JACKSON TWP — With students back to attending school in person full time, the Seneca Valley School Board also met physically for the first time since the brunt of the pandemic.

And COVID-19 wasn't even on the agenda.

In fact, the topic that garnered the most attention was charter schools.

Presenting a resolution that will be considered at next Monday's action meeting, Superintendent Tracy Vitale introduced what she — and some board members — see as a fundamental issue with how Pennsylvania funds charter schools.

Vitale said that while the district has about 1,400 students enrolled in its in-house cyber charter school, 192 students — 160 in general education and another 32 in special education — have enrolled in outside charters, whether they are brick-and-mortar or cyber schools.

Lynn Burtner, the district's business manager, said this means the district will have to remit nearly $3 million to these outside schools should the students remain enrolled in those schools for the full academic year.

“Unfortunately, based on previous years' tends, we have currently budgeted this year (at) $1.8 million,” Burtner said. “That difference is significant and will be challenging to overcome before the end of this year.”

Vitale said she doesn't judge parents who choose to enroll in the charter schools, although she expounded on what she sees as the qualities of Seneca Valley's in-house program. Her issue, she and the proposed resolution said, is with the state's funding mechanism.

The proposed resolution, which is being circulated by the state school board association, says that, during the 2014-15 academic year, the most recent for which the organization has data, cyber schools received $100 million more from the state's school districts for special education than they spent on special education.

The topic provoked a passionate response from board president Jim Nickel, who said that figure is “$100 million of your taxpayer money,” later adding that “it's profit.”

“It needs to be updated. It's broken. It's broken,” he said. “So, I don't know that I've ever done this, but I'm going to take the opportunity to suggest to the 75 people listening online, … call out Rep. Daryl Metcalfe, call out Sen. Scott Hutchinson, and ask them why they aren't willing to or have the guts to step up and fix something that's broken to the total of, and again folks, five years ago and one piece of this, $100 million of your taxpayer money.”

Board Vice President Eric DiTullio said the $3 million the district expects to remit to external charter schools this year is equivalent to more than 4 mills in the district's tax rate.