Article: LET’S TAR AND FEATHER CHARTER SCHOOL SYSTEM

Canton Repository

Dec. 4, 2005

MUSTARD SEEDS RICK SENFTEN

You know, if word leaked that the county engineer had sent out a few guys with a couple of truckloads of asphalt to lay a new driveway for a generous campaign contributor, people would scream. They’d want to know why their taxes were spent on a private job and who in the world OK’d this — well, let’s call it what it is — theft. They’d want the boss’s head.

Spending tax dollars on charter schools is pretty much the same scam, or would be considered so had it not been legitimized back in the ’90s by handsomely bankrolled and grandly schmoozed legislators who, by their votes, created a 297-school, $445 million industry — one that drains public schools of the dollars needed to reach education goals that charters, so far, haven’t been made to meet.

OOPS!

When his charters were launched here a few years back, David L. Brennan, chairman of White Hat Management and mega-Republican contributor, urged reporters to check the scores of students in his schools after their first year; he assured they’d do better than public school kids.

We checked. They were struggling, and things haven’t changed much since.

The charters are flopping so badly, in fact, that our lethargic governor recently worked up the energy to warn them to shape up or scram. Of course, with the backing of the Legislature, the charters are free to answer, “Yeah, right.”

It was at once encouraging and frustrating that the charters were forced by unionized teachers before the Ohio Supreme Court on Tuesday to explain their constitutionality; encouraging because somebody was finally forcing the right question in the right place, and frustrating because the answer should have been obvious long ago, before the cavemen of the General Assembly bent on killing public schools blessed the charter concept.

But given how the Legislature has four times ignored Supreme Court orders to restructure Ohio’s unconstitutional method of public school funding, Justice Paul Pfeifer was right to wonder aloud Tuesday why he and his colleagues should expect the lawmakers to obey any better if the court finds charters unconstitutional, too.

MORE TO DO

It’s not that we shouldn’t consider alternative teaching methods. God knows the traditional model employed by public schools — one teacher trying to enlighten a sea of sleepy faces — doesn’t work for every kid, but improvement becomes only tougher when resources are drained by charters. That money should be left to the public to find alternatives, such as this county’s multidistrict collaboratives and McKinley’s still-budding, small-school program. There’s room for more, but not if thousands of dollars vanish every time a kid leaves a public system for a charter. In any case, giving public dollars to private concerns should be a decision for voters, not legislators.

You just don’t give tax dollars away to private interests. You don’t do them favors at their homes, and you don’t fund businesses they run out of public eyeshot, like the charters do. But if we have a change of heart about this, let’s write some laws that give us all a piece of the action — at least a new driveway.

You can reach Rick Senften at (330) 580-8314 or e-mail: