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Charter school
debacle getting more newspaper editorial attention
By William Phillis
Something is happening that should have happened fifteen years ago.
Editorial boards have finally awakened to the charter school experiment
that has removed over $7 billion from Ohio school districts. The $10.9
million pilot program has morphed into a billion dollar annual
boondoggle.
The Cleveland Plain Dealer weighed in on the matter on February 20,
2015.
Ohio must stop increasing taxpayer subsidies for ill-regulated charters
at expense of Ohio's public schools: By Editorial Board on February 20,
2015 at 5:10 AM
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.
We understand that HB 64 also will help high-performing charter schools
such as those that have partnered with the Cleveland school district.
However, far too many of Ohio's charter schools are academically
struggling, and as a whole, they lag behind traditional public schools
in every city except for Cleveland, according to a recent Stanford
University report on Ohio's charter schools.
Such dysfunctional charter schools deserve the boot, not more money --
a reality that even Kasich seemed to acknowledge when he included in
his budget charter-school reform proposals that crack down on the inept
sponsoring organizations of ineffective schools.
But the direct taxpayer subsidies to charters at the expense of
traditional public schools not the only way that these schools are
being penalized. The Ohio Department of Education is now insisting that
the Akron school district find money to bus charter school students who
walk more than a half a mile to their charter school -- even though
public school youngsters must walk more than two miles, often in
dangerous neighborhoods, to be eligible for the district's busing
program.
That absurd unpaid mandate is forcing Akron, a perennially struggling
urban school district, to spend at least $1 million it doesn't have for
an extensive busing program for youngsters who don't attend its own
schools.
State law should be changed to require charter schools to contract for
busing out of their own per-student subsidy.
The state must stop a school-funding approach that, to benefit
deficient charter schools, is hollowing out the ability of public
schools to function.
William Phillis
Ohio E & A
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