Healy seeks to reform Ohio charter schools

For immediate release: Tuesday, April 25, 2006

CONTACT: Adam Herman at (614) 466-8030

Healy Delivers One-Two Punch to Charter Schools

State Rep. William J. Healy II, D-Canton, is introducing two bills this week that aim to reform Ohio’s charter school system.  The bills, which will be officially introduced on Thursday, seek to improve the accountability process for failing charter schools and eliminate potential conflicts of interest for public school board members, respectively.

“Charter schools have been virtually unsupervised for nearly their entire existence, and it’s time the state established control over these failing ventures.  These schools are performing at levels far below the vast majority of public schools, when they were created to address shortcomings in the traditional public school system.  We need to send a message to our students that failure should not be rewarded,” Healy said.

Officially called “community schools” in Ohio, charter schools receive public dollars previously reserved for traditional public school districts.  This often leads struggling local school districts to pass the costs of education on to their residents – a practice that Healy detests.  “It is reprehensible that local residents are being forced to bear the burden of failing charter schools,” Healy said.

Healy’s first bill ends the special treatment currently being given to failing charter schools by requiring the public release of test results for schools less than three years old.  Current regulations allow these failing test results to go unreported.  The bill also goes one step further by mandating that any charter school tested at levels of “academic watch” or “academic emergency” for two consecutive testing years be denied funding if their results do not clear these two lowest performance categories in the following year’s test.

Currently, failing charter schools are only required to submit “improvement plans” created under the federal “No Child Left Behind” Act.  Healy feels this is not enough of a deterrent to poor performance, and has long argued that charter schools must perform at levels higher than the schools they are seeking to replace.  “If a charter school is failing at the same rate (or worse) than a public school, what’s the point?” Healy asked.

Healy’s second proposal prohibits a public school district board member from serving as a board member or employee of a charter school that is not sponsored by a public school district.  Healy feels that this dual role creates an obvious conflict of interest for the board member, and thus wants to prevent the opportunity for such a conflict to exist. 

The bill also prohibits a public school district board member from serving as an employee or board member of an organization that manages the daily operations of a community school under contract with the school’s governing authority (namely, a management company).  Healy feels that this additional conflict of interest has the potential to be the most destructive, as the board member would personally profit from the removal of students from a public school district.

Co-Sponsors:

• Charter testing bill – Representatives Williams, Yuko, Koziura, Otterman, Skindell, Carano, Harwood, Chandler
• Board member prohibition bill – Representatives Williams, Woodard, Strahorn

Both bills will be formally introduced and assigned numbers in Thursday’s non-voting session.

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