Stop House Bill 530 In Pennsylvania | Diane Ravitch's blog:
Stop House Bill 530 In Pennsylvania
House Bill 530: Stop this last minute attempt to push bad charter expansion bill in the final week of session
The General Assembly is preparing to push charter expansion legislation under House Bill 530 all the way through in this final week of voting for the 2015-16 legislative session and send this bad bill to Gov. Wolf. Conversations in the House and Senate are happening now to fast-track this bill to the governor’s desk by the end of the week. Between Monday and Wednesday, House Bill 530 is expected to be moved out of the House Rules Committee and sent to the House floor for quick passage. The bill will then move directly to the Senate Floor for a concurrence vote. Final action could occur within 48 hours, so your action against this bill now is critical.
We need to STOP House Bill 530! Please send the prepared letter that is available by clicking on the Take Action button. This is a NEW letter that has been prepared to be sent to members of BOTH the House and Senate, so if you sent one to House members last week, please send this latest version. This letter will also be sent to Gov. Wolf.In addition, please call, text or tweet your members of the Houseand Senateand tell them not to push this bill through in these final session days. Use the talking points below. House Bill 530 creates numerous changes to the Charter School Law, but does not provide real, meaningful reforms or relief from increasing charter funding costs. Tell your House and Senate members to vote NO on this bad legislation. House Bill 530 is not taxpayer friendly because: - It does nothing to address the fact that charters continue to be overpaid for special education costs. In 2014-15, school districts overpaid charter schools more than $101.7 million more than the expenditures actually reported by charters.
- It does nothing to address that fact that charter tuition payments continue to wreak havoc on local school district budgets. Since 2007-08, tuition payments from school districts to charter schools have increased 139.3%.
- Instead, House Bill 530 creates a statewide advisory commission to explore funding issues that doesn’t even include school directors, even though they are charter school authorizers and responsible for the budget and taxing decisions in their districts. This is not a balanced step toward reform.
- It includes provisions to allow charter schools to have significantly higher fund balances than school districts and it removes the ability of school districts to negotiate with charter schools for discounts on tuition rates.
House Bill 530 is not real reform because: - It does nothing to address fraud, waste and abuse by charter management companies
- It falsely purports to set tighter rules for financial transparency and accountability when in fact such provisions that are already required.
- It enables the expansion of charter schools with less accountability and dilutes existing authorizer oversight.
- More charter school proponents are added to the state Charter School Appeal Board.
House Bill 530 makes charter schools less accountable because: - School districts’ ability to revoke charters for poor performance is reduced by forcing them to use a new performance matrix to measure the academic performance of charter schools and to assess renewal terms. Oh, and guess who creates this matrix? A commission comprised of members that is weighted in favor of charter school representatives.
- It expands charter renewal terms and further removes authorizer oversight.
- It allows charter schools to ignore student enrollment caps
- Charter schools are not required to use the state-developed evaluation system for teacher and principals required for school districts.
What House Bill 530 does: - Eliminates the ability to compare charter schools and their sending school districts and undermines the original intent of the Charter School Law to create schools that provide something above and beyond what is provided by traditional public schools.
- Instead, it makes new rules that only benefit charter schools at the expense of students, school districts, and local taxpayers.
- Allows unchecked expansion of charter schools
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Stop House Bill 530 In Pennsylvania | Diane Ravitch's blog:
