What does it look like when thousands of students — roughly the enrollment of one of Ohio’s largest school districts — suddenly lose their school?
Ohio might be on the verge of finding out, as the online Electronic Classroom of Tomorrow, where between 12,000 and 20,000 students attend at any given time, could close within a week because of the lack of a sponsor and bonded treasurer.
While Ohio has experienced numerous mid-year charter school closings before, they were local, isolated events. The shuttering of ECOT, which draws students from nearly every traditional district statewide, would represent the biggest mid-year charter failure in the state’s history.
Logistical problems would ripple out to almost every corner of Ohio. School districts, required by law to reabsorb students, are bracing themselves for an influx.
"We’re in what I’d call the organized scrambling mode right now, getting plans in place," said Jeff Warner, spokesman for Groveport Madison schools. The district in southeastern Franklin County is looking at a scenario where 126 students show up within days, most of them high-schoolers.
Thursday morning, Groveport administrators began hashing out every kind of contingency that an influx of students would affect. Bus routes might have to be shifted. Classrooms would need to be staffed. Schools would need to communicate with the families about enrollment procedures.
Crowding is a consideration. Groveport Madison High School has room for about 960 students, but this year’s enrollment is already nearing 1,500 students. One possibility, Warner said, is that incoming students could opt to attend Cruiser Academy, the high school’s all-online program.
Along with academic support, Warner said, the district is just as concerned with providing social and emotional support for students who aren’t used to attending a physical school building.
About 305 students could be enrolling in South-Western schools near Grove City, but they’re distributed fairly evenly among the district’s 30 schools, said spokeswoman Sandra Nekoloff. If crowding crops up, plans are in place to deal with it.
"We welcome back any of our students," she said.
Columbus City Schools is preparing for up to 1,200 students, about two-thirds of whom have never attended a district school, said spokesman Scott Varner. The district will contact families in the coming days to answer questions.
"One of our challenges will be getting a complete up-to-date set of records and transcripts from ECOT so we can accurately place students and credit the work they’ve already completed," Varner said in an email. "Current ECOT families may want to secure as much of those records as they can now from ECOT."
Just getting the required student transcripts to transfer kids to a new school and enroll them in the right classes at the right grade levels will be a monumental task, particularly all the evaluations for special-needs students, said Ellen Wristen, principal of Brookwood Academy, a Columbus charter school for special-needs students.
"Getting those transcripts and getting those special-ed reports will be just a disaster," Wristen said. "The number (of transcripts) that ECOT would be delivering to the schools, that would be phenomenal. What a mess."
Under state rules, transcripts are either shipped to the district where the student lives or to the charter school’s sponsor, where "they will probably be unprepared to receive them," Wristen said. Without that documentation, "we don’t know what courses you’ve passed, what courses you’re taking. We don’t know what credits you have."
For 12th-graders, it could delay graduation if the massive reshuffling of students means they can’t satisfy credit requirements, Wristen said.
While many e-school students may elect to enroll in one of the other Ohio e-schools, a state law capping annual growth of individual e-schools might thwart them, said Aaron Churchill, Ohio research director for the pro-charter Thomas B. Fordham Institute.
According to the Ohio Department of Education’s latest figures, there would be only enough capacity for fewer than 7,000 new online students, even if all of the schools’ allowed expansion was open and available to new students.
"It’s rather ironic that ECOT’s influence put that (cap) into place. It basically kept other online school enrollment significantly down," said Sen. Peggy Lehner, R-Kettering, chairwoman of the Senate Education Committee. Lawmakers may look to remove that cap if ECOT closes, Lehner said.
The Ohio Virtual Academy, with a student body of about 9,900, has been discussing the possibility that ECOT could close since October, said Head of School Kristin Stewart.
"We certainly aren’t recruiting, but we feel like it’s an ethical thing we need to prepare for," Stewart said.
She hopes the legislature would adopt a "hold harmless" provision for any school that takes on ECOT students. State testing is just around the corner, she said. Plus the school expects some applicants to show up without official transcripts, which could harm Ohio Virtual Academy’s standing with its sponsor.
Student inquiries and applications are up, Stewart said, and ECOT teachers also have contacted Ohio Virtual Academy, seeking work.
"They have families to feed," she said. "I admire the fact that they’ve held on. They’ve held on for the students."
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