Are Arizona Virtual Schools Overfunded?

by David Safier

(TASL) The Virtual Schools folks are nothing if not organized. They continue to fight the battle against state cuts to online school funding. Their latest salvo: An op ed in the Republic complaining that the legislature is planning to cut virtual school funding. The author, Ann Robinett, is the president of a group that calls itself Arizona Parents for Education which, not surprisingly, only cares about funding for online schools.

A few months ago, virtual schools supporters were urged to take part in a letter writing campaign and a demonstration in front of the state capitol. These folks are organized and tenacious.

The Arizona Parents for Education website, by the way, is only a little more than a month old, and it’s very slick. Ann Robinett, who depicts herself as a concerned parent, is either a very capable web designer and public relations professional, or the site was put together by the Arizona Distance Education Association, the lobbying arm of the Virtual Schools. My guess is the second option. For me, the name is a giveaway: Arizona Parents for Education. Nonprofessional activists normally don’t come up with clever, deceptive titles like that.

A state legislator I was talking to said he didn’t believe Virtual Schools were being targeted for cuts in the current budget. He viewed all the noise as a preemptive show of strength, to warn legislators about the fuss they can expect if they make any cuts.

But maybe cuts in virtual schools are warranted. The 2007 Report from the State Auditor General seems to think so.

Here’s some information about virtual school costs from the audit. Administrative costs are $500 higher per student at virtual schools than the state school average: $1200 as opposed to $700 per student. But that average hides some ridiculously high administrative costs at a few schools. At Arizona Distance Learning, the administrative cost is $3134 per student, and three other virtual charter schools are above $1500. Other schools have lower administrative costs, which brings the average figure down.

One reason for the high administrative costs is — surprise! — high administrative salaries. Three of the schools reported that their top administrators had salaries between $71,000 and $187,000. Similarly sized brick-and-mortar schools gave their top administrators between $65,000 and $81,000.

Take a breath. Look at that figure again. The state is paying CEOs or Directors at publicly funded virtual schools upwards to $187,000. Since the largest of these schools has 1400 students and the next largest has 700 students, you can roughly compare that CEO to a principal at a 1500 student high school or a 700 student middle school.

It was hard for the audit to dig too deeply in the way money was spent at these virtual schools, because many of the schools haven’t been complying with the state requirement “to prepare an annual report that includes a description of their program’s cost-effectiveness.” In other words, we’re dealing with faith-based funding here. The state says to the virtual school, you tell us what you need, and we’ll give it to you.

Once again, I’m jumping into this topic without knowing all the facts. I’ll try to learn more. I hope some people from the virtual schools will help us out with some facts and figures. (Please don’t try and spin this with vague assertions about how well you serve special needs students and dropouts. Let’s have something concrete.) But something smells wrong here.

One final note about the amount virtual high schools spend per student. According to the audit, Primavera High School (a virtual school) spends $7,345 per student. Arizona Distance Learning school spends $7,159. Does the state give these schools more than others that spend in the $5,000 to $6,000 range? If not, where is all that extra money coming from?