ECOT official outlines revenue woes

Three things happened in October that “severely hampered” ECOT’s revenue, one of which is a temporary hold of how much money the online charter school receives from the Ohio Department of Education.

“This is the item where I’m pulling my hair out at night and scratching, trying to figure out what the Ohio Department of Education is trying to do,” ECOT’s Vice President of Finance Chris Meister said during a Tuesday meeting of the online charter’s school board.

Originally, Meister said that the Education Department communicated to the Electronic Classroom of Tomorrow that the temporary hold on state funding would be roughly 18 percent.

In reality, it’s more like 23 percent, Meister said.

“The temporary hold, in my humble opinion, is a made-up number where we have asked them for some information on how the number is determined,” Meister said.

The response Meister said he has received from the Education Department? “Nothing.” Meister also said that in July, state Auditor Dave Yost said the Education Department should withhold part of what ECOT receives this year.

“I don’t know how the number was arranged — out of fear of the auditor or in correspondence with what he requested,” Meister said.

Back in September, the Education Department determined that ECOT owes $19.2 million for the 2016-2017 school year.

ECOT also is fighting an order to repay millions of dollars in state aid for unverified student enrollment — for the second year in a row.

“We’re doing our best to operate on an extremely reduced amount of revenue,” Meister said.

Another thing that Meister said hurt ECOT’s revenue is lower payments for full-time equivalent (FTE) students.

“All graduates are all out. Kids that decided not to come back to ECOT are out ... it’s had a bad effect on our student FTE,” Meister said.

The third thing that Meister mentioned is the Education Department is continuing to collect the $2.5 million related to the 2015-16 clawback.

“So there’s two strikes right there,” Meister said. “Lowerpaid FTE and the $2.5 million being withheld.”

On Monday, the state revealed ways it says ECOT used in an attempt to gain more taxpayer money than the the state says the online charter school deserves, including issues with the attendance data ECOT recorded.

That wasn’t mentioned during Tuesday’s public school board meeting.