EDUCATION Charter school bill concerns teachers union

The Ohio Education Association is still looking over the bill.
By JEFF ORTEGA
VINDICATOR CORRESPONDENT
COLUMBUS -- A bill that would revamp the state's charter school laws is drawing concern from one of Ohio's two large teachers unions.
The Ohio Federation of Teachers is concerned with provisions that would expand the kinds of entities that would be able to sponsor charter schools, federation president Tom Mooney said Tuesday.
Under a revised bill presented to the House Education Committee Tuesday, Ohio's 13 state universities, public school systems, educational service centers and nonprofit organizations would be able to sponsor "community schools."
Sponsors: Under current law, among those that may sponsor a charter school are the State Board of Education, according to legislative researchers. In Lucas County, charter schools may also be sponsored by the Lucas County Educational Services Center and the University of Toledo, researchers say.
"We haven't found out how to make the ones we got work in the first place," federation President Tom Mooney said Tuesday. "There will be less accountability over taxpayer money."
The teachers union also is concerned that for-profit companies could simply establish a nonprofit agency to start a charter school.
"It's a back door way to open the education budget to for-profit companies," Mooney said.
According to a legislative analysis, the revised bill would require the Department of Education to oversee the sponsors of charter schools -- public, nonprofit schools that operate independently of any school district but under contract with a public sponsor.
The revised proposal would also eliminate the authority of the state Board of Education to sponsor charter schools, but would allow the state board to continue to sponsor schools for which it has a current contract until the contract ends or a new sponsor is found.
State Rep. Jon Husted, the Dayton-area Republican and the bill's chief sponsor, said the state's being able to sponsor and oversee charter schools is "like being the prosecutor and the public defender."
Husted said his bill is important.
"Choice and competition are American virtues," Husted said.
Mooney said the 20,000-member teachers union, like other educational organizations, will be studying the proposal as it makes its way through the Legislature.
The Ohio Education Association, the other large teachers union in the state, is still looking over the bill, a representative said.
Reaction: The revised bill, one of a package of bills unveiled last year by conservatives in the Legislature on school choice, received mixed reaction from members of the committee.
State Rep. Kenneth A. Carano of Youngstown, D-65th, an education-committee member, was critical. "I'm not in favor of the community schools system the way it's set up now," he said.
State Rep. James M. Hoops, a northwest Ohio Republican and another committee member, was more hopeful.
"I think we're moving in the right direction on it," said Hoops. "We need to look at ways to make [community schools] accountable."
House Education Committee Chairman Jamie Callender, R-Willowick, said he anticipated debate on the revised bill to begin in earnest next week.