Study: ECOT diverted $591M from schools in 6 years
When ECOT was shut down in January, leaving roughly 12,000 students searching for a new school, Federal Hocking schools Superintendent George Wood said the 15 students that came from his district fell into one of three categories.
Some students said they didn’t know why they were on ECOT’s list because they hadn’t attended school there, he said. Some had credit deficiencies putting them a good two grade levels behind. And some, he said, couldn’t be found because addresses or phone numbers were bad.
“Not a single student that came back from ECOT was on track to graduate with the appropriate number of credits,” Wood said, questioning why it took so long for the state to crack down on the school.
With the Electronic Classroom of Tomorrow, formerly the state’s largest charter school, being auctioned off in pieces, some schools and longtime ECOT critics are taking stock of how much state money was diverted to the online charter.
Stephen Dyer, education policy fellow with the liberal think tank Innovation Ohio, said $591 million was transferred from Ohio public schools to ECOT over the past six years.
Of that, $62.9 million came from Columbus City Schools, which had by far the most students attending ECOT. South-Western had the fourth-largest ECOT cost: $16.2 million.
In all, nine Franklin County districts sent at least $2 million to ECOT over the past six years.
Innovation Ohio has posted on its website a rundown of how much money has gone from each district to ECOT over the last six years.
Ohio does not directly fund charter schools, instead subtracting the money from individual districts based on where a charter student lives. Traditional public school officials and advocates have complained for years that the system also diverts local tax revenue to charter schools along with the state funding.
ECOT was shut down by its sponsor in January after the school was ordered by the state Board of Education to repay the state $80 million for unverified student enrollment over the past two school years. The state found that a number of students were not engaged in learning for the state-minimum 920 hours per school year.
Dominic Paretti, member of the Columbus Board of Education, said Columbus funding to ECOT stretching back to 2002 totaled $116 million — an amount he described as “several levies worth” of money.
Columbus had about 1,500 students per year going to ECOT. Several hundred, Paretti said, returned to Columbus after ECOT closed, “but we still have no idea what happened to the rest of these kids. We don’t even know where they’re at.”
Rep. Andrew Brenner, R-Powell, chairman of the House Education Committee, questioned the validity of Innovation Ohio’s $591 million figure, arguing that the money was used to educate students that didn’t attend their home districts.
“If the student is not in the school district, why would the money go to the school district?” Brenner said.
ECOT has become a hotbutton political issue, with Democrats sharply criticizing Republican officeholders for failing to act sooner or more decisively to improve oversight of a school whose founder, Bill Lager, was a major GOP contributor.