Pennsylvania’s largest cyber charter school, Commonwealth Charter Academy, has drawn attention from public school advocates for spending millions of dollars on advertising and real estate. Now, the statute will go to court to avoid turning over records that would provide more clues about how it spends taxpayer money.

Charter, which has amassed hundreds of millions in assets over the past four years, as enrollment has grown, it has dismissed questions about its spending, saying it provides a high-quality education to nearly 30,000 students. Public school advocates – who pay CCA and other cyber charters for each student within attendance limits that it registers — let’s say the statute drains the school district’s coffers and providing little accountability for rising costs.

“You start to wonder, what are you getting for this?” said Eric Epstein, an anti-corruption activist in Harrisburg and a member of the Central Dauphin School Board, where he said CCA is “consistently the best biller” among charters paid by the school district.

Epstein is one of the attorneys taken to court by CCA after a state open records officer in August ordered Charter to give Epstein copies of contracts and invoices for services spanning several years. The CCA appealed two orders in favor of Epstein; a hearing is scheduled in Dauphin County Court in December.

In another case pending in Commonwealth Court, CCA argues that it should not turn over copies of forms submitted by families seeking reimbursement from charters for classes their children took outside of school.

Through a spokesperson, CCA said it complies with the Right to Know law — which gives citizens the right to request public records from public agencies — while protecting family and student privacy. He said his legal arguments in the cases “speak for themselves.”

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“Threadable” information.

Epstein — the founder of Rock the Capital, a group that monitors Pennsylvania’s authorities, boards and commissions — filed a series of right-to-know requests with the Commonwealth Charter Academy earlier this year.

The information the charter makes available to the public is “used,” Epstein said. As a public school, CCA is overseen by a board of trustees that holds public meetings. But meeting agendas posted online do not include information about which contracts the board votes on or how much money it votes to spend.

Nor the minutes of the meetings. Minutes from the September meeting, for example, say council members voted to approve “proposals, agreements and purchases,” with no mention of what those proposals, agreements and purchases were for. (Timothy Eller, who is the CCA’s chief branding and government relations officer, did not respond to a question about why the charter does not post board meeting materials online.)

Epstein filed for a variety of records. Among them: copies of RFPs issued and invoices paid by the charter between 2021 and 2024 for various services, including advertising, architecture, marketing and government relations. He also asked for charter contracts with law firms and lawyers for a similar period of time.

When the statute did not provide those records, Epstein turned to the Pennsylvania Office of Open Records. A hearing officer ruled in favor of some but not all of his requests, ordering the statute to conduct a “good faith search” and turn over the records. But CCA challenged those decisions in court, arguing that Epstein’s requests were “insufficiently specific.”

“This is a stalling tactic,” Epstein said. He said CCA should be able to produce bills, “just like any other public school.”

Refunds for “Community Classes”

In 2022, the Office of Open Records ordered Commonwealth Charter Academy to turn over records to Susan Spicka, executive director of the public education advocacy group Education Voters PA, which requested forms sent to the charter by families seeking reimbursement for “community classes.” .” CCA provides reimbursement to families for classes their children take outside of school.

Charter had refused to provide those forms to Spicka, arguing that doing so would violate students’ privacy rights.

While the Office of Open Records ruled that CCA could turn over those records and still protect the students’ privacy if it redacted their names, CCA appealed, arguing that the forms were educational records and therefore should not be public.

It said redaction of the forms would not be sufficient as it could contain the parents’ handwriting, which would reveal their identity.

A Common Pleas Court judge rejected those arguments, again ordering CCA to produce the records. CCA then appealed to the Commonwealth Court, where the case is pending.

During the struggle for records, CCA produced a spreadsheet of reimbursements claimed by families in 2019-2020 for classes ranging from art, violin and piano lessons to horse riding, speed skating and hockey. Refunds were requested up to $200, according to the CCA spreadsheet. (Eller did not respond to a question about how much money families are eligible for and whether the money goes to families in addition to activities students can participate in through their local school district, saying the statute “provides a modest reimbursement for a family when a student participates to educational and education-related activities in the local community.”

In a filing by attorneys at the Public Interest Law Center, Spicka said the Right-to-Know law “guarantees access to public records, not an agency’s selective summaries of its records.”

“To hold otherwise would undermine (the law’s) purpose of promoting government transparency and accountability and allowing public scrutiny of government activity,” she said in the filing.

Separately, Spicka and other advocates have raised questions about CCA’s practices in making cash payments to families. On months worth of checkbooks they requested from the charter earlier this year, the names of hundreds of entities paid by CCA were redacted — including $180,000 worth of payments to vendors redacted in June alone 2024, according to Spicka.

When Spicka challenged those redactions, CCA said they represented “the names of caregivers who received payments under CCA’s Community Class Reimbursement Program; the names of family mentors who provide CCA services, including assisting newly enrolled families in successfully transitioning to CCA and online learning; and name of staff” reimbursed for tuition payments.

(In a June 2023 checkbook, CCA classified more than 500 payments to entities redacted as student or caregiver payments, with amounts ranging from $22 to $7,425. The charter also made more than 100 payments that month to redacted entities he classified as family mentors most payments were $550.)

When asked by Spicka for any contract, agreement or documentation that “details the work or services provided by the vendors/entities being drafted,” CCA said it had no records.

Eller did not respond to questions about whether CCA has agreements with its family mentors, the services they provide and how much they are paid.