ECOT owes $60M, reviewer says
A state hearing officer ruled against ECOT on Wednesday, determining the online school owes the state $60 million for enrollment that cannot be justified.
The Electronic Classroom of Tomorrow could not justify most of its enrollment, and thus was overpaid by $64 million last school year, hearing officer Lawrence Pratt wrote in his recommendation, which now goes to the state Board of Education. He said the board should collect $60 million of that overpayment or deduct it from the school’s future payments.
The state Board of Education will decide at its meeting on June 13 whether to accept, reject or modify Pratt’s recommendation.
The Ohio Department of Education concluded in September that, based on student computer log-in durations provided by ECOT, the school justified only about 40 percent of its purported 2015-16 enrollment. That was based on the state-minimum requirement that students receive 920 hours of “learning opportunities.”
ECOT, which appealed to a department hearing officer, has argued that the department illegally created a new rule asking for log-in duration data, which was not required in prior attendance audits. The state’s largest charter school also said the rule was illegally applied retroactively to the
start of last school year.
“ECOT’s own attendance policies emphasize the need for student participation at an average of five hours per day, 25 hours per week,” Pratt wrote. “Its superintendent had even raised it after beginning employment. There is therefore ample evidence in the record that ECOT was aware of durational requirements.”
In past attendance reviews, ECOT simply signed off that students were “offered” 920 hours of learning opportunities and were not withdrawn from school for truancy.
But under the law, Pratt said, “It is clear that offering a learning opportunity includes the concept of student participation in that learning opportunity.” The intent is not to “teach to what could be the equivalent of an empty classroom.”
Pratt acknowledged that the department could have provided better notice to ECOT
about the changing approach to the review, but that doesn’t justify the school “ignoring the mandate and its own attendance policies.”
Pratt also said it’s improbable that ECOT leaders really thought the state, despite a decade of ignoring durational data, would indefinitely pay for the school’s 15,000-plus students “so long as the school made sure its students logged on to a computer once every 30 days.”
The ruling is yet another blow to ECOT’s efforts to prevent the state from forcing it to pay back $60 million of the nearly $109 million in state funding it received last year. The school also sued the state, and that case is pending before the Franklin County Court of Appeals after ECOT lost at the trial court level.
ECOT spokesman Neil Clark said it’s no surprise that the department’s hearing officer ruled in its favor.
“When unelected
bureaucrats pursuing their own agenda act as prosecutor, judge and jury, this is simply the expected result,” he said. “It’s the reason we filed our court case and why the legislature needs to craft a fair solution that treats all schools equally.”
Pratt also determined that if any e-school fails to provide log-in data to justify enrollment, the department can determine the school gets funded for zero students.
Quaker Digital Academy and the Buckeye Online School for Success got credit for zero students last year. They were two of eight smaller e-schools that were told they owe a total of $23 million for unjustified enrollments.
While Pratt recommended the Education Department recoup the entire overpayment, he urged the state to consider new data ECOT presented during the hearing documenting additional student attendance, which would drop the amount owed to $60.4 million, down from $64 million.
Rep. Teresa Fedor, D-Toledo, called on Republicans to return all campaign donations from ECOT founder Bill Lager, one of Ohio’s largest GOP contributors.
“With $60 million essentially being stolen from taxpayers, today’s ruling draws into question the massive amounts of cash GOP lawmakers have accepted from ECOT over the years,” she said. The Republicans who control the state legislature “should at minimum hold themselves accountable for being complicit in the theft of tax dollars from our taxpayers.”