Pittsburgh, Pa. − January 29, 2025 − Senator Lindsey M. Williams, Minority Chair of the Senate Education Committee, issues the following statement:
As chair of the Senate Education Committee, I take my oversight responsibilities of the Pennsylvania Department of Education (PDE) seriously. That is why I pay close attention to its consideration of cyber charter school applications.
Recently, Unbound Academic Institute applied to open an Artificial Intelligence-based cyber charter school here in Pennsylvania. After reviewing materials from this hearing, I was extremely concerned with its application, which proposes to use “guides” instead of teachers and relies exclusively on artificial intelligence for the mere two hours of daily instruction that students receive.
I was relieved to see that the PDE rejected Unbound’s application today. Pennsylvania families currently have 14 cyber charter schools to choose from, with unlimited seats, and all of them are failing students academically. We do not need another statewide cyber charter to siphon money away from local school districts and taxpayers.
Every one of Pennsylvania’s existing cyber charter schools has been identified as needing some level of support and improvement under the state’s accountability system. Additionally, PDE lacks the capacity needed to provide financial and academic oversight for these schools.
Despite this, Pennsylvanians already spend roughly $1 billion every year on tuition for our current cyber charter schools, making this one of the leading drivers of property tax increases. Tuition at these privately run, publicly funded schools is not tied to the actual cost of education, and many cyber charters bring in significantly more money than they spend on educating students – creating a slush fund of taxpayer money that cyber charter schools spend on non-school related purchases like dining, hotels, travel, cars, and entertainment.
A recent report by Education Voters of Pennsylvania found that Commonwealth Charter Academy, Pennsylvania’s largest cyber charter school, spent nearly $600,000 at car dealerships and car washes in one year and more than $115,000 for dining – including $5,000 to a vineyard.
I am calling for the legislature to enact my moratorium on the approval of new cyber charter schools until common sense, bipartisan reforms that legislators, school boards, and families across the state have been asking for can be implemented.
We must strengthen charter school accountability and transparency, prevent fraud, better serve high-need students, and ensure that neighborhood public schools are not adversely affected. I will continue to fight to secure these broader reforms – but in the meantime, a moratorium is needed to prevent this colossal problem from getting worse.
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