In Worst Case Scenario, ECOT Could Still Pay 602 of its 607 Teachers

Last week, the Electronic Classroom of Tomorrow's Superintendent, Rick Teeters, wrote that if the Ohio Department of Education was able to actually determine how many kids ECOT was actually educating, ECOT would be forced to close. This was based on a preliminary department review that showed the vast majority of ECOT students were only logged onto their computers for 1 of the required 5 hours of the learning day.

Trouble is, Ohio pays ECOT so much money that even if this ratio held true and ECOT lost 80% of its funding, the school (which doesn't have to pay for buses, custodians, lunch ladies, capital outlays like heating and cooling, or building security) would still have enough to pay all but 5 of its 607 teachers.

Last year, ECOT received $108,610,808 in total state funding. According to the most recent state report available, ECOT had 607 teachers who averaged a $36,089 a year salary. To pay their teachers, ECOT needs $21,906,203 a year. Cutting their state funding by 80% leaves ECOT with $21,722,162. That would leave the school $183,861 short for their teachers, which means all but 5 of their teachers could still be paid with the state money.

However, ECOT still receives $12.5 million in federal funding. So they would still be able to have a significant amount of total funding left over for those five teachers with a handsome profit to boot.

Back for a moment to ECOT's huge state funding haul. If ECOT gave every one of its 15,000 kids a new, $2,000 laptop every year, it would still have enough money left over after paying its teachers to clear nearly 50% profit.

So does this mean that ECOT will close if they get their funding cut? Who knows.

What it does mean is we pay a lot of money to a school that can't graduate even 4 of 10 students and generate more dropouts than any school in the nation.

And it also means this: Where is all of ECOT's money going, if not to the kids it purportedly claims to educate?

Remember this is your money and mine. We the taxpayers and our kids must have a proper accounting for ECOT's expenditure of our hard-earned money.