Toledo City Council’s zoning and planning committee is considering a proposed ordinance that would ask whether suggested school buildings have facilities such as media centers and running tracks. That’s not proper zoning. It’s an improper intrusion on private and charter schools’ autonomy.
Under the proposal, officials deciding whether to issue the “special-use permit” needed to build a school would have to consider whether the plans met the Ohio School Design Manual’s requirements. Depending on the grade levels a school plans to offer, those requirements might include a running track, an outdoor playground, or a computer lab.
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Councilman and former Toledo Public Schools official Cecelia Adams, who is pushing the proposal, said students should be in school buildings with the “best designs,” and that zoning is “the only avenue that the city has to deal with the issue.” She denied that she was “trying to impose any educational standards.” She called for a “level playing field” between conventional public schools and charter schools.
TPS got about a half a billion dollars in state funding for a recent 10-year program to upgrade or build 40 schools, starting in 2002. Charter schools are not eligible for state construction funding. The design manual was intended for schools built or renovated with government money.
The point of this measure is to put charters under more of the regulations that apply to conventional public schools. However, the point of charter schools is for them to be less regulated. That’s why they can provide alternatives. The measure would push charter schools to invest resources in facilities that only make sense if they have certain programming. What good is a running track if students don’t have a track-and-field program?
And because resources are always finite, requiring certain facilities would mean less money for other programs. If charters don’t have to build everything that traditional public schools do, they may be able to build other features, or build them better. And that means families who don’t value running tracks may be able to pick schools that put that money into biology labs or music rooms, or for that matter, indoor gyms with treadmills and weight machines.
The legitimate purposes of zoning do not include making sure schools provide the kind of educational resources one thinks best. Zoning is for making sure land uses are compatible with neighboring uses and infrastructure; that people don’t overwhelm the roads, host raucous events in quiet neighborhoods, or undermine neighbors’ property values. But whether a school causes such problems is not determined by whether it has a computer lab.
This is not a zoning ordinance. It’s an attack on the autonomy of charter schools.
First Published January 2, 2017, 5:00 a.m.
