Pennsylvania Levels the Playing Field for Virtual Students—With Room to Grow

Pennsylvania’s new education code significantly improves required “wellness checks” for students attending cyber charter schools. The final language is far less onerous than earlier proposals and, importantly, applies to all public virtual schools, including district-run online schools and charter-run online schools.

But it also raises an important question: What is a school’s duty to keep a child safe? How comfortable should we be with the government requiring families to regularly prove that their kids are safe inside their own homes?

The wellness-check mandate began with an understandable goal. Lawmakers wanted to ensure the safety of children following the horrific 2024 death of a 12-year-old girl who was enrolled in district schools for years and then a cyber charter school for five months. Authorities say she died because of abuse and starvation at home.

Inexplicably, the initial wellness-check mandate applied to only cyber charter schools, not to district-operated virtual schools. If state officials think children educated virtually require an additional wellness check, there is no logical reason that safeguard should not apply to an online school operated by a school district.

Lawmakers finally corrected that imbalance, applying essentially the same standard to all online public schools. Students receiving their education exclusively through a district virtual program for the full school year will now be subject to weekly wellness checks, as required for cyber charter students.

The new language is also less burdensome. It expands the ways schools can satisfy the wellness-check requirement. In addition to webcams during synchronous classes, checks can now occur during health screenings, testing, advising, tutoring, and school-sponsored activities. The law also recognizes excused absences and documented internet or power outages as valid reasons for a family to miss a wellness check.

While these are positive changes, it’s important to recognize that requiring every virtual student to be visually observed by a state-approved official each week turns our traditional presumption of innocence on its head.

Plus, it ignores the immediate threat of school violence that thousands of Pennsylvania children are exposed to in district public schools. Statewide, the Commonwealth Foundation estimates nearly 40 percent of schools are persistently dangerous, based on the required reporting of school violence incidents (with or without arrest).

Federal and state laws require that students attending persistently dangerous public schools be provided with the opportunity to enroll in a safe school within their local or neighboring school district. However, the state does not designate violent schools as persistently dangerous, so it can shirk its obligation to provide better choices for students stuck in violent schools.

Every child deserves protection from abuse. That’s why each child deserves the opportunity to attend the school of their choice.

The new wellness-check mandate treats all virtual schools fairly. That’s significant, considering Pennsylvania’s funding system allocates less funding to charter schools while allowing district schools to keep funds for students they no longer educate.

Protecting children is among government’s most important responsibilities. But so is respecting the privacy of families who have given government no reason to suspect that their kids need protection from them.

Most importantly, the ultimate form of accountability is choice. Government should empower families and students with the options and resources they need to thrive and excel academically. Enabling families to shop around is the surest way to provide students with the safe, stable learning environments they need to succeed.