A planned charter school with ties to evangelical Christian and politically conservative organizations could, if successful, divert approximately $2 million a year from area school districts starting in 2024.
Southeast Ohio Classical Academy, to be based in Athens County, has stirred controversy among local parents and educators who are concerned in part about the school’s:
- Association with a private Christian college known for its political activism.
- Ties to a “planted” evangelical church in Athens.
- Curriculum based on “our Western civilization inheritance.”
- Potential to siphon state funding away from public schools.
Those concerns have been aired on social media, including a spirited discussion in the Women of Athens Facebook group last month and the creation of an Athens Parents against SOCA Twitter page. Local law enforcement investigated one Facebook comment for “indirect threats” to SOCA board members, although the case was closed without charges.
The school’s founders say that SOCA has no religious affiliation, that its curriculum offers a “well-rounded education,” and that “school choice is a part of freedom.”
Public charter school, private Christian backing
Board member Kim Vandlen said she has long hoped to open a classical school, inspired by her own education at Hillsdale Academy in Michigan. The private, Christian K-12 school is operated by Hillsdale College, a private Christian college with longstanding ties to libertarian and conservative politics.
According to the Hillsdale College website, the Barney Charter School Initiative provides extensive support to member schools, including consulting and startup resources, teacher and principal training, and more.
SOCA is one of four charter schools slated to open in Ohio as members of BCSI, along with schools in Cincinnati, Columbus, and northeast Ohio. BCSI has helped launch more than 20 charter schools since its founding in 2010, with nearly 50 additional schools using its curriculum.
That number could escalate. Tennessee Gov. Bill Lee announced plans earlier this year to bring 50 BCSI member schools to the state, although the partnership’s future is now somewhat uncertain.
As reported by Salon, BCSI’s original mission statement (since deleted) described the initiative as an effort to “recover our public schools from the tide of a hundred years of progressivism” in public education, framing the public school as “among the most important battlegrounds in our war to reclaim our country from forces that have drawn so many away from first principles.”
Such language is a red flag for supporters of public education, such as Ohio Education Association President Scott DiMauro.
“I don’t think there’s much doubt that [Hillsdale and BCSI are] looking to use this as a way to indoctrinate students to their way of thinking,” DiMauro said.
Ray Houska, an intervention specialist at Eastern High School in Meigs County who lives with two young children in the Athens City School District, said he is uncomfortable with SOCA’s connections to Hillsdale College.
“I would have a hard time being okay with our community subsidizing that sort of thing,” Houska said.
Vandlen said SOCA will not advocate for the religious or political ideas associated with Hillsdale College and its administration.
“We are partnering with them because they are successful at opening charter schools that are successful charter schools, but our school will be run by a board of individuals within our community; it is in no way run by Hillsdale College,” Vandlen said.
The Hillsdale College public relations department did not respond to several requests for comment by phone and email over a one-week period.
A controversial curriculum
SOCA will offer students a “classical education”—which its website describes as an education in the “accumulated wisdom of Western civilization”—using a curriculum developed by BCSI and Hillsdale College. Vandlen said classical education, in essence, means a “well-rounded education,” noting that SOCA will emphasize quality writing, foreign languages (including Latin) and civics.
Tee Ford-Ahmed, director of communication and media for the Mount Zion Baptist Church Preservation Society and a former professor of media studies with a focus on marginalized populations, said SOCA’s description of classical education is “extremely valid”—but questioned whether it is a “public relations spin.”
Ford-Ahmed added that Hillsdale College administrators appear to have “a certain view of the Western concept, and I’m not sure that it’s all-encompassing.”
Last year, Hillsdale College unveiled the 1776 Curriculum to guide history and civics education. The curriculum was “inspired by” the report of former President Donald Trump’s 1776 Commission, which was chaired by Hillsdale College President Larry Arnn.
Trump formed the commission in response to national protests over the police murder of George Floyd in 2020. The executive order forming the commission stated it would promote “a clear historical record of an exceptional Nation” and counter a “radicalized view of American history” including “one-sided and divisive accounts” of “America’s history related to race” described as “attacks on our founding.”
The commission’s report was widely condemned by historians. A statement by the American Historical Association describes the commission’s report as a call for “government indoctrination of American students” that elevates “ignorance about the past to a civic virtue,” with specific reference to the legacies of slavery.
“I would be very concerned about a curriculum that provides a largely celebratory version of U.S. history and lacks critical consideration of times when the nation fell short of its stated values and goals,” said Katherine Jellison, professor and chair of the history department at Ohio University.
Vandlen said she does not believe the 1776 Curriculum will form the basis of SOCA’s history and civics curriculum, adding that the history curriculum the school will use is older. But she said she hasn’t “found a need” to compare SOCA’s curriculum to the 1776 Curriculum. She declined to share detailed curriculum materials with the Independent.
The Hillsdale College website describes the 1776 Curriculum as a “reflection of… instruction in Hillsdale-affiliated schools.”
A “planted” church
Vandlen is one of six members of the SOCA board. The others are Rich Schmaltz, Jon Eckles, Courtney Kuhnert, Caleb Beasecker and Linda Rice.
Vandlen, Schmaltz, Courtney Kuhnert and Beasecker are all affiliated with Brookfield Church, at 5 N. Court St., part of an evangelical, non-denominational Christian church network that launches churches primarily in college towns. Courtney Kuhnert is married to Brookfield Church Pastor Aaron Kuhnert; Vandlen is the church’s bookkeeper.
Schmaltz and Kuhnert were part of the group that originally “planted” Brookfield Church. According to the Brookfield Church website, “Jesus called” the Kuhnerts from Vine Church in Carbondale, Illinois—along with Schmaltz and 27 others—“to transfer schools, give up their careers, move away from their friends and families, and risk everything to start Brookfield Church.”
The network of churches that Brookfield belongs to is currently under scrutiny over a 1986 sex abuse case involving a church leader.
Although individuals affiliated with Brookfield Church make up a majority of the SOCA board, Vandlen said there is no “link” or “affiliation” between SOCA and Brookfield Church and insinuations to the contrary are “completely false.”
“When you start a project, you talk to your friends about it first,” Vandlen said. “There was really nothing else that went into it. I knew some other people that liked classical education and already knew a lot about it.”
Vandlen said the school is not a religious project.
“It’s a charter school, a public school, and not a religious school,” Vandlen said.
According to the Ohio Voter Project, all but one of the board’s members are registered as Republicans in Ohio; Eckles did not appear in voter records.
Rice is a former board member of the Pregnancy Resource Center of Athens County, according to materials available through ProPublica. The Christian organization “empowers and equips those with an unexpected pregnancy to choose life,” according to its GuideStar profile. Abortion rights groups have criticized pregnancy resource centers as deceptive.
Public school, private operations
Although charter schools are funded as public institutions by the state, education policy expert and former Democratic member of the Ohio House of Representatives Stephen Dyer said charters have been allowed to operate as private organizations.
“Just calling yourself a public school, or calling (a charter school) a public school in law, is not enough,” Dyer said. “You actually have to walk like a duck.”
For example, SOCA board members are self-selected, whereas members of public boards of education are elected. This represents a “fundamental problem” with the way charter schools operate in Ohio, DiMauro said, because charter school boards “don’t have any direct accountability to the communities in which they operate.”
Another difference is transparency. Vandlen refused to divulge donor records and curriculum materials to the Independent—requests that public institutions are required to fulfill under Ohio’s open record laws.
“You certainly don’t have the accountability of a local public school district,” Dyer said. “It’s kind of a misnomer, that they call themselves public.”
Ohio Department of Education Interim Chief of Communications and Press Secretary Lacey Snoke said the state’s system of sponsoring organizations ensures the “accountability and quality” of charter schools. Sponsoring organizations are themselves evaluated regularly by the ODE.
DiMauro said the OEA would like to see the state’s sponsor system replaced with one that requires oversight from local school districts.
“Our position is that if a charter school is going to operate, it should be responding to a clear need within the community,” DiMauro said.
A system like that proposed by the OEA has allowed three local school boards in Tennessee to at least temporarily block charter schools affiliated with Hillsdale College.
No such local recourse exists in Athens County, DiMauro said.
State Representative Jay Edwards (R-Nelsonville), who supports charter schools, said there are accountability issues with both public schools and charter schools:
“Sometimes we overregulate them, sometimes we’re under-regulating them.”
While somewhat sympathetic to the OEA’s proposal on oversight of charter schools by local school boards, Edwards said he views charter education as a choice best left to parents.
“If a parent wants their kid to go to school like (SOCA), and that’s what their choice is, I commend parents for it,” Edwards said. “This is about options … We’re wanting to have multiple options for these kids.”
Impact on local school funding
Recent changes to Ohio’s school funding formula mean local school districts are no longer directly responsible for footing the bill when a student switches to a charter school. Edwards, DiMauro and Dyer all described this as a significant improvement in school funding policy.
However, state funding is still allocated per pupil—so when students switch from a public school to a charter, the public school district still loses state funding. This affects some districts more than others, depending on how reliant the district is upon state aid.
“Small, southeast Ohio districts are especially sensitive to any state aid leaving, because they raise so little local revenue,” Dyer said.
For example, Athens County’s average property values rank 60th out of Ohio’s 88 counties; the county is 83rd in median household income. Because it has a lower overall tax base, Athens County districts receive substantially more state funding per pupil than the state average.
According to June payment data available through the state, public school districts in Ohio received an average of $4,941 in state funding per pupil in 2021-22, while Athens County districts received an average of $7,613 per pupil.
That’s still less than the funding SOCA could get. In the last fiscal year, charter schools in Ohio received at an average of $9,082 in state funding per pupil. Dyer said charter schools receive more state aid to compensate for the lack of direct local funding.
Vandlen said SOCA hopes to recruit 280 students from across the region in its first year, across two sections of 20 students in each grade from kindergarten through sixth grade. SOCA plans to add one grade per year until it reaches grade 12.
Vandlen said she doesn’t expect SOCA to “negatively impact any one school district” because “we’re trying to serve such a large area and the class sizes will be so small.”
“Choices are great,” Vandlen added. “If somebody chooses to send their school or their child to a charter school, it’s okay that their tax money would go along with them.”
Edwards agreed.
“In a perfect world we would have options for students that wouldn’t take away from the public school,” Edwards said. “But having options for students is a good thing.”
Vandlen said the plan is to open SOCA within 15 miles of Athens. However, the school will accept students from any district, as well as students whose families might otherwise pursue alternative, nontraditional paths such as homeschooling. (Most new private or charter schools rely at first on parents to get their kids to school, Vandlen said, noting that the board is still discussing transportation options.)
That wide net of potential enrollment makes it impossible to precisely predict SOCA’s impact on local school district funding. Based on recent funding data from Athens County districts though, SOCA would pull roughly $2.1 million from area districts in its first year if the school meets its enrollment targets. If SOCA reaches full capacity, the annual impact would nearly double.
“I am concerned about the impact this will have on all of our local school districts,” Federal-Hocking Local School District Superintendent David Hanning said in an email. “Every charter school siphons funds from local school districts who already struggle to provide quality programming.”
DiMauro said the OEA is also concerned about the impact of charter school funding on the state’s ability to fund public education generally. Overall, Ohio’s 611 public school districts received $7.2 billion in total state funding during last fiscal year, while 324 charter schools and 7 STEM charter schools received a combined $1 billion, according to June payment data.
“Over a billion dollars is going to charter schools that could otherwise be going to fully fund our local public schools,” DiMauro said.
Education officials aren’t the only ones concerned. Ford-Ahmed believes diverting public school funding to charter schools is ultimately discriminatory.
“We need to be pouring more money into public schools, instead of using the money for something else,” Ford-Ahmed said, adding that robust school funding helps keep “everything on an even keel.”
Houska also worries that SOCA would undermine the quality of local public schools.
“I want all families in our area to be served by strong, well-funded public school systems, without fear of them losing an art program, or a music program or paraprofessionals … when buildings face financial hardships,” Houska said. “I’m concerned with the hardworking people living in this area being able to do right by their own kids.”
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