The first shots of this war were fired in Husted's back yard and a whole new meaning of the words "in-your-face!"

The start of charter wars? Did the legal war over Ohio charter schools start today?

Columbus Dispatch
9/12/2007
The Daily Briefing

Attorney General Marc Dann went to court this afternoon to close two poor-performing charter schools in Dayton. But, more important, he vowed to take similar action against such schools statewide.

“There are lots of charter schools in this state that serve great purposes and do what charter schools were designed to do…we don't want to interfere with that,” Dann told The Dispatch.

“But certainly there are 30 or more that scream out for this kind of attention. Whether I can get to all of those I don't know.”

In an in-your-face to House Speaker Jon Husted, an ardent charter school supporter, Dann filed the lawsuits in Husted's home Montgomery County. The AG's unexpected strike prompted Ohio's largest teachers union to drop a lawsuit against the state that alleged education officials were failing to monitor the privately operated, tax-funded schools.

One of the Dayton schools, New Choices Community School, has met only 1 of 29 academic performance standards during its six years of operation as a middle school, Dann contended.

The other, the Colin Powell Leadership Academy, has met only 1 of 61 standards in six years of operation. It offers classes for from pre-school through 8th grade.

The two schools have received more than $17 million in state aid during those six years.

About 76,000 students are attending 311 charter schools in Ohio, according to the Ohio Department of Education.

--By Catherine Candisky