York City School District is under Act 141 status, which is essentially the public education version of Act 47 municipal financial distress. It even has a recovery officer and a recovery plan. That plan found that of 7,658 school age students in the District, 5,130 (67%) attended one of the District’s schools, and 2,450 (32%) attended a charter or cyber charter school (the remainder attended an alternative school). The plan noted “a growing share of the total student enrollment is moving away from the District schools to charter schools” and survey data seems to indicate that parents are very satisfied with the results of the charters.
The recovery officer is proposing to turn over three of the District’s schools to charter management while leaving the remaining five in the hands of the District. Student progress and parent satisfaction would be measured and, after four years “…whichever model was working better would be pursued”. A third party would monitor the progress.
Of course, members of the teachers’ union are not happy with the proposal, even as they can see with their eyes the movement of children to charters. One of the complaints is that the company that could manage the schools might “pump its own money into schools”—here is a guess that many of York’s teachers are strongly in support of more funding via new taxes.
