The Edjurist - Information on School and Educational Law

I am attending the Ohio Alliance of Charter Public Schools in Sandusky, Ohio today. Nina Rees, the President of National Alliance Charter Public Schools spoke about the charter school movement that has grown to the point where 42 states allow them and 2.5 million students are currently educated in a charter school. She said that annually 600 new charter schools are opened and 200 are closed.

I presented in a session on Charter School Policy Trends around the Great Lakes with Kevin McKenna (Latsha, Davis, & McKenna), Chad Reeves (Ohio Alliance), and David Hansen (Ohio Dept. Of Education). One policy trend we noticed in Ohio and a Michigan is the push for greater accountability for charter school authorized. In Michigan, HB 5852 is designed to encourage "complete transparency" and a more rigorous authorizing process and, if enacted, would prevent the creation of new charter schools until an authorizer accedition system is established. In Ohio, the Department of Education is working on a system.

The most notable case is Hope Acad. Broadway Campus v. White Hat Mgt., LLC, 2013-Ohio-911 (Ohio Ct. App., 2013), that is currently before the Ohio Supreme Court. It asks the court to determine whether the management company (White Hat) or the school owns the physical property at the school because the items were purchased by the management company for use at Hope Academy but White Hat was given public funds to do it. White Hat argues they own it, and the school contends they should be able to keep it because it was purchased to benefit the public.

Another trend mentioned at the conference is the need for charter schools to perform better academically then traditional public schools. Two Pennsylvania cases involved charter schools that were closed in part because they didn't perform better than the traditional school district where they are located: Graystone Academy Charter School v. Coatesville Area School Dist., 2014 WL 4214057 (Pa. Cmwlth., 2014) and New Hope Academy Charter School v. School Dist. of City of York, 89 A.3d 731 (Pa. Cmwlth., 2014). Nina Rees applauded this effort by contending that charter schools should close themselves if after 5 or 6 years their students are not outperforming their neighboring public school district.