How much money do we send to charters?
It was the same room.
Two months earlier, a band of Greater Cincinnati superintendents met here and announced they were uniting to fight state control over education. From-the-top mandates, they said, are making it “nearly impossible to teach.”
They were 41 districts strong then. Now, they number 43. And in late September, they met again at the Butler County Educational Service Center to hash out their demands for charter schools:
• That they be held to the same transparency and accountability as traditional public schools;
• And that lawmakers change the rules to ensure no local levy money goes to charters.
The gripe is this: Ohio charter schools are not doing better than traditional public schools. In many cases, they’re doing much, much worse. Yet, according to the Greater Cincinnati School Advocacy Network, charters are taking an unfair chunk of state funding.
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Southwest Ohio districts funnel more than $90 million a year to charter schools. Advocates say it makes perfect sense – charter schools are public, so their students are entitled to public money. Opponents, though, like those in the GCSAN, say the state is forcing them to divert local levy money to less accountable, lower performing charters.
The charter movement was based on the promise of doing better for the state’s poorest, said Mason City Schools Superintendent Gail Kist-Kline, but “14 years of evidence” show that’s not happening.
“Policymakers appear so entrenched in defending the charter-school experiment,” Kist-Kline said, “that they are unable to see that the emperor is indeed wearing no clothes.”
How much money?
This is how it works:
The state starts with a base number. This year, it’s $5,900 per student. Then, some kids get a bit more – if they’re not a native English speaker, for example, or if they’re economically disadvantaged, gifted or learning disabled.
But then, before the state cuts a check to each district, it holds some back. Does your district have a high per-pupil property value? That will cost you. Is the median income in the upper range? That’ll cost you, too.
Cincinnati Public Schools, by far the region’s largest district, gets a paltry 44 percent of that per-student funding.
Indian Hill, the region’s wealthiest district, gets only 5 percent.
Yet, when any district loses a student to a charter school, they pay out the full 100 percent.
The GCSAN argues that three-fourths of all Ohio public school district funds are transferred to “equal or worse performing charter schools.” At some districts, like Mason, it’s a relatively small hit. Mason lost 77 students to charter schools this year, a small fraction of its 10,000-plus enrollment.
Elsewhere, it’s a grander scale. CPS gets about $3,033 per student from the state. The district lost 7,482 students to charters this year, and it passed on $54 million to those schools: a little more than $7,200 per student.
“It just isn’t right,” said CPS superintendent Mary Ronan. “I feel this is a common interest, be you a wealthy suburban or a poor urban. We all have the same issue, and that’s really what brought us together.”
The middleman?
Greg Harris, of Madisonville, argues the opposite. Harris runs StudentsFirst Ohio, a nonprofit advocacy group that is typically pro-charter. Harris has two children in traditional public schools and none in charters, but he argues that the funding, if anything, is slanted against charter schools.
Traditional public schools get money from local levies, and charter schools don’t have that option, Harris said.
Traditional schools get money for facilities, while charters do not.
Take CPS’ entire budget: roughly $500 million minus the $54 million that goes to charters and another $20 million for ed-choice students. What’s left breaks down to roughly $15,000 per CPS student, or twice what goes to charters. And that, Harris says, is the number that matters.
“Districts sort of have this mentality that ‘The money belongs to us,’ ” he said. “But the money doesn’t belong to districts. It doesn’t belong to property. It belongs to kids.”
And those students that are leaving for charters? Their parents are taxpayers, too, Harris said.
The districts “aren’t educating those kids anymore,” he said, “so why should they be paid to educate them.”
Traditional districts have become a middleman, passing on money from the state to charters. Some have suggested cutting out that step, and Harris thinks that would be wise.
They left for a reason
At 7:45 a.m., Principal Tyree Gaines stands with a microphone in front of the students at Carpe Diem, a charter school housed in a wing at CPS’ Aiken High School.
It’s nearly the end of the first quarter, Gaines says, so it’s time to make sure everyone is on track.
And if yesterday wasn’t great, make today better, she says: “It’s up to you to make it happen.”
Carpe Diem is a charter school based on individuality. It’s not an online school, but students spend about half their time working online. That way, they can go at their own pace, Gaines said. If they want to work faster, great. If they’re homeless, sleeping on a relative’s couch, they can log in from a library and stay on track.
Tyeshia Smith, 16, is poised to graduate this year from Carpe Diem. Next year, she wants to go to Xavier University, on her way to becoming a child clinical psychologist.
Smith recently moved back to Cincinnati from Mississippi. She thought about returning to Walnut Hills, where she studied before, she said, but Carpe Diem fits better.
Quincy Wilks, 14, came to Carpe Diem by way of North Avondale Montessori. Wilks was behind at NAM, he said, but he caught back up after he started at the charter. The go-at-your-own-pace suits him.
“That way, I don’t feel like I’m getting held back at all,” he said. “Or getting rushed, either.”
Gaines taught English at CPS’ Withrow University High School before she took over at Carpe Diem. She was “disenchanted” with the education system, she said, because she saw so many students getting passed along without truly learning.
She loves Carpe Diem because it’s smaller, like a family, and because it’s a different option for students, she said. To her, that’s why charter schools matter.
Too many schools?
This year, Carpe Diem enrolled 189 would-have-been CPS students. Altogether, though, CPS students left the district for 48 different charter schools. That’s too many, said superintendent Ronan.
Years ago, CPS downsized from about 75 schools to the 55 it has today. But then, “40 charter schools crop up,” Ronan said, and the city is in a worse place than it started.
State testing data is two years old, but of those 48 charters with available rankings, CPS scored better than 85 percent.
“There are too many schools for the market,” Ronan said. “And we downsized because we knew that, and we wanted to save taxpayers money.”
In the end, it’s complicated. CPS itself sponsors two charter schools: Carpe Diem and the Lighthouse Community School, a highly specialized school that targets students living in the child welfare system.
And the district is considering sponsoring a second Carpe Diem in the National Underground Railroad Freedom Center on The Banks. That’s the distinction, Ronan said: She’s not anti-charter; she’s anti- bad charter.
“We all thought they would offer choice,” she said. “And I think everyone thought, ‘Oh, they’ll perform better than your public schools.’ And gosh, what are we, 10-15 years later, and there’s only a handful of high-quality charter schools?”
Breaking down district cash outflow
When students leave a traditional district for a charter school, a portion of that district’s money follows. Here’s a breakdown of local districts that send more than $1 million to charters.
Ohio’s base funding is $5,900 per student – though, based on a complicated formula, most districts get only a fraction of that. Their funding is then supplemented, in large part, by local levies.
Cincinnati Public
District enrollment*: 30,411
Students choosing a charter school this year: 7,482
Total transferred to charter schools: $54.03 million
Average per-student transferred to charter schools: $7,221.35
Mt. Healthy
District enrollment*: 3,149
Students choosing a charter school this year: 482
Total transferred to charter schools: $3.51 million
Average per-student transferred to charter schools: $7,280.74
Northwest Local
District enrollment*: 8,019
Students choosing a charter school this year: 465
Total transferred to charter schools: $3.27 million
Average per-student transferred to charter schools: $7,026.27
Winton Woods
District enrollment*: 3,286
Students choosing a charter school this year: 385
Total transferred to charter schools: $2.56 million
Average per-student transferred to charter schools: $6,658.03
Middletown City
District enrollment*: 5,999
Students choosing a charter school this year: 862
Total transferred to charter schools: $7.47 million
Average per-student transferred to charter schools: $8,658.51
Hamilton City
District enrollment*: 9,386
Students choosing a charter school this year: 552
Total transferred to charter schools: $3.85 million
Average per-student transferred to charter schools: $6963.80
Lakota Local
District enrollment*: 15,259
Students choosing a charter school this year: 273
Total transferred to charter schools: $1.98 million
Average per-student transferred to charter schools: $7,252.04
Fairfield City
District enrollment*: 8,849
Students choosing a charter school this year: 249
Total transferred to charter schools: $1.76 million
Average per-student transferred to charter schools: $7,058.96
Lebanon City
District enrollment*: 5,224
Students choosing a charter school this year: 192
Total transferred to charter schools: $1.39 million
Average per-student transferred to charter schools: $7,230.88
Franklin City
District enrollment*: 2,774
Students choosing a charter school this year: 129
Total transferred to charter schools: $1.04 million
Average per-student transferred to charter schools: $8,036.75
West Clermont Local
District enrollment*: 7,574
Students choosing a charter school this year: 284
Total transferred to charter schools: $1.91 million
Average per-student transferred to charter schools: $6,718.60
All of Ohio
District enrollment*: 1.69 million
Students choosing a charter school this year: 118,928
Total transferred to charter schools: $917.94 million
Average per-student transferred to charter schools: $7,718.43
*based on 2013-14 estimates, the latest state report card available
Source: Ohio Department of Education