State lacks info on 1,700 Ohio charter-school students
As the Ohio Department of Education attempts to close the financial books on last school year, one thing is certain: Making sure charter schools get the right amount of money is no easy task.
The state is continuing to withhold or reduce payments to schools that educate about 1,700 charter-school students because they have been “flagged.” That means the state got conflicting claims about where the students lived or what schools they attended.
Although the number is down from about 5,000 flagged students this spring — mainly because a state computer system that charters and districts use to resolve enrollment disputes went down for maintenance — the 1,700 flags are still more than triple the number the state ended with last school year.
Out of 385 charters, 240 have been paid for students even though it is uncertain whether the students were enrolled at those schools. Other charters might have been shortchanged and are owed money by the state. To lessen the financial blow, the Ohio Department of Education has said it won’t reduce a charter’s payments by more than 5 percent in a month.
But other errors have cut funding by more than 5 percent for some charters: Four charters lost all of their monthly state payments in June, after the state questioned how they were calculating attendance or providing transportation or because of other problems.
One of them — London Academy, sponsored by London City Schools west of Columbus — agreed to assume that every one of its students attended only half a school day after it determined it couldn’t adequately track the number of hours students had worked from home over the Internet, said London district Treasurer Kristine Blind. London Academy received $117,500 in January, but because of the discrepancies, received no state money in May or June.
The schools with the largest number of flagged students are four of the state’s large Internet charter schools, which together have more than 300 students flagged, worth an annual total of about $1.8 million in state education aid. TRECA Digital Academy had the most flags — 117 students, worth about $680,000 in state aid.
“We haven’t been able to reconcile our budget from January on,” said Tim Hilborn, chief instructional officer of META Solutions, TRECA’s parent.
A charter school in Cleveland had the highest rate of flags — more than 19 percent of its 190 students. The New Day Academy Boarding & Day School’s state payments dropped
85 percent between January and June, down about $91,000 a month. The problem: Many students have more than one state identification number, or they have moved among multiple school districts and it’s State lacks info on 1,700 Ohio charter-school students | The Columbus Dispatch:
