kasich and charters
Ohio Gov. John Kasich discusses school funding at E Prep and Village Prep charter school in Cleveland, which has a partnership with the Cleveland public schools.
(Marvin Fong, The Plain Dealer)
There has got to be a better way to fund K-12th-grade charter schools than Ohio Gov. John Kasich's latest budget proposal that would further rob traditional public schools of millions of dollars in order to subsidize poorly regulated charter schools. The governor's plan would continue the cannibalization of Ohio's public schools.
That's especially so since the Ohio General Assembly itself has been all too willing over the years to pick the pockets of public schools to pad the pockets of the private interests behind for-profit charters and the lobbyists who represent them -- and far too unwilling to tighten Ohio's shamefully lax regulatory framework for charters.
This year, it appears charter reform supported by Kasich finally will emerge in the General Assembly. Increasing charters' taxpayer subsidy should await the results of that reform effort; pumping nearly $1 billion into their coffers, as the governor's plan envisions, is not the answer.
The Ohio General Assembly should also change a state law that puts traditional public school systems such as Akron on the hook for millions of dollars to provide special bus transportation to private and charter school students even beyond what they can afford to offer regular public students.
But let's go back to House Bill 64, the governor's two-year budget proposal. According to the Legislative Service Commission, a nonpartisan research group for state legislators, Kasich's budget would give charter schools nearly $1 billion in 2016 and 2017 by increasing the amount of state funding charters will receive for operating, base pay per student and facilities.
We understand that HB 64 also will help high-performing charter schools such as those that have partnered with the Cleveland school district.
However, far too many of Ohio's charter schools are academically struggling, and as a whole, they lag behind traditional public schools in every city except for Cleveland, according to a recent Stanford University report on Ohio's charter schools.
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Such dysfunctional charter schools deserve the boot, not more money -- a reality that even Kasich seemed to acknowledge when he included in his budget charter-school reform proposals that crack down on the inept sponsoring organizations of ineffective schools.
But the direct taxpayer subsidies to charters at the expense of traditional public schools not the only way that these schools are being penalized. The Ohio Department of Education is now insisting that the Akron school district find money to bus charter school students who walk more than a half a mile to their charter school -- even though public school youngsters must walk more than two miles, often in dangerous neighborhoods, to be eligible for the district's busing program.
That absurd unpaid mandate is forcing Akron, a perennially struggling urban school district, to spend at least $1 million it doesn't have for an extensive busing program for youngsters who don't attend its own schools.
State law should be changed to require charter schools to contract for busing out of their own per-student subsidy.
The state must stop a school-funding approach that, to benefit deficient charter schools, is hollowing out the ability of public schools to function.