A final end to the legal battle involving the state and its largest online charter school is coming closer.
The Ohio Supreme Court has set February 13 as the date to hear arguments in the case filed by the Electronic Classroom of Tomorrow.
The state school board voted that ECOT must pay back $60 million for 9,000 students that it claimed were enrolled but couldn’t verify their attendance.
ECOT has claimed that state law says the hours students spent online as determined by logins can’t be used to calculate state funding.
At a rally in May, just after the state school board’s vote, ECOT’s board president Andrew Brush said this is a fight for the future of education in Ohio.
“And in this fight, we don’t want special treatment. We merely want the right to fair treatment and equal protection under the law,” Brush said.
Two lower courts have sided with the state.
Last fall, ECOT officials said in a court filing that the school would close within four months, in the middle of the school year, if the state's efforts to recoup the $60 million continued. School officials said the closure would affect nearly 12,000 students and eliminate about 800 jobs.
