Public school districts in the state of Ohio lost more than a half billion dollars — $590 million, to be exact — to the controversial, problematic and now-closed Electronic Classroom of the Future online charter school since 2012. The Cleveland Metropolitan School District’s portion of that was $39 million.
Those numbers come from Innovation Ohio, a progressive think-tank. (Find your local school district’s sum in a spreadsheet here.)
ECOT received state dollars for each student it enrolled, with the money being pulled from the district in which the student lived. There were about 800 students enrolled from the CMSD area.
It fell under intense scrutiny last year after employees told the state ECOT lied about how often students were using online classes and inflating enrollment numbers. Audits backed up those claims and it closed up shop earlier this year. Ohio says the defunct charter school owes the state $80 million, a judgment ECOT is fighting.
Only six of Ohio’s 613 ended up losing money and students to the school, according to the policy group.
CMSD’s annual budget is about $750 million.
This article appears in Jun 6-12, 2018.
A decade ago I enrolled my daughter at ECOT after removing her from Cleveland public schools. As a parent, I could no longer cope with the public school experience my child was having. She graduated from ECOT, and is currently pursuing her Master’s degree at CSU.
I had no problem with home-schooling at that time, but since my child wanted to pursue higher education, I was concerned that she would have difficulty enrolling at college without a high school diploma. ECOT was the solution I chose, and it worked.
I agree that all institutions receiving public funds should be accountable and transparent as it pertains to tracking the use of those funds, but I’m sad to see Ohio families with one less option when faced with untenable local public schools.
Not to worry, there will undoubtedly be yet another massive property tax levy on the November ballot Im sure to make up for the millions lost by CMSD CEO Gordon and the rest of the massively overpaid CMSD administration staff!