Teachers union attacks charter school operator

This is not the first time the statewide teachers union has criticized the company.
By HAROLD GWIN
VINDICATOR EDUCATION WRITER
YOUNGSTOWN -- The Ohio Federation of Teachers says White Hat Management, Ohio's largest charter school operator, is breaking state laws set up to govern charter schools.
The 20,000-member teachers union also accuses David Brennan, founder of Akron-based White Hat, with winning legislative and state administrative support for the charter school movement with $3.8 million in campaign contributions to Republican lawmakers between 1990 and 2005.
The Brennan family gave $162,500 to state lawmakers during a two-month period in late 2001 during deliberations over a bill to allow private groups to sponsor and operate charter schools, the union's report said.
White Hat has 33 Ohio schools with about 16,000 pupils and has opened schools in other states, according to the OFT report, "Education Empire: David Brennan's White Hat Management Inc. -- A Comprehensive Report on the Origins, Evolution and Business Model of Ohio's Largest Charter School Company."
The schools include the Life Skills Centers in Youngstown and Warren.
Subsidy payments
Ohio shouldn't be paying White Hat schools a total of more than $100 million a year in subsidy payments because the company isn't in compliance with state law, said Tom Mooney, OFT president. That's money diverted from the public schools, he said.
The OFT report says the state laws require that charter schools be nonprofit and their boards of directors be independent.
That isn't the case with White Hat, according to the report, which claims that White Hat forms a for-profit limited liability partnership in the name of each of its charter schools.
Not independent
Many of those schools share the same people on their boards of directors, the report said, noting that nine individuals make up the boards of eight different schools and some of them also serve on the boards of five other schools.
The schools are far from independent, the report says, noting that White Hat not only owns the school names but also their buildings and is the sole vendor for each school, renting them buildings and furniture, selling them computers, books and other supplies and even leasing them teachers and administrative staff.
The company has an arrangement that requires 97 percent of all public funds going into the schools to go to White Hat, limiting the state's ability to audit school finances, the report says.
White Hat officials weren't immediately available to comment on the OFT report.
This isn't the first time the teachers union has attacked White Hat. The OFT has also been a frequent critic of the schools' academic performance.
Mooney said he hopes this report will embarrass state regulators into taking action to correct the charter school violations. Legislators need to realize they've let this situation run for too long, he said.
gwin@vindy.com