Pennsylvania’s largest charter school, Commonwealth Charter Academy, has drawn attention from public school advocates for spending millions of dollars on advertising and real estate. Today, the Charter is being taken to court to avoid disclosing documents that would provide more clues about how taxpayer dollars are spent.

The charter, who has amassed hundreds of millions in assets over the past four years, as its enrollment has soared, has fended off questions about its spending, saying it provides a high-quality education to its nearly 30,000 students. Supporters of public schools – paying CCAs and other cyber charters for every student within their attendance limits that registers – let’s say charter drains school district coffers and with 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 biggest biller” among charters paid for by the school district.

Epstein is one of the defenders being sued by the CCA, after a state public records official in August ordered the charter to give Epstein copies of contracts and invoices for services spanning over several years. 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 have to turn over copies of forms submitted by families seeking charter reimbursement for classes their children took outside of school.

Through a spokesperson, CCA said it complies with the Right to Information Act – which allows citizens to request public records from public agencies – while protecting lives private for families and students. He said his legal arguments in these cases “speak for themselves.”

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Threadbare information

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

The information the charter makes available to the public is “threaded,” Epstein said. As a public school, CCA is overseen by a board of directors who hold public meetings. But meeting agendas posted online do not include information about which contracts the board votes on, or how much spending it votes on.

Neither do meeting minutes. The September meeting minutes, for example, indicate that board members voted to approve “proposals, agreements and purchases,” without any mention of the purpose of those proposals, agreements and purchases. (Timothy Eller, CCA’s head of branding and government relations, did not respond to a question about why the charter does not post board meeting materials online.)

Epstein filed requests for various documents. Among them: copies of calls for tenders issued and invoices paid by the charter between 2021 and 2024 for various services, including advertising, architecture, marketing and government relations. He also requested the charter’s contracts with law firms and notaries over a similar period.

When the charter did not provide these records, Epstein appealed to the Pennsylvania Office of Open Records. A hearing officer ruled in his favor on some, but not all, of his requests, ordering Charter to conduct “a good faith search” and turn over the records. But the CCA appealed these decisions in court, finding that Epstein’s requests were “not sufficiently specific.”

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

Refunds for “community courses”

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

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

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

He said drafting the forms would not be enough because they 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 fight for records, the CCA produced a spreadsheet refunds requested by families in 2019-2020 for classes ranging from art, violin and piano lessons to horseback riding, speed skating and hockey. Reimbursements 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 is allocated to families in addition to activities students can participate in through their local school district, saying that the charter “provides a modest reimbursement for a family when a student participates in educational and education-related activities in their local community”).

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

“To rule otherwise would defeat (the law’s) purpose of promoting government transparency and accountability and enabling public oversight of government activity,” she said in the filing.

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

When Spicka challenged these redactions, CCA said they represented the “names of custodians who received payments under CCA’s Community Class Reimbursement Program; the names of family mentors who provide services to CCA, including helping newly enrolled families successfully transition to CCA and online learning; and names of staff” reimbursed for tuition fees.

(In a June 2023 check log, the CCA classified more than 500 payments to redacted entities as payments for students or tutors, with amounts ranging from $22 to $7,425. The charter also made more of 100 payments that month to redacted entities she classified as family mentors; most payments were $550.)

Upon Spicka’s request for any contracts, agreements or documentation “detailing work or services provided by vendors/entities that are redacted,” 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.