ALLENTOWN, Pa. — A Lehigh Valley charter school soon also could operate a cyber charter school from its Allentown location.
The reconstituted State Charter Appeals Board, commonly called the CAB, is scheduled to start hearing appeals in February after canceling its January meeting.
That’s when Executive Education Academy Charter School Chief Executive Officer Robert Lysek said it plans to argue its revised cyber charter application should be approved.
Executive Education Academy applied in September 2020 to add a cyber school to the existing physical charter. At the time, Lysek said it was motivated to expand virtually because of the coronavirus pandemic.
With the emergency COVID-19 situation seemingly subsided, he said there continued to be a need for the virtual option.
“When we have parents come in that want to do a tour, that pre-enroll with us,” Lysek said. “We ask them if they would be interested in a cyber model? And the answer is yes.
"So if you look at our waitlist, which is just shy of 2,000. Now that's about 1,000.”
“We ask them if they would be interested in a cyber model? And the answer is yes."Executive Education Academy Charter School CEO Robert Lysek
The CAB is a seven-member board that hears appeals from those applications.
It also can overturn local school districts when they decide whether to grant brick-and-mortar schools a charter and whether to renew or close them.
It also can overrule denials of cyber charter applications. Cyber charter schools are decided by the state Department of Education since students across the commonwealth can attend one no matter where it’s being operated from.
The board's makeup
The board’s power makes it controversial and the board has had a number of vacant seats because of a disagreement between Senate Republicans and former Gov. Tom Wolf.
School choice advocates have criticized it for being less than friendly to school choice and public school advocates have objected to its ability to override local determinations.
Gov. Josh Shapiro recently made five appointments to the Charter Appeals Board, filling it out and allowing it to hear more cases. The Republican-controlled Senate approved his nominees earlier this month.
The current CAB members:
- Carol Aichele, of Malvern, Chester County, state Board of Education member and Pennsylvania’s secretary of state during former Gov. Tom Corbett’s administration. (New appointment)
- Don Alexander, a teacher at Carlynton School District, located near Pittsburgh. (New appointment)
- Jennifer Faustman, the chief executive officer of Belmont Charter Schools in Philadelphia whose term expires in 2025.
- Lisa Kennedy, city of York school board director. (New appointment)
- Helena Liddle, an academic adviser with the Community College of Allegheny County. (New appointment)
- Thomas Killion, a former Delaware County Republican state senator, who is being re-appointed to another term on the board. (New appointment)
Shapiro did not re-appoint Lancaster County public school teacher Stacey Marten or former Central Bucks School District board member Jodi Schwartz, whose terms expired last year.
'Working hard to do the right thing'
Anne Clark, chief executive officer of the Pennsylvania Coalition of Public Charter Schools, said she was encouraged the appeals board was now full and was hopeful the new makeup will mean more charter schools.
She said across the state, more than 30,000 would like to enroll in a charter school.
“I know that Pennsylvania is really working hard to try to do the right things by our students,” Clark said. “And that's all that the coalition is concerned about is high-quality charter schools getting approved. “
Greg Vennemann, a board member of the local advocacy group BASD Proud Parents, said he is concerned about the new CAB members.
The organization calls itself “pro-education” and said it is not affiliated with the Bethlehem Area school board.
Vennemann said he believed the new members appeared to be more supportive of privatization.
“Cyber charter, that's statewide, we don't even have any input into if we get to approve those or not,” he said. “They can recruit students across the entire state without any oversight or input from our local school board.”
Vennemann said local officials should make the decisions at least about physical charter school locations.
A group called Charter Solutions, which is made up of consultants, developers, charter school advocates and educators, is pushing an effort to establish a Lehigh Valley STEAM Academy Charter School in Bethlehem, Allentown and Whitehall Township.
Developer Abe Atiyeh is an owner of Charter Solutions as well as the owner of all the properties being proposed for the charter sites.
“If [the BASD school board] sees an application that doesn't meet the needs of our district, and they deny it, to have it go to a state board that can just overturn it without any due process from our side would be, to me, very disappointing,” he said.
Wrongly denied
How this new board will function is something Larry Feinberg, director of the Keystone Center for Charter Change, said he’ll be looking for in the coming months because members appear to be coming from a mix of politics and education.
He said he’ll also follow this case because a cyber charter hasn’t been approved by the state recently and research shows cyber charters underperform year after year compared with both brick-and-mortar charters and regular public schools.
Executive’s first application was denied by the state in January 2021 for having various deficiencies, including an insufficient budget, a lack of professional development plans and no clear understanding of federal academic requirements.
It submitted a revised application, which was denied in June.
Lysek said it plans to argue to the CAB that the revision is a good plan that was wrongly denied. He’s confident the new CAB will give its application a fair hearing.
“We weren't denied for major deficiencies or deficiencies that we clearly as solid operators in the brick-and-mortar world can address,” Lysek said.
"And I've only gotten better with cyber now because we experienced it. As well, we now have partners in the cyber world that can help us in regards to some of the operational lack of understanding that we have.”
