Charter school now part of district

YOUR SCHOOLS

The Groveport Madison school district is out of the charter school business, at least for now.

Eight months after the state rated it as a “poor” charter sponsor, the Groveport Madison Board of Education voted unanimously on Wednesday night to formally approve a settlement with the Ohio Department of Education.

Under the agreement, Cruiser Academy, a charter school the district sponsored for students at risk of dropping out or not graduating, will become a regular school under the district’s control after June 30. It will continue as a dropout-prevention school, and because it doesn’t share a building with another district school, it will not be factored into the district’s state report card.

The Groveport Madison board also had to approve a formal agreement with the Cruiser Academy board to make the change official. That document said in part that Ohio laws and regulations have “changed significantly, imposing increasingly burdensome and costly new requirements and constraints” on the schools and their sponsors, and that “changes in law and in ODE’s interpretations of law ... threaten the financial stability” of the school.

In October, Groveport Madison school district was among 21 Ohio agencies sponsoring charter schools that were rated as “poor,” the lowest possible rating. Three other districts in the area — Pickerington, Reynoldsburg and Hamilton Local schools — also received “poor” sponsor ratings. The state informed those sponsors that it would be revoking their sponsoring authority but they could appeal.

Groveport Madison schools appealed, and reached the tentative agreement with the state in January.

Cruiser Academy’s problem wasn’t related to academics; the department gave the school district an A grade for those students’ performance. Groveport Madison was dinged for being out of compliance with rules and laws and a lack of best practices in areas such as planning, contract development and school oversight.

In the fall, Superintendent Bruce Hoover said that a host of new regulations required charter sponsors to prepare hundreds of reports that added up to thousands of pages. That hurdle made it impossible for the district to meet the deadline for compliance, he said.

Cruiser Academy, established in 2010, had 186 students at the end of the year. About 18 percent of the academy’s students live in other districts, said Deputy Superintendent John Hurd.

Hoover said those outof-district students might continue at the school if their superintendents make agreements with Groveport Madison schools.