Charter startup audit tracks costs

THE COLUMBUS DISPATCH

11/18/2007

By Bill Bush

Would-be Ohio charter-school operators received a total of $2.55 million in state and federal “planning grants” to start 33 schools that never opened, state records show.

That’s nearly 10 percent of the 352 grants issued and doesn’t include planning money for schools that have opened and closed.

The Ohio Department of Education is trying to recoup $1.56 million from 19 schools that either misspent startup grants or could not document how the money was spent. About $3,600 has been repaid.

The department is halfway through an audit of every startup grant recipient that has received federal planning and implementation money in the past three years. The audit will be completed next summer, said Todd Hanes, executive director of the department’s Office of Community Schools.

Hanes said he doesn’t think anyone took grants not intending to open a school.

“There are some people who have some very good intentions,” he said, adding that the work required to open charter schools likely overwhelmed some operators.

But spending education money that never reaches children is just more evidence that Ohio’s charter-school program is broken, said Sue Taylor, president of the Ohio Federation of Teachers.

“I hold the state of Ohio accountable for this very lax system,” said Taylor, whose union represents teachers who work in traditional school systems.

“This is a huge, huge abuse of taxpayer dollars.”

Of the $2.55 million, $1.86 million was federal money.

Terry Ryan, vice president for Ohio programs and policy at the Thomas B. Fordham Institute, a supporter and sponsor of charter schools, said opening a school costs a lot of money.

“You need books and desks and upgrades to the computers and all of that. Good schools need money.”

However, he said, taxpayers shouldn’t be the only ones taking a financial risk in creating charter schools.

Those who want to start them “should have some skin in the game,” Ryan said.

Among operations that received money but never opened schools, the Akron-based Summit Academy got the most.

Summit Academy, whose Web site says it operates 29 schools that serve 1,900 students, received nearly $895,000 to open five schools, including one in Columbus, but never followed through, according to state records.

School officials could not be reached for comment.

Of those operations from which the state is trying to recoup money, the now-defunct Harte Crossroads charter schools owe the most — $1 million in federal funds.

Hanes said the two schools, formerly operated out of the same space in the Columbus City Center mall, could not document how that money was spent. (The schools should have received $900,000 in federal grants but were mistakenly issued an additional $100,000, Hanes said.)

Harte Crossroads schools closed in the spring $1.6 million in debt, their books declared “unauditable” by the state auditor. The schools could not find at least 44 new computers, which officials said probably were stolen.

bbush@dispatch.com

Copyright (c) 2007, The Columbus Dispatch