The Electronic Classroom of Tomorrow lost three legal challenges Wednesday in less than two hours.

First, the Ohio Supreme Court rejected the online school giant's two requests to block the state from collecting $60.4 million in overpayments for inflating its attendance.

Less than two hours later, Judge Guy Reece of Franklin County Common Pleas Court rejected ECOT's argument that the state Board of Education violated the state's Open Meetings Act and nullified the $60 million tab. Reece said the Sunshine Law "does not apply to quasi-judicial proceedings like the one in which (the Board of Education) was engaged in."

The 6-1 decisions by the Supreme Court mean the Ohio Department of Education can start deducting $2.5 million each month from the Electronic Classroom of Tomorrow's state aid payment beginning with Thursday's July payment.

Instead of $8.1 million each month, ECOT will receive $5.6 million in taxpayer funding. The deduction in state aid is scheduled to continue for 24 months, when the debt for the 2015-16 school year will be repaid. The money could be returned to students' home school districts, but no determination has been made, said education department spokeswoman Brittany Halpin.

The high court rejected a mandamus request by ECOT to stop the repayment process and another motion seeking to hold off the repayment pending the Supreme Court's consideration of ECOT's appeal of a decision by the Franklin County Court of Appeals upholding the state's action as legal.

Justice Terrence O'Donnell dissented in both decisions. W. Scott Gwin, an appellate judge appointed to sit for Justice Judith L. French, who recused herself from case, voted with the majority. No written opinions explaining the rulings were issued.

ECOT officials said Wednesday that they remain confident they ultimately will prevail, noting that the court "has not ruled upon or resolved the merits of ECOT’s appeal and claims against the Ohio State Board of Education and Ohio Department of Education. Rather, it determined only that ECOT is not entitled to a preliminary remedy of an injunction," ECOT spokesman Neil Clark said in a statement.

"Once the Supreme Court has an opportunity to fully review the merits of the case, it will determine that ODE has acted in violation of Ohio law by, among other things, imposing — without prior notice or warning — a new, durational funding standard on only certain e-schools during the middle of a school year. The Supreme Court, like all Ohioans, should be concerned with reining in ODE administrators who have been emboldened to believe that they can do and get away with anything, no matter what the law says."

But the 6-1 rulings do not bode well for ECOT’s chances in its pending lawsuit arguing that the state should not be permitted to use students' computer log-in durations to determine enrollment for funding purposes.

In addition to showing irreparable harm to get an injunction, ECOT had the burden of proving a “substantial likelihood of success” in its lawsuit. ECOT’s attorneys said in their filing that the court could grant the injunction “solely based on ECOT’s likelihood of success on the merits of its statutory claims.”

In June, the state Board of Education ordered ECOT to repay the money after education department investigators used computer log-in durations and offline documentation to verify 6,313 full-time ECOT students. That was about 60 percent less than the 15,322 students ECOT claimed. Ohio pays public schools on a per-pupil basis.

ECOT officials have disputed the findings, arguing that the department illegally changed the rules for counting students and violated a 2003 agreement that the e-school only had to "offer" students 920 hours of learning opportunities.

The two courts' refusal of ECOT's eleventh-hour filings to avoid repayment were the latest in a string of legal defeats from courts at three levels, a state hearing officer, Department of Education, and the state board. ECOT's pleas for help from the state legislature also failed.

Now, the only ECOT appeal pending is with the Supreme Court over the department's attendance audit.

School officials last month said ECOT would lay off 350 employees — a quarter of its workforce — in the coming weeks, and could eventually close because of the repayments.

Douglas Cole, the Department of Education's legal counsel, noted in his filing that while ECOT claims a "looming catastrophe," it has cash reserves of nearly $17 million and pays about $21 million per year to a pair of for-profit companies owned by school founder Bill Lager for management and software licenses.

Plus, Cole wrote, the state could simply repay the money to ECOT later if the school "should prevail on its absurd argument that it is entitled to full funding for a student so long as the student logged in ... for a few minutes at least once every 30 days."

Separately, Ohio Auditor Dave Yost is investigating ECOT's use of tax dollars on television ads attacking the Department of Education. Yost has subpoened records from several television stations to determine how much was spent on the advertising blitz and who paid the tab.

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