Lawmakers call for district audit

Youngstown, East Cleveland districts included in financial audits

“The state report cards issued from 2015-2021 clearly indicate the money wasn’t used to educate students.”

— Michelle Lepore-Hagan (Youngstown)

A trio of Democratic state representatives requested an audit of three academic failing public school districts, including Lorain City Schools, to find out what happened to hundreds of millions of taxpayers dollars that allegedly was spent to improve education but provided no results.

Rep. Joe Miller, of Amherst, joined with Michelle LeporeHagan (Youngstown), Kent Smith (Euclid) in calling for the audit of the school districts, including Youngstown and East Cleveland.

The representatives made the request in a letter to state Auditor Keith Faber.

The three hope the audit will “finally bring transparency in taxpayer spending to these communities after they were taken over by the state’s academic distress commission (ADC),” according a news release announcing the request for the audit.

Lorain Schools CEO Jeff Graham said he welcomed the audit.

Graham said he’s spoken about the issue in the past with Miller.

“I don’t think he has concerns with what is going on currently because we are behaving like a healthy school district,” Graham said. “We don’t do anything without board approval, and I act as superintendent and the board acts as the board.

“I welcome anyone coming in to look at our books.”

According to the release, in 2015 the state General Assembly created House Bill 70, which put what are known as “failing” school districts under the control of “unaccountable academic distress commissions and CEOs” who then were charged with improving education in the district.

Since 2015, academic distress commissions and CEOs never had to make public to taxpayers how they were spending money to improve the schools, the release said.

“The audit is an essential step toward restoring the public’s trust in the school system that was undermined because HB 70 enabled the ADCs and CEOs to avoid scrutiny as they spent, and likely misspent, hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars,” LeporeHagan said. “We need to know where those dollars went and why.

“The state report cards issued from 2015-2021 clearly indicate the money wasn’t used to educate students.”

Failing districts were asked to submit a 3-year academic improvement plan to the state’s superintendent by December 2021.

Over the next three years, failing districts, like Lorain, will be required to meet benchmarks that indicate they are improving and are staying in line with their academic improvement plan.

If the districts do not reach the benchmarks, again they will go back under the control of an academic distress commission.

In conjunction with this three-year improvement plan the state auditor is required to complete what’s known as a one-time performance audit, which would also occur during the three-year window for the improvement plan.

But Miller and others want to know how taxpayer money was spent prior to the repeal of HB 70 and that’s why they are calling for an audit now.

“For too long, Ohio taxpayers have been kept in the dark about the free rein the CEO’s had under the ‘oversight’ of the academic distress commission,” Miller said. “We believe that a performance audit as far out as three years is not satisfactory.

“This information is needed much sooner to help districts meet their improvement plans. The flaws of this failed experiment by the state should be made public.”