Virtual Victory

Via Associated Press

A state court on Monday dismissed the Pennsylvania School Boards Association's challenge of the legality of online charter schools and said districts should have an opportunity to question tuition bills for the schools.

Commonwealth Court ruled that the Department of Education should provide an "expedited opportunity" for districts to challenge any decisions by the department to withhold money from them for refusing to pay cyber charter school tuition bills.

But the districts have no standing to question whether cyber schools, which deliver instruction over the Internet, are allowed under a 1997 law that authorized the creation of publicly funded, independently operated charter schools, Judge Rochelle S. Friedman said. "The General Assembly did not give them any rights to participate in the (chartering) process; the General Assembly only placed on such school districts the obligation to pay for their students who attend charter schools," Friedman wrote in her majority opinion.