State avoids “loophole” for charter school money, rejects applications for millions

Chapelside Academy charter school in Cleveland

The Chapelside Academy charter school in Cleveland won't receive any extra money from the state after the Ohio Department of Education blocked an application from its operator, the Accel Schools chain.

CLEVELAND, Ohio – The Ohio Department of Education has blocked a “loophole” that would have given millions in tax dollars to charter schools with bad grades by using another.

The department on Friday announced the 63 charter schools that did qualify to share in the $30 million fund that Gov. Mike DeWine and the state legislature created this summer as a bonus to help the best charter schools in Ohio.

Most of the decisions were clear cut. Four Breakthrough schools received $1.7 million from the new fund, five Constellation schools received $1.7 million, and several others in Northeast Ohio were recognized because of their strong grades on state report cards, as DeWine and charter supporters intended.

But the department rejected some large applications for the money, with a decision that is drawing complaints.

Some had worried that provisions in this summer’s state budget bill would open the door for schools with poor grades to receive money solely because their operator ran schools in other states that had received a federal grant.

At the top of that list were 33 schools, including several in Cleveland, run by the for-profit Accel Schools chain. As The Plain Dealer reported Sunday, those schools failed to meet Ohio’s academic criteria but might have qualified for $15 million or more because an Accel-run school in Colorado Springs won a federal charter school expansion grant a few years ago.

But the department today rejected Accel’s application for those schools, citing details of Accel’s corporate registrations in Ohio that fail to connect Ohio operations with those of Accel in Colorado.

Because Accel is not registered as a business that also operates in other states, the department ruled it is not eligible for the money.

Another 10 Accel schools here in Ohio that had strong grades qualified for $4.1 million from the fund.

Accel founder Ron Packard said the ruling is unfair and while schools in different states may have different corporate registration, they are all Accel subsidiaries.

“We believe we were improperly denied the funding,” Packard told The Plain Dealer. “We meet all of the qualifications stipulated in the code.”

Packard said he and staff would scrutinize the department’s decisions for all schools.

The department had no comment on its decisions, outside of its notification letters to schools.

The Concept charter school chain, best known in Ohio for its Horizon Science Academy schools, also had applied for money for several of its schools using that out-of-state provision. That application was denied for the same reason as Accel’s: Concept Schools NFP was not registered as doing business in other states, along with Ohio.

Like Accel, some Concept schools, like Noble Academy Horizon Science Academy – Denison Middle, qualified for money because of good grades on state report cards.

That’s how the fund should work, said Chad Aldis of the Fordham Foundation, a pro-charter advocacy organization. Schools in Ohio, he said, should win the money if their grades are good enough, not based on what out-of-state schools do.

“At the end of the day, what’s important is that every school in Ohio has the opportunity to demonstrate that it meets the rigorous requirements that the state has established,” Aldis said. “Any school that’s operating in Ohio, we believe, should meet the state’s performance requirements.”

Breakthrough co-founder John Zitzner, who has campaigned for more money for his schools for several years, was still studying the list of recipients to see if more of his schools should have qualified. He was pleased that the fund has started but had one disappointment: So many schools qualified that the amount of money going to each school was reduced about 11%, he estimated, from the $1,750 the budget bill had called for.

“It’s unfortunate that there isn’t enough money in the fund to provide the $1,750 that was the desire of the administration,” he said.

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