Today’s state budget negotiations feel like a game of UNO – find a match, skip, reverse, lose a turn. It’s not a fun game for the schools and vital programs that have been dealt a financially losing hand with the budget delay.

Senate Republican players are holding their cards close, so we don’t know their next move, but we do know that the Democrats and Republicans can’t find a match on education funding (among other issues, like SEPTA).

Republican Senate Majority Leader Joe Pittman has even signaled his interest in throwing down the reverse card on the new fair – and constitutional – education funding formula the legislature agreed on just last year.

If Senate Republicans play a cost-saving wild card – cyber charter tuition reform – it would be a gamechanger.  

Local public school districts – already underfunded by the state by $4 billion – pay over $1 billion in cyber charter tuition a year because, when a local student enrolls in a cyber charter, school districts pay that cyber charter what the district spends per student. This is much more than the cost of educating a student online, as evidenced by the fact that just five of the 13 cyber charters are sitting on $619 million in unspent taxpayer dollars.    

The cyber charter school funding system is deeply flawed and in need of urgent reform because cyber charters are literally taking money away from students across the Commonwealth.

Governor Shapiro introduced a budget that would keep $378 million in public school classrooms, not cyber charter bank accounts. The House Democrats passed legislation last month that would save school districts $619 million, meaningful reform that would benefit all 500 school districts across Pennsylvania.

These are winning strategies for kids. But it’s not just Democrats advocating for reform. Here’s what prominent Republicans are saying.

• “The cyber charter funding formula needs to change to reflect what is actually being spent to educate students.” – Tim DeFoor, Pennsylvania’s Republican Auditor General
• “When you consider the fact that school districts have numerous expenses and mandates that do not apply to charter schools…a difference in [tuition] funding makes perfect sense.” – Robert Gleason, who led the state Republican Party for over a decade

No side in Harrisburg is holding all the cards in the negotiations but they must not ‘dis-card’ Pennsylvania’s students or taxpayers through the process. If they do, the future of our Commonwealth will be losing a lot more than their turn.