At the end of last week, explains Jim Siegel of the Columbus Dispatch, all nine Democrats serving in the Ohio Senate along with 30 of the 33 House Democrats signed an amicus brief urging the Ohio Supreme Court to find for the state and against the notorious Electronic Classroom of Tomorrow (ECOT), the state’s biggest charter school. ECOT has been challenging the state all year to let it collect state per-pupil funding without documenting that students are actually attending school.
The Ohio Department of Education has been trying to claw back $60 million over-paid to ECOT for the 2015-16 school year and another $19 million for 2016-17. ECOT has continued to claim that state law does not require the school to document that students are actually logged in for 920 hours each year—working with the curriculum the school provides—but merely that the school provides the curriculum to the students it claims are enrolled.
ECOT has challenged in court the state’s demand that the school document attendance records if it intends to collect payments from the state. ECOT’s appeal is currently being considered by the Ohio Supreme Court. Plunderbund summarizes the history of the case: “ECOT filed the lawsuit more than a year ago claiming it is not required to document how many hours its students (are) engaged in learning… After losing in Franklin County Common Pleas Court and the 10th Circuit Court of Appeals, ECOT has appealed to the Supreme Court of Ohio.”
The amicus brief filed last week by legislative Democrats follows the filing of another amicus brief in late October. The Columbus Dispatch reported that Bill Batchelder, the now-retired Speaker of the Ohio House, and four other former Republican legislators filed their own amicus brief with the Ohio Supreme Court. They claimed that the Ohio Department of Education “is violating legislative intent by requiring ECOT to verify its enrollment with log-in duration.” If you are having trouble parsing that outrageous nonsense (which seems to mean that the legislators intended for ECOT to amass tax dollars for students the school cannot prove are enrolled full time), it may help if you remember that only months after retiring from a career in the legislature including serving as Ohio’s House Speaker, Bill Batchelder opened a lobbying firm, The Batchelder Company, which represented ECOT’s founder William Lager until July, 2017.
In the introduction to their amicus brief, Ohio’s legislative Democrats expose ECOT’s bizarre argument: “The issue… before the Court is whether the Ohio Revised Code Chapter 3314 allows the Ohio Department of Education (ODE) the ability to use durational evidence of student participation to determine funding for internet- or computer-based community schools (e-schools). Revised Code section 3314.08 and its subsections plainly incorporate durational requirements as part of the review of student participation meant to determine the amount of funding an e-school is entitled to receive from the state. It is incontrovertible that ODE has the right… to use a durational element in a review of e-school funding claims. It is incontrovertible as well that the legislative history of chapter 3314… shows that the legislature routinely amended the code to make enforcement and oversight of e-schools more thorough… Finally, the Court cannot find in favor of the Appellant. To do so leaves an absurd hole in Ohio’s constitutional guarantee to teach its children in free, publicly funded schools. A decision that finds for the Appellant creates a void in which to take and squander taxpayer dollars without allowing any government oversight for the stewardship of those dollars… The Ohio Constitution demands the state educate its children. It cannot be Ohio’s founders and successive caretakers’ hope that those children would never be brought to a classroom (electronic or otherwise) yet the school and its administrators would reap lavish financial rewards.”
Toward the end of their amicus brief, Ohio’s legislative Democrats declare: “The entire system of public school regulation is geared toward ensuring children receive an education. The record in this case reflects that ECOT and other e-school amici failed in this obligation and are callous toward that failure. The state should not have to withhold funding to guarantee those who purport to be educators take basic steps to teach children in their charge, but this case shows they must. The state does not seek this level of regulation for its own sake or to target e-schools, but to avoid the tragic reality we are confronting in which thousands of students have not received education for which their alleged school was paid.”
The attorney of record on the legislative Democrats’ amicus brief is Joe Schiavoni, the former Senate minority leader and an announced candidate for governor. Schiavoni, who represents the Youngstown area, has twice introduced bills to regulate attendance reporting by ECOT and Ohio’s online charter schools. Describing his proposed legislation, which has never been brought to a vote, Schiavoni commented: “We need to make sure that online schools are accurately reporting attendance and not collecting tax dollars for students who never log in to take classes. Online schools must be held accountable for lax attendance policies. Without strong oversight, these schools could be collecting millions of dollars while failing to educate Ohio’s school children.”
This blog has tracked the long ECOT scandal.
janresseger 
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