Toledo Public Schools officials are becoming increasingly — and justifiably — concerned about a state takeover of the school district.
Receiving two more overall “F” grades on the state’s school report card this September and next would trigger a controversial 2015 law that allows the state to appoint an academic distress commission to take over Toledo Public Schools, removing local control of the city’s public schools.
The board of education does not plan to accept such a fate quietly and recently approved a measure vowing to fight.
A resolve to fight is all well and good, but what TPS really needs is some backup in Columbus. Fortunately, some lawmakers in both the state House and state Senate also want to block state efforts to take over TPS or any other public school district.
Among the bills that address the issue are measures that would give local officials more say when their districts are taken over and one that would improve community input.
Perhaps the most promising is a bill that would slap a moratorium on school takeovers. Ohio must take this opportunity to press pause before more districts get swept up in a failed takeover program.
There is no evidence that the state has helped the three Ohio districts taken over since 2015. Far from it. Instead, there is evidence that state takeovers actually managed to make matters worse in Youngstown, East Cleveland, and Lorain.
In Youngstown, standardized test scores dropped after an outside CEO took over, falling from 602nd in the state to 606th. This is to say nothing of complaints that takeover managers spend money without oversight and hire unqualified, inexperienced administrators to replace local professionals.
Toledo Public Schools has all the typical struggles of a large, urban school district in a city with many poor students. Its standardized test scores, graduation rates, and other measures are a more accurate reflection of the entrenched, dense poverty in much of the district than of the quality of TPS teachers or administrators.
Fixing what ails Toledo Public Schools is not going to be as simple as replacing local school personnel with outside officials who are not accountable to the district’s parents, voters, and taxpayers of Toledo.
Unlike his predecessor, who pushed for the takeover legislation, Gov. Mike DeWine has said he is open to reviewing the takeover law.
That’s good.
The General Assembly must seize the opportunity to send the governor a bill that halts the school takeover scheme before Toledo and other districts in jeopardy get swept up into the system that offers no local control, no accountability, and no real prospect for improvement.
First Published April 11, 2019, 4:00 a.m.
