February 20, 2025 - Harrisburg, PA
Auditor General Timothy L. DeFoor today released a performance audit of five cyber charter schools which shows from 2020 to 2023, they legally increased revenues by $425 million and reserves by 144%, due in part to an outdated funding formula that does not use actual instruction costs to determine tuition, set guidelines for spending or set limits for cyber charter school reserve funds."I am now the third auditor general to look at this issue and the third to come to the same conclusion: the cyber charter funding formula needs to change to reflect what is actually being spent to educate students and set reasonable limits to the amount of money these schools can keep in reserve," Auditor General DeFoor said. "Our recommendation is that in the next six months the Governor should appoint a task force to review the funding formula and direct it to issue a report within nine months determining a new formula that is equitable, reasonable and sustainable, and the General Assembly should act within six months of the taskforce's report to facilitate the enactment of legislation. The most important thing we can do is to provide our children with a quality education and as leaders we need to set our personal agendas aside and fix how we fund education in this state."Speaker list:Auditor General Timothy DeFoorGordon Denlinger, Deputy Auditor General for Audits
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