A $400 per month fuel stipend for every employee who comes into the office to work. Concessions, parking, and tickets to a major league baseball game for the whole family. Gift cards for groceries, Amazon, Target, Domino’s, and Dunkin’. Lavish budgets for commercial shoots, TV advertising, and expensive swag.

Perks for a fancy tech company? Line items for a Fortune 500 company?

No. These are just a few examples of what Pennsylvania’s cyber charter schools are spending money on — money they receive from school districts. These are tax dollars that home and business owners pay to their school districts that are intended to be invested in educating our communities’ children.

You might be wondering how this is possible. How do cyber charter schools have so much excess funding to waste when school districts often must raise property taxes just to be able to provide students with basic, essential resources? And how are cyber charter schools allowed to spend millions of school tax dollars every year on things completely unrelated to educating students?

The answers to these questions lie in Harrisburg. For more than two decades, state lawmakers have been unwilling to take action to reform Pennsylvania’s Charter School Law.

In 2002, the Pennsylvania legislature amended the Charter School Law to authorize the creation of cyber charter schools that would educate students in their homes via the internet. Pennsylvania’s Charter School Law mandates that school districts make tuition payments for students who live in their districts and enroll in a charter school.

The state-mandated tuition rates districts pay for both brick-and-mortar and cyber charter schools are based on what the district spends educating students in its buildings.

In 2024-25, tuition rates for regular education cyber charter students range from $7,659 to $28,959 per student per year. Rates for special education students range from $18,627 to $63,019 per student, regardless of the cost of services required by the student

These equivalent tuition rates may seem sensible at first glance, but operationally, they do not add up. Cyber charter schools educate students at home on a computer, not in a brick-and-mortar school. They do not need to employ security or maintenance/custodial staff or heat, cool, and maintain school district facilities, including libraries, labs, and grounds. Cyber charters’ operational and overhead costs simply do not add up to equal those of traditional public schools – yet the formula in state law requires school districts to pay cyber charter schools as though they do.

Auditor General Tim DeFoor recently documented the impact of Pennsylvania’s “outdated formula” for cyber charter schools in an audit of five cyber charters that his office conducted for the years 2021-2023. DeFoor found a staggering growth of cyber charter bank accounts (fund balances), which were packed with $619 million at the end of his audit period. Funding was so excessive that one cyber charter school had an unrestricted fund balance that was more than its total expenditures for that fiscal year.

The audit documented that one cyber charter spent $196 million during this time period acquiring and renovating 21 buildings, which DeFoor noted is “unusual” for a school where students are educated in their homes on a computer. The audit found millions spent by cyber charters on things unrelated to educating students like fuel stipends and parties. And our own research shows that cyber charters also waste millions on advertising and gift cards.

A current cyber charter reform proposal in Harrisburg would enact a flat tuition rate for all regular education students of $8,000, matching the tuition paid to cyber charters more closely with the actual cost of providing an online education.

This proposal would save $278 million annually, including more than $600,000 in annual savings for Warren County school districts, while ensuring cyber charters have ample funding to educate students at home on a computer.

These reforms would mean less pressure on districts to raise property taxes and more funding in communities that could be invested in hiring additional teachers, aides, counselors, and nurses in students’ classrooms or fixing leaky roofs, abating asbestos, or installing HVAC systems.

Pennsylvanians must demand that state lawmakers take decisive action this year and enact an $8,000 tuition rate for regular education students who attend cyber charter schools.

We cannot afford another year of inaction or half measures that will guarantee even more of our tax dollars will be packed into bank accounts or wasted by cyber charter schools on gas stipends, gift cards, advertising, and parties.

Susan Spicka, a Shippensburg resident, is executive director of Education Voters of PA.