teachers left their jobs during the 2022-2023 school year, a 1.5% increase from the prior year and the largest spike in a decade.
Fuller said it was the biggest exodus on record and it’s hurting students.
“There’s a large number of kids who don’t have access to a well-qualified teacher because the districts just don’t have enough people to hire at the moment,” he added. “Even more disconcerting to me is that these are students in our underfunded districts. There’s lots of kids of color, lots of kids living in poverty.”
Pennsylvania School Boards Association Senior Education Policy Director Andrew Christ said it’s hard to entice professionals in other industries to pursue teaching.
“I think one of the biggest challenges dealing with staffing shortages, is how do we get more people into the field, but in a way that we still have quality educators coming into the classroom?” Christ said. “We are seeing greater areas of need in terms of special education, science, math and technology. So how do we get more of those people out of their current fields and in the classroom?”
That problem makes the pipeline of college students even more valuable to districts with staffing needs, but data shows more students may be deciding to avoid a teaching career even while they’re still in high school.
An SAT survey asks Pennsylvania high schoolers what field they plan to major in.
In 2009, 11.2% said they were choosing education, but a decade later that number dropped to just 4.5%. That 6.7% decrease was by far the largest drop of all included majors in that time frame.
“There just simply aren’t enough teachers right now, coming out of our teacher preparation programs,” Fuller said.
When FOX43 asked why students are not choosing to become teachers, Fuller responded, “One is that it’s really expensive to get a higher education degree in Pennsylvania.”
The most recent survey data from the National Center for Education Statistics backs this up.
Keep in mind that these numbers are from the 2021-2022 school year and all the figures we are about to show you are in-state tuition rates – out-of-state students pay even more.
Students at four-year public universities in the U.S. paid $21,854 in total expenditures on average; that’s tuition and room and board.
In Pennsylvania, that number is more than $5,000 higher, with $27,336 in total expenditures for public universities, 7th highest in the nation.
U.S. students at private four-year universities paid an average of $47,940 in total costs during this school year.
In Pennsylvania, the number was $60,218 on average, the 8th highest in the country.
However, Pennsylvania’s future educators are getting a break this year.
Last year’s state budget approved a $10,000 stipend program for student teachers starting this fall, compensating them for what has long been unpaid work.
“I do think that the student teacher stipend has created some positive vibes amongst teachers in Pennsylvania,” Crosson said. “That win is really big for us because it's removing a barrier to becoming a teacher.”
“We would like to see that stipend obviously increase over the years,” Chapin added. “$10,000 does not cover a semester in college.”
Governor Shapiro’s new budget proposal would add $5 million to the student-teacher stipend fund.
Unlike many measures being considered, the program has enjoyed bipartisan support.
While it could help stop the bleeding, Crosson said it doesn’t address the larger problem.
“It's helping our youngest generation of teachers come into the profession, but part of the teacher shortage is because teachers are leaving, it's because of burnout,” she said. “It's because there isn't enough to sustain us within the profession. We need Harrisburg to look at how we retain our teachers. How do we acknowledge and reward their service to our state?”
As budget conversations get underway in Pennsylvania, lawmakers are considering several solutions to address the shortage.
How lawmakers plan to address Pennsylvania’s teacher shortage in 2024 Pennsylvania schools are still grappling with a teacher shortage that’s prompting action from lawmakers, but the divide in Harrisburg could prolong the issue.
As students at Emory H. Markle Middle School in Hanover, York County discuss their latest reading assignment, South Western School District Superintendent Jay Burkhardt is concerning himself with a different conversation; how to find the next generation of Pennsylvania educators.
While the schools are currently staffed, upcoming retirements mean the district is already beginning recruitment for next year, dipping into a dwindling pool of teaching talent.
“It’s always been an undercurrent. It’s been here for a while. Less and less people are going into the profession,” Burkhardt said. “I would say the impact has become more profound over the last three to five years. We’re seeing a drop off in the number of candidates applying, especially in some of our more specialized certifications; secondary science and mathematics. Even our elementary, which typically drew our greatest number of applicants, we’ve seen a decline in that as well."
“It's a competitive market, not just with school districts and other employers, but among school districts in the state,” said Andrew Christ, director of education policy at the Pennsylvania School Boards Association. “They have to have competitive salary and benefit packages, to attract and retain those quality teachers.”
Education experts told FOX43 the competition means schools with higher property tax revenue have an advantage and can outbid other districts for top teaching talent – creating quality gaps in lower-income and minority communities.
It was part of why the Pennsylvania courts ruled the state’s funding system was unconstitutional.
Budget constraints mean some districts have had to adjust their sales pitch to educators.
“It’s about the culture, it’s about the climate, it’s about the support from the community. You understand the expectations, you’re supported, you’re valued and the community is behind you,” Burkhardt said. “I think there is a quality of the job and the profession that can often offset the difference in salary.”
Data from the National Education Association shows the average starting teacher salary in Pennsylvania is $47,827.
That’s the 11th highest in the nation, but lower than neighboring states New York, New Jersey and Maryland.
According to the National Center for Education Statistics, the average annual wage for public school teachers in Pennsylvania in constant 2019 dollars declined by almost 6% from 2000 to 2019.
Keep in mind, over the last 20 years, the buying power of $100 has been cut almost in half. That means teacher salaries are significantly less than they were 20 years ago.
“Using the same cost of living across years, the average teacher salary is actually lower than it was in 1990,” said Ed Fuller, a Penn State professor who helped conduct a study on Pennsylvania’s teacher shortage last year. “If you’re coming out of college with a large student loan and you’re not going to make that much as a teacher, it’s just not a very good fiscal decision.”
The Pennsylvania State Education Association is advocating for a minimum $60,000 teacher salary, with a $20-an-hour minimum for supporting staff.
PSEA President Aaron Chapin said it would help districts compete for new teachers.
“If we expect kids coming out of college to stay in Pennsylvania, we need to pay them. When you go to West Virginia, or to Delaware, New Jersey, or Ohio, all the states that surround us pay their educators more. They pay their support staff more,” he said. “We need to do the same thing in Pennsylvania if we're going to attract the best and the brightest.”
Republicans and Democrats are split on how to address the state’s teacher shortage.
Democrats want to invest $10 million more in the state’s Educator Talent Recruitment Account; that’s grant money to help schools pay for teacher salaries.
It’s part of the Governor’s plan that would invest $1.1 billion in additional Basic Education Funding.
Democratic Representative Mike Sturla believes the plan would work, but it will take time to see results.
“Part of this is we're looking at trying to look at this holistically and saying, how do you get there fast enough?” Sturla said. “We have a shortage of teachers in the state of Pennsylvania right now. If I say you can only use this if you're hiring new teachers, the school district says, ‘I've tried, I can't hire new teachers till you graduate some more.’ Some of the new teacher hires might be in year four because that's when we'll have new graduates.”
Republicans want to change the state’s pension system, a noted budget concern in the Pennsylvania School Boards Association’s recent state of education report and one that the party said is digging into the state’s general fund.
Republican State Senator Greg Rothman worries taxpayers would be on the hook for teacher salary increases.
“We hear the school districts constantly saying, 'We need more money, we need more money,' and there are taxpayers that are on the other end of that,” Rothman said. “I'm not opposed to the governor's proposal to offer incentives to teachers, but I ultimately think it's the market. Is it right that one school district can pay another teacher more than another? Not if it's coming out if the funding is coming from the state. I don't think that's appropriate.”
Both sides agree on additional student-teacher stipends and reduced class sizes.
Experts tell FOX43 there may be other solutions, like increasing teacher scholarships and starting programs to allow professionals in other careers to transition to teaching.
Still, Burkhardt said the need for quality educators will never end
“Let’s say we close the gap and we don’t have the shortage, we’re going to have to continually work to make sure that it never happens again or to make sure that the workforce is there to support us moving forward as educators,” he said.
He suggests a simple gesture can help shrink the shortage.
“If I could give any word of encouragement to our public, please let the teachers know how much they mean to you,” Burkhardt said. “People always think it comes down to salary, but that impact it has on a teacher is greater than you could ever imagine.”
If there are any signs of hope to be seen, several of FOX43’s interview subjects said they’re optimistic that the shortage may be leveling off, but lawmakers are still expected to address the concerns in this year’s budget.
Why Shapiro's budget proposal could start education funding battle in Pennsylvania Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro's second budget proposal included more than $1.1 billion in additional basic education funding.
In his second budget proposal, Governor Josh Shapiro wasted no time addressing a longstanding issue in the Commonwealth.
"My budget invests $1.1 billion in new funding this year for our schools," he announced minutes into his address inside the Pa. Capitol on Tuesday.
The governor's plan introduces an additional $1.1 billion in basic education funding. Almost $900 million would come in the form of a first-year investment through a new adequacy formula. The remaining $200 million would be funneled through the Basic Education Funding Commission's fair funding formula.
It's directly in line with the BEFC's majority report, which passed on party lines. The Pennsylvania State Education Association supports that plan.
"We need to give the students the money that they need right now to give them the services they so badly need, and not do it when it's politically convenient," said Aaron Chapin, president of PSEA.
"Consider this, even if we funded every single one of the initiatives I talked about today and contained in my budget, we would still have an $11 billion surplus by the end of June 2025," Shapiro boasted.
That $11 billion figure would be down from the $14 billion surplus the state expects by the end of the fiscal year.
Republicans suggest the rate of spending is unsustainable.
"We have an independent nonpartisan economic organization called the independent fiscal office, they have projected a $3 billion deficit moving forward in our state budget," said State Sen. Kristin Phillips-Hill, a Republican who represents York County and serves as co-chair of the BEFC.
"We're going to have a deficit when we are in deficit spending right now," said State Sen. Greg Rothman, a Republican who represents Cumberland, Dauphin and Perry Counties and served on the BEFC. "I'm hoping the governor's got a plan."
FOX43 put the question to Democratic State Representative Mike Sturla, who backed the Basic Education Funding Commission's majority report the governor's budget proposal is based on.
"At the state level, we've been running surpluses now for several years and the projection is that we will continue to run surpluses. We have a $6 or $7 billion rainy day fund," said Sturla, a BEFC co-chair and a representative of Lancaster County. "In the event that that progress stalls at all, we at least have a cushion to get us through some of that."
"The administration said we're not buying into a plan where we're going to have to raise taxes, which is one of the reasons why we pushed it out seven years because they said we think that that is a reasonable rational projection," he added. "The IFO says we might not run out, we might run out of money soon. The Shapiro administration actually has projections that are more conservative than the IFO's and they believe we can do this."
No matter how much the state decides to add to its basic education funding contribution, the Pennsylvania School Boards Association said issues persist.
"When you compare increases in mandated costs, pensions, charter schools and special education, what the state contributes and what school districts pay, there's around a $4 billion difference," said Andrew Christ, PSBA senior director of education policy. "Local taxpayers and school districts are on the hook for that $4 billion. Even if we took every single dollar increase in basic education funding, over that time, we're still somewhat $2.6 billion short. That's up to local taxpayers to fill that difference."
The new budget and education spending plan faces an uphill battle.
Pennsylvania is the only state in the country with a divided house and senate.
"It's time to solve these pressing problems, to meet this moment responsibly and with bipartisan compromise," Shapiro said during his address.
"I'm going to get to work," promised Phillips-Hill. "The governor's budget address is the starting point in the process of crafting the Commonwealth's budget will take into account what the governor has requested."
There are signs the contention has already begun.
"There was some political reasons why they didn't, the majority didn't want to come up with just a report that we agreed on," Rothman recalled, speaking of his colleagues across the isle in the BEFC. "They wanted to put their points and Chairman Sturla made that clear. I don't know if it was a public meeting or executive meetings, [he said] I'm not going to sign a report that doesn't have a dollar amount it."
"We can't just say we're gonna get a consensus report that doesn't get the job done," Sturla told FOX43. "We can get to an agreement where we can say, 'This met some of the needs that the Republicans wanted, met some of the needs that we wanted, and ultimately, whether it's what we wanted or what they wanted, does it meet the needs of the kids?'"
The more time that passes, the longer Pennsylvania's inequitable and unconstitutional education funding remains.
"A lot of our school districts, they're trying to long term plan, but then those line items that they're planning to be there are being held up with the budget fights of the of the past several years," said Kevin Busher, PSBA chief advocacy officer.
Lawmakers weigh solutions to fix 'crumbling' Pennsylvania schools School buildings in many Pennsylvania districts are badly in need of repair. Gov. Shapiro proposed hundreds of millions in funding for school construction this year.
The original entryway doors at Burrowes Elementary School in Lancaster have been in use for nearly 70 years. Students have been walking through them since the school opened in the 1950's.
The building hasn't received a significant renovation since, and signs of its age are everywhere.
From the leaking ceiling panels in first-grade classrooms, to the broken wheelchair lifts, to the old, energy-sapping windows in a building without air-conditioning, School District of Lancaster Assistant Superintendent Matt Pryzwara said the school's problems don't end there.
"The unit ventilators, which they have back there, which are recycling the air or blowing heat, if our boiler is not working properly, if our boiler goes down, then the temperature gets out of control," he said.
The district has been applying band-aids for years and trying to adjust to changing technology.
Server boxes hang in the hallways, bringing the internet to teacher's laptops and projectors, but the school's aging electrical system is struggling to power it all.
"We have to be very cautious on how many things we can plug in the plugs here because it will blow," Przywara said. "It sounds pretty simple, but all of those things need to be intact."
"Some places have extremely outdated, borderline unsafe facilities, and that needs to be addressed," said Ashlie Crosson, a teacher at Mifflin County High School who was awarded Pennsylvania teacher of the year for 2024.
Crosson says her students notice the differences when they travel between schools.
"For them, it's very apparent. They walk into a building and sometimes they're like, 'oh, wow, my school is really nice compared to this.' Other times they walk into a building and they're like, 'Well, wait a minute, we don't have that and we don't have that.' What's that all about?," she said. " If our students across our state are feeling inadequate, or are feeling inferior, simply because of their zip code, that's a problem."
"Our buildings across the state, they're crumbling, and there's such a need right now," said Aaron Chapin, president of the Pennsylvania State Education Association. "When they have better conditions, they're going to learn a lot in a lot more effective manner."
State lawmakers in Harrisburg recognize the issue.
"I've asked, and I've not ever gotten an answer, why we have school districts that have facilities that are, you know, there's lead-based paint falling from the walls?" said Greg Rothman, a Republican state senator who serves parts of Perry, Dauphin and Cumberland Counties.
His question isn't easy to answer.
The School District of Lancaster has been planning to replace or renovate Burrowes Elementary and aging schools like it since 2007, wanting to address concerns in 20 buildings over 10 years.
Funding issues pushed the timeline back by at least a decade.
In that time, the project's total cost ballooned to more than $400 million dollars.
"We were relying on both the state share, which is normally about 25% of the cost that they would reimburse us through a program called PlanCon. That program no longer exists," Przywara said. "The rest, the 75% was on the backs of our local taxpayers here."
Przywara said about 87% of the district's students receive free or reduced lunches.
While the higher poverty rate means the district receives a higher percentage of its funding from the state, lower property tax revenue leaves little room to improve buildings.
A recent study from the Pennsylvania School Board Association found almost 19% of school districts see school facility maintenance as their biggest challenge this year.
Meanwhile, 23.9% said facility construction is a top budget pressure.
The author of the report says the School District of Lancaster's situation isn't unique.
"If you go to the rural and a lot of the urban communities, most of their education dollars come from the state," said Andrew Christ, PSBA's director of education policy. "In the suburban areas, they're able to generate revenue locally. So they're able to meet those mandated cost increases from pensions, charter schools, special education, and have money left over to invest in facilities."
Last year, Pennsylvania enacted two bills that created programs to address school construction needs, but right now there's no funding for those programs.
Democrats and Republicans from the Basic Education Funding Commission agree the programs should be funded and they want to start another program called PlanCon 2.0. It's a formula that would fairly reimburse schools when they complete construction projects.
Both sides agree they need a better understanding of how much needs to be spent on school construction statewide, so it's likely they'll ask the Department of Education to conduct periodic studies.
What's not yet clear is how much funding will be agreed upon. The Democrat-backed majority report wants $300 million per year and $2.1 billion over the next seven years.
Governor Shapiro followed that recommendation in his recent budget proposal.
As co-chair of the Basic Education Funding Commission, Democratic State Rep. Mike Sturla had a heavy hand in the BEFC's majority report.
"Because we suspended programs to help schools, with their school facilities and buildings, we actually need to do something along those lines also," Sturla said. "We put another couple billion in to do school facilities so that kids aren't going to school in schools that have lead or asbestos or leaky roofs. Once the schools are then fully funded. Seven years from now, under this plan, we will then say to those schools, you know, we'll help but we're not going to pay for the most of this.
"I think it's a good start in terms of where they ended the old PlanCon program to get some new money back into schools where people have been pushing it off," Przywara said, speaking of the BEFC's majority report plan that the Governor backed earlier this month. "I'm sure there are many schools in the commonwealth that have deferred maintenance."
Still, State Senator Greg Rothman, a member of the Basic Education Funding Commission, questions what kind of maintenance is necessary.
"Is air conditioning really. . . I mean that's a first world problem," Rothman said. "I asked the one architect to justify an ethic was like, 99.9% of all the schools in the world don't have air conditioning."
"Our school day goes beyond the standard day for extended day programming, and we also have a host of summer programs," Przywara said, responding to Rothman's assertion. "That's what we're trying to do to meet the achievement gaps. For us, we need to have buildings that can be conditioned for all types of the environment; hot, cold, in between, all those things."
Rothman and his Republican colleagues worry Democrat's funding number may be too high, concerned it's digging into the state's nest egg.
"The Rainy Day Fund is a one time expenditure and education, that's not what we do," Rothman said. "It'd be one thing if you say, okay, we're going to take the money and put it into a building a new school or fixing a school. But to create new programs, that's where we end up getting in trouble."
With another budget battle looming, Sturla acknowledges districts could suffer the most from a delay.
"We've got to smooth those numbers, again, trying to get some predictability and consistency for school districts who say, 'we're sitting here waiting for you guys to pass a budget, and we've already passed our budget, and then we have to go back in and reopen our budget and change funding,'" Sturla said. "'You haven't funding buildings and we don't know whether we're responsible for a building or you are,' so we're trying to create some consistency and stability."
"We're forced to then approve our budget before the state does and have to make decisions around academic programming or building projects, and in the case of last year, many months before the state actually says, 'here's what we're going to provide to schools,'" Przywara added.
Burrowes Elementary School will be demolished and rebuilt next year as part of the School District of Lancaster's next phase of construction.
We won't know the exact number school districts can expect to receive from the state for building maintenance until this summer at the earliest.
In the meantime, there are other concerns looming large.
Pennsylvania's charter school funding challenge The commonwealth's charter schools are growing as funding conversations heat up in the State Capitol. Lawmakers on both sides are considering reform.
Modern education faces many challenges that can place students in difficult situations they're eager to escape.
Unfortunately, students in Pennsylvania public schools have few places to turn to if they are unsatisfied with their home district.
"This is a public education problem," said Brian Hayden, CEO of PA Cyber.
The state commissioned brick-and-mortar charter schools in 1997, followed by cyber charter schools in 2002, giving parents and students an alternative to traditional public schools.
Hayden said every student has a unique reason for choosing charter.
"It could be a bullying incident, it could be anxiety that they have about going to school, it could be the decisions a teacher makes," Hayden said.
"We also have students that come here from families that have busy lives," said Tim Eller, Senior Vice President of Outreach and Government Relations at Commonwealth Charter Academy.
Pennsylvania's cyber charter landscape is now the largest in the country, with at least 61,000 students enrolled in cyber charter schools - That's more than double the next closest state.
Commonwealth Charter Academy is the largest cyber charter school in the state, serving 27,000 students.
Eller said these schools are predominantly publicly funded.
"We're all public employees, our salaries are public," he said. "It's very frustrating that we keep getting tied in that we're a private entity being funded with taxpayer dollars. [That's] the furthest thing from the truth."
"Our students are public school students and our families are public school families," Hayden added.
Charter schools are public schools, but they receive funding a little differently.
They do receive some federal dollars, but when a student chooses to leave a traditional public school in favor of a charter, a portion of the money the home district would pay to educate that child goes to the charter school instead.
Just how much the charter school receives may vary and we heard a range of answers when we asked for an average amount.
Commonwealth Charter Academy said charters receive about 70% of what a traditional public school would spend on the student, PA Cyber said it was closer to 75%.
The Commonwealth Foundation said charters receive 83% of what a home district pays, while the Pennsylvania School Boards Association reported that it's 88% on average.
"They actually get less per student," said Nathan Benefield, senior vice president of the Commonwealth Foundation, a conservative policy arm. "The district keeps money even when they don't have the student educated anymore."
"Our students should have the same rights to the education that they're paying for, regardless of what public school they're going to," Hayden added.
Proponents of traditional public schools see it differently.
In a recent Pennsylvania School Boards Association Survey, districts identified charter school payments as their top budget concern this year.
PSBA's Education and Policy Director Andrew Christ authored the report.
"When a student leaves a school district and enrolls in a charter school, they leave behind several stranded costs," Christ said. "Utilities, teacher salaries, all of those stay the same regardless of that student leaving the school district and going to a charter school, except now the school district has anywhere from $15,000 to $50,000 less than they did before. I think there's definitely an incentive on the part of school districts to try to bring those kids back."
"It is a budget pressure for us, there's no question," added Jay Burkhart, superintendent of South Western School District in Hanover, York County. "I think most of my colleagues would agree that charter schools are a good option. People should have a choice, but in terms of what we do, in terms of the cost that we expend versus what we pay them, if the student enrolls, [where] the dollars go."
Whether a student chooses a brick-and-mortar charter school or a cyber charter school, the funding is the same.
While cyber school instruction is virtual, charter officials revealed that they still have facility costs.
Commonwealth Charter Academy said it operates 15 buildings for students to take tests and receive tech support.
PA Cyber said its 9 regional offices offer important in-person services.
"It's expensive to educate 11,000 students," Hayden said. "I think sometimes people forget that the technology is very expensive. No school district has as many tech people as we do."
"We have to ship every kid that attends our school laptop technology to access our system. Just because we're an online school doesn't mean we don't have tech support costs, we don't have state testing costs," Eller said. "I think where a lot of people don't seem to recognize where costs come in is when we have students with special needs where we provide in-home services."
Unlike traditional schools, charter schools are not regularly audited.
It's an oversight charter school representatives said is the state's responsibility, and not indicative of a lack of transparency on the part of charters.
Education Voters of PA released the details of right-to-know requests for cyber charter spending submitted for the 2022-2023 school year.
It shows Commonwealth Charter Academy spent over $8 million on advertising in a single school year, while PA Cyber spent more than $2.3 million.
Eller said advertising takes up just a small fraction of the academy's budget.
"We don't advertise to increase enrollment, we advertise because there's 14 of us across the state," he said. "We believe we are the top-performing charter school in the state. Attracting families to CCA instead of other cybers is what we would like. The family has already chosen to leave the district."
"Here at PA Cyber, we spend about 2% or 3% of our budget on advertising. That's it," Hayden said. "It's minimal. Far and away, the largest number of students who come here are based on family and friend recommendations. We think it's important that people are aware that we exist, but it's not pulling kids out of traditional public schools."
Democratic State Representative Mike Sturla questions charter schools' effectiveness and whether they're worth the expense.
"It's adding tremendously to the cost of education without any proven results," he said. "They can't show that those kids actually perform better. There is not a charter school in the state of Pennsylvania that has to-date reached the average student achievement of any public school in the state of Pennsylvania, and yet we send them millions of dollars a year."
These are the results from the 2023 Pennsylvania System of School Assessments, or PSSA's, from the Pennsylvania Department of Education.
The Pennsylvania School Boards Association took those numbers and broke them down by type of school.
In English language arts, the statewide total hovered around the 50% proficiency mark for grades three through eight.
The numbers show brick-and-mortar charter and cyber charter students were largely outperformed, dipping more than 20 percentage points in some grades compared to the entire state totals.
In mathematics, the numbers are worse across the board.
Only third-grade mathematics hit the 50 percent proficiency mark in the state totals and charters were behind again.
In eighth-grade mathematics, just 26% of students were proficient statewide, while brick-and-mortar charters registered just 13.3% proficient - Cyber charter students were just 8.7% proficient.
FOX43 asked Republican State Representative Greg Rothman about the numbers. He suggested the results require more context.
"I would compare it to the demographics and geographics of those kids. Is it that it's a child from the city of Harrisburg who's going to a cyber school as proficient at 17% compared to the city of Harrisburg school, [which has] that same demographic?" he said.
Cyber charter representatives contend the PSSA results don't accurately depict their students' performance.
Unlike in traditional public schools, Eller stated the majority of CCA students opted out of taking the test.
"We've heard from families that state testing doesn't matter to them," Eller said. "When you look at the actual students who came into CCA [and] took the PSSA's they're in the fifty percent area."
While cyber charter representatives told FOX43 that they're improving outcomes for attendees, cyber charter students often face more challenges than their counterparts in traditional schools.
"In a way, cyber charters are at a disadvantage because the bulk of the students that [attend] have been underserved [or] bullied out of their district, for a variety of reasons," Eller said. "When they come here, they're not at the grade level they're enrolling in."
"We're not proud of these numbers and we know that, regardless of when a kid comes here, we need to do our best job to educate them and make sure that they do better moving forward," Hayden said. "Our data shows if a student starts here in elementary school, their test scores at the Keystone levels are at, or above, their counterparts in traditional schools."
Cyber charter funding top concern for school districts, lawmakers weigh solutions Pennsylvania has more cyber charter students than any other state in the country, but regulations that govern the schools haven't changed since 2002.
Pennsylvania has quickly become the cyber charter capital of the nation, with more than 60,000 students enrolled.
Data from the Pennsylvania School Board's Association State of Education report shows while traditional schools have lost students in recent school years, cyber charter schools have seen a boom.
Cyber charter school regulations haven't changed since 2002, but technology and the education landscape have.
Pennsylvania Teacher of the Year Ashlie Crosson said while the learning environment is malleable, the basics still work. She believes the classroom is still the best place to deliver educational material.
"I think COVID kind of showed us that there is still a value to our classrooms," she said.
The pandemic forced students and families to reassess their educational needs, and many chose to stay virtual despite proficiency gaps.
"What we've heard from families is the cyber program, again we're talking about program versus school, was just not sufficient for my kids," said Tim Eller, senior vice president of outreach and government relations at Commonwealth Charter Academy. "They may be engaged with a teacher 15, 30 minutes a day. Our school is not set up that way."
Although many school districts offer cyber programs, cyber charter officials suggest their method of instruction can't be replicated.
"Prior to the pandemic, school districts said what we did was cheap and easy, then when they had to do it during the pandemic, it was suddenly expensive and hard," said Brian Hayden, CEO of PA Cyber. "If you remember, they were literally begging for billions of dollars."
School districts say they're still under significant funding constraints and that charter school payments are a big part of the problem.
Starting in 2003 the state reimbursed school districts about 30% of what they paid to charter schools every year, but that reimbursement ended in 2011, forcing districts to adjust their budgets to accommodate the additional payments.
The Basic Education Funding Commission's Majority Report suggests if the state had continued reimbursements, local school districts would not have been forced to pass on $2.5 billion in charter school expenses to local taxpayers.
Pennsylvania Department of Education data shows school districts spent over $1 billion on cyber charter school payments in the 2021-2022 school year alone.
Pennsylvania State Education Association President Aaron Chapin said something has to give.
"School districts are taking on a huge burden when it comes to charter school costs," Chapin said. "We're not talking about whether or not charter schools should exist. That's not the discussion. It's that school districts are having to pay so much more. The costs are highly exceeding what they're receiving from the state when it comes to basic education funding."
Republican State Senator Greg Rothman is a member of the Basic Education Funding Commission.
"I understand that the school districts don't want to lose revenue or money from the students. But those are students they don't have to educate either," said Republican State Senator Greg Rothman, a member of the Basic Education Funding Commission.
The Pennsylvania School Boards Association has been calling for cyber charter reform.
Chief Advocacy Officer Kevin Busher said one state bill is showing promise, having passed in the Democrat-controlled house.
House Bill 1422, passed the House of Representatives in July, with 20 Republican votes," Busher said. "In this atmosphere, as you know, that's a major success, bipartisan support."
Pennsylvania House Bill 1422 includes 63 pages of changes that address repeated criticisms of cyber charter schools.
It would set attendance minimums, regulate how often a school must verify a child has been seen by educators in the virtual setting and mandate that at least one parent be included in a charter's boards of trustees; a body that is currently appointed, not elected.
Most notably, it would mandate that a charter's educational and financial performance is reviewed every year and if it's below set standards, the state can choose not to renew a charter's contract.
The bill would require all public schools to report how much they spend on advertising and sponsorships to the Department of Education every year, and it would be available to the public.
Cyber charters would also be subject to an independent audit every year.
What lawmakers and charters are focused on is how it would apply to education funding; the state would create something called the Statewide Cyber Charter School Tuition rate.
It would mean cyber charter schools would receive $8,000 for every non-special education student starting next school year.
"If House Bill 1422 became law as it was introduced and passed the house, it would shut us down," Eller said. "It would be a 50% funding cut right off the bat."
"We do not oppose reform to the charter law. It's an old law. The world has changed. We don't even oppose a discussion about funding," Hayden said. "Under this governor's proposal of $8,000 which is a cut across the board, these students are being treated as almost second-class citizens."
Charters argue students should not receive less funding, no matter which public school they decide to attend.
House Bill 1422 has yet to be considered by the Senate Education Committee.
The Democrat-backed Basic Education Funding Commission Majority Report suggests the state should reimburse school districts for charter school tuition payments once again, beginning at a minimum of $500 million.
It would cover about 15% of districts' charter costs.
In the minority report, Republicans suggested the state create a cyber charter school reimbursement formula, but did not specify a dollar amount or percentage.
"Cyber seems to be the place where a lot of folks can coalesce on this and looking at the state taking on more of that reimbursement," said Republican State Senator Kristin Phillips-Hill, co-chair of the Basic Education Funding Commission.
"I think we should start funding those students from the state, no longer making it a responsibility of the school district," Rothman added. "Everyone can agree to that, but then those kids are not counted in the daily membership and we fund schools based on a per kid."
Cyber charter officials said they do not oppose the state reimbursing districts, but reiterated they see the House bill as a threat to their operations.
They say any reduction in funding for public school students flies in the face of the Pennsylvania courts' ruling on education inequalities last year, pointing out that a high percentage of their students qualify for free or reduced lunches.
Democrats and Republicans agree charter school funding is putting a burden on school districts; it will be up to them to decide how to fix it.