Saturday, May 20, 2006
Requests for information on charter school teacher contracts were denied.
By HAROLD GWIN
VINDICATOR EDUCATION WRITER
YOUNGSTOWN -- The Coalition for Public Education says a study it commissioned of Ohio's charter schools shows they aren't the public entities they claim to be.
Ohio law defines them as public schools, but those operated by educational management companies claim their teachers aren't public employees, nor are the individual school boards for those management company-run schools independent as required by law, the study showed.
The Braddock Organization, a Columbus-based public interest research group, was commissioned to do the study, looking at the four largest charter school chains in the state, said Tom Mooney, coalition chairman and president of the Ohio Federation of Teachers, a statewide teachers union.
Mooney has been a frequent and outspoken critic of charter school operations in Ohio.
The study, released Friday, claims that many charter schools don't operate as public schools as state law requires.
The schools are tightly controlled by their management companies, which appear to prefer secrecy over public accountability, Mooney said, despite the assertions of a charter school attorney in oral arguments in a case challenging charter school constitutionality before the Ohio Supreme Court in November claiming that the schools "... carry every indicia of a public entity."
Braddock filed public information requests with the schools for information on teacher contracts but got nearly all of the responses from the management companies, not the schools themselves, the news release says.
Companies
The companies were identified as White Hat Management of Akron (which has Life Skills Centers in Youngstown and Trumbull County), Summit Academy Management of Akron (which has schools in Youngstown and Warren), National Heritage Academies of Grand Rapids, Mich., (which is opening a charter school in Youngstown this fall) and The Leona Group of East Lansing, Mich.
All declined to provide the requested information, claiming the teachers are all employees of the private management companies and not public school employees. Yet, those teachers contribute to the State Teachers Retirement System pension fund for public school teachers, the release said.
Further, the study found that The Leona Group and Summit run their schools with a "superboard" that oversees all of the schools, rather than having an independent board for each school as they are supposed to have, the release said.
National Heritage and White Hat have overlapping board memberships for their schools, it said.
Spokesmen for White Hat, National Heritage and Summit Academy couldn't be reached to comment on the report.
"It's clear the public has no voice in these schools," Mooney said.
PTA statement
"Charter schools were called community schools in Ohio to signify that they would establish closer ties to the parents and community," said Barbara Sprague, Ohio PTA executive director. "But these schools are just the opposite. Board members represent the management companies, not the community or parents."
The PTA is a coalition member as are the state school board and school administrator associations, the Ohio Education Association, the League of Women Voters and the Ohio AFL-CIO, Mooney said.
The public needs to know how these schools are being run, and the state Legislature needs to reform the state charter school laws to make sure those schools conform to legal requirement, he added.
gwin@vindy.com