[Bridging_the_digital_divide] Virtual High School is money movement

[Jason Barkeloo]

Millions in lost funding spurs district's virtual school plans
  From eSchool News staff and wire service reports
  June 14, 2004

The Columbus, Ohio, city school district will develop an online high 
school in an effort to retain hundreds of students and millions in 
state funding the district expects otherwise to lose to charter schools 
next year, school officials said.

  Columbus Public Schools officials say the district's new school would 
mirror the services of internet-based charter schools, which reportedly 
have drawn more than 1,000 students away from the city's public schools 
already.

  At least 16 online charter schools operated in Ohio this past year, 
enrolling 22 percent of the state's 38,248 charter school students and 
receiving about $50.6 million in state funds.

  The online schools provide students with a modem and computer, and 
teachers assigned to them keep in contact by eMail and phone.

  The district's plan for a virtual school of its own is still "on the 
drawing table," said spokesman Michael Straughter. But students who are 
leaving the Columbus schools in favor of online charters "obviously 
want something from the district that we need to provide," he added.

  Straughter said the district estimates its online school would serve 
about 125 students starting in September. He added that four community 
centers around the city would provide in-person tutoring and computers 
for students who don't have online access at home.

  The district has begun surveying exiting students to see what it could 
do to keep them.

  The growing volume of those students has thrown off the district's 
enrollment projections, which means predicted funding isn't 
materializing.

  Students who enter charter schools take about $5,000 in state aid with 
them. The district expects the loss of state funding to charter schools 
to rise to $34.6 million by 2008, up from $18 million this year.

  In 2000, a contractor predicting enrollment for the Ohio School 
Facilities Commission assumed there would be no change in the number of 
students choosing charter over public schools in 10 years.

  Now, the number of those students in Columbus alone has more than 
tripled--to 3,995--and the city expects to lose several hundred more 
next school year. Columbus had a total enrollment of more than 62,000 
students this year.

  A multibillion-dollar effort to upgrade school buildings necessitates 
accurate enrollment projections, said Rick Savors, a spokesman for the 
school facilities commission.

  "We want to know how many students we're having to build for," he 
said. "It doesn't do us any good to build too much or too little."

  The cost of building upgrades for just Columbus and the five other 
largest districts in Ohio--Akron, Cincinnati, Cleveland, Dayton, and 
Toledo--is $5.74 billion. The state would pay $2.95 billion of that.

  Charter schools have their own financial problems. Since 2002, one in 
four of those audited has ended a fiscal year in the red.

  Despite those financial troubles, the state Department of Education 
estimates that 15 more charter schools could open in Franklin County 
during the next school year, bringing the number of privately run, 
publicly funded schools in the county to 40.

http://www.eschoolnews.com/news/showStoryts.cfm?ArticleID=5110
---

Jason Barkeloo
President
TouchSmart Publishing
http://www.touchsmart.net
tele 513.225.8765


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