Charter and cyber schools were a talking point at Tuesday night’s Tamaqua Area School Board meeting.

Business manager Connie Ligenza said 163 total district area students opt for charter school; 20 attend Gillingham Charter School, Pottsville; and the rest attend schools such as Commonwealth Charter Academy and other alternative cyber/charter options.

She shared the most recent figures from the end of last fiscal year.

“It’s a moving target, but we expended $1.863 million in charter school costs,” Ligenza said. “Out of that, $340,000 were for Gillingham, the rest were cyber/charter.”

Superintendent Ray Kinder said the district is in communication with these students every year.

“Every year, we communicate with our students that have chosen to leave our charter schools and go elsewhere and try to encourage them to come back with the things we are able to offer them that perhaps they’re not receiving at other places,” Kinder added.

While some students leave for one reason, or another, there are others within the district who never attended public school.

“There is that segment of the population. There are certain requirements we have as a public school to be able to monitor and things like that, and often times, people leave because public school system - because they’re trying to avoid things,” Kinder said. “We hope to get those people back in our building as soon as we possibly can.”

Kinder said funding is based per student - whether the student is a regular or special education student.

“The formula, which is the thing that is highly debatable right now, is that essentially, we provide way more compensation to cyber/charter schools than is necessary, or to be honest with you, than they should be entitled to.

“We’re giving them this funding as if those schools are other brick- and-mortar schools which have lights to turn on, facilities to keep up and all of those types of things.”

Tamaqua offers virtual options, with separate asynchronous and synchronous schedules.

“Synchronous obviously allows you to log into your class schedule and go along with it during the day and be able to have the same teachers that you would have normally if you were in the building.

“Asynchronous is offered more at the younger level for the students. … The asynchronous instruction for those students has significant interactive information online for students to be able to utilize.”

Kinder said he expected some students and families to pursue other virtual and charter options during the pandemic, but hoped that TASD’s cyber programs would offset that number of students.

“We believe that we have done an excellent job with our cyber programs and our virtual academy that we have. However, we still will contend that the best learning experience for the vast majority of students is in front of a trained instructor each day, in a classroom, with the social interactions that occur in the building.”