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Vivian Moon ![]() MUSA Council ![]() Joined: May 16 2008 Location: Middletown, Ohi Status: Offline Points: 4187 |
![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() Posted: Jan 22 2015 at 4:07pm |
Updated: 3:51 p.m.
Thursday, Jan. 22, 2015 | Posted: 9:43 a.m. Thursday, Jan. 22, 2015 4 local charter schools under investigation
for attendance numbers
Only 43 of the 153 students listed in
attendance records at The surprise head count uncovered wide
discrepancies in the number of kids in class versus the attendance numbers
reported by the schools to state officials, State Auditor Dave Yost said.
Attendance discrepancies were found at three other Montgomery County-based
charters — On Oct. 1, Yost deployed 30 auditors to 30
schools to take attendance. Yost found problems in 16 schools, including
significant attendance issues in seven charters that target drop out students.
Among the seven is Auditors showed up at 8:35 a.m. Oct. 1 at
Dayton Technology Design H.S. and found just 43 students in school — well below
the 172 estimated enrollment given in July 2014 and below the 153 students
reported to Ohio Department of Education
by the school to be in attendance on Oct. 1. School Director Karl Perkins told
auditors that the headcount would be low because tardy students tend to arrive
closer to 9 a.m. and some log onto the computer from home, the report said. Yost’s team showed up again — unannounced —
at 8:55 a.m. on Nov. 12 and counted 60 students at Dayton Technology Design
H.S. The audit also noted that the school didn’t notify ODE that it would offer
“blended” learning where students take classes in person and online. Yost said ODE should investigate the seven
charters as well as nine other community schools where auditors found moderate
variances in attendance numbers. Among the nine are “I’m really kind of speechless in everthing
that I found. It is quite a morass,” Yost said. Sandy Theis, executive director of Progress
Ohio, a liberal think tank, said taxpayers and students are getting hurt. “I
think they should raise hell, call their lawmakers and tell them to fix it,”
she said. State funding for schools is based on
student headcounts. Previously, public schools would conduct counts in the
first week of October, which prompted Herculean efforts to get kids to show up
that week. But that changed this academic year to a requirement that schools
report their actual daily attendance throughout the year, said ODE spokesman
John Charlton. Charter schools are required to report their attendance figures
monthly and funding is pro-rated based on those reports, he said. “We will take a serious look at this report
and work with the auditor’s office, like we always do,” Charlton said. In the 2012-13 academic
year, 115,324 students attended 367 charter schools, which collected a combined
$824.6 million in state funding, according to an ODE annual report on community
schools.
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