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Tulsa Beacon
ily Newspaper
Ghost Students
Many public schools
add but don’t subtract
By Ray Carter
Director, Center for Independent Journalism
When news broke that the Oklahoma
State Bureau of Investigation had filed a
search warrant accusing Epic Charter
Schools of receiving state funding for
“ghost students” who did not attend
school through the online provider and, in
one case, had even left the state the prior
year, it understandably drew concern from
all quarters.
But as that investigation proceeds, it has
indirectly highlighted a less well-known
fact: Many traditional public schools, all
across Oklahoma, are receiving funding to
educate similar “ghost students” who no
longer attend those schools. And, for those
schools, the payments are not only legal,
but the result of deliberate design.
Oklahomalawrequires that state school
funding be distributed based on several
factors, including “the highest weighted
average daily membership for the school
district of the two (2) preceding school
years.”
The use of the highest average daily
membership (ADM) figure from prior
years guarantees that many schools, par-
ticularly those with declining enrollment,
receive continued funding for students
who have transferred to other districts,
graduated, or even moved out of state.
“Those are ‘ghost students’ that they are
getting paid for,” said Sen. Gary
Stanislawski, a Tulsa Republican who
chairs the Senate Education Committee,
“and they will fight, fight to the death, to
maintain those.”
“There are definitely districts across the
state that are being paid for students that
are no longer there,” said Rep. Chad
i D
Property of OPS News Tracker and members of the Oklahoma Press Association.
www.tulsabeacon.com
“Those are
‘ghost students’
that they are
getting paid for
and they will
fight, fight to
the death, to
maintain those.”
- Sen. Gary Stanislawski, R-Tulsa
Caldwell, an Enid Republican who served
on a task force that examined the state’s
school-funding formula.
Byron Schlomach, director of the 1889
Institute, an education and research organ-
ization, has also examined Oklahoma’s
school-funding formula.
Given that some families move multiple
times in a year, and may change school
districts with each move, is it possible one
child may be counted as part of the ADM
figure at more than one school at the same
time?
“Oh yeah,” Schlomach said. “Easily.”
And because Oklahoma’s school-fund-
ing formula provides “weights” based on
a student’s grade-level and demographics,
the financial gain to schools when some
students leave can be even higher than
what occurs when other students move.
For example, in apaper he wrote about
Oklahoma’s school-funding formula,
Schlomach noted, “On a grade-level basis
under Oklahoma’s system, a fourth, fifth,
or sixth grader is counted as a single stu-
dent. Students at every other grade level
are counted as slightly more than a single
student.”
’t l t th t k
Tulsa, Oklahoma
As a result, if a student in the first grade
moves out of a district, the financial bene-
fit of the retained “ghost” funding for that
student is greater to the district than what
would occur if a fourth grader moved
away.
Meanwhile, the student who moved to
another district may be counted in the new
district’s average daily membership while
simultaneously being counted in the ADM
for the child’s prior district.
Other states that have employed similar
funding systems have shifted to using cur-
rent-year student counts due in part to the
ghost-student problem.
In a summary of education reform
measures enacted at that time in Indiana,
the 2012 edition of the American
Legislative Exchange Council’s “Report
Card on Education” noted Indiana law-
makers had ended the use of a student-
count system similar to that now used in
Oklahoma.
“Previous statute had compensated dis-
tricts with declining enrollments by fund-
ing ‘ghost students’ for up to three years
after they had transferred out of that dis-
trict,” the report noted of Indiana’s efforts.
“Going forward, the state will fund
schools based upon the current student
count.”
In 2009, Indiana’s state superintendent
of public instruction estimated that
Indiana taxpayers had sent $94 million to
schools to support more than 16,000 stu-
dents who weren’t enrolled in those dis-
tricts.
When legislation advanced to use a cur-
rent-year student count for funding,
Indiana’s Legislative Services
Agencyconcluded that 200 districts in that
state were overfunded due to the ghost-
student system, while 143 had been under-
funded and would receive financial bene-
fit from using current-year counts.
See Ghost on page 3
 Tulsa Beacon

...Ghost Continued from page 1

Another 15 districts were expected to see no change in funding.

Matthew Ladner, an author of the 2012 American Legislative
Exchange Council report, now works as the senior research
Aug strategist for the Arizona Chamber Foundation. He notes
Arizona faced similar ghost-student problems due to its fund-
01 ing formula.
In Arizona, public charter schools were funded based on
current-year student counts, but traditional public schools
were funded based on the prior year’s student numbers. When
2019 students left a traditional public school for a public charter
school, Ladner said it resulted in “more and more kids that we
were double-funding for a year.”
“A kid would leave a district to go to a charter school, which
Page happens frequently, and the district would still be getting
funded for them, and the state would fund them in their new
A003 charter school this year,” Ladner said.
A' report from the Goldwater Institute estimated Arizona
was paying $125 million annually to educate more than 13,000
Clip ghost students.
resized Oklahoma officials have already attempted to prevent fund-
ing of ghost students in one area—online schools, where fund-
34% ing is already based on current-year population counts.
According to a'presentation given by Department of Education
officials several years ago, “the weighted average daily mem-
From bership for the first year of operation and each year thereafter
of a full-time virtual charter school shall be determined by
A001 multiplying the actual enrollment of students as of August 1 by
1.333” [emphasis in original].
“You kind of have the best of both worlds. You get the
money because you grew, and you’ve got the money even
though you’ve gotten smaller.”
—Former state Rep. Dennis Casey (R-Morrison)
As a result, when a student transfers from a traditional pub-
lic school to a virtual charter school in Oklahoma, the child can
be counted in the population of both schools and the prior
school still receives funding to educate the departed student.
If a current-count system works for online schools in
Oklahoma and all schools in other states, why are all
Oklahoma schools not funded based on current student popu-
lations? The answer, officials say, is simple: politics.
“Every time you do something, there’s winners and there’s
losers,” said former state Rep. Dennis Casey, R-Morrison.
“And so, as politicians, I don’t know if they really want to do
anything, because they’ll look at it and go, ‘Well, that affects
my district.’ Or they’ll say, ‘I’m all for this. This helps my dis-
trict.’ And so we get nothing done.”
Casey is a former school administrator who served as vice
chair of the House Appropriations & Budget Committee dur-
ing his legislative tenure and also served on a funding-formula
task force. While he said the formula needs adjustments, he
warned that enacting even modest change is politically daunt-
ing.
Casey noted the state holds some appropriation funds back
for districts that experience growth beyond expectations.
Those funds are released in the middle of the school year based
on student figures provided after the start of the school year.
As a result, even officials at districts that are technically
shortchanged by the school-funding formula are content to
leave it in place, despite funding of ghost students elsewhere.
“You kind of have the best of both worlds,” Casey said. “You
get the money because you grew, and you’ve got the money
even though you’ve gotten smaller.”
Caldwell, who noted the “education establishment is pretty
change-averse,” is also skeptical that lawmakers will end the
funding of ghost students, noting the attitude of school admin-
istrators who served alongside him on the funding-formula
task force.
“For the superintendents that were there, the basic message
was, ‘We know it needs to be tweaked and fixed, but we’ve
also figured out how to work under the current system, so
don’t change it,’” Caldwell said.
Stanislawski said legislation has been filed “many times” to
eliminate the use of backward-looking head counts that result
in the funding of ghost students at Oklahoma schools, but
“with no success.”
“It’s a legal way to rob other school districts, and yet they all
don’t mind playing that game and being robbed,” Stanislawski
said. “And it’s a farce.”
He said one measure to address the issue cleared the Senate
this year and could receive a hearing in the House in the 2020
session.
The argument for basing school funding on prior-year pop-
ulation figures is that districts hire staff and make other pur-
chases in advance of a school year, so if enrollment is signifi-
cantly lower than expected, it can create financial problems
unless funding reductions are implemented slowly over sever-
al years.
But Schlomach thinks it is a mistake to automatically pro-
vide excess funding to those schools.
“You ought to make these districts actually make the case for
why they ought to get relatively more funding while they’re
losing enrollment,” Schlomach said.
Ladner said similar objections were raised in Arizona.
“There’s always some case that the districts will make for
keeping things this way,” Ladner said. “I think, in the end, it
was like, alright guys, look: If we’re going to draw up a list of
funding priorities, where does ‘funding ghost students’ fall on
the priority list? So they made the change.”
Stanislawski, who supported legislation this year that
increased financial transparency requirements for online
schools like Epic, hopes lawmakers will finally address the
ghost-student problem next year, especially given the publicity
it is now receiving.
“It’s not equitable for all students across the state,”
Stanislawski said. “The funding formula needs to be modern-
ized.”

Ray Carter is the director of OCPA’s Center for Independent

Journalism. He has two decades of experience in journalism and com-
munications. He previously served as senior Capitol reporter for The
Journal Record, media director for the Oklahoma House of
Representatives, and chief editorial writer at The Oklahoman.

Property of OPS News Tracker and members of the Oklahoma Press Association.
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