City schools right to go after charter operations

Every school district in the state owes a debt of gratitude to the Youngstown City Schools for its decision to fight the establishment of Legacy Academy, a new school in Youngstown whose charter was authorized by the Lucas County Educational Service Center and which opened its doors nearly a month after the 2001-2002 school year began.
In suing the school, the Lucas County agency, the State Board of Education and the Ohio Department of Education on the grounds that Legacy was set up illegally, Youngstown's board of education may well open in Mahoning County Common Pleas Court the can of worms that the "community schools" movement has become and let taxpayers see the wigglers they've been supporting for exactly what they are.
And there's definitely a lot of wiggling going on -- particularly on the part of the Lucas County ESC and the Rev. Norman L. Wagner who has tried to turn his defunct Calvary Christian Academy, a private, tuition-funded religious school, into a tax-supported charter school. Perhaps even the state department of education has been remiss in not making its position on Legacy Academy clear before now.
No funding: Despite Wagner's insistence that he has already received state funding, Dottie Howe, an education department spokesperson, told The Vindicator, "No funding had gone to Legacy at all, and we don't intend to fund them." She said the state doesn't recognize Legacy as a community school and questions the authority of the Lucas County ESC to even charter a school outside Lucas County.
Peg Hull, the community schools coordinator for LCESC, says that her agency has received "no written communication" from the state regarding their out-of-county chartering authority, but refused to discuss what they may have been told by state authorities. Instead. she referred The Vindicator to Tom Baker, LCESC's superintendent.
Earlier this year when we tried to obtain information about eCOT, the questionable Internet school that LCESC had chartered, Baker would not return our phone calls. Baker didn't return our phone calls about Legacy Academy either.
But just last month, state Auditor Jim Petro discovered that eCOT received at least $1.7 million more than it should have because neither the state Department of Education nor LCESC had established proper oversight. With Baker's agency receiving 2 percent of the funding going to each of the schools chartered by LCESC -- now about a dozen -- he probably doesn't want to slow down the gravy train.
Gravy: If the education of the 225 students currently enrolled at Legacy Academy had been funded by the state, that would have been $1.24 million coming from Ohio taxpayers to fund Wagner's school and some $25,000 to LCESC.
There's not a little irony in the Youngstown school district's current lawsuit. A little more than two years ago, the city schools were bending over backward trying to collect nearly $40,000 in past due rent from Wagner's church, Mount Calvary, for the former Princeton Junior High School building that the church was using as a private school. Had the district insisted on the payment of the rent -- or simply foreclosed -- rather than selling the building to Wagner for less than the amount owed, we doubt a charter school would have been an issue.
Howe says that the State Board of Education and the Department of Education concur with the Youngstown district's lawsuit -- although they're on the list of defendants.
As the case makes its way through the courts we expect the following questions to be answered:
How can a non-religious school be conducted on religious property? How many of the current enrollees in Legacy Academy were enrolled in Wagner's Calvary Christian Academy? And why do public officials -- like those in Lucas County -- refuse to make public information about a public institution?