Ohio school boards want to ban ads for bad charter schools
School board members from across Ohio want to ban charter schools like Imagine Cleveland, which was forced to close this summer by the state, from advertising.
COLUMBUS, Ohio -- The state may have just passed a major overhaul in its charter school laws, but school board members from across Ohio want more restrictions on charter school advertising and funding.
Members of the Ohio School Boards Association updated their "legislative platform" at their annual conference Monday by seeking more charter school rules and changes to state funding of busing. Board members want the state to ban charters with bad grades or finances from advertising and want to require all charter school ads to list details about student performance in school.
The OSBA left it up to the Ohio Department of Education to decide which schools need to be blocked from advertising, but wants all charter ads to list the school's graduation rate and its "Performance Index," the state's composite of student test scores in multiple grades and subjects.
School board members also want charters and their operators, plus any private school receiving state voucher money, to have to report student performance the same way as a traditional public school.
And OSBA members opposed an item passed in this year's state budget that makes $25 million in state money available to strong charter schools to build or renovate facilities. Members don't want any money for facilities to go to any charter school.
The requests come a month after the state legislature passed a comprehensive charter school reform bill that made Ohio's first substantial changes in charter school law in years.
Damon Asbury, OSBA's director of legislative services, said he understands the group missed the window where legislators were focused on changes to charter law. But he said charter school issues will be debated again this year and going forward.
"We still think it's important that we be on record where we stand on those issues," Asbury said. "It reinforces our advocacy efforts and it reminds our legislators where 3,500 school board members stand."
And he added: "We don't want to see any backtracking."
Whether these requests will gain any traction in the legislature is unclear. State Rep. Andrew Brenner, chairman of the House Education Committee, declined to comment until he can look at what members passed.
Darlene Chambers, CEO of the Ohio Alliance for Public Charter Schools, Ohio's major charter school advocacy group, could not immediately be reached for comment.
Other items sought by OSBA leaders include:
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• Separately awarding all lottery profits to districts on a per-pupil basis, instead of just including that money in the school aid pool;
• Having the state give districts "sufficient funding for every child who rides a school bus;"
• Encouraging districts to transport students residing more than one mile from school, instead of two miles as required now;
• Fully compensates districts for transporting students to schools that are not part of the district;
• Reinstating state funding for bus purchases; and
• Having the state give more money to rural districts with low density and low wealth.Ohio school boards want to ban ads for bad charter schools | cleveland.com:
