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Ellen Belcher is the Dayton Daily News opinion pages editor. She writes about state government, education, the environment, higher education and all things Dayton.
Martin Gottlieb is an editorial writer and columnist for the Dayton Daily News opinion pages. He focuses on the political process itself and does such national issues as war, the economy, taxes and Social Security, as well as a hodge-podge of local and state issues.Home > Blogs > A Matter of Opinion > Archives > 2009 > March > 25
Wednesday, March 25, 2009
Guest column: If charter schools go down, expect chaos
We’re being inundated by folks going to bat for charter schools, which would lose up to a third of their funding under Gov. Ted Strickland’s proposed budget.
Here’s a take from the Thomas B. Fordham Foundation, which has been a big backer of charter schools in the state and in Dayton. One interesting statistic the authors point to that I haven’t seen before is how many Dayton teachers and support personnel would be affected if the local charters go under.
Charters are a big business in Dayton.
From: Terry Ryan and Kathryn Mullen Upton:
It’s common knowledge that the current budget bill (H.B. 1) proposed by Gov. Ted Strickland would cut charter school funding to levels that would likely kill off a sizeable percentage of the state’s charters.
Ohio has more than 330 charters that serve more than 82,000 children. The sudden demise of 150, 200 or more schools would likely result in chaos for the children involved, their families, the teachers and administrators in the schools, and in the communities they serve.
First, let’s say H.B. 1 becomes effective this July, and the proposed funding cuts render financial viability for charter schools impossible for 50 percent of them in August.
This would mean roughly 41,000 children and their families statewide would suddenly be looking for new schools for the 2009-2010 school year. As most children in charters are in cities, the impact would be extreme in places like Dayton (6,200 charter students), Cleveland (10,000 charter students), Columbus (8,000 charter students) and Cincinnati (6,800 charter students).
In Dayton, if half of the 6,200 children in charters were tossed out of their schools, this would result in roughly 3,100 students looking for new schools. Many, if not all, would likely flood the Dayton Public Schools.
Imagine the challenge for Dayton, with a student enrollment of about 15,500 students, facing a sudden influx of more than 3,000 new students.
Simply registering and placing these students into classrooms would be a monumental challenge. A nearly 20 percent influx of new students would require the district to find classroom space for all these students. Teachers also would have to be identified and hired in a matter of a couple of weeks.
The district also would have to, among other things, figure out how to provide lunches to all these new students, and quickly arrange how to transport them around town to their new schools.
All this, remember, would be happening in a school district that has struggled mightily to educate the current group of kids under its charge. Consider that 75 percent of district students in Dayton last year attended a school rated “academic emergency” (an F) or “academic watch” (a D) by the state.
Second, there are about 4,500 teachers working statewide in Ohio’s charter schools.
In Dayton, there are roughly 465 teachers working in charters, and another 435 support staffers and administrators. These folks, and the thousands of other adults statewide who service charter schools, would be tossed into a brutal job market.
Some would end up in traditional district schools, but many would simply swell Ohio’s unemployment rate of 9.5 percent.
Third, closing Ohio’s charter schools en masse would further litter the state’s already blighted urban landscape.
In Dayton, the nicest and most modern buildings in neighborhoods like Dayton View are charter schools. Does Dayton, a city Forbes magazine recently rated as being the “fifth emptiest city” in America, really need more empty buildings, especially in its poorest neighborhoods?
Finally, abruptly closing hundreds of charter schools would involve so much extra work, the operations of the Ohio Department of Education, the state auditor’s office, and the attorney general’s office would likely grind to a halt.
They’d be overwhelmed trying to figure out things like tracking and confirming student records (for example, how many high school credits do various students actually have?); figuring out who is responsible for unemployment payments for laid-off teachers; and determining the status of millions of dollars in federal grants, federal special education dollars, and federal food program dollars for charter schools.
Additionally, there would surely be dozens, if not hundreds, of lawsuits filed by angry parents, disgruntled employees, upset landlords, and vendors. It would be a legal mess of massive proportions.
It is true that Ohio, and Dayton, still have too many academically underperforming charter schools. State lawmakers have dealt with this in recent years by putting into place an academic death penalty for the most chronically underperforming schools.
Two schools were forced to close in 2008 and 23 more are at risk of closure in 2009 because of poor academic performance. More can and should be done, however, and proposals to tighten up the academic performance requirements for charters should be supported.
But, seeking to go after a significant proportion of all charter schools (the good, bad and ugly alike) — by starving them of money — in one year would create serious problems for children, families, communities and the state.
At times like these, let’s hope that cooler heads will prevail and that the focus is on supporting those schools that work.
Permalink | Comments (26) | Post your comment | Categories: City of Dayton, Economy, Education, Guest Columns, Ohio politics
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