WHAT ARE COMMUNITY (CHARTER) SCHOOLS?

In Ohio, charter schools are called "community" schools to differentiate them from state chartered private schools. Charter/community (the terms will be interchangeable in this document) schools are public schools. They may not discriminate in their student selection, they may not charge tuition, and they may not ignore laws pertaining to health, safety, and civil rights. They are, however, completely autonomous and thereby relieved of some of the restrictions that govern regular public schools.

Community schools were first authorized in Ohio in 1997, as citizens demanded educational choices for public school students and the legislature grappled with a funding system that had been declared unconstitutional by the Ohio Supreme Court. It was hoped that establishing a new approach to school governance and organizing schools freer of certain bureaucratic, traditional, and labor restrictions would encourage innovative methods of teaching to improve student performance. Charter schools were originally authorized in the eight large urban school districts, although they initially have been established only in Dayton, Cincinnati, Cleveland, Akron, Columbus and Youngstown. (Later legislation permits their establishment in areas where public schools fall into the "Academic Emergency" category, and a charter is being organized in the Mt. Healthy district.)

Supporters of charter schools argue that new ways to operate schools, innovative educational programs, and increased autonomy in decision-making can provide solutions to the problems of at-risk students,high absenteeism, increasing dropout rates, suspensions and expulsions. Indeed, some of the community schools that have been established in Cincinnati’s school district have tailored their programs to students who have not succeeded in traditional settings.

HOW ARE COMMUNITY SCHOOLS FUNDED?

Community schools are funded with public tax dollars: the State’s per pupil allocation, Disadvantaged Pupil Impact Aid (DPIA)/Title I, special education funds where applicable, and federal grants for start-up. In the 2001-02 school year, the state’s basic aid figure per pupil was $4814. To that number, a "cost-of-doing-business" factor of 1.075 is added, bringing the state’s per pupil allocation to $5175.05, i.e., $4814 (1.075). In 2002-03, the basic amount will be $4949 + $371.18 for a total per student allocation of $5320.18. DPIA/Title I funds are dispensed to community schools at the same rate as they’re allocated to Cincinnati Public Schools. The amount of DPIA/Title I funds a school receives depends upon the number of enrolled students who meet poverty guidelines.

Some schools have applied for and received grants from private institutions to help them with their programs. Additionally, Cincinnati Public Schools is required to provide transportation for students in charter schools, as well as for private schools.

Despite the fact that charter schools receive public funding, they do not operate under the local school district’s school board. Each charter school has its own board and is held accountable through the contract it has with the organization that sponsors it. Their accountability is to the State Board of Education, which evaluates the performance of the schools and determines whether or not their performance merits renewal of their contracts.

HOW ARE COMMUNITY SCHOOLS ESTABLISHED?

Founding and developing a community school is a complex task. Planners must identify a target student population and put together a mission, teaching/learning approach, goals, and measurements that will meet the needs of the identified population. Organizers of a new charter school must find a sponsor for the school; in Hamilton County that sponsor could be the State Board of Education, the Cincinnati Public School District, the board of any other school district in Hamilton County, or a joint vocational district in Hamilton County. (A conversion charter school-changing an existing school to a charter school-must obtain its charter from the district-of-location’s board of education.) Once a sponsor is found, a contract is negotiated between the organizers and the sponsoring board. It specifies what the school intends to do and how it will meet its goals.

The contract also specifies what types of measurement devices the school will use to determine whether nor not it is meeting its goals: standardized tests, portfolios, performance assessments, surveys, etc. If the contract stipulations are met, it can be renewed; if the charter school fails to meet its established goals, the sponsor can revoke the contract. Interestingly, the organizers of a charter school must be of not-for-profit status. Once the school has its contract, however, the organizers may then turn to a for-profit (or other) organization to operate the school.

When the contract has been drafted and accepted by the necessary parties, the organizers must find suitable facilities, recruit faculty and students, put together support services, and obtain the necessary equipment to ensure the full and faithful execution of the plan described in the contract.

Both students and teachers at charter schools elect to be associated with a particular school because they subscribe to its methods, philosophy, mission, program, etc. Faculties for the schools are recruited mainly via classified advertising in various newspapers; students are found via outreach publicity, word-of-mouth, and personal contact. Neither teachers nor students are assigned to a specific school by the district in which the school is located.

CINCINNATI CHARTER SCHOOLS AS OF 2002

All of the 15 community schools open and operating within the Cincinnati School District are new schools. Three of Cincinnati’s new schools, Lighthouse Community School, East End Community Heritage School, and ISUS Trade and Technology School, have obtained their charters from the Cincinnati Board of Education and are in their second year of operation. The remaining 12 were chartered by the State Board of Education, and most of them have been operating for two or three years. The State Board has chartered three other schools, but they are not yet open (one will operate in the Mt. Healthy district). A "virtual" academy has also applied for a charter from the State and is seeking to open in Cincinnati in the near future. The 15 schools served a student population of 3,783 in school year 2001-2002, according to CPS information.

LEAGUE’S PROJECT

At the time the League of Women Voters of the Cincinnati Area (LWVCA) Education Committee began examining charter schools (Fall, 2001), committee members decided to limit their study to those schools in the CPS District that were chartered by the State Board of Education. At that time, eleven such schools were open and operating in the district (a twelfth has opened since we began). Eight of these were elementary schools, two were for high-school aged students, and one was a "middle" school.

A brief telephone interview to each school’s chief administrator initiated the committee’s activities. The purpose was to confirm the information we had about the school and ask them to send any printed materials they might have available for public use. In every case, the respondents were friendly and very willing to share information and their enthusiasm about their schools. Committee members asked if they might visit the school at a later date and were told that they would be most welcome.

Committee members then determined that a visit to each school would be necessary to obtain the information needed for League members. A set of questions was developed and asked of each of the administrators so similar data from each school could be compiled. Those questions were:

• How do your school’s salary and benefits compare to those in the regular Cincinnati Public Schools?

• How do you recruit teachers and other faculty? What qualifications must a potential teacher in your school have?

• Who makes up your governing board? How frequently do they meet? Who may attend the meetings?

• What oversight is the State Dept. of Education providing and how do they provide it? What reports must you provide to your sponsors?

• What methods of instruction do you use that wouldn’t normally be found in a public school?

• What sort of parental involvement have you experienced? Do you require this from those who send their youngsters to your school?

• Do you find it necessary to supplement the monies you receive from the State and Cincinnati Public Schools? If so, how do you raise these funds? What fees do you charge?

• Added at the suggestion of Joan Platz, Education Specialist for League of Women Voters of Ohio (LWVO): How do you define success in your program?

In the schools where we were given a tour of the facility, we looked at room sizes, visible equipment, the general ambience of the school, and general condition of the buildings.

During the year, ten of the eleven existing charter schools were visited (Harmony School was the exception), and in most cases, League members spent 45 minutes to over an hour interviewing the principal, touring the facility, and meeting other staff members.

WHAT WE FOUND

The management of the schools chartered by the Ohio Board of Education involves a variety of organizations, but can be divided into two main types - schools run by outside management organizations and schools initiated and run by inspired local teachers. In the first category, two of the schools, Life Skills Center and Riverside Academy, are operated by White Hat Management, a for-profit company based in Akron that operates a number of charter schools throughout the state. SABIS International, as its name implies, is part of an international organization, but its local authority resides in Minneapolis. The W.E.B. DuBois School has some financial backing from the local Episcopal Diocese. In the second category, the founders, who generally serve as chief administrators, fund-raisers, and curriculum resources, operate the remaining schools - A.B. Miree, Cincinnati College Preparatory Academy, Dohn School, Greater Cincinnati Community Academy, Harmony School, Oak Tree Montessori, TCP World Academy, and W.E.B. DuBois. Most of the schools we visited were in their third year of operation.

Governing boards consist of four to nine members, who are drawn from the community, parents, and school personnel. Most of them convene bimonthly or quarterly and have open meetings.

Faculty members are recruited through newspaper ads and personal contact. Teachers in every school are required to be certified in the subjects they teach. Apparently, part-time teachers can be exempt from this requirement. In most cases, the pay is lower than that of Cincinnati Public Schools, but classes are smaller and teachers are either retirees or entry level. School days are longer and there are more school days per year for some of the charters. Benefits are comparable to those of CPS.

An official of the State Department of Education visits the schools twice a year; each visit lasts approximately four hours. Between visits, the schools must file the same reports as CPS to the State Department of Education. Said reports deal with attendance, enrollment, numbers of students receiving free/reduced price lunches, numbers of special students, etc. Students must take the state proficiency tests, but scores are not published until after the third year of operation of the school.

Facilities being used by the charter schools we visited did not adhere to a common formula. Riverside Academy operates in a 1950’s school building that was purchased from CPS. The Life Skills Center uses a former food stamp building. The TCP Academy uses a former church building, the Cincinnati College Preparatory Academy is in a former Drug Enforcement Office building, the Greater Cincinnati Community Academy (GCCA) is in a strip mall. Some of the facilities’ locations cater to the neighborhood in which they are located. Others draw from all over the city.

It appears that the buildings suit the purposes of the organizers and meet the needs of the specific curriculum. The Cincinnati College Preparatory Academy’s individual classrooms have no windows, but they are brightly painted and well lighted. Their facility’s previous tenant also had a nice chemical lab, which now benefits the school. Other schools creatively adapted their space to their needs with dividers, bright colors, and furniture. Most do not, however, have the luxury of "specialty" rooms, i.e., music, art. Some had physical education capabilities, but most rely on outdoor activities to fulfill that function. Only the Greater Cincinnati Community Academy’s facilities appear inadequate for their function, and the administrator mentioned that their thin walls and faulty roof were compelling them to look elsewhere for another building.

By law, charter schools may not charge tuition, and most of the administrators with whom we spoke said that their allocations from the State and Title 1 were adequate. Start-up grants are also available, and were used by many of the schools we saw. Fees, if charged, are quite low and cover the cost of a uniform/shirt. Help is available for students who cannot afford the fee. Some of the schools have fund-raising events, such as dinners, but we are not aware of student involvement in fund-raising, i.e., selling candy, fruit, raffle tickets, etc. The administrator in some of the schools seeks grants to cover specific needs. Since we did not request access to the school budgets, we cannot define exactly the sources of their incomes nor definitively how they used it.

A common thread seems to run through the charter schools’ educational approach, and that is an attempt to meet each child’s needs and educate the "whole" child. Part of the goal is to ensure that every student has a positive attitude of accomplishment from his/her studies. Obviously, each school has its own approach to doing that. Some emphasize reading/phonics, one urges its students to think college from kindergarten on, several use computers extensively, yet another resorts to a point system, and Oak Tree has a Montessori approach throughout its entire curriculum at all levels. There is intervention for students who falter, and small class size for more individualized attention. Reading and math are the primary foci, although music, art, foreign language are available in some-but not all-of the schools. Additionally, almost all of the schools stress "character development," a readiness to be a positive force in society in the future.

Parental involvement varies. Most of the schools have a parent organization; one or two of the schools sponsor special classes and activities for their parents. Since parents choose to send their youngsters to a charter school, one might assume they would be intimately involved with the school. In some places parents act as tutors, fund-raisers, event coordinators. However, most of the schools draw their students from all over the city, so they face problems of transportation, working hours, and time that are not uncommon in other schools. Innovative themed family nights, evening parent classes, reading programs, etc. are some of the ways the schools involve their parents.

DEFINING SUCCESS

We asked administrators how they define their schools’ success. The answers to the question varied. About half of the schools responded that raising proficiency test scores would indicate whether or not they were successful in their programs. (They were quick to remind us that many of the students who come to charter schools are about two years below grade level. Ergo, test scores will be low at the outset.) This approach, of course, is very measurable. The remaining administrators pointed to such things as producing students who are "givers to society," emphasis on success, academically involved youngsters, "having students come back each day and want more." These goals, while admirable, are hard to quantify.

If one examines the proficiency test scores produced by the charter schools, one would have to conclude that many of these schools are not "successful." However, they do boast high attendance percentages, and the students apparently do feel very "special" to be attending a charter school. Administrators point out that many of the students who come to community schools are well below grade level when they arrive. The schools’ task, then, is not only to enable those students to pass the proficiency test, but to attain a degree of confidence in their ability to achieve. They argue that engendering this attitude could provide a much-needed first step to improving the overall academic performance.

PROBLEMS IN SOME CINCINNATI COMMUNITY SCHOOLS

The problems of three schools chartered by the State Board have been documented in the press.

Harmony Community School

The first indication that the school was having problems surfaced in September 2001, when it began holding classes in the main public library. The school had received $464,946 in July and August 2001, but had been evicted from their building in a local strip mall because of unpaid rent. The school ultimately found temporary quarters in East Price Hill, but that building lacked adequate athletic facilities. Officials of Harmony Community School recently signed a contract to purchase the former Jewish Community Center on Summit Road.

Meanwhile, another financial problem surfaced when the state auditor’s office ordered the school to repay over $11,000 from an experiment in student entrepreneurism. Additionally, Harmony showed an operating loss of $308,725 for the year ending 6/30/01.

Greater Cincinnati Community Academy

According to a report issued by the state auditor in April 2002, the GCCA misappropriated about $260,000 and has accumulated over $1.5 million in debt. Officials of the school promise they will pay back what they owe, but there are obvious concerns about the viability of the school. Other financial snags include: monies withheld from employee checks but not submitted to the School Employees Retirement System; payments for undocumented goods and services, goods delivered to the former treasurer's home; overpayments based on erroneous enrollment information.

SABIS International School

This school’s local board of directors terminated its contract with its parent company claiming that the parent was more interested in making money than in educating children. Now board members have asked the State Board to rescind the charter and dissolve the school. As of mid-September, the school has not reopened.

All school districts and charter schools are audited by the State annually. New regulations adopted in HB 364 presumably will add some further state oversight to these institutions by creating a State Board of Community Schools. However, most of the public remains in the dark about how these schools are using their public funding, since their boards are not elected and oversight is fragmented. Additionally, since many of the schools operations rely heavily on the personality, enthusiasm, and hard work of the founder, there is the question of what would happen should that individual be unable to continue in his/her position.

THE LEAGUE’S POSITION

Joan Platz, LWVO Education Specialist, testified on HB 364, a bill aimed at charter school accountability. In her testimony, Joan stated, "The League supports the concept of community schools as one way for public schools to meet the educational needs of students through innovative, community-sponsored education programs. However, the League strongly believes that community schools, and all schools that receive public funds, should comply with the same educational standards and regulations, and be directly accountable to the public for student performance and the responsible management of the school."

Indeed, these were the arguments that led the LWVO to join with other organizations in a lawsuit filed in May 2001 against the State Board of Education and the Superintendent of Pubic Instruction. According to Joan, "The lawsuit alleges that the state’s community school program violates the state constitution because community schools are not held to the same standards as public schools, are not administered by elected boards of education, and local property taxes are diverted to private operators without voter approval. The suit also alleges that the state has failed to enforce current law governing community schools’ contract obligations, and has allowed private schools to convert to community schools in violation of state law." To date, the suit has not been resolved.

Education Committee

With thanks to Mr. John Rothwell, Director of Charter Schools for Cincinnati Public Schools, and to James Turner, State Board of Education, for meeting with us and providing input and insight.

November 2002