2012 senior class photos
2012 West Carrollton graduation
Home of the Week
E-mail 
E-mail 
E-mail Home > Blogs > Get on the Bus > Archives > 2010 > October > 18 > Entry
Ohio Supreme Court ruling could hurt charter schools
We reported last week that landlords who rent commercial buildings to Ohio charter schools are not exempt from paying property taxes, according to a 7-0 state Supreme Court ruling.
Bill Sims, who heads the Ohio Alliance for Public Charter Schools, told the Columbus Dispatch it could put many charter schools in “serious peril.”
Sims said many schools or their for-profit management companies across the state will owe years of back taxes and that some will be unable to pay because they are prohibited from using their state financial aid to pay taxes.
As far as the impact the ruling could have on charter schools in the Dayton area, “we’re trying to figure that out,” said Terry Ryan, vice president for Ohio Programs and Policy for the Thomas B. Fordham Institute. Ryan, who works in Dayton, didn’t know how many rent their buildings or may already be paying property taxes.
Two local schools sponsored by the Thomas B. Fordham Foundation — the Dayton Leadership Academies’ Dayton Liberty and Dayton View campuses — have been paying the taxes for nearly a dozen years, Ryan said, so “this really won’t have any impact” on them.
The court was unanimous in its ruling, but Justice Evelyn Lundberg Stratton acknowledged in a concurring opinion that it would put some charters in a Catch-22 because they “are funded by state funds but are prohibited by law from using those funds to pay taxes.”
Stratton said the legislature could amend the schoolhouse exemption law so that any building housing a charter school would be tax-exempt, regardless of whether the landlord profits.
Ryan would like to see that change in the law.
“Charters do have to pay the tax when they get no help from the state or local taxpayers for facilities, so it is a burden to charters,” he said.
Tell us what you think of the ruling.
Permalink | Comments (3) | Post your comment | Categories: Charter Schools and School Choice
Tweet
Comments
By Bob
October 23, 2010 6:03 PM | Link to this
For-profit companies force their charter franchises into a triple-net lease, then sell the properties to a wholly-owned subsidiary and that company leases the property to the charter schools for a nice profit. Serves ‘em right. Hope it drives Imagine and White Hat out of business in this state.
By Max
October 19, 2010 8:50 AM | Link to this
The Court’s ruling was and is consistent with current tax and funding ‘laws.’ The question is should the legislature amends the restrictions to allow charters to pay the property taxes? This ‘exception’ will present a constitutional debate during which, again, the public school funding - property taxes from school levies - formula will be addressed within the same framework. An extreme possible application would be if a provate home is being used to ‘home school’ the resident children, then should the state also pay their property taxes? Ok, that’s extreme but these are ‘plug in and test’ applications the Supreme Court surely considered. However, the existing policy has been in place since the charters came to be and their financial plan should have included, where applicable, the tax liabilities. Again, the Supreme Court must have viewed this as a valid ‘contract’ for which the charters are responsible for their end, not the taxpayers or property owners. The legislature, hopefully, will agree and leave things as they are.
By NCF
October 18, 2010 2:22 PM | Link to this
It would be interesting to know which properties that have charter schools have been acting on the understanding that there was no property taxes due like this. I really wonder what the charters and/or their property owners will do in order to pay the taxes. Looking forward to the follow-up article. Thanks.