Data-scandal legal bill: at least $1.4M

The school board approved a $275,000 payment to Porter, Wright, Morris & Arthur. Future costs should wind down as lawsuits do.

The legal tab paid to a Downtown law firm representing Columbus City Schools in data-rigging matters continued to swell over the second half of this school year.

The Columbus Board of Education approved $275,000 more on Tuesday night, to be paid to Porter, Wright, Morris & Arthur by the end of this month.

The district didn’t immediately have a running total for what’s been paid to the firm, but The Dispatch reported in December that it had been authorized to receive a total of $1.17 million, meaning Tuesday’s appropriation put the total at least to $1.45 million.

“It will get us through this

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year,” Larry Braverman, the district’s legal counsel, said of the new payment amount.

After this year, Porter Wright’s services are expected to be ongoing as the cases of two principals, suing the district over their termination for datarigging, continue, Braverman said. But future payments to the firm, he said, should begin to lessen as the cases wind down.

The $1.45 million doesn’t include $300,000 that the board authorized to defend itself after it illegally closed a series of school-board meetings in 2012 to discuss the data-rigging scandal privately with Porter Wright lawyer Robert “Buzz” Trafford.

The Dispatch sued the district for violating the state’s Open Meetings Act, and a Franklin County judge approved a settlement that prohibits the board from closing meetings merely because an attorney is present.

The district had argued that attorney-client privilege allowed it to close those meetings.

The board agreed to pay The Dispatch’s legal fees of $170,000 for that case, but the newspaper waived the payment. Had it not, the district’s total legal bill for the scandal could be approaching $1.92 million — about enough to pay the salaries of more than 60 first-year teachers for an entire school year. In other business on Tuesday: The board approved a new two-year contract with the district’s almost 4,000 teachers, raising the pay scale 1.8 percent next school year and 2.2 percent the following year, and costing the district an additional $10.8 million over two years. But because the deal also did away with a special program that awarded bonuses for student academic success, the district will save $5.8 million over the contract, making the net salary increase about $5 million, said Treasurer Stan Bahorek.

“We needed to get this behind us,” said Tracey Johnson, president of the Columbus Education Association, the teachers union, who said the bonuses would have gone to about 10 percent of teachers each year, but the pay raises will go to all teachers.

Superintendent Dan Good said that the district is in much better shape this year concerning the state’s “third-grade guarantee” than it was this time last year. The guarantee requires third-graders to pass the reading proficiency test to advance to the fourth grade.

More than 84 percent of the district’s third-graders are eligible for promotion to fourth grade. At the end of last school year, only 74 percent had passed the reading test. Through an intensive summer-school reading program, the district improved to 88 percent of thirdgraders eligible for promotion at the start of this school year.

The board approved the sale of the former Franklinton Elementary to United Preparatory Academy for $505,000, its appraised value. United operates four charter schools in Columbus. The building, about seven blocks west of COSI in Franklinton, is 29,678 square feet and sits on 1.04 acres. United was the only bidder.

Franklinton Elementary is the fourth vacant school building that the district has sold to charters since March.