Dear Families,
 
We need you!  On Wednesday, March 24th the House Education Committee will be voting on several bills.  Two of these bills would directly and adversely affect cyber charter schools.
 

• HB 483 - This bill would not permit a child to enroll in a cyber charter school if the child does not meet the age requirements of the home district.  Parents who choose a program for improving the early education of their child should not be denied this option.

• HB 2320  - This bill would force cyber charter schools to deal with truancy issues. It will end up forcing cyber charter schools to hire additional staff and incur significant expenses for the reporting requirements and attendance hearings all across the state.  Cyber charter schools enroll students from all of the 501 districts. This would cause a huge financial burden on our schools. The end result is that cyber charter schools are unlikely to enroll truant students leaving them with the school district or causing an older student to dropout of school.   Neither of these options is desirable for students or their families!

Together these bills begin the effort to kill cyber charter schools!

Please contact your legislator and also the members of the House Education Committee.  Call them and let them know you oppose these bills and want to protect public cyber education! Below is a list of members of the House Education Committee and their contact information. We must remain vigilant against attacks on our schools!

We need to show just how strongly we support our public cyber schools, and just how wrong it would be to consider anti-cyber school legislation.  Our message needs to be loud and clear, that our public cyber schools must be protected!


If you do not know who your legislator is, you can go to our website www.pacyberfamilies.org and click on useful links.  Click on “Find Your Legislator”.  On the next page enter your zip code in the upper right corner.  It will bring up a listing of your representative.


Our friends at PCCS have also written a letter to the House Education Committee to oppose these bills.  I have included their letter to the committee below.  I hope you will take a moment to read it.

Day on the Hill

Speaking of remaining vigilant, let’s all come together on May 25, 2010 for our 4th Annual Day on the Hill to show our state legislators just how serious we are about protecting schools that have done so much for our children.


We are going to be making a few changes to the event this year. We will not be meeting at the Capitol this year. This year we will be meeting in the Mall area near the State Museum on North Street. We will then be marching together from North Street down Commonwealth Avenue where we will then gather at the Capitol Fountain for the rally.


We hope we will see all of you there!  By doing this, we are going to let the Legislature know that we’re watching – and WE ARE COMING!


Keep moving forward!

Cindy Strausburger
President

Here is a list of House Education Committee Members:

 

Majority members:                                    Capitol Number                             District Number

Rep. James Roebuck                                   717-783-1665                               215-724-2227

Rep. Ken Smith                                          717-780-4757                               570-372-2845

Rep. Richard Grucela                                  717-705-1878                               610-614-1312

Rep. Barbara McIvaine-Smith                      717-705-1922                               610-696-4990

Rep. John Yudichak                                     717-787-1751                              570-740-7031

Rep. Mike Carroll                                        717-787-3589                              570-655-4883

Rep. H. Scott Conklin                                  717-780-4764                              814-238-5477

Rep. Lawrence Curry                                   717-783-1079                              215-572-5210

Rep. Patrick Harkins                                    717-787-7406                              814-459-1949

Rep. Mark Longietti                                     717-772-4035                              724-981-4655

Rep. Michael O’Brien                                   717-783-8098                              215-503-7850

Rep. John Pallone                                       717-783-1819                              724-339-1990

Rep. Chelsa Wagner                                   717-783-1582                              412-343-2094

Rep. Jake Wheatley                                    717-783-3783                              412-471-7760

Rep. Rosita Youngblood                               717-787-7727                              215-849-6426 

Minority Members: 

Rep. Paul Clymer                                        717-783-3154                              215-257-0279

Rep. Will Tallman                                        717-783-8875                              717-633-1721

Rep. Bernie O’Neill                                      717-705-7170                              215-441-2627

Rep. Thomas Quigley                                  717-772-9963                              610-718-5787

Rep. Kathy Rapp                                         717-787-1367                              814-728-3564

Rep. Bryan Cutler                                        717-783-6424                             717-786-4551

Rep. Mike Fleck                                           717-787-3335                             814-644-2996

Rep. Duane Milne                                        717-787-8579                             610-251-1070

Rep. Thomas Murt                                       717-787-6885                             215-674-3021

Rep. Mike Reese                                          717-783-9311                            724-423-2812

Rep. Todd Rock                                            717-783-5218                            717-749-7384 

Letter from PCCS to the House Education Committee:

March 22, 2010

 

Honorable James Roebuck                                    Honorable Paul Clymer

Chairman, House Education Committee            Republican Chairman, House Education Committee

Harrisburg, PA  17101                                    Harrisburg, PA  17101

Via fax

RE:            HB 483(PN535);  HB 2320 (PN 3345);  HB 2328 (PN 3353)

Dear Chairmen Roebuck and Clymer:

 

On behalf of the members of the Pennsylvania Coalition of Charter Schools, representing nearly 110 charter schools—both “Cyber” Charter Schools and “Bricks and Mortar” schools—who educate students from every school district in the Commonwealth, I write in strong opposition to each of these bills listed above.

Each one of these bills will harm charter schools in Pennsylvania.  Collectively, if enacted, these bills would create serious hardships to Charter Schools and, in some cases, imperil the very existence of some Charter Schools.

Before briefly addressing each bill, I must note that these bills are being offered neither to fix an alleged problem with Charter Schools, nor are they being offered to help our schools or our students.  Rather, each bill, in enacted, would either deprive a school, or student, of a service; or place an undue burden on a Charter School.  This is misguided and regrettable.

 

HB 483 (PN 535): This bill would harm our schools by forcing them to reduce the services that they offer to students.  Charter Schools were created, among other reasons, to help create education alternatives and to allow academic programs to be created to fill needs that are missing in traditional public schools. This bill goes against the very essence of charter schools and creates a dangerous precedent.

If today you legislate that charters may not educate Pre-K students, unless the local school district also offers that service, perhaps tomorrow you will decide that charters may not offer Spanish or AP Chemistry or Remedial Mathematics, if the local district doesn’t offer the same courses.

Finally, this legislation is in direct contrast to Governor Rendell’s Pre-K Counts initiative.  This bill goes against current law and future goals.

HB 2320 (PN3345): While this bill may have an admirable goal—i.e., keeping kids in school—its approach is unduly burdensome to Charter Schools.

This legislation would require that a student’s attendance (truancy) record ought to travel with him from a traditional public school to Cyber Charter School.  Fair enough.  The problem is that this bill places the burden of collecting records on the Cyber Charter.  Worse yet, this bill places the cost and administration of prosecution on the Cyber Charter—in the student’s home district.

In other words--for purposes of this example, a Cyber Charter student living in the Erie School District and now attending a Cyber Charter based in Philadelphia might be one day away from being legally “truant.  If he misses that next day, the Philadelphia-based Cyber Charter School not only would have to know that he is now “truant,” but also, bring the student before a District Magistrate in Erie.   This is an unfunded, unwise mandate.

 

HB 2328 (PN 3353):  This bill will achieve no goal other than depriving bona fide choices to parents, when selecting a Charter School.  By depriving transportation to students seeking to attend a Charter School, many Charter Schools will no longer be a realistic option for parents.

Again, the objectives—when creating Charter Schools—were to offer parents meaningful choices, encourage competition and to allow Charter Schools to meet the needs of students who were not having their needs met in traditional public schools.

Depriving Charter Schools of transportation and depriving Charter Schools of transportation-funding is unfair and unwise.  Before considering this bill, I urge the committee to amend it to include direct funding to charter schools for transportation when districts choose not to offer their own transportation.  Allowing districts to keep transportation money and not offer it is unfair both to the taxpayers and to the families who choose to send their children to a charter school.

Respectfully, these bills will each harm Charter Schools; and, not one of them will improve education in one school, nor for one child.  Collectively, these bills take away services and choices from our students and their families; and, place undue burdens on Charter Schools.  Therefore, we request a “No” vote on each bill.

Sincerely,

Lawrence F. Jones, Jr.

President, PCCS