Cyber school supporters say charter commission depriving students

By D. Aileen Dodd

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

The Georgia Charter Schools Commission is facing another legal fight over how it divvies up funding.

Georgia Families for Public Virtual Education will be bringing its attorney to the Aug. 19 commission meeting to urge the board to reconsider a move the group says “illegally” sets insufficient funding  for cyber schools, which teach via the Internet.

The commission has decided to fund cyber charters at a lower level than traditional charter campuses. Charters in buildings receive a combination of federal and state funds plus a controversial local matching share of tax dollars. Cyber charters receive everything but the local matching share. Georgia Cyber Academy, the state's only virtual school, has about 6,000 students.

Cyber school supporters say they are not looking for full funding but virtual schools need substantially more money to educate students competitively.

"The very law that creates the commission is what the commission has violated,” said attorney Doug Rosenbloom, who recently wrote the commission on behalf of the parents group. “The explicit purpose of HB 881 is to provide sufficient funding for charter schools. The commission is not doing its homework.”

Rosenbloom said the commission arbitrarily set funding for cyber charters at $3,200 per student after relying on research from the governor's budget staff without independently investigating actual costs for a virtual education.

The funding offered to cyber charters is less than half the state average per pupil of $8,000 paid to other public schools. In a letter to the commission, Roosenbloom criticized the funding formula for cyber charters, saying it was "a mere fraction of the funds they require and to which they are legally entitled."

The flap comes as the commission faces a state Supreme Court challenge over its existence and power to authorize and fund charter campuses not approved by local districts.

Mark Peevy, executive director of the commission, said the board is not required to offer cyber charters a matching local share of education dollars in whole or in part. "I don't think the commission is violating any laws."

Peevy said the board already planned to discuss cyber school funding next week.  “If our funding level isn’t sufficient enough to attract high-quality virtual charter schools to Georgia, then we want to start a discussion about how we change the funding level,” he said.

Kaplan Academy of Georgia and Provost Academy Georgia, approved to open in August, recently backed out, saying they could not provide students with a quality education and pay for teachers, computers and electives like art on the money the state was offering. The national funding average for virtual charters is about $6,500 per student.

"The fact that the only two virtual schools approved by the commission withdrew ... due to inadequate funding is a very strong statement," said Tony Roberts, CEO of Georgia Charter Schools Association. "Charter schools generally do a great job managing with tight budgets. But they are not miracle workers. They have to have sufficient funding to serve students if we want them to succeed."