Public private districts and open enrollment

A few years ago, a couple of my Fordham colleagues coined the phrase “public private” schools to describe schools that educate virtually no low-income students. In the report, they suggested the following notion: Though “public” in name, high-wealth schools are, in practice, pretty much equivalent to private ones. Families wanting to enroll their children in such schools effectively pay “tuition” through higher real-estate taxes and/or paying a fortune on housing. Low-income families are functionally excluded from sending their children to these schools.

But when an affluent district enacts an open enrollment policy, students outside its jurisdiction can attend. This suggests that they’re acting more in their public than private nature. Since 1989, Ohio has permitted such inter-district open enrollment, and today, most (though not all) districts participate. For the 2015–16 year, 81 percent of districts allowed some degree of open enrollment.[1]

So what about Ohio’s public private school districts? Do any of them open their doors for all comers? Or are they adhering more closely to their “private” identity by denying non-resident students the opportunity to enroll? Let’s take a look at the data.

When my colleagues examined public private schools in 2010, they identified them based on whether they enrolled less than 5 percent low-income students (i.e., eligible for free-and-reduced price lunch—FRPL). Applying that threshold to Ohio districts yields just five with less than 5 percent FRPL. But let’s set the bar a little bit higher—at, say, 10 percent FRPL. This procedure yields twenty-five school districts out of 609 in Ohio (or 6 percent of districts; the fraction of schools nationally identified as public private was 3 percent in the 2010 analysis).

Perhaps another way of identifying a public private district could be based on how it raises revenue. If a district generates a large fraction of its revenue locally, one could almost view its revenue structure as dependent on “private” contributions. For example, the benefits of a local school tax accrue more directly to the taxpayer, especially compared to a state tax which funds a variety of public programs. Setting the threshold at 80 percent or more local revenue[2] yields thirteen public private school districts.

Table 1: Public private school districts in Ohio, 2013–14

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Source: Ohio Department of Education, Cupp Report (FY14) and Open Enrollment Listing (2015–16)

As one observes from Table 1, we identify a total of thirty-two public private districts in Ohio, of which six qualify under both thresholds. Do any of them allow inter-district open enrollment? The answer is yes, but not many. Kudos to the nine that do allow open enrollment: Minster, New Bremen, Chagrin Falls, Fairport Harbor, Marion, Danbury, Miller-New Cleveland, Russia, and Mason school districts. While it may be true that these districts don’t actually enroll many low-income students outside of their jurisdiction, at least they’re opening an opportunity for disadvantaged children in their area to attend. But shame on the public private districts that refuse to open their doors to students outside of their district. They should change their open-enrollment policy, especially if there are available seats. Or maybe it’s time to call these districts what they are: Private.