PHILADELPHIA – A Pennsylvania lawmaker wants to simplify the way the state provides financial support to cyber charter schools, but some are concerned the move could put the schools at risk.

State Rep. Jim Christina believes the Pennsylvania Department of Education should make payments to cyber charter schools directly, rather than through the state’s school districts, which is currently the case, Watchdog.org reports.

The way the system works now, payments to all charter schools are processed through the local school district in which they do business, using a per-pupil formula. But because cyber charter schools encompass the entire state, payments could come from any number of Pennsylvania’s 500 districts, according to the news site.

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“The General Assembly has a choice. We can tinker with a broken funding mechanism or establish a long-term solution,” Christina told Watchdog.org.

Christina introduced HB 2174 to give the Department of Education authority to make payments to charter schools directly, and to appropriate funding for the payments. Some charter school leaders, however, are concerned about how such an appropriation process could potentially backfire, the news site reports.

“Any legislature antagonistic to cyber charter schools could overnight destroy this class of schools by simply underfunding them or completely defunding them,” Jim Hanak, CEO of PA Leadership Charter School, told Watchdog.

Christina’s bill was assigned to the House Education Committee last week, Watchdog reports.

The idea of the state paying cyber charter schools directly seems to make a lot of sense. There are roughly 32,000 cyber charter school students in the state from as many as 500 different school districts, so it’s easy to see how complex it can be for cyber schools to track and collect funding for each student.

Funneling all of the payments into one funding stream, however, also seems to increase the risk that lawmakers sympathetic with the state’s teachers unions could more easily pull the plug on cyber schools, which are regarded as threats to the traditional public school monopoly that the unions depend on.

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Perhaps lawmakers could find a solution that both streamlines the system and protects cyber school financing from political attacks. Cyber schools obviously fit the needs of many students, and they shouldn’t be left at the mercy of Democratic politicians who will cut off their funding the first chance they get, just to please their allies in the teachers unions.