Bill Phillis a a retired deputy superintendent of schools in Ohio. He follows the money and tracks how much corrupt charter operators have diverted from public schools.
Note in the previous article that demand for charter seats has fallen in Ohio.
Bill Phillis writes:
Charter champion Fordham Institute’s spokesman is on a media blitz promoting more money for charter facilities. He is quoted as saying, “They don’t have the money to spend on adequate facilities and end up missing out on things like science labs, and computer centers, and playgrounds, and other things that are incredibly critical and part of the education process.”
The charter sector in Ohio is totally inefficient. In most cases, the charter industry is duplicating facilities that wouldn’t be needed if charter students were attending the traditional system.
The charter industry is notorious for outrageous high cost leasing arrangements that take funds away from charter classrooms. If charters receive more funding for facilities, much of it will be layered on top of the huge profits collected by charter facility companies allied with charter management companies.
Until charters are required to follow the same laws and rules as school districts, not one dime more should be provided to charters for facilities or any other purpose.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
The charter sector everywhere is redundant and less efficient than traditional public schools. The main difference is that charters are privately owned and operated, and they are rarely answerable to the communities they serve. They are opaque and frequently are wasteful and fraudulent. They drain the public asset of public education and impede the work they do. They are not subject to the same laws as public schools. Charters often promote profit over people. Charters have become a harmful, undemocratic movement designed to move public money into private pockets without the input of the community that is losing funding. Their goal is to privatize a public service and asset. They do not perform better than public schools, and they increase segregation.
Donald Trump, SOTU, Febr. 5, 2019: “The time has come to pass school choice for America’s children.”
DT: Wrong on everything, every time
Not enough people talking about his casual selling of students and democracy. Schools choose, parents don’t.
and it is the bland casualness offered with the statement which speaks volumes about how deeply rooted the privatizing cause has become
Reblogged this on David R. Taylor-Thoughts on Education.
I’m afraid the whole school funding debate in Ohio is getting hijacked by ed reform lobbying groups.
Again.
What do we have to do to get some people in state government who are interested in the PUBLIC schools in this state?
Can they focus for even a workweek on something OTHER than charters and vouchers?
They’re 6% of Ohio students and they utterly dominate our state legislature. They offer absolutely nothing of value to 94% of families and students, session after session, year after year. I’m sick of paying them for them this. I want to find and hire state employees who have some interest in the public schools that actually exist instead of this ideological dream of a privatized system.
Maybe when Ohio lawmakers finish up work on this latest charter/voucher initiative they could turn their attention to the public schools 95% of the families in this state use.
They’ll have to get re-acquainted with the public schools in all their districts. It’s been years since they’ve done a day’s work on behalf of any of them. Those buildings they drive past with playgrounds attached? Those are schools. There are thousands of them.
Ohio’s Republican legislature works for men like the Koch’s. Check out how many belong to the Koch’s ALEC.