D. Brennan, who promoted Ohio charter schools, dies
Akron industrialist David Brennan died Sunday afternoon, according to a Facebook post by his daughter, Nancy Brennan. He was 87.
Brennan, a familiar figure with his trademark white hat, founded the for-profit charter school company White Hat Management in 2000. The company, a pioneer of school choice in Ohio, sold the last of its contracts to run charter schools in August.
An Akron native, Brennan was a 1953 graduate of The Ohio State University and earned a law degree from Case Western Reserve University four years later. He worked as a lawyer, founding the Amer Cunningham Brennan law firm, in addition to serving as chairman of Brennan Industrial Group and the Brenlin Group, which are holding companies of industrial and manufacturing businesses based in Akron.
Amid their philanthropic work, he and wife Ann became Summa Health System’s first eight-figure donors with a $6 million gift in 2015. That gift brought the couple’s total donation to Summa to more than $10 million, including $3.5 million in 2004 toward the $35 million Ann and David Brennan Critical Care Center on the Summa Akron City Hospital campus.
Brennan was also a major contributor in Republican politics. During the late 1990s and early 2000s, he was reckoned the largest donor to Republicans in Ohio, and he used his influence to advance charter schools in the state.
Once synonymous with political power and influence, Brennan’s White Hat Management saw its reputation sink after years of low test scores and soaring high school dropout rates. Since 2014, the company steadily lost its edge in Ohio’s increasingly competitive schoolchoice market.
White Hat had been sued by 10 of its former charter schools, which claimed White Hat violated its financial duty to the schools through a contract giving it ownership of textbooks, computers and furniture that had been purchased with public funds.
In 2015, the Ohio Supreme Court ruled the contract was legal and that nearly all of the property belonged to White Hat, but the company came in for criticism over how it managed charter schools.
With parents now sending their kids, and the state funding that comes with them, to better-rated educational options, White Hat rapidly divested itself of school-management contracts. The selling accelerated when school boards began ditching the company for operators that are more transparent.