Yost demands repayment of nearly $300,000 in state money

Ohio Auditor Dave Yost demanded repayment of nearly $300,000 on Thursday from Columbus-area educators who apparently pocketed the tax money meant to benefit students.

In the first case, a would-be charter-school operator received $88,750 for a school she never opened.

According to the annual audit of Ohio’s financial records, Wendy Marshall received the state aid to open the Directional Academy in Columbus in the fall of 2013 under the sponsorship of the North Central Ohio Educational Service Center.

Yost said the misspending was the latest problem in Ohio’s system of privately operated, publicly funded charter schools.

“The system is busted, broken and doesn’t work,” Yost said. “When everyone is responsible, no one is responsible. Ohio’s chaotic supervision of charter schools is inadequate and needs reformed. ”

The audit also uncovered problems at a private school in Hilliard.

(Read more at the Dispatch.com).

Your charter schools

School choice. Doesn't that sound nice? It seems to ring of sounds we all hold dear: liberty, equality and the pursuit of excellence in education. The sad truth is, however, that Ohio's charter schools are a mess.

According to a study released late last year and commissioned by the pro-charter Fordham Institute, of the 68 criteria on which public and charter schools are compared, 56 of those criteria indicate that charter schools have a negative impact on students versus public schools. For example, the average Ohio charter school student completed 14 fewer days of learning in reading and 36 fewer days in math than the average public school student.

The results are so bad that a member of the pro-charter Hoover Institution told the City Club of Cleveland, "I am actually a pro-market kind of girl, but it doesn't seem to work in a choice environment for education."

Recent Ohio school report cards show charter schools receiving more Fs than As, Bs and Cs combined. Over 60 percent of the state's charter schools earned Ds or Fs last year, according to knowyourcharter.com, which gathers its information from the Ohio Department of Education.

Charter school performance is so bad that even Gov. Kasich has vowed to get tough with underperforming charter schools in 2015.

(Read more at the Sandusky Register)

More charter school controls wanted by the left and by Auditor Yost on the right

Charter school reform proposals are gaining broad support in Columbus, but there are voices on both the left and the right who say the $1 billion charter school movement in Ohio needs even stronger controls than what has been proposed.

Both Gov. John Kasich and Republicans in the Ohio House have made separate proposals to change the oversight and management of charter schools - public schools open to anyone, but which are privately-run.

A third proposal is coming soon from the Ohio Senate.

While both proposals so far are receiving praise for taking on some important issues, some want them to go further.

Auditor Yost wants clearer rules

State Auditor Dave Yost, also a Republican, said he plans to give the legislature his own suggested changes early next month. Those will include requiring more financial reporting by charter schools and the private companies that often run them, along with better definition of the role of those companies.

"I don't think that what needs to happen is on the table yet," Yost told The Plain Dealer.

Among Yost's concerns: that Ohio has no clear definition of when a charter school is acting as a private organization or when they take on a governmental role in educating children. That leaves private organizations receiving large amounts of tax money that don't have much accountability to the public.

The complaints from the left, coming this week from the Innovation Oho think tank and the Ohio Education Association, are mostly predictable. Both are groups that have been critics of charter schools.

But while they both want bad charter schools closed faster and want better financial reporting, they and most Democrats aren't fighting to shut down the charter movement, just the worst schools.

(Read more at Cleveland.com)

Ohio must stop increasing taxpayer subsidies for ill-regulated charters at expense of Ohio's public schools

There has got to be a better way to fund K-12th-grade charter schools than Ohio Gov. John Kasich's latest budget proposal that would further rob traditional public schools of millions of dollars in order to subsidize poorly regulated charter schools. The governor's plan would continue the cannibalization of Ohio's public schools.

That's especially so since the Ohio General Assembly itself has been all too willing over the years to pick the pockets of public schools to pad the pockets of the private interests behind for-profit charters and the lobbyists who represent them -- and far too unwilling to tighten Ohio's shamefully lax regulatory framework for charters.

This year, it appears charter reform supported by Kasich finally will emerge in the General Assembly. Increasing charters' taxpayer subsidy should await the results of that reform effort; pumping nearly $1 billion into their coffers, as the governor's plan envisions, is not the answer.

The Ohio General Assembly should also change a state law that puts traditional public school systems such as Akron on the hook for millions of dollars to provide special bus transportation to private and charter school students even beyond what they can afford to offer regular public students.

But let's go back to House Bill 64, the governor's two-year budget proposal. According to the Legislative Service Commission, a nonpartisan research group for state legislators, Kasich's budget would give charter schools nearly $1 billion in 2016 and 2017 by increasing the amount of state funding charters will receive for operating, base pay per student and facilities.

(Read more at Cleveland.com)

Gov. Kasich's budget would send nearly $1 billion to charter schools

Charter school funding in Ohio will creep to nearly $1 billion a year, under Gov. John Kasich's schools budget, estimates released today show.

If more students decide to attend charters next school year, that $990 million total could top the billion dollar mark.

Estimates by the Legislative Service Commission, the non-partisan research arm of state government, also showed other key details today of how charter funding would change if Kasich's plan is approved by the legislature.

Charter schools are privately-run, but they are public schools open to all students and funded by the state.

In addition to showing changes in aid to charters, the new estimates show how state aid to school districts would change, once the state deducts money for students from each district who choose to attend charter schools.

See below for an explanation of how those deductions work.

Here are some highlights:

• The state will pay charter schools $34.5 million more in the 2016-17 school year than this school year for daily operations, even if charter enrollment stays the same.

• That's about $279 more for each of the 123,000 charter school students in 2016-17 than today -- a 3.7 percent increase.

• Some of that is from the $100 increase in the base aid per charter student in 2014-15, which increases to $200 more in 2016-17.

(Read more at Cleveland.com)

Former Batchelder staffers lobby for charter school

As lawmakers and Gov. John Kasich discuss how to overhaul Ohio charter school laws, some new players have entered the debate. Well, sort of new.

Troy Judy and Chad Hawley, who each served in top staff leadership positions, including chief of staff, for former House Speaker William G. Batchleder, have formed a lobbying firm, The Batchelder Company.

Among the first clients for the new firm are those affiliated with the state’s largest charter school, the online Electronic Classroom of Tomorrow, better known as ECOT. School founder, William Lager, is among the largest individual contributors to legislative Republicans.

With an enrollment of more than 14,500, ECOT is now the state’s 10 th largest school district, benefitting from an eight-year moratorium on new online charter schools. Of the $113 million it received in state tax revenue, $21.4 million went to two companies that Lager formed to provide services to the school.

Judy and Hawley, along with Batchelder, who was term limited at the end of 2014 and is serving as an adviser to the firm, have been hired to represent those companies – Altair Learning Management, which runs ECOT’s day-to-day operations, and IQ Innovations, Lager's software firm.

(Read more at the Dispatch)