CLEVELAND, Ohio -- Democratic attorney general candidate Steve Dettelbach signaled Friday he plans to make a campaign issue out of Republican rival Dave Yost's history with a troubled Ohio online charter school.
The Electronic Classroom of Tomorrow is fighting the state's claim that it owes $60 million for misrepresenting its enrollment. A review found that the school had proper documentation for only 6,300 of its 15,300 students - a 59 percent gap, The Plain Dealer reported in the 2015-16 school year. ECOT was found to owe the state another $19 million for the 2016-17 school year.
"For years, politicians failed to ask for ECOT's actual attendance books and hold them accountable for cheating taxpayers, because they were too busy cashing campaign checks from those associated with the school," Dettelbach, a former U.S. attorney, said Friday in a speech in Westerville.
Yost, the Ohio auditor, over the years has received campaign donations from companies and people affiliated with ECOT, totaling at least $29,000. And for some of that time, Yost's office was checking the school system's books.
Yost appears have to have followed standard procedures in his handling of complaints against ECOT -- and put the school system under additional scrutiny, records reviewed by cleveland.com show. Yost has also pursued charter school reform as state auditor.
"Campaigns get to decide what their issues are, but voters get to decide what they care about -- and the record shows that Dave Yost has fought to protect their tax dollars, time after time, year after year, charters included, ECOT included," a campaign statement said.
With the charter school issue likely to be a recurring theme in next year's campaign for attorney general, here's what we know about Yost and ECOT.
What's Yost's relationship with ECOT?
ECOT and ECOT-connected individuals have contributed thousands of dollars to Yost over the years, campaign finance records show.
Yost attended the 2014 ECOT graduation and delivered a commencement address at an ECOT graduation in 2015.
William Lager, the founder of ECOT, donated $11,395 to Yost's campaign in 2010. And Lager and ECOT-affiliated individuals and companies donated $10,000 to Yost's transition fund in the same year.
In 2014, Lager and ECOT-related people and entities donated $7,500 to Yost's transition fund. Lager has been a generous donor to Ohio Republican candidates and committees, contributing tens of thousands of dollars.
The ECOT-related contributions account for a fraction of Yost's more than $5 million in campaign contributions since he first sought statewide office in 2010, the campaign noted. Yost is not close to Lager, has never visited Lager's home and has not spoken to him in more than two years, according to his campaign.
Given the school's troubles, would he consider returning the ECOT contributions?
"People who donate to Dave Yost know upfront that the only thing they get is good government," the campaign responded.
Dettelbach in his speech may have been alluding to the timing of the donations. Yost received donations in December 2014 totaling $7,500 from ECOT-related entities and people.
Around the same time, his office investigated claims of wrongdoing within ECOT, and found none.
"Campaign contributions never influence any official act," the Yost campaign said. "The Auditor of State's professional staff conducted these audits, and their work is conducted under audit standards and peer-reviewed. Any allegation of influence is sheer malevolent partisanship, and not supported by the facts."
So what happened with the auditor's review of ECOT?
The auditor's office reviews ECOT annually. But in 2014, in response to allegations of misconduct, the office put ECOT under additional review.
"For anyone to suggest that they cut corners -- they actually did apply additional scrutiny," auditor's office spokesman Ben Marrison said.
Two ECOT employees made allegations of wrongdoing within the company in 2014.
The allegations included improperly unenrolling students, forging signatures on student applications to increase enrollment numbers and misusing federal grant money.
The regular audit and the additional review included investigating the enrollment numbers, which determine how much state money ECOT receives per student. The auditor's office found no problems during this testing.
The auditor's office also found no evidence of misuse of the federal grant money.
"Critics can live in fantasyland, but in the real world, ECOT was subjected to more scrutiny, not less, because of a self-reported whistleblower complaint -- a complaint that was determined to be unfounded by auditors and one that the whistleblower refused to be interviewed by investigators. The complaint was handled by the book as are all complaints to this office," the Yost campaign statement said.
Why didn't the auditor's office catch ECOT's wrongdoing?
When the auditor reviews ECOT, it is required to apply rules set by the Ohio Department of Education and the Ohio legislature. Enrollment data was the standard to determine how much money ECOT and other charter schools received per student.
In 2016, the department changed the rules and began using student participation data instead.
"We could not have in 2014 said that we're going to measure participation. We don't get to decide that," Marrison said.
The education department conducts a review of the school system independently of the auditor every five years.
In that review in 2016, which looked back at 2015, the department found that ECOT owed the state millions, because it couldn't provide complete student participation numbers for its student body.
"And that's why ECOT and every school that was caught in this window, the five-year window, failed," Marrison said.
ECOT is fighting the new rules in court, and has claimed the state was trying to merge the concepts of participation and enrollment, The Plain Dealer reported in 2016. The Ohio Supreme Court in September agreed to hear the case.
At issue is whether ECOT must show only that students have enrolled and that they log on, however briefly, to avoid truancy violations and to receive full state funding for each student. The state had been seeking proof that students were spending more than one hour a day online.
Because the school in the past did not have to provide documentation of the work its students did, school leaders have said it's unfair to expect the documentation retroactively for the 2015-16 school year, The Plain Dealer reported.
Dettelbach pushed back on the level of scrutiny ECOT received from the auditor's office.
"The only thing worse than an auditor who couldn't find $80 million in missing cash is an auditor who is proud he can't find $80 million in missing cash. Whether it's incompetence, fraud or corruption, the people of Ohio deserve better," Dettelbach campaign spokesman Ian Moskowitz said.
What has Yost done since to make charter schools more accountable?
Yost and the auditor's office began to work on charter school reform in 2015 -- when the Ohio legislature was reviewing reforms that would later become law: House Bill 2.
"He just wanted to bring more accountability to that area," Shawn Busken, legislative director for the auditor's office, said. "He specifically sat down with his audit staff and said, 'I want you to go through House Bill 2, line by line, and you tell me what's not in there that needs to be in there. Tell me what do we need to add to this bill. What did they not see? What did they miss?' And then the audit staff came back with a long, long list."
The auditor pushed Ohio lawmakers to make charter school finances more transparent.
He wanted the state to change the law governing how much of a charter school's spending can be kept hidden from the public when a private management company is hired to run the school, The Plain Dealer reported. Many charter schools in Ohio pay private companies 90 percent or more of the state tax money they receive.
Yost also wanted to crack down on students who chronically missed class online. He told lawmakers in 2015 that charter schools must withdraw students - and stop collecting state tax money for them - if they miss 105 consecutive hours of school - almost a month of class.
"If the student misses 104 hours, then shows up for a single day, the student gets a new 105-hour clock," Yost told lawmakers, The Plain Dealer reported. "The school is not required to withdraw the student and they continue to receive funding as if the student hadn't missed a day of school."
He said the state should require charters to withdraw kids and stop collecting state money when a student qualifies as a "chronic truant" under state law by missing seven or more consecutive school days, ten or more school days in one school month, or fifteen or more school days in a school year.
It wasn't an easy ask.
"Charter schools, trust me, they take that seriously when a student has to be unenrolled, because that means you cut off the funds for the school and they stop getting their money and they don't like that," Busken said.
Those recommendations didn't make it in the law -- but other transparency rules did.
Management companies -- the groups that often are contracted to run charter schools and pay their bills -- must disclose detailed spending. Before, all they had to provide was a few line items, Busken said.
"I'll give you ECOT as an example. Altair Management is the management company that spends the money for ECOT. But we wanted more disclosure of how they're spending that, particularly on all those ancillary things, like ad buys. How much is the school spending on ad buys as opposed to what they should be doing, which is educating kids? How much are they spending on travel expenses?"
Now those management companies must provide those details.
What kind of stand has Yost taken toward ECOT since the scandal?
Yost in August pushed companies owned by ECOT's founder to pay back $12 million they owed the state. He also asked the state to pay ECOT less, warning that the state may never recover the money the school system owes.
Yost asked the state superintendent to set aside money that the school would receive for the upcoming school year until its attendance claims could be verified, The Plain Dealer reported.
He's also gone after ECOT's ad money, his campaign noted.
"When the auditor suspected that ECOT was airing attack ads against ODE using taxpayer dollars, he served ECOT with a cease and desist letter," the campaign statement read. "He has since issued subpoenas to find out exactly where the advertising money came from."
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