Senate GOP rescues charter schools in budget proposal

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By William Hershey, Staff Writer Updated 12:12 AM Saturday, May 30, 2009

The Republicans who run the Ohio Senate have put their stamp on the proposed $53 billion two-year state budget and the big winners are Ohio’s charter schools.

The big loser was Democratic Gov. Ted Strickland’s plan to overhaul schools and school funding.

The GOP plan unveiled on Friday, May 29, calls for keeping spending for charter schools at the current level. The budget passed earlier by the Democratic-controlled House cut charter spending by 15 percent, with cuts for online schools as high as 70 percent.

“We are very happy and grateful that the Senate put all kids first. We realize there was a mammoth fiscal problem dropped at their doorstep and we appreciate that they put that aside to focus on the welfare of 80,000 children,” said Ron Adler of Miamisburg, president of the Ohio Coalition for Quality Education, a charter advocacy group.

The Senate GOP said that Strickland’s “evidence-based model” for school reform was “fundamentally flawed” and stripped out requirements for districts to provide nurses, tutors, counselors and reduced student-teacher ratios, while providing more spending overall for K-12 education.

William Leibensperger, vice president of the Ohio Education Association, the state’s largest teacher’s union and a key backer of the Strickland plan, said the Senate was “missing out on an historic opportunity” to create an education system that would transform the state’s economy.

The battle is not over.

The Senate is expected to approve its version of the budget next week, setting the stage for a House-Senate conference committee that will try to come up with a compromise spending plan for Strickland to sign before the July 1 start of the new fiscal year.

Contact this reporter at (614) 224-1608 or whershey@DaytonDailyNews.com.

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