Armed with a 600 page report citing significant failures in a 600 student charter school in Cincinnati, the Harmony Community School, Ohio Attorney General Marc Dann has filed a law suit to shut it down.   The list of school failures, many of which were compiled by the State Auditor, are horrific and have already landed the private owned but publicly funded school on an "Academic Emergency" list maintained by the Ohio Department of Education.   

Dann has now sued four underperforming charter schools all of whom are authorized to operate outside the laws controlling local Ohio education.

What makes Dann's suits important beyond the State of Ohio is that his shut down efforts are not based on representation of a state agency or Board but rather on his authority to regulate non-profit organizations.  In this case, Harmony Community School is owned by the Buckeye Community Hope Foundation.

As is true in many states, the State Board of Education is designed to be independent of any Governor or Attorney General.  In Ohio, eleven members are elected from their respective State Board districts and eight are appointed by the Governor over a period of years. The chairs of the education committees of the Ohio House of Representatives and the Ohio Senate are ex officio members.  The purpose of such an arrangement is to take education "out of politics."

The Harmony School is saying that Dann is supplanting the Board and its licensing functions with his personal view of whether the school should continue to function.   Dann is saying that it is his job to make sure that Ohio non-profits are not failing in their purpose and, in doing so, subjecting kids to a lousy education.

The implications of Dann's broad use of his non-profit authority - especially in the face of non-action from the state agency that licensed the school - will resonate beyond Ohio.  Other charter schools, and other attorneys general, will be watching the outcome of the Ohio litigation.