Terry Ryan offered written testimony to the Ohio House Finance Primary and Secondary Education subcommittee today. Testifying in support of Governor Kasich’s Achievement Everywhere school reform plan, Terry outlined four reasons that the Buckeye State should support the Kasich plan (testimony can be downloaded here): Governor Kasich’s plan
Calls for new investments in public schools. In fact, it seeks an increase in K-12 funding of nearly 10 percent over two years. This is generous in tough fiscal times.
Recognizes the need for getting at, and reporting on, Academic Return on Investment (ROI).
Promotes innovations and innovators through its Straight-A fund.
Removes some of the shackles off educators. Specifically, under the proposed “Free to Advance” provisions some regulations will be lifted so districts and schools can make more effective use of state dollars.
In addition, Terry also offered five recommendations to improve the Kasich education plan:
Get all dollars to follow kids to the schools they actually attend.
Require annual Academic ROI reporting for all public school buildings in the state – district and charters. Just as some districts are more productive than others, so are some schools and these should be acknowledged and better understood.
Further eliminate mandates – regulations, laws, contracts – that force funds to be spent in particular ways across all schools regardless of student characteristics.
Rapidly move away from “hold harmless” provisions and guarantees that provide funding to districts for phantom students. An obvious downside to such policies is that they support schools losing students at the expense of those gaining students.
Require annual student performance report cards for private schools that receive more than 30 percent of voucher bearing students.
In short, Terry argued that Governor Kasich’s education plan has much to like about it—it’s sensible and lives within the means of the state budget constraints. For these reasons, Fordham lends its support to the Kasich plan. And we hope that legislators will consider ways, some of which were suggested in testimony today, to further improve the Kasich plan and even better serve the kids of Ohio.
The Columbus Dispatch is reporting today that Gahanna-Jefferson Public Schools will be discontinuing their experiment with charter school creation at the end of this school year. The school of 110 students in grades 9-12 will be absorbed into the district. The main reason cited: once start-up funds ran out ($450,000 from the federal government’s Public Charter School Program), Gahanna Community School’s board and staff were unable to maintain operations with the fractional per-pupil funding provided monthly by the state to all charter schools. Upper Arlington closed a charter school for similar reasons last year.
While it is tempting for me to snark about “unscrupulous charter operators” (believe me, I wrote that blog post and it was really funny) and to rage that the federal government should get its start-up money back from Gahanna-Jefferson and Upper Arlington too, I think it is more important to talk about the object lesson that this situation presents.
The fiscal picture painted by the board and staff of GSC is the daily reality of almost all charter schools across the state: once the start-up funds are spent, the per pupil funding provided for school operations by the state – with no local funds and no facility dollars – is at least a third less than what is available to even the poorest of public districts in Ohio. Gahanna cites the savings that will be had by not having to pay $85,000 for filing separate state data and paying for separate financial services between the community school and the district. And this was with the district Treasurer doing the work!
Charter schools have to report data to the state monthly while districts only have to do it twice a year (something that the current state budget will hopefully change), and well run charters often bid out their work to get the best price, share services with other schools, and even train some staff do double duty. Thus keeping costs down. All hands on deck, for certain.
GSC has been housed within Gahanna Lincoln High School since its inception, Wickliffe in Upper Arlington was within a building the district already owned, so neither school ever had to worry about paying rent or figuring out where to hold classes. That is not the reality of charter start-ups who have to identify facilities and then pay rent and often times repair costs to get the buildings up to code.
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