Ohio’s largest charter school, the Electronic Classroom of Tomorrow (ECOT), lost an attempt in court moments ago to block a state audit of its attendance and state funding that the school says threatens its ability to survive
Franklin County Common Pleas Judge Stephen McIntosh denied ECOT’s request to stop the audit, which was scheduled to begin Monday.
At issue is the amount of time that the 15,000 students at the giant online school spend logged on for classes and doing other schoolwork offline. Unlike at a traditional school where teachers can take attendance every day, students at online schools work from computers at home on their own schedule.
That leads to controversy over how to measure how much time students spend on lessons and whether ECOT received all of its $108 million in state funding for the 2015-16 school year properly, or whether it overcharged the state.
ECOT Superintendent Rick Teeters told supporters in a message earlier today that the state has changed some rules for counting learning time. Those, he said, make the audit an “underhanded” attempt to “eliminate” the school.
“Without court intervention, these underhanded procedural changes would severely limit our ability to provide a quality school experience,” Teeters said. “In fact, they would likely force us and other e-schools to close our doors altogether.”
But in court filings, the Ohio Attorney General’s Office said that ECOT is raising a premature “false alarm” to stop the audit because there is no immediate financial impact. If the audit finds that ECOT has to reimburse money to the state, ECOT can appeal later to the state school board or the court.
Any repayments would occur through multiple deductions of state aid to ECOT next year, not a single immediate charge.
In the audit, the Ohio Department of Education wants to verify that students are spending at least five hours per day on “learning opportunities,” as ECOT’s policy requires. That’s the schedule ECOT set so that students can meet the 920 hours of schooling that state law demands each year.
An early round of the audit this spring found that students are not logging in to ECOT’s website for five hours per day, even when averaged over multiple days.
The school had told the state earlier this year that students are doing enough approved work offline to meet state law, so the department is now asking ECOT for documentation of that time.
The school, which could have to repay money to the state if the audit can not verify students’ work, now says that it is not required by state law to track that offline activity.
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