Cyber charter schools in Pennsylvania are a different animal from the run-of-the-mill public school.

A charter school is still a public institution. It doesn’t play by the same rules, however. It could have a different goal or a different method - like focus on a nontraditional curriculum or an unusual teaching method. It doesn’t have the same school board oversight, although local boards are part of the charter approval process.

A cyber charter is similar with the key difference of having no physical classroom. Instead, students are issued computers - sometimes tablets, too - and log onto their classes from home.

Charters of all kinds still get public money for operation, but they get it through the districts where the students live. What does the district spend per child on education? That provides a baseline for the “tuition” a district pays the charter school for each child. It might be as low as $8,600 or as high as $26,500 depending on where you live.

A physical charter needs to put the money toward teachers and instructional materials, but also a building and desks and the other tangible aspects of running a school. A cyber charter doesn’t.

To be fair, there are other costs an online-based program needs to maintain in a way a physical school doesn’t. More servers, more tech support, all the equipment a regular school district or physical charter might put off for a year are the equivalent of a roof or plumbing. They are the infrastructure that makes it work.

But do they cost the same? Do they require the same investment from districts or the state?

Gov. Josh Shapiro has proposed changing the way cyber charters are funded. Instead of varying by geography, every district would pay a flat $8,000 per student. (Let’s keep in mind, this is only a proposal right now.)

The plan is something that appeals to the districts. Jeannette School District, for example, would save $420,000 a year under the plan - about 30% of the $1.4 million it pays now. Allegheny Valley School District would cut its cyber charter costs by about 50%.

Cyber charters bristle at the idea and point to the way their expenses increase in other areas because of the lack of physical space - including reimbursing families for internet costs. Timothy Eller, senior vice president of outreach and government relations for Commonwealth Charter Academy, suggested it was unconstitutional and in conflict with the governor’s promise that no school will see a funding decrease.

Leveling the playing field for all districts makes sense. It is questionable whether dropping cyber charter funding below the lowest amount paid previously would be beneficial to those students. Could it incentivize some schools on the $26,000 payment end to offload low-performing students to cyber charters as a cost-saving measure?

Other districts question the lack of transparency about budgeting or being held to different standards than charters.

Perhaps providing a fair solution is to ask cyber charters which issue is more critical to their mission. Would they rather have the higher funding and not be subject to the same accountability requirements as school districts - or take less money and clear the same hurdles?

Or maybe the state could spend less time pitting different schools against each other and do what a court has already told it to do: find a better, fairer way to structure school funding across the board.

Pittsburgh Tribune-Review