Arizona Charter Schools: The Good, The Bad, and The Costly, Part 3: Cyber Schools Fight to Protect Funding

by David Safier

(For background on this post, link to Part 1 and Part 2 of this series.)

Last Tuesday, 800 Charter Cyber School advocates gathered in Phoenix to demand, “Don’t cut our funding!” There has been a move afoot, they were told, to cut some 20% from funding for Cyber Schools. The event was covered by the Citizen and the Arizona Republic.

Who wants to cut funding for Cyber Schools? That’s not clear. Certainly not Tom Horne, who spoke at the rally against funding cuts. The Citizen article says cuts have been “proposed during closed-door budget meetings.”

After reading the articles a few times trying to figure out what the story was, I found a clue in The Citizen article. Apparently, “last year the auditor general concluded that the program [which included funding for Cyber Schools] had been overfunded by about $6.4 million.” The reason is: “40 percent of distance learning students were concurrently enrolled in brick-and-mortar schools.”

It makes sense that the state should spend no more than 100% for a student, right? If that student splits time between two schools, each school should get a piece of the pie. But I guess right now, Cyber Schools are claiming more than their due amount for some of these students.

I’m not good at reading bills, but I think this all revolves around HB 2816. In its current form, it states:

If a pupil is enrolled in a school district or charter school and also participates in the technology assisted project-based instruction program, the sum of the average daily membership, . . . shall not exceed 1.0.

Currently, in other words, each student should have one student’s worth of funds following him/her, and right now $6.4 million is being double dipped by the Cyber Schools.

But there is a revision to that section of the bill adding this clause to the end of the previous sentence:

EXCEPT THAT IF THE PUPIL IS PARTICIPATING IN A JOINT TECHNOLOGICAL EDUCATION DISTRICT THE AVERAGE DAILY MEMBERSHIP SHALL NOT EXCEED 1.25.

I read that to mean, if a student is enrolled in a Cyber School, the state can kick in another 25% to the regular student allotment. (Here is the text of HB2816.)

This, I think, is what it’s all about. Not that Cyber Schools are in danger of getting less money than other Charter Schools, but that students enrolled in both Cyber and brick-and-mortar schools should get 25% more.

If I’m right, the entire campaign by the industry’s lobbyist, the Arizona Distance Education Association, and Tom Horne’s righteous defense of Cyber School funding, is a lie, or, to be fair, a quarter truth. They are in fact defending extra funding going to Cyber Schools, when they claim they are trying to stop a cut in funds.

(For some background on the lobbying campaign, here is an email from the lobbying group sent to parents and others. It ends with a list of legislators to contact.)

The legislature, at a time of budget restraints, shouldn’t be slipping in extra funding so that Cyber Schools can get more than is their fair share of state funds.