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Ohio: After GOP Lifts Income Caps on Vouchers, Enrollments and Costs Soar

By dianeravitch
February 12, 2024 //
3

Republicans in the Ohio legislature love vouchers. They don’t love public schools. First, they created vouchers for Cleveland in 1995 as part of a budget bill. The ACLU challenged the program, and the Supreme Court upheld it in a 5-4 decision called Zelman Vs. Simmons-Harris.

Here is a summary at Case Western Reserve University’s website:

On June 27, 2002, the court ruled 5-4 in favor of vouchers, with Justices Sandra Day OConnor, Antonin Scalia, Anthony Kennedy, and Clarence Thomas joining Chief Justice William Rehnquist in delivering the majority opinion. Rehnquist argued that the program is “entirely neutral with respect to religion.” He explained, “It permits genuine choice among options public and private, secular and religious. The program is therefore a program of true private choice.” Justice David H. Souter offered a harsh dissent, joined by Justices John Paul Stevens, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, and Stephen G. Breyer. Souter called the ruling “potentially tragic” as a “major devaluation of the establishment clause.”

Souter was right. Cleveland has had its voucher program in place since 1996. Almost 30 years later, it’s clear that it did not improve academic achievement. Cleveland has participated in the NAEP testing since 2003. It is one of the nation’s lowest scoring urban districts, outperforming only Detroit (a city with many charter schools). Vouchers didn’t make education better in Cleveland and may have made it worse by reducing civic investment in the public schools.

Lots of choices—public, charter, and vouchers—no improvements.

Despite the clear evidence of failure in Cleveland, the Ohio legislature created multiple statewide voucher programs. Initially, they were targeted towards specific high-needs groups, including low-income children.

Now, however, the legislature has raised the income cap again. Students are eligible if their family income is 450% of the federal poverty level.. Enrollment more than tripled, from 24,000 to 82,000, and costs are ballooning. But that won’t slow down the rush to universal vouchers, where the state gives a voucher to every student regardless of family income.

The only statewide evaluation of Ohio vouchers was released in 2016. It was sponsored by the Thomas B. Fordham Institute, a rightwing think tank that supports school choice The findings were negative. Vouchers depressed achievement. But no one cared.

Laura Hancock at Cleveland.com reported:

COLUMBUS, Ohio – The number of applications for Ohio-funded scholarships for private schools has more than tripled this school year over the last after the state legislature increased both the cash amount of the vouchers and family income eligibility, according to new figures.

So far, the state has paid out $166.9 million for private school tuition this year in one of the voucher programs that the legislature expanded.

But that amount will continue to rise. Most private schools collect tuition on a monthly basis, and not all applications to the program have been granted or even submitted. Parents have until the end of the June to submit voucher applications…

According to the latest figures from the Ohio Department of Education and Workforce, the state’s new K-12 agency:

– Thus far in the 2023-2024 school year, 82,610 students have been awarded scholarships to private schools in the one of the five voucher programs that the legislature expanded. In the 2022-2023 school year, families of 24,320 kids received vouchers.

-An additional 8,582 applications had been received as of Jan. 25 but were in need of a correction or were otherwise incomplete.

DEW has changed the way it’s reporting the dollar amount, as reporters have published dozens of stories about the controversial growth in private school vouchers this year. Previously, it reported how much money the state had committed to private school vouchers in the 2023-2024 school year, based on approved student applications.

For instance, in late October, it had committed $239.8 million for 41,120 students whose applications had been approved at the time. That figure raised eyebrows because it suggested the state could go well over the $397.8 million the General Assembly had budgeted for vouchers this school year.

Since then, the number of applications approved has more than doubled, but the state agency is reporting only how much it has paid out rather than its total commitments to date. Calculating that number is difficult without detailed data because the state awards scholarships based on a sliding income scale.

That means the state spend reported now is about $73 million lower than what the state said in October. However, by the end of June, the amount of state money spent is almost guaranteed to be higher.

In the two-year state budget bill passed over the summer, lawmakers expanded voucher eligibility to all families. Among the changes:

-The General Assembly raised the full voucher award from $5,500 to $6,165 this school year for students in K-8 and from $7,500 to $8,407 in 9-12.

-For the full voucher, lawmakers expanded family income eligibility to 450% of the federal poverty level, or $135,000 for a family of four, from the previous 250% of the federal poverty level, or $75,000 for a family of four.

-Lawmakers removed income caps for all families this year, meaning high-income families also can receive scholarships, but the award decreases the wealthier a family is. For instance, families at 451% to 500% of the poverty level are eligible for $5,200 for K-8 and $7,050 for 9-12.

The state has five private school voucher programs. Some are for children with special needs or for families who live in the boundaries of the Cleveland Metropolitan School District. The program with explosive growth this year is Education Choice, which is based on income eligibility. (That is different from an EdChoice program for families who live in the boundaries of low-performing public schools.)

So far this school year, 146,544 Ohio students are receiving a scholarship for one of the five voucher programs, costing the state $428.5 million to date.

A Wednesday report about Ohio’s private school vouchers by ProPublica found that parents with kids in private schools were being pressured to apply for vouchers, even if they were against it on principle. Schools pressured lower-income parents to obtain the scholarships first before asking for financial aid. Some schools appeared prepare to raise tuition, because the increase could be absorbed by parents, now that the state was paying a large chunk of their tuition, the reporting found.

What is more, Ohio’s voucher program enables the revival of discrimination that federal law forbids.

Journalist Marylou Johanek writes:

Public financing of parochial school prejudice is the law in Ohio. Take a minute to process, I’ll wait. The state has opened its coffers to Catholic schools that discriminate. The overwhelming amount of Ohio’s voucher money — free taxpayer money to offset private and religious school tuition — goes to Catholic schools.

The Catholic Diocese of Cleveland receives a ton of voucher funding. It just announced a new anti-LGBTQ+ policy in its 84 private religious schools that is blatantly discriminatory. Your tax dollars at work. Against the LGBTQ+ community. Against highly vulnerable LGBTQ+ youth.

Turns out the Church’s “all are welcome” spin is a conditional precept based on strict adherence to unchristian bigotry. Church leaders in Cleveland put their flock on notice that the universal invitation of acceptance may be rescinded to those who “openly express disagreement with Church teaching on matters of sex, sexuality, and/or gender in an inappropriate or scandalous way.”

The way Jesus turned nonconformists away.

From here on out, Catholic policy in Cleveland elementary and high schools — that rake in millions in taxpayer-funded vouchers — states that every person is expected “to present and conduct themselves in a manner consistent with their God-given biological sex” or face disciplinary action. Apparently, inclusive, affirming, nonjudgmental love is overrated.

The Catholic Diocese of Cleveland aligned itself with “culture war” extremists attacking people who can’t fight back. When an institution as influential as the Cleveland diocese rolled out sweeping prohibitions on LGBTQ+ expression and support in its diocesan-run and parish schools, it effectively blessed the record wave of hateful anti-LGBTQ+ bills being introduced by right-wing politicians in Ohio and Republican statehouses across the country (500 and counting).

Open the link and read it.

Categories Education Industry, Elections, Funding, Ohio, Privatization, Religion, Separation of church and state, Vouchers

ProPublica: Private Schools in Ohio Urge Parents to Get a Voucher

By dianeravitch
February 1, 2024 //
60

ProPublica reported that private schools in Ohio are actively encouraging parents to seek vouchers for their children to supplement their tuition. This enables the private schools to reduce student aid and also to raise tuition.

ProPublica said:

Tara Polansky and her husband were torn about where to enroll their daughter when they moved back to Columbus, Ohio, a year and a half ago. The couple, who work for a nonprofit organization and a foundation, respectively, were concerned about the quality of the city’s public schools and finally decided to send her to Columbus Jewish Day School. It was a long drive out to the suburbs every day, but they admired the school for its liberal-minded outlook.

So Polansky was startled when, in September, the school wrote to families telling them to apply for taxpayer-funded vouchers to cover part of the $18,000 tuition. In June, the Republican-controlled state government had expanded the state’s private-school voucher program to increase the value of the vouchers — to a maximum of $8,407 a year for high school students and $6,165 for those in lower grades — and, crucially, to make them available to all families.

For years the program, EdChoice, targeted mostly lower-income students in struggling school districts. Now it is an entitlement available to all, with its value decreasing for families with higher incomes but still providing more than $7,000 annually for high school students in solidly middle-class families and close to $1,000 for ones in the wealthiest families. Demand for EdChoice vouchers has nearly doubled this year, at a cost to Ohio taxpayers of several hundred million additional dollars, the final tally of which won’t be known for months.

That surge has been propelled by private school leaders, who have an obvious interest: The more voucher money families receive, the less schools have to offer in financial aid. The voucher revenue also makes it easier to raise tuition.

“The Board has voted to require all families receiving financial assistance … to apply for the EdChoice Program. We also encourage all families paying full tuition to apply for this funding,” read the email from the Columbus Jewish Day School board president. She continued: “I am looking forward to a great year — a year of learning, growing, and caring for each other. Let’s turn that caring into action by applying for the EdChoice Program.”

Polansky bridled at the direction. She had long subscribed to the main argument against private school vouchers: that they draw resources away from public education. It was one thing for her family to have chosen a private school. But she did not want to be part of an effort that, as she saw it, would decrease funding for schools serving other Columbus children. Together with another parent, she wrote a letter objecting to the demand.

“For this public money to go to kids to get a religious education is incredibly wrong,” she told ProPublica. “I absolutely don’t want to pull money out of an underfunded school district.”

For decades, Republicans have pushed, with mixed success, for school voucher programs in the name of parental choice and encouraging free-market competition among schools. But in just the past couple of years, vouchers have expanded to become available to most or all children in 10 states: Arkansas, Arizona, Florida, Indiana, Iowa, North Carolina, Ohio, Oklahoma, Utah and West Virginia. The expansion has been spurred by growing Republican dominance in many state capitals, U.S. Supreme Court rulings loosening restrictions on taxpayer funding for religious schools, and parental frustration with progressive curricula and with public school closures during the coronavirus pandemic. Many of the expanded programs are experiencing high demand, which voucher advocates are taking as affirmation of their argument: that families would greatly prefer to send their children to private schools, if only they could afford them.

But much of the demand for the expanded voucher programs is in fact coming from families, many quite affluent, whose children were already attending private schools. In Arizona, the first state to allow any family to receive public funding for private schools or homeschooling, the majority of families applying for the money, about $7,000 per student, were not recently enrolled in public school. In Florida, only 13% of the 123,000 students added to the state’s expanded school-choice program had switched from public school.

In Ohio, the effects of the move toward looser eligibility in recent years was clear even prior to last summer’s big expansion: Whereas in 2018, fewer than a tenth of the students who were newly receiving vouchers that year had not attended a public school the year before, by 2022, more than half of students who were new to EdChoice were already in private schools.

That ratio will climb much higher in Ohio, now that the vouchers are available for families at all income levels and private schools are explicitly telling parents to apply. The surge in applications this school year has been so dramatic that it’s nearing the total enrollment for all private schools in the entire state.

At St. Brendan’s the Navigator, on the other side of the Columbus beltway from the Jewish Day School, the missive arrived on the last day of July. The letter, signed by the Rev. Bob Penhallurick, called the expanded vouchers a “tremendous boon to our school families and Catholic education across Ohio” and said that all families were “strongly encouraged to apply for and receive the EdChoice scholarship.” He noted that, depending on their income level, families could receive up to $6,165 for each child — nearly covering the $6,975 tuition. “Even a small scholarship is a major blessing for you, the school, and the parish,” he wrote.

And then he added, in italics, that if a family did not apply for the vouchers, “we will respect that decision,” but that “supplemental financial aid from the parish in this case will require a meeting” with either himself or another pastor at the school…

At Holy Family School near Youngstown, the directive arrived a few days later, on Aug. 3. “As you are aware, ALL students attending Holy Family School will be eligible for the EdChoice Scholarship. We are requesting that all families register their child/ren for this scholarship as soon as possible,” wrote the school’s leadership. And then it added in bold: “It is imperative that you register for EdChoice for each of your students. We are waiting to send invoices until your EdChoice Scholarship has been awarded.”

In an interview at the school, Holy Family principal Laura Parise said the push to apply for EdChoice had succeeded. “One hundred percent of our students are on it,” she said. “We made it that way — we made our families fill out the form, and we’re going from there.”

There is more. Open the link.

Categories Education Industry, Ethics, Funding, Ohio, Privatization, Religion, Separation of church and state, Vouchers

The Hoax of Ohio’s So-Called “Community Schools”

By dianeravitch
January 14, 2024 //
5

Denis Smith worked for the Ohio Department of Education, where he oversaw the burgeoning charter industry. When I was in Ohio a few years back, another former state official told me that charter lobbyists wrote the state’s charter school law. In their effort to make it palatable to give public money to private entities to run schools, the lobbyists decided to call them “community schools.”

As Denis Smith points out in this article, Ohio is the only state that calls charter schools by that name. In fact, “community schools” have their own definition. They are public schools that offer a wide range of social and even medical services. There are federal programs for charter schools and for community schools: they are not the same. Some charter schools in Ohio operate “for profit.” No community school does.

Smith writes:

More than a quarter-century ago, in a move that undermined the status of the state’s public schools, Ohio Republicans approved legislation that authorized the use of public funds to operate schools run by private management companies. These entities that use public funds to establish and maintain a parallel system of education are called charter schools.

Except in one state, where the legal title for these schools may be an issue that is bound to confuse both policy makers and the public over time.

Indeed, in this nation 44 of the states refer by law to these public-private hybrids as charter schools. Sadly, the Ohio Revised Code calls them something else, community schools. That poor choice of language terminology, an awkward construction from the very beginning of Ohio school privatization, may now pose a problem and continuing confusion as the result of legislation in the U.S. Senate that will expand the existing federal community school program.

That’s right, the federal full-service community school program.

On Nov. 29, Ohio U.S. Sen. Sherrod Brown introduced the Full-Service Community School Expansion Act of 2023 in the U.S. Senate. The legislation seeks to increase the number of school districts and schools in the federally-funded community school program, which shares the same title with the hybrid schools in Ohio but otherwise has no resemblance.  

What policy experts define as a full-service community school was codified in 1991, when Florida legislation defined such an educational program as “the integration of educational, medical, and social and or human services that meets the needs of youth and their families on school grounds or in easily accessible locations.” Indeed, the basic idea of a community school and the terminology for it predated the Ohio legislation that renamed charters as community schools. More on that later.

The initial legislation that established the FSCS program defined the “four pillars of a community school” as having integrated support for students from health and social service agencies, an expanded instructional day for added learning opportunities, community engagement, and collaboration by the school leadership with community service providers.

The federal definition of a community school is instructive, where the school day is extended to enhance learning, and where community organizations provide dental, vision, nutrition, and other key services to help children thrive and be successful in their school experience. If it has been said that it takes a village to raise a child. But it also takes a community to educate a child through public participation in providing the care and support for those who are the future.

This idea of a community school, now defined in federal law, complements the historical image of the little red schoolhouse, which has served as the center of the community since the early days of the republic. In fact, the Northwest Ordinance of 1787 required that a portion of the land in new territories be set aside to support the establishment and funding of public schools. It is also fitting to know that Ohio was the first state to be formed from the Northwest Territory in 1803.

With this historical background and the federal legislation that defines a community school, let’s compare the federal concept of a community school with what is called a “community school” in Ohio.

In 1997, the legislature established in the Ohio Revised Code Chapter 3314- Community Schools, a strange entity that is a hybrid of public funds received by private management companies to educate students. But the problem with these “community schools” is that they are neither of the community nor public in their structure.

As an example, the very idea of a national charter school chain operating multiple schools, whose headquarters may be elsewhere, where its board members sit on the governing bodies of several schools and may not be residents of the communities where the schools are located, is antithetical to the concept of a community school.

So we are back to a contradiction in terms that needs to be addressed. Of all the 45 states that have chosen to operate publicly funded but privately operated schools, Ohio has chosen to use the term “community school” in law when these schools are anything but.

And the reason? You shouldn’t be surprised to know that in this state of gerrymandering and supermajorities, it’s all about politics. Here’s why.

About 15 years ago, a former Republican legislator told a colleague who worked with me in the Ohio Department of Education’s Community (Charter) School Office that there was a concern the initial legislation would not have passed in 1997 if the word charter was used. Community was a “word that sells,” it was thought back then. To this day, it appears that Ohio is the only state which uses such unique language to describe these schools, where community replaces the term charter and sponsor replaces another key term, that of authorizer.

In light of the confusion that will only grow as real community schools continue to develop, public schools with extended-learning formats and support programs provided by collaborating community organizations governed by elected and not appointed community members, it’s time for the legislature to do the right thing and amend Chapter 3314 of the Ohio Revised Code. To put it bluntly, and in light of prevailing federal definitions as found in the Full-Service Community School Program, Ohio community schools are not and cannot be identified as community schools.

Conclusion: Ohio politicians, watch your language. Real community schools, particularly the full-service variety and not charters masquerading as such, are the real thing. Thank you, Senator Brown, for your precise use of language in sponsoring this valuable program and advocacy for community schools. After all, it takes a community to govern, oversee, and support a school, a real community school, that belongs to all of us, and not a national chain or profit-centered business enterprise.

Categories Charter Schools, Community Schools, Education Industry, Education Reform, Ohio

Ohio: Governor Vetoes Bill Banning Transgender Medical Care

By dianeravitch
December 29, 2023 //
13

Governor Mike DeWine vetoed a bill to ban medical treatment for transgender minors, an unusual move for a Republican governor. The legislature has the power to override his veto. The governor said that the decision about such care should be made by the people who love the child most: parents.

In addition to banning transition care for minors, the bill says medical professionals who provide the care could lose their licenses and be sued. It also prohibits transgender girls and women from playing on high school and college sports teams that correspond with their gender identity.

On Friday, Mr. DeWine said that if the bill were to become law, “Ohio would be saying that the state, that the government, knows better what is medically best for a child than the two people who love that child the most, the parents.”

The governor reached his decision after visiting hospitals and meeting with families “both positively and negatively affected” by gender-affirming care last week, a spokesperson said…

In addition to banning transition care for minors, the bill says medical professionals who provide the care could lose their licenses and be sued. It also prohibits transgender girls and women from playing on high school and college sports teams that correspond with their gender identity…

This summer, the American Academy of Pediatrics commissioned a systematic review of medical research on the treatments, while still taking the position that they can be essential. Transgender adolescents have high rates of depression, suicidal thoughts and self-harm, and some evidence suggests that puberty blockers and hormones, in the short-term, could improve their mental health.

“The most harrowing part of my job is informing parents that their child died, especially when their death was from a preventable suicide,’’ Dr. Steve Davis, chief executive of Cincinnati Children’s Hospital, told Ohio senators at a hearing on the bill. “You trust us on every other condition. Please, trust us on this one.’’

Categories Gender, Health, Ohio

BOMBSHELL: Cardona Gives Hillsdale Charter School $2 Million, Despite Lies and Lack of Diversity

By dianeravitch
December 7, 2023 //
29

What an embarrassment for the U.S. Department of Education!

Carol Burris writes on Valerie Strauss’s Washington Post blog, “The Answer Sheet,” that Secretary Miguel Cardona just awarded one of its largest grants ever to expand a Hillsdale College charter school in Ohio. Hillsdale is closely tied to the conservative Christian movement and to Republican leaders such as Donald Trump, Governor Ron DeSantis of Florida, and Governor Bill Lee of Tennessee.

Hillsdale’s history program is called “the 1776 curriculum,” intended to refute the ideas of journalist Nicole Hannah-Jones’ controversial “1619 Project.” Hannah-Jones argued that American history began with the arrival of African slaves in 1619. To counter her narrative, the Trump administration in its waning days created “the 1776 Commission” to produce a quick version of a patriotic history. On President Biden’s first day in office, he abolished the 1776 Commission. Hillsdale College, however, continued the work of writing a full U.S. history curriculum based on the work of the 1776 Commission and made it available to schools that wanted history as it used to be taught: with great men, high ideals, and unblemished patriotism.

Hillsdale is now associated with a chain of charter schools that have adopted its Christian worldview and the 1776 curriculum. As Burris, executive director of the Network for Public Education explains, a Hillsdale charter just won nearly $2 million from the federal Charter Schools Program. CSP is administered by the U.S. Department of Education. The charter made claims about its location and its demographics that are “misleading.”

Trying to think of an analogy to Secretary of Education Miguel Cardona giving a large grant to a Hillsdale charter school: imagine Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos giving $2 million to a charter school for transgender children. Neither seems likely. But one scenario happened.

Valerie Strauss introduces Burris’s column.

A recent federal audit had a bit of bad news for the U.S. Education Department’s Charter Schools Program (CSP), which has provided more than $2.5 billion in grants to help open or expand charter schools. The audit by the department’s Office of Inspector General found that the CSP office may not have had “reliable information needed to make informed decisions” about continuing funding for charter schools with program grants.

There was more in the audit, which you can read about here, but this post looks at a different problem facing the CSP: schools with highly problematic applications that win millions of dollars of federal money anyway.

Charter schools are publicly funded but privately operated, some of them as for-profit entities, and they educate about 7 percent of U.S. schoolchildren. The 30-year-old charter sector has been riddled with financial and other scandals over the years, although supporters say that the problems these schools face are expected growing pains and that they offer families an important option to schools in publicly funded districts. Critics say that they are part of the movement to privatize public education and that some states have lax charter school laws that do not properly regulate them.

This post was written by Carol Burris, an award-winning former New York high school principal and now executive director of the advocacy group called Network for Public Education, which is an alliance of organizations that advocates for the improvement of public education and seeks legislative reform of charter schools. Burris has written previously on the charter school program for Answer Sheet (for example, here and here). She has chronicled how the program spent hundreds of millions of dollars on charter schools that never opened or closed not long after opening.

Burris writes about the funding application of a charter school in Ohio, the Cincinnati Classical Academy, and says that her organization, along with a group of Ohio legislators and other organizations, have asked Education Secretary Miguel Cardona to rescind the school’s nearly $2 million CSP grant. I asked the school to comment and will add its response if I get one. I asked the Education Department about the letter, and a spokesman said this in an email:

“The U.S. Department of Education (Department) is committed to supporting state and local efforts to increase school diversity and reduce racial and socio-economic isolation in schools, including through the Charter School Program (CSP). There are multiple safeguards in place to ensure the integrity of CSP applications and funded grants. For example, all CSP applicants must provide attestations confirming the accuracy of information submitted in their application. False, fictitious, or fraudulent statements or claims may subject applicants to criminal, civil, or administrative penalties. Such safeguards are in place to help ensure charter schools serve communities well.”

By Carol Burris


An invitation to fiction writing. That is how Mike Winerip described the federal Charter School Program (CSP) grant process in a 2012 New York Times story, a characterization based on his investigation of a New Jersey charter school, which, despite three failed attempts to open and an application full of “misrepresentations,” had secured a CSP grant.

This issues didn’t go away. The All Football Club of Lancaster, Pa., an unauthorized charter school with no community support, submitted an often-incoherent application and yet won $1.2 million in 2020. A school run by a for-profit operator immersed in self-dealings and a segregation academy turned charter school cashed in on a North Carolina grant.

But the prize for the most inventive story to secure a CSP grant may belong to the Cincinnati Classical Academy (CCA), a Hillsdale College member school, for securing a nearly $2 million grant. CCA, which prides itself on teaching virtue, asked for the grant on the basis of its claim that it was closing the achievement gap and serving disadvantaged students, never reporting that only 16 percent of its students are economically disadvantaged and that 2 percent are Black — a starkly different student body from the overwhelmingly disadvantaged and majority-Black Cincinnati Public School students, who, CCA says, it wants to save from poverty.

Cincinnati Classical Academy


Cincinnati Classical Academy is located on a cul-de-sac in a leafy residential suburb of Cincinnati called Reading. The school’s website features a motto and a coat of arms, and plays a video showing the school building with a cross atop a tower at the entrance as well as a large American flag. It currently runs from kindergarten through seventh grade but says it plans to add a grade each year until it becomes a full K-12 school.

It takes considerable digging on its website to realize that CCA is a charter school, not a tuition-free Christian private academy. Its headmaster’s message speaks of morals, virtue and “old-fashioned” methods. Pictures of the gymnasium show a large crucifix on the wall next to an American flag. In a photograph of a school hallway lined with posters depicting the school’s virtues, Mary and the infant Jesus from Botticelli’s “Madonna of the Magnificat” illustrates the virtue of humility. To illustrate gratitude, CCA shows a family praying before a meal.

Nearly all of the uniformed children featured on the website are White. There is no mention of a provision for free lunch on the school’s webpage, which features catered lunches students can purchase in full or a la carte.

Although CCA is only in its second year, it has the status of being a member school of Hillsdale College’s K-12 initiative, which entitles it to free curriculum, training and consultation from the small, nondenominational, conservative Christian college in Michigan. Hillsdale President Larry Arnn is an ally of former president Donald Trump as well as of Trump’s former education secretary, Betsy DeVos, and “distinguished fellow” Christopher Rufo, an activist who has fueled the culture wars.

Hillsdale provides support for CCA through its Barney Charter School Initiative, which began in 2010 with a half-million-dollar contribution from the Barney Family Foundation and which has opened a few dozen charter schools across the country. Hillsdale College’s mission is to maintain “by precept and example the immemorial teachings and practices of the Christian faith,” while the mission of its K-12 charter schools includes a call for “moral virtue.” A Hillsdale K-12 civics and U.S. history curriculum released in 2021 praises conservative values, criticizes liberal ones and distorts civil rights history.

According to its 990 tax forms, the Barney Family Foundation gives to health and child-centered charities along with Americans for Prosperity, the Cato Institute, the Hoover Institution, the Heartland Institute, the State Policy Network, the Friedman Foundation for Educational Choice, the Heritage Foundation, and other right-wing foundations and think tanks.

Stephen Barney, a trustee emeritus on the Hillsdale College Board, has been one of its most generous donors. Between 2010 and 2019, the Network for Public Education identified more than $4 million earmarked for Hillsdale from Barney’s foundation, excluding unlisted donations in 2011 and or donations before or after those years.

Despite Hillsdale College’s frequent boasts of rejecting federal money (and the federal regulations that come with it, including Title IV provisions), the college’s affiliated charter schools eagerly dip into the federal Charter School Program through state entitlement grants. To date, the Network for Public Education has identified more than $16.75 million given to Hillsdale charters for school start-ups or expansions.
The grant to CCA is the first given directly by the federal department to a Hillsdale-connected charter school.

The questionable narrative

Applicants for Charter Schools Program Developer Grants fill out extensive applications in making the case for why their schools deserve the funds. According to the Federal Register, which calls for applications, the first purpose of the CSP is to “expand opportunities for all students, particularly for children with disabilities, English learners, and other traditionally underserved students, to attend charter schools.”

However, CCA caters to the well-served in disproportionately high numbers. State records show that it had no English language learners in 2022-2023 when it applied. Students with disabilities were enrolled at less than half the rate of the Cincinnati Public Schools. More than 80 percent of the students in Cincinnati Public Schools were economically disadvantaged compared to fewer than 17 percent at CCA. Other charter schools in Hamilton County had no problem attracting economically disadvantaged students; their average rate topped 85 percent.

The only category in which CCA exceeds a demographic of Cincinnati Public Schools is White students. More than 82 percent of CCA students are White, compared to 20 percent in the public school district.

So what can a school like this do to get a grant intended for schools that serve underserved kids? It didn’t reveal itself.

CCA cited Cincinnati Public Schools demographics to make its case in its application even though it is located in the Reading Community City School District, which is whiter, wealthier and has better ratings. Then it provided another handful of schools within five miles for comparison, none of which are in Cincinnati Public Schools. The school also talked in its application about closing the achievement gap and serving diverse, underserved students even though its unrevealed Black student population (2.4 percent) is so tiny the state does not even give it a gap-closing measure.

But where the school best revealed itself is in its list of goals and objectives. Not only did it fail to share its lack of diversity, it included no goals or objectives to address it. The application does not discuss the need to increase the number of English language learners, homeless children, students with disabilities, or students who get free or reduced-price lunches to level the enormous gap between the school’s proportions and the greater Cincinnati area.

If achieved, the goals in the application prepared by Kentucky’s Adkins and Company and signed off by the president of the school’s governing board will not disrupt the status quo. CCA will be able to meet them and keep the federal dollars flowing for four years while maintaining the reality projected on its website — that it is a magnet for White, Christian conservative families to escape the area’s diverse schools.

The CSP review process

If you have ever applied for a mortgage, you remember the extraordinarily detailed evidence you must provide to support every claim. That is not the case when “free government money” for charter schools is at stake.

The curious lack of a demographic profile of the school’s students was never a concern for the reviewers. CCA received the highest score of all applicants — 101. One of the three reviewers gave the school a perfect score. You can find the application and the reviewers’ scoring here.
Reviewers, who are solicited from the charter school world, were satisfied that “comprehensive data is provided, revealing the underperformance of Cincinnati public schools and underscoring the necessity for a high-quality alternative that offers families a viable choice,” even though the school is not a part of Cincinnati Public Schools.

The reviewers bought the same old narrative — a high-poverty district is bad, so bring in a charter school. They parroted back what the applicant said and praised Hillsdale College’s Barney Charter School Program.

Inexplicably, given the CSP’s checkered history, the Education Department increased the maximum amount of Developer Grants per charter school from $1.5 million to $2 million this year, and CCA got nearly every penny of the limit: a grant for $1,991,846. Grants are usually for five years, but CCA had been open for a year when it applied, so it got a four-year grant. The average amount per year is $300,000 but the Education Department gave CCA nearly half a million dollars a year — on the basis of claims that even cursory checks on state data or a visit to the school’s website would show to be untrue.

Back in Ohio, public education advocacy groups are outraged but not surprised. Bill Phillis, the executive director of the Ohio Coalition for Equity and Adequacy of School Funding, told me that the charter industry in his state “has been rife with financial and academic fraud and corruption.” He also said the CCA’s application for a development grant, with its “deception and disingenuous information,” is “typical of the charter industry in Ohio.”

The Network for Public Education sent a letter to U.S. Education Secretary Miguel Cardona protesting the grant and asking that it be rescinded. It was signed by Phillis’s coalition, along with U.S. Rep. Greg Landsman (D-Ohio), five state legislators who represent the area, the Ohio PTA, both state teachers unions, the Cincinnati NAACP, and more than a dozen public education, civil rights, local teacher associations and advocacy groups.

Other 2023 CSP awardees are being challenged. The St. Louis Board of Education has passed a resolution protesting the more than $35 million CSP grant received by the billionaire-funded Opportunity Trust to open more charter schools in Missouri — nearly all of which will, because of state law, be located in St. Louis or Kansas City. According to the St. Louis Post-Dispatch:

“The group misrepresented its relationship with SLPS in its application to the U.S. Department of Education, the resolution states. The school board “does not have a working relationship with the Opportunity Trust, does not collaborate with the Opportunity Trust and has opposed efforts by the Opportunity Trust to enact legislation to divert district funds to charter schools,” it [the resolution] reads.”

CSP grant applications that have been misleading and deceptive have still been rewarded with millions of taxpayer dollars from CSP. Whether the source of the problem is the department’s process, a less-than-rigorous application, the reviewer selection process or faulty regulations, awards that are based on disingenuous claims and deceit do not serve children or taxpayers well.

Until something changes, the statement that applicants sign — “I am aware that any false, fictitious, or fraudulent statements or claims may subject me to criminal, civil, or administrative penalties. (U.S. Code, Title 18, Section 1001)” — should be enforced, and the secretary should use his authority to terminate the grant.

Categories Accountability, Cardona, Miguel, Charter Schools, Curriculum, Equity, Extremism, Funding, History, Lies, Ohio, Race, Scandal, U.S. Department of Education

Jan Resseger: The Governor‘s Takeover of Education Is Hurting Ohio’s Schools

By dianeravitch
November 13, 2023 //
12

Recently, there has been a trend in states with a supermajority of Republicans in the Legislature to seize the reins of power in every realm. First, they gerrymander the state to assure that the other party has no chance to win control. Then they strip power where Democrats exercise any authority. In North Carolina, the Republican Legislature removed power from the Democratic governor. In Wisconsin, the Republican Legislature followed suit. In Ohio, with a Republican Legislature and Governor, the Governor took control of education away from the mostly elected State Board of Education.

The Ohio State Board resisted. It even sued. But a judge ruled that the governor had the authority to take control of education policy away from the State Board, even though voters gave those powers to the State Board in 1953.

Bill Phillis of the Ohio Coalition for Equity and Adequacy provided the context:

Judge rules that state level governance of education can return to the Governor’s office, notwithstanding that Ohioans, in 1953, transferred education governance from the Governor’s office to the State Board ofEducation via a constitutional amendment.

Article VI, section 4 was added to the Constitution in 1953 by the citizens of Ohio. At that time, the governance of education was embedded in the governor’s office. Ohioans passed a constitutional amendment to have education governed with the same model as used at the local level—citizens elected on a non-partisan basis to govern school districts. Local districts were not and are not now governed by other governmental jurisdictions—mayors, city councils, county commissions, township trustees.

In Ohio’s current political climate, the will of the people is summarily disregarded, even though the Ohio Constitution states that “all political power is inherent in the people.” (Article I, section 2) Notwithstanding this powerful constitutional safeguard for the folks, a Senate leader in Ohio recently said publicly, “We kinda do what we want…”

The Court, in other words, overturned the will of the voters and the state constitution.

Jan Resseger, who lives in Ohio, describes the evisceration of the State Board of Education.

She writes:

Education Week‘s Libby Sanford recently covered the education governance battle in Ohio, where the legislature just seized control of public education standards and curriculum by eviscerating the power of the Ohio State Board of Education and moving control of the state’s public schools under the political control of the governor and his appointees.

Sanford explains how the leaders of Ohio’s gerrymandered, supermajority Republican legislature folded the school governance takeover into the state budget after the legislature had failed on its own to enact the the plan to gut the power of the State Board of Education: “(T)he Republican-led Ohio state legislature passed a two-year budget that included a provision converting the Ohio Department of Education, led by a superintendent chosen by the State Board of Education, into the Ohio Department of Education and Workforce, led by a director appointed by the governor. The budget also… includes a requirement that schools adopt a state-approved reading program by the next school year and a ban on the use of the three-cueing method in literacy instruction. The move changing how education is overseen in The Buckeye State strips the 19-member State Board of Education—of which 11 members are elected and eight are appointed by the governor—of its powers to… set academic standards and set frameworks for school curricula, limiting the board to decisions on teacher disciplinary and licensure cases and disputes over school boundaries.”

According to the provisions of a 1953 state constitutional amendment, Ohio’s state board of education will continue to exist but will lack any power to control significant policy. Its members will continue to appoint a state superintendent of public instruction, but that individual will serve as a mere advisor to the governor’s appointee who will control the state’s primary public education governance and operations.

In Ohio, two members of the State Board and another parent, on behalf of their children enrolled in public schools, along with the Toledo Board of Education filed a lawsuit to block the governor’s seizure of the powers of the state board. A judge has allowed the takeover to move forward, however, while the case makes its way through the courts. On November 3, 2023, plaintiffs’ attorneys submitted a brief in support of the plaintiff’s objections to the magistrate’s decision.

Sanford examines the political takeover of Ohio’s public schools in the context of a broader national trend among legislatures and governors to introduce partisan bias into governance of an institution that has historically been protected: “(T)he state (Ohio) isn’t the first to make a move of this kind… (E)specially over the past few years, lawmakers and state leaders have taken more aggressive action on state education policy, enacting laws that limit what teachers can talk about in the classroom, greatly expanding school choice, and requiring that schools notify parents when their children seek to use pronouns or names that don’t align with their sex assigned at birth.”

Sanford interviews Jeffrey Henig, a professor of education and political science at Teachers College, Columbia University, who identifies Ohio’s insertion of politics into the governance of the state’s public schools as part of a growing trend across the states.  He calls the move, nonetheless, “a high-risk proposition.” Henig explains: “(A)t the start of the 20th century, around two-thirds of states elected their chief school officers. By 2010 that number had dropped to less than 30 percent. Many states, like Ohio, gave the power to choose a state school officer to state boards, while others gave that power to the governor. ‘The general story is there’s been this long, slow shift in formal authority… but more recently governors getting more directly involved.”

Citing examples like Governor Ron DeSantis in Florida and Governor Kim Reynolds in Iowa, Henig hopes that perhaps the new trend will run its course: “Public education can be a hot potato issue… You can get your hands burned by being too closely involved… General-purpose politicians will realize that education isn’t a sure winner for them and succumb to the pressures, many of which are legitimate, to make their mark in other areas of domestic policy rather than stick their noses right in the middle of these swirling waters of culture wars.”

As a citizen in Ohio who values public schooling, I hope Henig is correct. The danger for our children of inserting politics and ideology into the public schools has become clearer not only through the insertion of culture war bias into state legislation, but also as lobbyists pressure politicians to adopt ideology-driven education theories and even specific curricula from think tanks with known political biases. Ohio is an example. Dee Bagwell Haslam, whose family owns the Cleveland Browns, is a major contributor to the campaigns of Ohio’s Republican politicians. She also serves on the board of Jeb Bush’s ExcelinEd.  Dee Haslam has lobbied Governor Mike DeWine and the Ohio Legislature to promote one of ExcelinEd’s priorities: the Science of Reading. In this year’s state budget, the Ohio Legislature mandated that all Ohio public schools will adopt the Science of Reading as their sole reading curriculum.

In Schoolhouse Burning, his excellent exploration of the history of public education, Derek Black, an attorney and professor of constitutional law, describes the reasons why, in the period immediately following the Civil War, the authors of many of the state constitutions created state boards of education that would be independent and resistant to political meddling in public schools’ standards and curriculum:

“States… guarded against the politicization of education by vesting constitutional authority in the hands of education professionals (or at least people solely focused on education)… Following the Civil War, state constitutions increasingly established a state superintendent and/or state board of education. Doing so ensured that the individuals entrusted with administering education and setting various education policies would not be wedded to any geographic or political constituency. They were to act on behalf of all the state’s children and exercise their best judgment, hopefully devoid of the normal politics of the state house. And unlike the heads of transportation, agriculture, commerce, and police, for instance, these education officials would not serve at the pleasure of the governor or legislature.” (Schoolhouse Burning, pp. 220-221)

Categories Corruption, Education Industry, Extremism, Ohio, Privatization, Republicans, School Choice, Unions

Ohio: Lawyer from State AG Office Advised Both Sides in Blatant Conflict of Interest

By dianeravitch
October 28, 2023 //
1

The governor of Ohio is trying to take control of the state school board. They are too independent for Governor Mike DeWine’s taste because they are elected, not appointed by him. As an official body, the school board sued the state to block the takeover and was represented by the state Attorney General’s office. Unfortunately, their lawyer—it was discovered—was also advising the defense counsel. Their lawyer was “Chief Counsel and Ethics Officer for the Ohio Attorney General.” He will no longer be representing the state school board.

The Ohio Capital Journal reported:

An Ohio Attorney General lawyer for state school board members in their ongoing lawsuit to stop a massive transfer of power over K-12 education from the board to the governor’s office was found by the court to be giving legal advice to the defense counsel, also a member of the Attorney General’s Office.

Chief Counsel and Ethics Officer for the Ohio Attorney General Bridget Coontz has been disqualified from participating in the lawsuit anymore after sending an email on Oct. 3 that included legal advice to the counsel for defendants, Julie Pfeiffer, the section chief at the Ohio Attorney General’s Office, according to new court documents in the Franklin County Court of Common Pleas.

“In the email, Coontz offered legal advice to Counsel Pfeiffer clearly related to this case,” Franklin County Common Please Court Judge Karen Held Phipps wrote in an order disqualifying Coontz on Monday. “Coontz offered legal advice to Counsel Pfeiffer, which was directly adverse to Plaintiffs (Christina) Collins and (Michelle) Newman, who Coontz represented in this case. … Public confidence in the outcome of this case requires that Coontz be disqualified from any further participation.”

Seven members of the Ohio State Board of Education originally filed a lawsuit against Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine on Sept. 19 in an attempt to block an overhaul of K-12 education that was included by lawmakers in the state’s two-year budget this summer. Judge Phipps issued the temporary restraining order Sept. 21. Coontz filed a motion on Sept. 27 to substitute the Attorney General as counsel for the original seven plaintiffs.

“Coontz assured the Court that there was no danger of a conflict-of-interest in this situation because the Office of the Attorney General maintained a complex screening process in order to eliminate any such conflict of interest,” Phipps wrote.

When a conflict comes up between Ohio Attorney General clients, an ethics screen is set up between the AG lawyers and is distributed to all attorneys and supervisors involved in the case, Phipps said Coontz explained to the court during an expedited briefing process…

But Coontz mistakenly sent an email to a recipient on the other side.

According to Judge Phipps, Coontz told the court the ethics screen “did not become necessary because she determined that a conflict of interest did not exist.”

“Coontz’s argument in this regard is absurd on its face,” Judge Phipps wrote. “The Court strongly disagrees that Coontz personally gets to determine when a conflict of interest has arisen. The main concern here is the appearance of impropriety, which is precisely what Coontz’s email created. … Accordingly, Coontz is hereby disqualified from any further participation in this matter.”

The lawsuit is trying to stop the Ohio Department of Education from transitioning to the Ohio Department of Education and Workforce, which would create a cabinet-level director position and put the department under the governor’s office.

Categories Accountability, Fraud, Ohio

Ohio: Governor Seizes Control of State Board, Ignores Temporary Restraining Order

By dianeravitch
October 7, 2023 //
16

In Ohio, the Governor and Legislature didn’t like the fact that they didn’t control the State Board of Education. The State Board consists of 19 members, 11 elected, and 8 appointed by the Governor. The Republican leadership saw no value in having elected members. So they passed a budget that stripped the board of most of its powers and assigned them to a new Department of Education and the Workforce controlled by the Governor and focused on career and technical education.

Bill Phillis of the Ohio Coalition for Equity and Adequacy described Governor Mike DeWine’s refusal to comply with a temporary restraining order halting his takeover.

The Governor seems to have a problem understanding the purpose of the Temporary Restraining Order (TRO) issued to prevent him from implementing the transfer of State Board of Education functions to his office.

Franklin County Common Pleas Judge Karen Held Phipps, on September 21, issued a TRO to halt action on transferring State Board of Education functions to the Governor’s office. (Via HB33, the transfer was set for October 3.)

On October 2, the Governor, notwithstanding the TRO, essentially told reporters that the law would go into effect as of midnight October 3. In a speech to an education group the morning of October 3, the Governor said it was necessary for the law to go into effect for payment to be made to school districts, state employees to be paid, etc. Meanwhile, the court, on October 3, extended the TRO until October 20.

To this ordinary citizen, it seems clear that:

1. The TRO was meant to pause action on the transfer effective October 3.

2. State Board of Education operation would continue at least until the court decided whether or not the transfer law is constitutional. If the court ultimately decides the transfer is constitutional, the State Board of Education operations, as transferred in HB33, will end. If the court decides the transfer is unconstitutional, the State Board of Education operations will continue as in the past.

3. Hence, for the Governor to imply in the October 3 speech that obeying the TRO would have caused chaos seemed to be misleading. The TRO rendered him powerless to do anything regarding the matter until a court decision is issued.

Stay tuned.

Categories Accountability, Democracy, Education Industry, Extremism, Ohio

Denis Smith: What Ohio Can Learn from Texas

By dianeravitch
October 5, 2023 //
13

Denis Smith is a retired school administrator in Ohio who worked in the State Education Department’s office for charter schools. He writes here about the strong resistance to vouchers in Texas, compared to the collusion between legislators and religious leaders in Ohio.

You read that headline correctly.

It may come as a shock to readers to know that with all the issues confronting Ohio, it hasn’t been listed in recent surveys as the worst place to live and work. That honor, according to a new CNBC survey, goes to Texas.

The survey methodology targeted a range of issues facing the Lone Star State, with reproductive rights, health care, and voting rights identified as leading deficits that are adversely affecting the state’s citizens.

Noticeably absent from the CNBC list of top issues was education, which might come as a surprise to observers who have long deplored the low per-pupil spending for schools in one of the fastest growing states in the nation.

But there might be another reason why education didn’t pull Texas even deeper into the deficit column. As of now, and unlike Ohio, Texas does not have a universal education voucher program. In this year alone, Ohio joined 14 other states that have passed such legislation which allows taxpayers to pick up the tab for tuition at private and religious schools.

But universal vouchers haven’t happened yet in Texas, despite Gov. Greg Abbott’s strong advocacy of spreading public money around to unaccountable non-public schools.

Opposition to vouchers comes from the state’s vast rural areas, where there are few private and religious schools to choose from. That same anti-voucher argument was made in Ohio during the past legislative session, where families in rural counties would not have the same level of access for those living in metropolitan areas.

But if there is one person in the Buckeye State who almost singlehandedly pushed through the voucher bill despite spirited opposition, it would be Senate President Matt Huffman, whom Statehouse watchers have described as the bully- in-chief of Ohio politics and an aggressive champion of conveying public funds to religious schools.

By contrast, if there is one person in Texas who has been a principled leader in championing public schools and opposing vouchers for religious schools, the Rev. Charles Foster Johnson, leader of Pastors for Texas Children, would be that positive force.

What a contrast. In Ohio, we have a schoolyard bully in the person of Matt Huffman. In Texas, we have a principled pastor using a bully pulpit, a la Theodore Roosevelt, who popularized that term. But let’s not conflate the two terms, as Pastor Johnson respects constitutional limits, unlike the Ohio Senate President.

As a bully, Huffman respects nothing, and where the word principled is not followed by the term leadership. One specific example of Huffman’s lack of respect for societal norms and conventions is the Ohio Constitution and Article VI, Section 2, which clearly states a prohibition against the use of public funds to support private and religious schools:

The General Assembly shall make such provisions, by taxation, or otherwise, as, with the income arising from the school trust fund, will secure a thorough and efficient system of common schools throughout the state; but no religious or other sect, or sects, shall ever have any exclusive right to, or control of, any part of the school funds of this state.

By contrast, Pastor Johnson and his organization on September 19 released this statement opposing vouchers for religious schools in Texas. Here are some key excerpts from the statement of Pastors for Texas Children in opposition to vouchers:

Vouchers are a clear violation of the American ideal of separation of church and state.

In an unprecedented violation of God’s law of religious liberty and the American doctrine of the separation of church and state, Governor Greg Abbott this afternoon called on ministers and pastors to use God’s pulpit to push his private school voucher program.

The use of public tax dollars to subsidize religious instruction is a sin against God.

Pastors for Texas Children stands strong for the universal education of all God’s children, provided, and protected by the public trust. We oppose all attempts to privatize it for sectarian, religious, and political reasons.

As we examine the use of the bully pulpit by a Texas pastor in providing principled leadership compared to unconstitutional and unprincipled bullying by Ohio’s senate leader, the behavior of Ohio’s Catholic bishops in joining Republicans in supporting an assault on the Ohio Constitution through their advocacy of Issue One in the recent special election is a study in contrasts with the Texas pastors.

Those critical of the church’s role in trying to make it more difficult to amend the state’s constitution and thus block a popular abortion measure on the November ballot see its strong working relationship with Ohio’s Republican leadership. That relationship resulted in a gift, the universal education voucher program funding unaccountable religious schools, embedded in the new state budget.

And the constitutional prohibition for using public funds otherwise earmarked for public schools to support religious schools? Never mind Article VI, Section 2.

“We can kind of do what we want,” Huffman famously said in 2022.

And he does. Clearly these words depict the image of the bully-in-chief, intent on destroying public education regardless of a clear constitutional mandate to use public funds to support a “system[note the singular form] of common schools.”

So while it is true that Texas was ranked last in the recent CNBC survey, it has allowed us to view the contrasts with Ohio as seen in its political and religious leaders. Greg Abbott is clearly the bully in Texas, and Matt Huffman plays that role in Ohio.

But we also see differences in religious leadership, where a group of courageous Texas pastors has taken a position found in their organization’s vision statement:

Pastors for Texas Children believes that public education is a human right, a constitutional guarantee, and a central part of God’s plan for human flourishing. When this sacred trust and provision of God’s common good comes under attack by the forces of privatization, we respond with prayer, service, and advocacy.

This vision is in sharp contrast with that of Ohio’s Catholic hierarchy, which has been working diligently with the state Republican leadership to scoop up public money for private purposes.

Again, never mind Article VI, Section 2.

While Ohio does not have a faith-based organization like Pastors for Texas Children to advocate for the separation of public and private monies for schools, Vouchers Hurt Ohio, a group of nearly 200 Ohio school districts, has united to sue the state and stop the unconstitutional voucher scheme. Fair minded Ohioans should pray for the success of groups like VHO who wish to honor constitutional government.

In the meantime, the blatant sabotage of public education, a slow-motion trainwreck precipitated by Matt Huffman and his church allies, is underway in Ohio. In the name of the rule of law and the constitution, let us pray for their total and unmitigated defeat.

But let us also pray for the success of Pastors for Texas Children. Despite the likes of Greg Abbott, Dan Patrick, and Ted Cruz, there are good people of faith working hard to preserve and protect democracy and constitutional government, and in every neighborhood, the public school is the most visible form of community and democracy.

Ohio pastors, let us learn and model civic virtue as practiced by a group of Texas pastors.

Amen.

Categories Accountability, Education Industry, Extremism, Ohio, Religion, Texas, Vouchers

Cleveland: Charter School Founder Arrested as Part of Human Trafficking Ring

By dianeravitch
October 4, 2023 //
24

Bad things happen in all sectors. But so many bad things happen in Charterworld because there are so few controls or oversight. Public school employees typically undergo background checks, and their schools are regularly audited. The charter industry considers state regulation of any kind to be insulting.

But, lo! A charter school founder in Cleveland was arrested for being part of a human trafficking ring.

Incredible!

CLEVELAND — On Monday, Ohio Attorney General Dave Yost announced that a total of 160 people were arrested in a human trafficking crackdown initiative, known as “Operation Buyer’s Remorse.”

Among the list of 160 people who were taken into custody from Sept. 25-30 was 68-year-old John Zitzner, the co-founder of Breakthrough Charter Schools.

According to a spokesperson for the Ohio Attorney General’s Office, Zitzner was arrested by the Northeast Ohio Human Trafficking Task Force. Zitzner told task force members that “he works in education at Friend of Breakthrough Schools.” His case is being handled through the Rocky River Municipal Court.

Court records show that Zitzner was arrested on Sept. 28 in Westlake and charged with engaging in prostitution. He had his initial court appearance on Monday and is scheduled to be arraigned on Oct. 10.

What kind of person founds charter schools and engages in human trafficking and prostitution?

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Corruption, Education Industry, Evil, Ohio
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