Education chief: Variety is important
-
Pennsylvania Secretary of Education Ron Tomalis says now is the time to offer education alternatives.
Share with others:
The competition that charter schools create for traditional public school systems is good and should help to improve educational quality, according to state Education Secretary Ron Tomalis.
Mr. Tomalis, meeting Thursday with Post-Gazette editorial board members, said he supports the choices that charter schools, cyber charter schools and school vouchers, if legislators approve them, offer to parents and students.
He said now is the time to offer alternatives because a new generation of parents will be seeking choices in their children's education. He added that leaders of traditional public schools care more about the money they lose in tuition to charter schools than the students they lose.
"They don't care about the child leaving, they just want the money to stay," Mr. Tomalis said. "You would think they would want their program to be so compelling that [students] want to stay."
Tuition is paid to charter schools by the home school districts of each student. Until this year, districts were reimbursed for about a third of the cost of the lost tuition.
But the current state education budget cut out those reimbursements, leaving huge holes in some districts' budgets.
The secretary said charter schools are becoming such a popular choice that if all of the students were in one district, it would be the second-largest in the state.
He said he was pleased that some local school districts have started their own cyber programs in an effort to attract students back to the districts. He said school districts should create more innovative programs to keep or bring back students.
"That's competition. That's exactly the way you want it to work," Mr. Tomalis said.
Thomas Gentzel, executive director of the Pennsylvania School Boards Association, said he disagrees with Mr. Tomalis' contention that public school officials worry more about money than about losing students.
First Published September 23, 2011 12:00 am
