Denis Smith, who previously worked in the Ohio Education Department’s charter school division, writes here about the Byzantine school finance system of the state, which enables charters to be funded at the expense of public schools.
He writes:
Last fall, the Columbus Dispatch published an article, Are local school taxes subsidizing Ohio Charters? that confirmed the Byzantine nature of Ohio school finance and the complexities surrounding the calculation of state school aid. If comprehending how the formulas work which allow districts to receive state aid is enough of a challenge, readers also learned that the state was adding insult to financial injury by sending extra money to charters by calculating the amount of local support in the charter aid formula. This calculation method further assists charters by using the local share amount (viz., local property taxes raised by the district for its schools) in the formula to determine charter payments at the expense of public education.
How novel: starve public schools of state funds for years but use local support dollars to calculate the level of state charter payments. So much for local control.
Let’s get back to that word Byzantine again. Consider this one example of how state school aid works.
“When a student living in the Columbus district attends a charter school, the state subtracts nearly $7,800 on average from the district’s state funding. But the state is giving Columbus only an average of about $3,900 in basic aid per pupil,” the Dispatch’s Jim Siegel reported. “Once charter-school money is subtracted, the district gets just $2,604 for each student who is left, a $1,312 loss that is also, by far, the highest in the state,” he explained.
As we’ve read before on these pages, voodoo public policy begets voodoo economics which begets voodoo accounting. In the Dispatch story, Sen. Peggy Lehner, the chair of the Senate Education Committee, confirmed the perfidious nature of state school aid when it comes to charters. “It’s kind of a shell game with the money,” she said. “It’s state dollars, but you have to use local dollars to backfill the state dollars. I think it’s pretty clear that these kids are getting local dollars.”
School boards and voters are starting to catch on to the shell game that causes the dollars to flow out of their public schools and into the coffers of privately managed charter schools.
The situation is bringing financial distress to many districts, which explains why dozens of districts have invoiced the state for the money they have lost to charters.
Scam. Voodoo public policy. Shell game.
How long will the voters of Ohio stand for this financial undermining of the public schools that educate more than 90% of the state’s children?
Diane Ravitch's blog 
OMG … HORRORS. Diane, thanks for your blog and this post.
Yvonne, It’s disastrous for kids and families who are displaced from their schools because of the privatization scam that is undermining our system of public education. We really needed things to get better, not worse, and privately-owned quasi-“public” charter schools openly favor the few at the expense of the many. They have made things worse for over 90% of public school students in Baltimore. Walk a mile in their shoes.
paz, I don’t think Yvonne intended to be snarky if that is what you are thinking.
Oh. Well nevermind then.
Pennsylvania is terrible too. It has a distorted reimbursement formula compliments of former governor,Tom Corbett. Charters are permitted to drain the coffers so that many cities with significant numbers of charters are deeply in debt, and the public schools in many cities are ready to collapse.
The propaganda machine in Ohio never ends, does it?
http://www.dispatch.com/content/stories/local/2016/05/15/charter-school-producing-hoped-for-results.html#
It goes in a kind of cycle- charters and vouchers until “testing season’ then 2 weeks of coverage of testing, and then back to charters and vouchers until the following spring.
It’s really worse than that, because voters specifically rejected sharing local funding with charters.
It’s a governance issue. They aren’t governed locally- the understanding was they wouldn’t be funded locally because there was no local representation.
That’s a pretty important concept to just throw away:
“But voters weren’t behind it. They defeated the 23.5 percent property-tax increase yesterday that would have shared local money with charter schools for the first time.
“The measure went down 69 percent to 31 percent, with all precincts reporting, despite the months-long work of Coleman’s Education Commission, a new state law and a multimillion-dollar campaign. A companion issue that would have created a new district auditor position answerable to city, county and school district officials also lost, 61 percent to 39 percent.
It was the first loss for a Columbus City Schools levy in 23 years.”
If they’re governed at the state level, and they are, then the state legislature needs to provide funding instead of taking the state share from public schools The state legislature is covering up a funding hole by taking from public school students.
http://www.dispatch.com/content/stories/public/2013/11/1105-columbus-school-levy-defeated.html
I just don’t think public school students were considered at all when this was put in. They were just completely ignored
Another rah-rah for charters and vouchers from a former member of the Obama Administration:
“The best of them are getting eye-popping results and closing achievement gaps as well as the highest-performing suburban schools. They are also graduating students from high school and enrolling them in college at much higher rates than traditional urban public schools.
At the same time, more than 30 states have passed laws authorizing the use of public dollars in private schools either through vouchers or education savings accounts, so the days of monopoly are coming to an end.”
It must have been a hugely negative environment for public schools under Obama, judging by what his former hires write when they go thru the revolving door in ed reform.
Is that whole administration anti-public schools? Some of the President’s hires should visit a public school. They might be surprised – a lot of us like our schools
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/peter-cunningham/does-lausd-want-to-protec_b_9930902.html
This will continue till Kasich is gone and his cronies sent packing. They are at the core of these corrupt practices. Kasich was lucky that his attempt at becoming POTUS went nowhere since this was sure to have come up as a result of opposition research and could easily have landed people in jail. It’s not too late.
DeMaria spoke last year at OSU’s John Glenn College of Public Affairs. Just as Chiara reports, not one proponent for public schools on the invitee list but, 3 representing charter schools. The astronaut, John Glenn, attended public schools. His Ohio high school even bears his name. I wonder how much his school loses, in local taxes, to privatized charters. For the event, the College falsely labeled charters, “public”. OSU leaders must have an exit plan, for when the oligarchs finish with K-12 and, launch the full-scale attack on public universities.
No surprise, charter school-loving Sherrod Brown is on the College’s Board
John Glenn H.S. is in the East Muskingum school district. KnowYourCharter.com reports “Total Transferred to Charters- $548,911”. Of the eight charters receiving the money, 3 were “F” schools and 4 were “D” schools.
You say: No surprise, charter school-loving Sherrod Brown is on the College’s Board.
And his office pumped out form letters to me explaining why he voted for ESSA with provisions for keeping in place the testing requirements and pouring money into charters. My appeal to cut those parts of ESSA came before the bill was voted on. His reply came about a month after the bill was passed.
You say: OSU leaders must have an exit plan, for when the oligarchs finish with K-12 and, launch the full-scale attack on public universities.
The attack on higher ed is well underway. In Ohio. The governor and legislature want evidence from programs that graduates are contributing to the economy within the state..The university-is-a-trade school mindset is there. Studies in the arts and humanities are on the chopping block unless connected to specific post-graduation careers.
Meanwhile football coaches are paid several million dollars not counting additional perks, basket-ball coaches not far behind,
Agree, adding, Kasich adversely affects Ohio’s economy and its citizens.
Last week, Wright State University’s President resigned, following Dayton Daily News exposes.The university’s imbedded relationships that served businessmen, have resulted in ongoing government investigations. On the heels of the resignation, it was announced that the school has a huge budget shortfall.
Charter schools are the new casinos. Same lousy odds, identical characters, the usual law-bending, and the neighborhood goes to hell in a hand-basket. I’m surprised the don’t have neon lights and water fountains out front. Gove ’em time, right?
Or, they follow the route of Ohio’s E-Check boondoggle.
The charter’s a casino
With odds that favor house
Of criminal Bambino
And other lousy louse
The offer is a jack-pot
But ruin’s what you get
You have to be a crack-pot
To take their lousy bet
Forgot the title “The Gambler’s Ruin”
Reblogged this on rjknudsen.