Another Twist in the Cyber School $6.4 Million Funding Chase

by David Safier

I have to admit, the more I read about the $6.4 million overfunding related to Arizona Cyber Charter Schools, the more confused I get. I thought I had this issue pretty well sorted out, but a comment by AZ Interested has me wondering.

The Performance Audit of TAPBI Schools (TAPBI is the term used to describe cyber schools) talks about a $6.4 million overfunding, but it says “the TAPBI program” was overfunded, not the TAPBI schools. It may sound like a distinction without a difference, but looking at this carefully, it could be a very significant difference.

A reasonable portion of the overfunding may have gone to brick-and-mortar schools who shared students with the Cyber Charter Schools, not to the Cyber schools themselves. An example of the overfunding in the audit shows a Cyber school getting its proper proportion of funds based on the proportion of time a student spent at the school, while the public brick-and-mortar school was funded as if the student was there full time, not part time. That would result in overfunding, but, contrary to what I wrote before, the beneficiary was the public school, not the Cyber school.

Other problems with overfunding that went directly to the Cyber Charter schools are clearer. Some of the schools enrolled more students who were not previously in public schools than was allowed by law. Also, the Dept of Ed funds students who take summer courses at the Cyber schools, while it doesn’t fund summer school students in public schools. Both of those resulted in more money going to TAPBI funding than would have been spent if the students had attended brick-and-mortar schools.

Put all three types of overfunding together, and you get a total of $6.4 million.

If what I’ve written here is correct, my concerns about overfunding of the charter schools have been overstated. Other issues, like the administrative costs, which are double those of the average public schools, and some very high salaries for top administrators, are still troubling. The performance audit also raises questions as to whether the overall per-student funding is higher than it should be relative to the costs of educating students online. But it looks like the issue I was focusing on was of less concern than I thought.

If I find out I’ve got it wrong this time, I’ll write another post.