ECOT Will Lay Off More Than 300 Employees to Pay Off What It Owes the State
WKSU | By Jo Ingles
Published June 22, 2017 at 12:05 PM EDT
STATEHOUSE NEWS BUREAU
Ohio's largest online charter school is making drastic job cuts to help pay the $60 million it owes the state.
Electronic Classroom of Tomorrow spokesman Neil Clark says the cuts are needed to pay back 60 percent of the $100 million the school got from the state last year.
"They have proposed laying off up to 350 people in the next 30 to 60 days," Clark says.
Teachers, administrators and staff positions will be eliminated. And Clark says if the state doesn't allow the school enough time to pay back the money, ECOT will have to close its doors for good. The state has said ECOT was paid for 9,000 more full-time students than were actually enrolled.
EducationECOTNeil ClarkOhio Department of EducationElectronic Classroom of Tomorrow
Jo Ingles
Jo Ingles is a professional journalist who covers politics and Ohio government for the Ohio Public Radio and Television for the Ohio Public Radio and Television Statehouse News Bureau. She reports on issues of importance to Ohioans including education, legislation, politics, and life and death issues such as capital punishment. Jo started her career in Louisville, Kentucky in the mid 80's when she helped produce a televised presidential debate for ABC News, worked for a creative services company and served as a general assignment report for a commercial radio station. In 1989, she returned back to her native Ohio to work at the WOSU Stations in Columbus where she began a long resume in public radio.
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