It was a good experience. The caucus room was filled with cyber school teachers, administrators, parents and students. The capitol rotunda was filled with students, parents, and teachers. They simulcast the meeting on monitors in the rotunda, so cheers of affirmation could be heard in the caucus room from the cavernous rotunda to emphasize our points. :)
First up was Representative Joe Emrick. I was impressed with the first line of his introduction. He said that he was an athlete, believed in "establishing a level playing field," and thought that his bill accomplished this. This caused me to wonder if he had read my BLOG post the night before and borrowed from my words. I apologize to Representative Joe Emrick for misunderstanding this issue in my former BLOG post. Former Auditor General Wagner identified that these funds were in essence paid twice. However, the double dip is more like one and a half times the cost of pensions, instead of twice the amount. This is because of the reimbursements that cyber charters are required to make to schools for facilities and transportation. Sometimes it is not until after legislation is passed that we realize that it is a mistake. Step into my time capsule, and I will explain why this bill is a bad idea. Cyber Charter Schools are already paying their employees less than their brick and mortar counter parts. These lower salaries and even larger cuts will lead to even further cuts in pensions. The end result of this could mean a dis-satisfied faculty that is more likely to seek a union. If a charter school has a union, will it likely be less innovative? If our purpose is innovation and even "a model," then how do we do this with the change-resisting agent of a teacher’s union in education?
Mike Reese gave his presentation next. I am certain that both Mr. Reese and Emrick are sincere in their intentions to reform charter schools. I respectfully suggest that they are sincerely wrong. Representative Dan Truitt did a masterful job of asking questions that got to the root of the issue. “Are cyber charter school students less important than the other students in The Commonwealth”? The Reese bill would cut funding from cyber charter schools by permitting the school districts to determine a formula which will cut up to 50 percent of the costs of any cyber program they offer to their own resident students. The problem with this cost cutting tactic is that it is a classic fox watching the hen house scenario. The tension in the room today testifies of this reality. Dan Tuitt offered two bills that were as Mr. Roebuck said “not discussable in this hearing.” They are HB 970 and 971. They cut cyber charter funding by requiring cyber schools to add line items to the expense report balance sheet that they submit annually. This seems like a more practical solution and also encourages innovation by cutting expenses in a way where these “laboratories of innovation” can cut expenses and still maximize cyber learning.
The school board association spoke in support of the two bills. They perceive themselves as schools of the last resort. They made a valid point that they are unfairly required to incrementally reduce expenses by the amount that their revenues are reduced by cyber charter and charter school reimbursement. It is here that I feel we missed an opportunity today. It seems to me that one of the by products of this hearing is it separated the cyber school movement from the charter school movement. Both types of schools have always supported each other in the fight for education reform. We should emphasize our solidarity with one another, which we successfully did; however, we could have better expressed our brotherhood with our brick and mortar charter schools. I agreed with the business manager of Spring Grove School District when he made the point above. It is not fair for administrators to have an incremental drain in revenues when they have no accompanying cut in expenses. I would also make the point that if this proposed legislation is passed, then the smaller cyber charter schools providing different innovative practices could be bankrupted more easily than the larger cyber schools. Is the goal of charter school reform to cut expenses at the price of cutting innovation in education?
Senator Jeff Piccola and Joanne Barnett did a brilliant job giving testimony on behalf of cyber charter schools. The only thing I would have changed may have been the importance of linking our interests with the charter schools that we became a force of change with in 1997. An unfortunate by product of these hearings could be to divide and conquer our mutual interests. This is the reason for the BLOG title. "The cyber and the charters should be friends." In our fight for education reform, we should not forget our roots.
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