Send School Aid Directly to Charters, Panel Says (OH)

September 2, 2010

Those who dream of a day when Ohio’s traditional districts and charter schools will work harmoniously know it is unlikely under a funding system in which districts get monthly reminders that their state funding is being siphoned away.

A subcommittee of the School Funding Advisory Council, the group tasked with looking at ways to improve the state’s system of paying for education in Ohio, recommended yesterday that funding for charter schools go directly to those schools instead of passing through the traditional public schools.

Under the current system, Columbus, for example, gets a monthly payment from the state for all students living in the district, but it must send some of that money to charter schools for the district residents who attend those schools.

"We hope to eliminate some of the animosity," said Richard Lukic h, a subcommittee member and president of the board of Constellation Schools, operator of 16 schools in northeast Ohio.

"Now, with the community-school funding being a deduct from the traditional public schools, every month it’s a reminder to them of the students they lost to community schools, and that the funding is following those students."

Lukich also hopes that direct funding would help with the issue of "flagging" students; that’s when a public school challenges whether a charter-school student still lives in that district. Money is delayed for about 30 days until a student’s address is verified, he said.

The payment system caused difficulties years ago for Columbus school officials. In 2004, district officials promised in a levy campaign not to increase spending by more than 3percent per year. But they had to count the charter-school pass-through money as part of their spending, limiting what they could spend on the district’s operations.

The district did not repeat that promise in its 2007 levy campaign.

The subcommittee is looking at ways to improve collaboration between traditional and charter schools. Other subcommittees are examining other parts of state funding.

Although the report calls for direct funding of charter schools, it also says that state leaders should not break out that funding into a separate line item in the state budget.

That would alleviate concern among charter-school supporters that, if the money were separated on paper, an unsupportive governor could wipe out the funding by using a line-item veto.

The report also recommends that the state do more to create cons istency in charter-school funding, perhaps by using a three-month average of the student count instead of monthly counts.