Campaign donations did not affect charter school legislation, says speaker

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COLUMBUS — Ohio House Speaker William Batchelder angrily denied mounting allegations from conservatives and liberals alike that campaign donations from large, for-profit charter school operators influenced House Republicans to pass legislation last week that would water down regulations designed to stamp out poorly performing charters and hold operators accountable for how they spend taxpayer money.

“It’s a damn lie that they (the operators) had anything to do with what went on in the finance committee,” Batchelder said.

But prominent supporters of charter schools — including Chester E. Finn Jr., an assistant education secretary during the Reagan administration — condemn House amendments to Gov. John Kasich’s two-year budget.

The changes would allow for-profit corporations to operate charter schools by applying directly to the Ohio Department of Education, without the oversight of nonprofit sponsors. Critics say that could prevent state officials from determining how public money is spent, and place the schools outside state public-meeting and open-records laws.

“I think they were accommodating some of their donors,” Finn said of House Republicans. Finn is president of the Dayton-based Thomas B. Fordham Institute, an education-policy think tank that sponsors seven charter schools. “I don’t think they were trying to fix Ohio’s broken charter school program.”

State Sen. Peggy Lehner, R-Kettering, said Kasich education adviser Robert Sommers and state schools Interim Superintendent Stan Heffner testified against the House changes this week in the Senate Finance Committee. Lehner chairs the Senate Education Committee.

Charter schools, also called community schools, are big business. In the 2009-2010 school year, taxpayers funded charters to the tune of $680 million. Last June, nearly 94,000 Ohio students were enrolled in 323 charter schools, which receive taxpayer money, but are subject to less regulation than traditional public schools to give them more flexibility to try innovative approaches to education.

Critics say some charter operators are more interested in making money than in educating kids.

The left-leaning think tank Innovation Ohio on Thursday accused Kasich and Republican-majority legislators of bowing to charter operators David Brennan and William Lager in creating an atmosphere favorable to their for-profit — and poorly performing — online charter school programs, called electronic schools or e-schools. The group said Brennan and Lager have made $4 million in campaign contributions, mostly to Republican candidates, since 2001.

Brennan of Akron runs White Hat Management, which operates 46 charter schools in six states, in- cluding LifeSkills Centers in Dayton, Springfield and Middletown. White Hat also runs the e-school OHDELA. Lager operates Ohio’s largest e-school, Electronic Classroom of Tomorrow, or ECOT.

Innovation Ohio said ECOT and OHDELA have graduation rates of 35 and 36 percent, respectively. That compares to a 54.3 percent rate for the Cleveland city schools, which have the lowest graduation rate among traditional Ohio public schools. The group said e-schools are cheaper to operate than traditional public schools, but have double the cost per student. “But the state pays Mr. Brennan nearly $12 million a year, and Mr. Lager rakes in $64 million,” said Innovation Ohio spokesman Dale Butland. “Ohio e-schools are an outrageous taxpayer ripoff.”

White Hat lobbyist Thomas Needles called Innovation Ohio’s report “an intentionally misleading, nearly incomprehensible, partisan attack from an organization that is hostile to school choice.”

As to the House amendments, Needles called charges of influence peddling “utter nonsense. We’ve had an ongoing dialog with the legislature for many years, and that’s altogether appropriate.”

He said that since 2004, Ohio has lost $20 million from failures of schools with nonprofit sponsors, and White Hat’s position, part of the House budget, is that unsponsored schools would have greater public accountability because they would be required to post a $1 million bond or guarantee to repay the state if a school closes.

In a prepared statement, ECOT used similar language to Needles’ statement, calling Innovation Ohio’s report “incomprehensible” and “a partisan, political attack on school choice.”

ECOT said most of its students are from low-income homes and are at risk of dropping out, yet “despite these challenges, ECOT has earned a ranking of ‘Continuous Improvement’ on the state report card and is poised to earn an ‘Effective’ ranking for this school year.” ECOT also said it receives half the funding of school districts with similar, at-risk student populations.

Batchelder said there’s room for both nonprofit sponsors and unsponsored, for-profit operators. “I understand that there are a lot of people who believe that (oversight by a nonproft) is the only way to go, and, in my opinion, that’s not the case. One of the things we’re going to find out is which (approach) is better.”

While Batchelder denied political contributions in- fluenced the House bill, he didn’t say who was responsible for the charter school amendments. “We had three different drafts that we went through and we did that in a number of areas,” he said.

House Finance Committee Chairman Ron Amstutz, R-Wooster, did not return a phone call seeking comment. But he told the Columbus Dispatch the amendments originated from a “variety of internal and probably some external inputs.”

Lehner said the source of the amendments is “one of the mysteries around here right now. From what I’ve heard, very few people saw it ahead of time.”

She said it’s important to preserve accountabililty and called the House language “reckless, and not something I can personally support.”

William Sims, who heads the Ohio Alliance for Public Charter Schools, said the House language raises serious questions about charter schools’ financial accountability and overall transparency. He, too, said the origin of the amendments is hazy. “When we raise that question, we get kind of a code of silence. Who was responsible? There seems to be no clear answer.”

Contact this reporter at (937) 225-2264.