Charter spent $2.27M on advertising
Ohio’s largest online charter school spent at least $2.27 million of state education tax dollars last school year on advertising to attract students, or about $155 for each student who enrolled that year.
And that’s only part of the Electronic Classroom of Tomorrow’s advertising budget, because other advertising — including those featuring Jack Hanna, director emeritus of the Columbus Zoo and Aquarium, as an ECOT spokesman — are paid for by the school’s for-profit management company, and its records are not public.
“We’re always concerned with the amount of money or expenditures spent in classroom instruction,” said Rick Teeters, superintendent of ECOT. “We try to keep the marketing expenditure around or under 2 percent of the total budget.”
ECOT’s 2013-14 revenue was $112.7 million, 90 percent funded by the state.
ECOT’s spending on advertising during the 2013-14 school year included:
• $1.79 million on ads, including radio and television time.
• $119,722 on Facebook ads.
• $135,418 on Google ads.
• $35,938 on mailing lists.
By comparison, Columbus City Schools, the state’s largest district, spent just over $108,000 on ads during 2013-14, about half of which was to remind parents to enroll their children before the start of the school year and announce new programs. About $44,000 was spent to advertise adult-education classes and vocational programs, said district spokesman Jeff Warner.
If Columbus schools spent 2 percent of its revenue on ads, it could mount a $16.1 million-per-year media blitz. That’s more than five times what the district’s unsuccessful levy campaign spent in 2013, when private donors gave a record $3 million and ads blanketed local TV screens.
“It seems shockingly high, and I cannot imagine there would be any good reason to spend that kind of tax dollars” on ads, state Rep. Teresa Fedor, a Democrat from Toledo, said of ECOT’s ad budget. She is calling for an overhaul of the state’s charter-school laws.
“Of course, there’s a profit margin associated with this, and that makes it even more questionable,” Fedor said. “I am outraged by this because we’re not getting the results at the end of the day, and it’s time for a review.”
The Dispatch reported last week that ECOT had an average enrollment of 14,600 students last school year, but only because it enrolled thousands of students each month to replace the thousands who left after staying for only weeks or months. ECOT churned through almost 23,000 students over the course of calendar year 2014 to arrive at an enrollment of 14,600.
Charter schools need to do more advertising than a local district school, said Chad Aldis, vice president for Ohio policy and advocacy with the pro-charter Fordham Institute in Columbus. “What amount is appropriate is a fair question,” Aldis said.
And a statewide charter school such as ECOT would have more ad expenses than a local school because its audience is larger.
Aldis is concerned whether parents and students are getting the information they need to make an informed decision from the school’s advertising.
“There’s probably a better way of doing it,” he said of spending tax dollars to get the message out about available charter-school programs. “This is to me a reflection of the lack of high-quality, school-level information that’s readily out there and available. The point I’m making is, parents are looking for sources of information about schools.”
Maybe a better way to meet that need with tax dollars would be for the state Department of Education to host a website that reviews schools, kind of like an Angie’s List of charter schools, Aldis said.
“Advertising in and of itself isn’t good or bad,” said State Auditor Dave Yost.
This week, Yost presented a charter-school reform plan to the Charter spent $2.27M on advertising | The Columbus Dispatch:
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