Ohio statehouse and flags.JPG
A compromise on House Bill 2, a charter school reform bill, is possible today if members of a joint House-Senate conference committee do not add any surprise changes this afternoon.
(Patrick O'Donnell/The Plain Dealer)
COLUMBUS, Ohio -- The compromise version of Ohio's charter school reform bill coming out Tuesday will have several small changes, but will not include some of the big ones that charter operators seek, said members of a special committee handling the bill.
"We agreed going in that we're not adding anything," said State Rep. Bill Hayes, a member of the joint House-Senate panel sorting out disagreements between the two chambers over the hot-button bill. "We've got enough issues."
State Rep. Ron Amstutz, president pro tempore of the House, said members are trying to be "evenhanded" and are sticking closely to the Senate's version of the bill.
"We're being pretty steady," he said on Monday, despite lobbying from charter supporters to ease the bill in their favor in some places. "We're not saying yes to everybody that has an idea."
Amendments to House Bill 2 will be presented at 2 p.m. Tuesday when the conference committee officially meets.
Until then, members continue to discuss problematic language with staff and each other, sorting out details and having proposals put into legal language to be added to the bill aimed at better controlling how charter schools operate here in Ohio.
* Click here for a detailed comparison of the House and Senate versions of charter school reforms.
If the changes win committee approval Tuesday, the Senate and House will vote on the updated bill Wednesday afternoon.
Amstutz and Hayes, who is chairman of the House Education Committee, would not discuss specifics of the amended bill, but did give glimpses of how some major areas of the legislation are heading.
If the bill turns out the way they indicated, it should easily win the support of the Senate Republicans on the committee, Peggy Lehner and Cliff Hite.
Democrats on the panel, who wanted the original Senate version passed, also would likely sign off, if changes do not weaken the bill.
Here are a few items that Amstutz and Hayes highlighted:
Sponsor evaluations: Though Ohio's new ratings on charter school oversight agencies, known as "sponsors" or "authorizers," have been controversial the last several months, the legislators don't expect this bill to dictate how the ratings will be handled.
But there may be changes to the Ohio Department of Education's Oct. 15 deadline to complete the evaluations.
The department is well behind schedule, after staff didn't follow state law in preparing some evaluations and several had to be thrown out.
Former school choice chief David Hansen resigned in July after The Plain Dealer reported in June that he had excluded the F grades of online schools from the academic evaluations of their sponsors.
Rules preventing "sponsor-hopping:" Charter critics are bothered that when sponsors pressure schools to perform better, operators sometimes find other agencies to sponsor them instead, so they can go on without being forced to make improvements.
Both the House and Senate had different ideas on how to prevent such "sponsor-hopping." The new bill will likely block struggling schools -- those with D or F grades on key state report card measures -- from switching sponsors, unless approval is given by the ODE.
Legislators and charter backers have debated how to handle those appeals to ODE. Amstutz and Hayes each said they would prefer setting up an appeals process that eventually have the state school board vote on each switch.
"That's a track that would make some sense," Hayes said.
There also won't be many criteria in the bill for how those appeals should be decided. Some have worried the bill might set such a low bar that schools would easily clear it.
Hayes and Amstutz said they prefer not to set restrictions on how ODE or the board will rule.
New way of evaluating schools: Charter schools have proposed adding a new way of grading schools, the so-called "Similar Students Measure" used in California.
By adjusting ratings based on the socioeconomic challenges a school faces, the measure would make many charter schools look stronger than they do in state report cards.
The Senate version of the bill said the state would study that variable for a year, then use it a year later. The charter schools want the measure implemented now.
But Hayes and Amstutz said they would rather see what a year of study finds, before deciding if the state should use it at all.
"We need to look before we leap," Amstutz said. "Let's understand this and its implications before we make a decision if that's the way we want to go."