Bill Phillis, retired deputy superintendent of the state department of education, is a zealous advocate for accountability and transparency. He has made a public records request about the Gulen charter schools in Ohio. He has written a multi-part series based on what he learned. This is Part 2.


Public Records and Charter Schools – Part Two: ESC of Lake Erie West

The Educational Service Center of Lake Erie West was formerly known as the Lucas County ESC. This regional educational agency was one of the three original Ohio charter school sponsors, or authorizers as they are called in the rest of the country. ESCLEW, as it is known in shorthand, remains one of the largest promoters of charter schools and sponsors more than 50 of them in Ohio.

On June 7, Amy Borman, an attorney for ESCLEW, replied to Ohio E&A about the records request for the Gulen Schools under its authorization. The request asked for those records held by the ESC which “detail all correspondence relating to the operation” of those particular buildings. Attached with her cover letter was a 239-page document.
A closer examination of this hefty record revealed a plethora of annual reports, mission statements, corrective action plans, and dozens of pages of reviews conducted by the ESC. In one section of the materials submitted, there are 25 pages of mission statements for the eight schools, with five of the statements apparently identical, except for the name of the school.

The records received included a January 2018 document entitled “ESCLEW Investigative Report: Concept Schools,” which showed that during the 2016-2017 school year, one of the schools hired 17 new teachers out of a total staff of 33. While this represents a nearly 50% change in the teaching staff in just one year, the report, which the ESC completed at the request of ODE, says that “Based on the findings of teacher turn over the ESCLEW did not find the numbers to raise concern for the school.”

In a discussion with counsel for the sponsor, she related that there are many factors involved with staff turnover, including new teachers that are at the beginning of their career, and that the range of factors may not be known within the statistics for staff turnover.

There were several other items found in the records that are of note. All of the eight schools contain board members who sit on multiple charter boards, which should raise oversight issues for critics of these schools. This sentence in the 2018 report is of particular interest. “An in depth review of the board membership and affiliation identifies that each governing authority member only sits on four or less governing authority boards which are not all the same boards for each five members, nor are all the schools authorized by the ESCLEW.”

The following sentence in that section of the 2018 report contains this statement: “The ESCLEW has verified the physical address of all governing authority board members to ensure that geographical locations have not interfered with attendance to the school or to governing authority meetings.” We will discuss this concern in more detail at the end of this series on public records.

A final note is made about a statement found in a response to a corrective action plan. On July 13, 2009, an administrator for Concept Schools stated that “It is Concept Schools’ policy that if an employee’s working visa application is denied by US Citizenship and Immigration Services, Concept Schools will refund the expense of the application.” In examining this statement, it remains unclear as to who will be reimbursed for this expense – the Ohio Department of Education or another entity. As with the concern about the selection and residence of board members, this question will also be addressed later in this series.

William L. Phillis | Ohio Coalition for Equity & Adequacy of School Funding | 614.228.6540 | ohioeanda@sbcglobal.net| http://www.ohiocoalition.org