Pennsylvania Bill Would Toss 35,000 Kids Out of Their Cyber Charter Schools – By Eric Boehm (Reason) / Jan 27 2020
“They’re trying to force us to put our children in the district school,” says Stefaine D’Amico, whose three kids attend online classes that could be abolished. “That’s not fair.”
When Stefaine D’Amico’s son Bobby became a target for bullies at school, she saw how the boy changed. He stopped enjoying school, and his progress faltered. He became emotionally withdrawn. Worst of all, the teachers and administrators at Bobby’s school didn’t seem capable of dealing with the situation.
“He slid back. His whole focus was the social [aspect]—you know, ‘Are these kids gonna accept me? Who is going to tease me today?'” D’Amico recalls. “As a parent, your hands are tied, and the school district isn’t helping, you just feel so frustrated.”
More than six years ago, before Bobby entered the sixth grade, D’Amico made the choice to pull her son out of the middle school in Marple-Newtown School District and enroll him in one of Pennsylvania’s so-called cyber charter schools—online education programs where students from any of the state’s 500 traditional public school districts can complete coursework and earn a high school diploma from home. It has made all the difference, D’Amico says. Bobby is now a high school senior, eager to graduate and head off to college to study filmmaking.
But Bobby might be one of the state’s last graduates from a cyber charter school, if one state lawmaker has his way. Under the terms of a bill that’s working its way through the state House this month, all of Pennsylvania’s cyber charter schools could be shuttered, leaving their 35,000 students scrambling to find limited spaces in brick-and-mortar charter schools and possibly forcing them to return to the traditional school districts they fled. That would include Bobby’s two younger siblings, both of whom are following his path through the Agora Cyber Charter School.
State Rep. Curt Sonney (R–Erie), chairman of the House Education Committee and the bill’s sponsor, says his goal is to “eliminate the tension between school districts and cyber charter schools.”
It would indeed do that—and more.
Continue to article: https://reason.com/2020/01/27/pennsylvania-could-shut-down-cyber-charter-schools-eliminating-choice-for-35000-students/
