Monday, November 19, 2007
About $3,600 in the start-up grants to the charter schools has been repaid.
COLUMBUS (AP) — Ohio charter school operators were given $2.55 million in state and federal planning grants to start 33 schools that were never opened — nearly 10 percent of the 352 grants that have been issued by the state, state records showed.
The $2.55 million doesn’t include planning funds given to schools that opened and later closed, the Columbus Dispatch reported Sunday.
The Ohio Department of Education is trying to recover $1.56 million from 19 schools that either misspent start-up grants or were unable to document how the money was spent, the newspaper said. About $3,600 has so far been repaid.
Spending education money that never reaches students is more evidence that Ohio’s charter-school program doesn’t work, said Ohio Federation of Teachers president Sue Taylor.
“I hold the state of Ohio accountable for this very lax system,” she said. “This is a huge, huge abuse of taxpayer dollars.”
But it’s likely that in most cases, the work required to open charter schools just overwhelmed some operators, said Todd Hanes, executive director of the department’s Office of Community Schools. He said he doesn’t believe anyone took grants not intending to open a school.
Buying books, desks and upgrades to the computers can cost a lot of money, said Terry Ryan, a vice president at the Washington-D.C.-based Thomas B. Fordham Institute, which supports charter schools.
But taxpayers shouldn’t be the only ones taking a financial risk in creating charter schools — school operators should be required to put up their own money as well, he said.
The Education Department is in the middle of an audit of all Ohio start-up grant recipients that have received federal planning and implementation money in the last three years. The audit should be completed next summer, Hanes said.
Akron-based Summit Academy Schools, which runs 27 schools in Ohio for children needing special education classes, received the most out of the grantees listed in the records — nearly $895,000 to open five schools. State records showed that the schools did not go into operation. Summit operates schools in Youngstown and Warren.
A message seeking comment was left Sunday at the schools’ administrative office.
The now-defunct Harte Crossroads charter schools owes $1 million in federal money — the most out of those operations from which the state is trying to recoup money, the Dispatch reported.
Harte Crossroads should have been given $900,000 in federal grants, but were mistakenly issued an additional $100,000, Hanes said. The schools have not been able to document how the money was spent, he said.
Harte Crossroads schools closed in March $1.6 million in debt, and the state auditor has declared their books unauditable. The schools have not been able to find 44 new computers, the newspaper said.
A telephone number listed for Harte Crossroads had been disconnected.