Good evening, 

And welcome back to another edition of the Keystone Labor Report. 

I guess it’s time to start getting used to saying “good evening” instead of “good afternoon” now that the days are getting shorter and it’s getting dark out by the time I send this newsletter out. 

We are closing in on our year-end goal for newsletter subscribers here at the Keystone Labor Report, and I want to thank everyone who has joined us here. 

I want to ask everyone to once again share this newsletter with family, friends, colleagues and fellow union members and encourage them to sign up for the newsletter. 

(Sean Kitchen / The Keystone)

After facing mounting pressure from school districts across the commonwealth, Pennsylvania lawmakers included a series of cyber charter school reforms in budget-related bills that were signed into law by Gov. Josh Shapiro last month. 

Cyber Charter Schools were first enacted by the Pennsylvania General Assembly in 2002 and have largely gone underregulated since. 

There are currently 60,000 students enrolled in 14 cyber charter schools across Pennsylvania, and in 2021, those schools enrolled 99.7% of students looking to attend a charter school thanks to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Lawmakers included four accountability reforms in the budget and made changes to tuition payments school districts make to cyber charter schools, saving school districts $178 million per year. 

“ The accountability reforms are incredibly meaningful reforms that are going to reshape how cyber charter schools operate and make the industry accountable for educating students,” Susan Spicka, Executive Director of Education Voters of Pennsylvania said in an interview. 

One of the main reasons I’ve spent a lot of time researching and reporting on Jeffrey Yass, who is Pennsylvania’s wealthiest individual and worth $65.7 billion, is because of his involvement in the fight to undermine public education and privatize it through charter schools or vouchers for private schools. 

The biggest proponents of charter schools, vouchers, and privatizing public schools are also some of the loudest anti-union voices around, and a recent interview Yass gave the Washington Post shows how privatizing public education is his single biggest interest issue in politics. 

Yass sees himself as a philanthropist giving tens of millions of dollars to pro-voucher Republicans (or Democrats for that matter) and compares his charitable giving  to Oprah Winfrey, Taylor Swift, Bruce Springsteen, or any other celebrity making political endorsements. 

(Associated Press / Matt Rourke)

President Donald Trump traveled to Northeastern Pennsylvania earlier this week to deliver an address on affordability, the economy and rising prices.Instead, he decided to unveil his 2025 Spotify Wrapped playlist and re-up some of his greatest hits. 

Instead of talking about lowering costs for Pennsylvanians, Trump latched onto his Festivus pole and aired a lengthy list of grievances. The president hurled insults at Democratic lawmakers and immigrants, joked about running for a third term, which is prohibited by the constitution, talked about the Philadelphia Eagles and reverted back to calling affordability a hoax. 

Click here to watch Gov. Josh Shapiro respond to Trump’s visit.