You have no buildings in cyber school!

Tuesday and Wednesday of this week, we visited Harrisburg to support cyber education. Each of our 13 student senators had their own story about why they choose to do cyber ed. They collected 100 letters from their classmates who had many different reasons for choosing cyber school. Our 13 student senators with very little training gave these letters to legislators by hand delivering the letters and dropping in on unsuspecting politicians. We also set up appoints with senators and representatives who I will mention in this post.

I like to call the reasons for choosing cyber school the three B's. Bullying, Bad grades, and Bad behavior. Bullying is a category that covers students being assaulted, attacked, or threatened physically or verbally, Many of our students have been bullied. Some of our students have been bullies themselves. Each has their own story that could fill several of my posts. Bad grades usually come when a student is unable to work at their own pace. They are defeated because they do not understand something, and do not have the time to get help or figure it out. The flexibility of cyber school allows students to work at their own pace or get tutoring help. Many of the 100 letters that we had gathered told that story. Bad behavior is not a very accurate description, but it does fit the rule of B. What I mean by bad behavior is really hyper activity, disorderliness, twitching, or even sickness. Included in this category is also disfigurement that would draw unwanted attention. I would like to add a fourth B to this mantra. The fourth B stands for buildings. School district personnel and legislators believe we have no buildings. This is wrong. Our cyber school has six buildings that we pay rent, mortgage or utilities on. Look at the top of the page to see examples of these buildings. Our mission was to communicate to the legislators that students had important reasons that they choose to by cyber schooled and that we have many of the same expenses as regular charter schools even though we receive 30% less funding for this reason. There is irony in our visit because our student government organization is an extra curricular activity that we also receive no funding for. This organization has sponsored two proms, two talents shows, numerous fundraisers, events, activities and  international and domestic trips annually for the past seven years.

We started our day be visiting Senator Mike Fulmer. He is the chairman of the senate education committee. Mike was informative and cordial to our students. He is new in this role and has an open mind. He is an advocate for parental choice in education which is also our desire. He asked us a great question. He asked if it would be fair if we could all be paid the same agreed upon amount for each student assigned to a cyber school. At the time I had not thought of that approach before. Now that I am home, I think it is a bad idea. If the PA Department of education were to add all of the individual allotments up from every school district for each student and divide by the number of school districts, minus special education, we would have an average amount for every student. The only problem with this strategy is that the districts who are richer would receive a bonus and the poorer districts would be forced to pay even more. While I am sympathetic to the idea of getting away from individual school boards establishing such unequal education allotments per student, I think this probably is the wrong way to go about it. A uniform payment for every student can not happen without reforming the entire funding of the state educational system.

The night before we had spoke with  Representative John Lawrence. He showed us some hand written letters from students. He said the he received as many as 500 a month. These letters were copied word for word from a teachers instruction. In the letters the students wrote about how money going to cyber schools was hurting their school. The ultimate betrayal of education is to indoctrinate young minds with opinion presented as fact. This is a mistake teachers can make when they are desperate for change. The ends justify the means in a process that opposes the values they embrace and teach. When we give into fear and in our confusion cheat with a quick fix to a problem we don't understand, then we must know that history will repeat itself in the future, and we may find ourselves on the other end of a future betrayal.

Representative Dan Truitt is a champion for cyber education and school choice. He has introduced two new bills to protect cyber schools. They are House Bill 970 and 971. These bills will allow cyber school funding to be reformed by having these schools report their expenses versus their revenues on an annual balance sheet. Unfortunately, cyber schools currently seem to be an easy target for funding cuts. When Dan attempts to defend cyber schools he has heard one consistent rebuttal. Cyber schools deserve a cut because they have no buildings.  When you ask a legislator if he has ever visited a cyber school they normally respond, no. Many legislators will never believe that we have buildings until they visit. We welcome them to come to 1332 Enterprise Drive, West Chester, PA 19380 or any of our other centers. I am sure that the other cyber schools will be happy to invite them as well. When legislators say we have no buildings, we should respond, look and see.