Biggest Obstacle to Ohio Charter Reform in Two Charts

Yes, there is hope that Ohio will finally get its act together and clean up our charter school laws. However, here are two charts that suggest it's going to be harder than having a few influential people say the right things.

What do you notice about the patterns between state money going to charter school operators and their campaign contributions? That's right. The pattern is strikingly similar. The more state money goes to these big operators, the more campaign contributions politicians receive.

Over at www.KnowYourCharter.com, we just did a report that outlines the issues here, as well as delineating some examples in the recent past of these big contributors getting what they want. We must remain vigilant and look out for any exemptions, grandfathering or delays in implementation of these new charter reforms, whatever they look like. They must apply to all charters, operators and sponsors. Now. And without exception.

(Read more at 10th Period).

Ohio auditor to report head counts from 30 charter schools

State Auditor Dave Yost is preparing to release results of head counts of students taken during unannounced site visits to 30 Ohio community schools last fall.

Yost says the attendance checks conducted on Oct. 1 came in response to reports of irregular attendance and enrollment practices within several Ohio community, or charter, schools.

He plans to go over what he found on Thursday, as well as making recommendations to both charter school sponsors and the Ohio Department of Education, which oversees their operations.

The event comes as Republican Gov. John Kasich (KAY'-sik) and state legislative leaders have said they'll pursue revisions to Ohio's charter school laws after a series of negative reports.

FEDERAL JUDGE ORDERS IMAGINE SCHOOLS TO PAY $1 MILLION FOR “SELF-DEALING”

A federal judge in Missouri blistered Imagine Schools, saying the lease it forced on a local school it managed constituted “self-dealing.” The judge ordered Imagine to pay the school more than $1 million.

School board members at the now-closed Missouri school sued Imagine, insisting that it acted in its own best interest, not the best interest of the school.

The facts of the case mirror arrangements in Ohio and other states where Imagine schools pay exorbitant rent to an Imagine subsidiary, SchoolHouse Finance. The high lease payments leave little money for classroom instruction and help explain the poor academic records of Imagine schools in both states.

(Read more at ProgressOhio)

Cash-strapped Field district will cut ties to charter school

In 2010, with a depleted budget and waning local support for new taxes, the cash-strapped Field school district heeded a state suggestion to cut costs and boost revenue — or be taken over.

Following the state’s advice, the board sponsored a charter school, Falcon Academy of Creative Arts. The board found the charter school a home in a vacant elementary school on the other side of the high school’s football field.

The arrangement allowed the largely property-tax-funded rural school district, as a sponsor and landlord, to collect some of the charter school’s state aid and charge rent on an unused asset.

The catch?

The charter school’s per-pupil funding would be taken from the school district, with Field schools essentially recording a cash loss for each kid who chose the academy.

Today, amid record enrollment at Falcon Academy, the state aid flowing away from Field schools has topped $1 million. That dwarfs the $112,000 the district collects in rent and a 3 percent sponsorship, or oversight, fee.

(Read more at Ohio.com)

Groundbreaking fight to unionize two Cleveland charter schools is delayed while the schools and union negotiate

The Ohio Federation of Teachers and the I Can charter school network have put their legal fight on hold over unionization efforts at two schools while the sides try to negotiate a settlement.

The groundbreaking attempt to make the schools the only charter schools in Ohio with a union stalled last spring before employees could take a vote.

The sides were scheduled for a hearing Tuesday on charges that I Can improperly blocked organization efforts last spring and fired teachers active in the push. If an administrative judge for the National Labor Relations Board found I Can guilty of unfair labor practices, teachers could automatically have been unionized.

Such an order would be a major step in Ohio, where only one charter school -- public schools that receive state tax dollars, but are privately run -- has been unionized before. That school has since closed.

Instead, the sides delayed the hearing indefinitely to continue negotiations.

Unionization efforts started last year

I Can operates seven schools in Cleveland, Akron and Canton and has close ties with the Cleveland school district, even receiving some local tax money.

The unionization efforts focused on two of the schools: Northeast Ohio College Preparatory School in Cleveland's Tremont neighborhood and University of Cleveland Preparatory School at East 40th Street and Chester Avenue.

Organizing votes scheduled last year were canceled.

Teachers at the two schools and the Ohio Federation of Teachers, which hopes to unionize several charter schools in Ohio, filed complaints this summer that I Can fired seven organizers and took other steps to intimidate employees against organizing.

Among accusations against I Can were that employees were led to believe they were under surveillance, employees were pressured to reveal who was leading organizing efforts, and that pay and benefit improvements were made just before the scheduled vote to discourage union membership.

(Read more at Cleveland.com)

How Local Tax Revenues Subsidize Ohio Charter Schools

Many homeowners who vote for school levies are getting shortchanged. Instead of the additional money going to their neighborhood schools, more and more of it is being used to subsidize state-mandated funding of charter schools – many of them with poor academic records, according to a new study by the Ohio Charter School Accountability Project.

Ohio has a formula that spells out how much state funding each student in each district should receive. Some of the money is from the state and some from local taxes.

But a rarely-discussed flaw in the formula results in traditional schools often receiving far fewer state dollars per pupil than charter schools for the same students. This forces districts to make up the lost state money by either raising their local taxes or cutting programs and services.

At KnowYourCharter.com, we have posted for the first time on one website how much state funding per pupil each school district should receive under the state’s formula. However, that’s not what the district ends up getting because charter schools (and other school choice options) deduct significant state dollars from Ohio’s public school districts. When you compare how much state funding per pupil each charter school receives with what school districts receive, it becomes abundantly clear that school districts often receive far fewer state dollars per pupil than the state pays to charter schools for the same students. This system then forces districts to make up the lost state revenue through local revenues or program cuts.

How School Funding Works

Every year, school districts in Ohio receive money from the state based on the number of students attending local schools and the amount of money the district can raise through local property taxes. Last year, the average amount of money sent by the state to local school districts was $4,149 per student.

While they are called public schools under Ohio law, charter schools are funded differently than traditional public schools. Rather than having a separate line item in the state budget, charter schools are funded with money that would have otherwise gone to a student’s home district. Under state law, the amount of state money that was deducted from a home district for charter schools last school year was $5,745[1] per student.[2] That amount is a state mandate.

However, data at KnowYourCharter.com shows that in the vast majority of cases that money is far more than what a school district would receive. Last year, 511 of 613 school districts in Ohio received less per pupil under the state’s formula than the minimum $5,745 per pupil received by charter schools.

(Read more at www.knowyourcharter.com)