Competition Between Local Public and Charter Schools Intensifying

Writing for The Mercury, Frank Otto does a masterful job surveying the changing landscape of public education in Phoenixville and mapping the (mostly friendly) competition between and upstart charter school for students and dollars.

In Otto’s telling, the market for Pennsylvania students opened in earnest in 1997, when the state legislature passed Act 22: a bill that mandated public school districts pay charter schools a fixed dollar figure, calculated by a formula that considers the school's budget and expenses, for each potential student of theirs that chooses to pursue their education in a charter.

For every student Phoenixville loses to a charter school like Renaissance, it pays $12,900. Neighboring Boyertown loses $8,343, while Spring-Ford pays $9,087 and Pottstown is billed $8,955. For each special needs student PASD loses, it pays $28,100. Currently, 347 students who live in the district attend charter or cyber schools.

The growing popularity of charter schools, and the consequently growing bill for the school district, hasn’t gone unnoticed. With budgets tightening across the state, public schools have ramped up their efforts to retain their students, or even peel a few back off the rolls of their charter competition.

See part one here and part two here.