HARRISBURG — Most of Pennsylvania’s cyber charter schools say they support tightening a law that the state says requires weekly wellness checks for students.
The schools issued a statement as a bipartisan group of state senators prepared to vote on the measure. Not among them was Commonwealth Charter Academy (CCA), the state’s biggest cyber charter. It previously said it’s “unreasonable” to expect its staff to see and hear from all students weekly.
According to the Pennsylvania Department of Education (PDE), CCA is the only cyber charter school in the state to challenge the agency’s interpretation of the law. The school has more than 30,000 students, which makes it bigger than any public school district in the commonwealth except Philadelphia’s.
The original law was partially spurred by the death of a 12-year-old CCA student, who was allegedly tortured and starved by her guardians. (A district attorney said there was no evidence the school did anything wrong, though family members have filed a wrongful death lawsuit.)
When PDE reached out to cyber charter schools last year requesting documentation that the new wellness check requirement was being followed, an attorney for CCA responded that the school had interpreted the law as not being mandatory, and wouldn’t be performing the checks because they were “unreasonable and impossible of execution.”
A spokesperson for CCA, Timothy Eller, told Spotlight PA this week that the school “fully supports student wellness and safety, which is why most students enroll with CCA.”
But CCA believes wellness checks “should apply to all public schools that offer cyber programs,” he added via email. He also said records of students’ referrals to county child welfare offices should be shared between schools if those students transfer, and that the state should give cyber charters more tools to deal with families who don’t comply with wellness check requirements.
Eller also maintained that CCA administrators “have and will continue to comply with the wellness check law, whether in its current iteration or if changed by the General Assembly.”
One state senator, Lindsey Williams (D., Allegheny), previously told Spotlight PA that the only reason legislators are revisiting the law is to get CCA to do weekly visual wellness checks.
She said this week that she was happy to see nine of the commonwealth’s 14 cyber charters confirm they’re already successfully doing these checks.
“As I’ve said repeatedly since CCA began questioning our legislative intent: we want to make sure that students are safe and that schools put eyes on kids at least once a week. The actions of these nine schools show that the law was clear,” Williams wrote in a statement.
“If the majority of cyber charter schools are already adhering to the law, then it should not be a problem for CCA.”
A minor legislative tweak
The law that members of the state Senate Education Committee voted to update Wednesday evening is relatively new, passed as part of last year’s state budget. It says cyber charter schools must weekly “ensure that each enrolled student is able to be visibly seen and communicated with in real time.”
According to the PDE, most cyber schools changed their procedures accordingly after its passage to ensure those checks were happening. CCA was the only school that told PDE it didn’t feel it was required to do them.
In remarks to the committee on Wednesday, the sponsor of the update, state Sen. Tracy Pennycuick (R., Montgomery), called it “a simple, commonsense fix to ensure the original intent of the law is fulfilled.”
Currently, the law requires that students be “able to be visibly seen.” The new measure would require that each student “is visibly seen.”
In a brief they shared with members of the upper chamber’s Education Committee, the nine cyber charter schools supporting Pennycuick’s bill detailed the steps they had taken over the past year to comply with the law.
These typically involved students being required to attend at least one on-camera class or regular check-in session per week, having teachers track how often they see students, and setting policies for follow-up — including home visits — if students aren’t seen for a set period.
Mike Leitera, CEO at PA Distance Learning, one of the charters that signed the letter, told Spotlight PA the school significantly overhauled its tech after the wellness check requirement took effect. Among other things, the school now requires teachers to track students’ engagement on a four-tier scale — present and on camera, present and not on camera, present but not engaged (i.e., logged on but not doing work), and did not attend.
The changes cost the school money, Leteira said, but he thinks they were worthwhile.
“Some of the impetus was Act 55 ,” he said, referring to the law that first required wellness checks. “But it was also an impetus to understand our students better and understand their academic progress better.”
He added that PA Distance Learning has no interest in pushing back against wellness check requirements, and is “in full agreement that there's anything we can do to better bolster our efforts in making and ensuring the health and wellness of our students, that we are 100% behind that.”
‘The same rules as everyone else’
Two of the cyber charters that didn’t sign the statement of support, Pennsylvania Cyber and 21st Century Cyber, both told Spotlight PA that they are currently complying with PDE’s wellness check requirements. 21st Century CEO Matthew Flannery added that his school “supports legislation that promotes student health and safety.”
Apart from CCA, the others didn’t immediately return Spotlight PA’s request for comment or issue any statements about the bill.
However, a cyber charter advocacy group, the Pennsylvania Association of Public Cyber Charter Schools, sent its own letter to Senate Education Committee members expressing concern about the wellness bill and other cyber charter-related legislation before the committee.
The association formed early this year to, in its own words, “dispel the myths and false claims about cyber charter schools.” While it lists no formal affiliations with CCA or any other cyber charter, its executive director, Marcus Hite, served as a CCA board member in 2023 and 2024, according to public filings.
Williams, the Democratic state senator, told Spotlight PA she thinks “it appears that CCA has chosen to use a brand-new entity to distract from the fact that they repeatedly act like they’re too big to follow the same rules as everyone else.”
Hite told Spotlight PA his group “fully supports thoughtful and comprehensive legislation that strengthens the safety of all students across the Commonwealth.”
But he also made an argument similar to CCA’s, saying the wellness check legislation should apply to public schools, some of which run their own cyber programs.
“The deeper concern here is that this legislation once again isolates cyber charter schools,” he said.
Hite and Eller, CCA’s spokesperson, both said they felt state lawmakers and officials haven’t engaged enough with cyber charter schools while drafting bills that affect them.
State Senate Education Committee Chair Lynda Schlegel Culver (R., Snyder) noted that while cyber charters had raised concerns with her, “we've assured them we'll continue to work together to come to a spot where I think everybody's comfortable, but we are protecting children.”
Her goal, she added, is “making sure that we are checking on them, we know that they're safe, and that there's not an issue that somehow gets missed.”
The wellness check bill wasn’t the only cyber charter measure that got a vote from the Senate Education Committee this week. The panel also approved a bill that would create new residency check requirements for cyber charter students.
Cyber charter schools had more concern about this bill, in part because under federal law, students who are homeless or dealing with housing insecurity are not required to prove residency for school enrollment. The committee added an amendment carving homeless students out of the residency rule.
The bills’ movement in the GOP-controlled chamber was notable. The state House, which is controlled by Democrats, has lately focused many of its education-related efforts on cyber charter regulation, while the upper chamber has been more circumspect.
Williams noted Wednesday in committee that she thought the state House’s versions of these bills are “stronger” and said she “would certainly prefer we land closer to there.”
But, she said, these measures are part of active budget negotiations and could still change. She voted yes.
Spotlight PA’s Stephen Caruso contributed reporting.