Dear Lorain County Superintendents:
Is your school board RESOLUTIONARY?
In accordance with Public Education Partners Call To Action and in conjunction with the ongoing public declaration by Lorain County Superintendents to take back local control of our school districts, the leadership of Lorain County Parents Supporting Our Children and Teachers has taken the liberty of calculating the amount of state funding that each district has unscrupulously been forced to hand over to educational thieves, more commonly known as Charter Schools.
As shown on the attached spreadsheet, since fiscal year 2002, a grand total of $239,062,557 has been stolen from our Lorain County public school districts. Lorain Public Schools have incurred the largest loss of funding with a 13 year total of $125,563,241. These figures were extrapolated from data supplied by the Ohio Department of Education on their website.
Are you aware that Lorain gives almost one-quarter of their state funds to charters? They are in academic distress and in danger of a full state takeover. How are they supposed to help children if they do not have the resources they need? Think of all of the support staff and new programs that money could be spent on. You might also be surprised to know that Avon Lake will give 19.20% of their state money to charters in fiscal year 2016.
Lorain County Parents Supporting Our Children and Teachers is painfully aware of the potential of the "Youngstown Plan" unfolding in our own backyard and we feel strongly that Lorain County civic leaders, school districts and taxpayers need to unite and refuse to allow such an educational atrocity to happen to the children of Lorain City Schools on our watch. Exposing this loss of funding to charter schools in Lorain and county-wide is a vigilant step that needs to be taken to uncover these unethical practices and rally EVERY taxpayer within EVERY Lorain County district to fight against the reformers.
In addition to the spreadsheet, also attached is a resolution template, as well as a sample resolution and invoice that Logan-Hocking School District sent to the ODE to demand repayment of funding that their district and children lost to charter schools. We have included everything for you so as not to drain any of your resources and enable you to execute this Call to Action in the most swift and efficient manner.
Thank you Elyria, Keystone and Firelands for having already boldly answered this Call To Action, as requested by concerned parents in your district (Mandy Jablonski-Elyria and Toni Jones-Firelands). At the time this letter was written,NINETEEN school boards have already passed resolutions to call attention to how, year-in and year-out, money is being taken away from traditional public school systems to support charter schools that traditionally have much lower academic achievement rates than public schools. When will your district be added to this elite list?
1. Woodridge
2. Logan-Hocking
3. Troy
4. Elyria*
5. Parma
6. West Clermont
7. Cardinal
8. Keystone*
9. Northmont
10. Jackson
11. Streetsboro
12. Firelands*
13. Lake Local
14. Bowling Green
15. Belpre
16. LaBrae
17. Southington
18. Beaver Local
19. Northridge
It is our sincere hope that each of you will take advantage of the tools we have shared with you today and take urgent and immediate action. We welcome the opportunity to partner with you, as the voice of the parents, for any future endeavors related to regaining local control.
Sincerely,
Lorain County Parents Supporting Our Children and Teachers
****Lorain County Parents Supporting Our Children and Teachers is a grassroots group of 1000+ parents and teachers concerned about current and proposed educational policies. Our mission is to protect public education, educate and encourage parents to stand up for their parental rights and to partner with Lorain County District Leaders to take back local control.****
We also felt it worth noting the amount of money that each district in Lorain County received from the state for Fiscal Year 2016 and what percentage of those funds went to charter schools. As you can see, and was noted in our email, the Lorain City School District is forced to send almost one- quarter of their funding to charter schools.
| Total State $ | % Sent to | |
| Districts FY16 | Charters | |
| Elyria | $37,849,730 | 17.80% |
| Lorain | $74,504,866 | 22.80% |
| North Ridgeville | $9,568,482 | 14.10% |
| Oberlin | $3,542,891 | 8% |
| Shef/Shef Lake | $4,662,916 | 14.90% |
| Amherst | $14,641,882 | 4.30% |
| Wellington | $5,203,238 | 6.60% |
| Avon | $3,950,343 | 12.80% |
| Avon Lake | $2,361,209 | 19.20% |
| Clearview | $8,105,981 | 9.90% |
| Columbia | $2,195,000 | 11.40% |
| Firelands | $6,900,181 | 4.70% |
| Keystone | $6,156,453 | 5.40% |
| Midview | $10,628,919 | 8.10% |
| County: | $190,272,090 | 16% |
In addition to supplying this information to the Lorain County superintendents, we also gave this information to some local news sources including the Chronicle-Telegram. You can read all about their take on this as well as some more information about the Firelands School District adopting the resolution to invoice the state for money lost to charters here.
If you are as disgusted as we were with what we found, you can send this information to your school board making sure to include the sample resolution (which we can email to you) and urge them to adopt the resolution as well. It is imperative that as many districts as possible adopt this resolution as not only will it make the public more aware of how charter schools are funded at the expense of our traditional public schools but it will send a strong message to the state that they must, at the very least, change the way that these poor performing charter schools are funded.
No comments:
Post a Comment