Lanzingers statement came in a ruling over a contract dispute that favored Akron-based White Hat Management, which has earned millions in taxpayer dollars managing Ohio charter schools.
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The court ruled in favor of White Hat, one of the largest for-profit school management companies in the country, against 10 of its former Hope academies and Life Skills Centers, mostly in the Akron and Cleveland areas.
In Tuesday’s ruling, Justice Judith Ann Lanzinger found that White Hat’s contracts with the schools allowed it to buy the property in its own name and require the schools to buy back the property they wanted when the contracts expired.
Separate bipartisan bills cracking down on the publicly funded, privately operated schools are pending in the Republican-controlled Legislature. Karen Hockstad represented the schools before the Court. He recently wrote an article in Commondreams about the ruling called, Challenging Charter Schools and the Privatization Agenda in Washington State.
Justices Kennedy and French went even further, claiming that “the school boards literally turned all money and responsibilities over to White Hat as an independent contractor with no expectation of transparency in how the business would be conducted”.
The state court ruled earlier this year that the city’s method for taxing athletes based on the number of games played violates players’ due process rights. One of the dissenters, Paul Pfeifer, is also a Republican, while the other, William O’Neill, is the court’s lone Democrat.
The court ordered the case returned to a trial court to inventory the disputed equipment and dispose of it under the terms of the White Hat contract.
Lanzinger questioned whether the schools would knowingly agree to such a clause, but she concluded that it “was an agreed-upon term”.
A White Hat attorney said the court properly upheld the contract between the schools and the company.
White Hat ran the schools’ day-to-day operations, including hiring their teachers and buying equipment for classrooms and offices.
Lanzinger later wrote, “We leave it to the General Assembly to determine whether public policy requires stiffening of the regulatory scheme governing these matters”. There were two dissents, which were notable in their strong language blasting both White Hat and the Court’s judgment. Sandy Theis is the executive director of ProgressOhio, which has long been critical of Ohio’s charter-school industry.
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The schools’ lawyer had argued the funds remained public despite their payment to White Hat and that classroom equipment belonged to the schools.
