ECOT appeal focuses on Board of Education’s process

EDUCATION

The Electronic Classroom of Tomorrow is not giving up its argument that the state Board of Education met illegally when it voted to require the online school to repay the state $60 million for unverified enrollment.

The state’s largest charter school this week appealed the ruling of Franklin County Common Pleas Court Judge Guy Reece, who last week rejected ECOT’s argument that the board violated Ohio’s Open Meetings Act.

Reece ruled that the board was engaged in a quasi-judicial proceeding and the Open Meetings Act does not apply.

ECOT has appealed to the Franklin County Court of Appeals, the same court that last week voted 3-0 to reject the school’s broader lawsuit that is trying to stop the Department of Education from using student computer log-in durational data as a basis for computing enrollment for funding purposes. That case has been appealed to the Ohio Supreme Court.

ECOT argued that the state board engaged in non-public deliberations on the matter, engaged in no meaningful public deliberation, and at the last minute removed from the meeting agenda time for board members to discuss administrative proceedings.

The board voted 16-1 in June to require ECOT to repay the $60 million. The Department of Education last week began deducting $2.5 million from ECOT’s monthly state payments, which is scheduled to last for two years.

In an attendance audit last year, the department found that, based largely on log-in duration records, most ECOT students were not close to getting the minimum 920 hours of annual “educational opportunities” required by the state. An audit this year is not complete.