Fine Press Reporting Leads to Long Overdue Regulation of Ohio Charter Schools
Yesterday afternoon, a House-Senate conference committee of Ohio’s legislature met to work out a compromise to regulate Ohio’s notorious charter school sector. In Ohio, Republicans dominate both houses of the legislature, occupy the governor’s mansion, and even dominate the elected state supreme court. Despite a year of negotiations and a long delay, the members of the conference committee voted unanimously to support a bill that will be submitted today for approval by both houses of Ohio’s legislature.
Everyone had worried that several months’ of lobbying by Ohio’s charter czars would weaken the bill. The Cleveland Plain Dealer’s Patrick O’Donnell reported late yesterday, however, that the bill does not appear to have been weakened by the House-Senate conference committee: “Still intact, with only minor adjustments, are changes designed to distance the often-cozy relationships between for profit charter school operating companies and the school boards that govern the schools.” The big charter management companies that have had “sweeps” contracts that forward over 90 percent of the schools’ operating budgets to the management company without reporting about how the money is used will now be required “to provide more information to the public about how they spend tax dollars they are paid to run the schools.” And there is a new “White Hat” rule designed to correct the situation that arose last month when “an Ohio Supreme Court ruling… allowed prominent for-profit charter operator White Hat Management to keep desks and computers it bought for schools using tax dollars, even after the schools closed. The court let White Hat keep the property because its contract with the school allowed it. The new provision blocks any such agreement and requires that leftover assets from closed schools, after bills are paid, go to the Ohio Department of Education to distribute to school districts.”
The conference committee was under enormous pressure yesterday not to cave in to the Fine Press Reporting Leads to Long Overdue Regulation of Ohio Charter Schools | janresseger: