Yoav Gonen of the New York Post discovered a stunning allocation of public funds in Brooklyn. Gonen reported recently that for-profit National Heritage Academies was leasing buildings and then subletting them at a mark-up of 1,000%, charged to the taxpayers. NHA is leasing a school from the Brooklyn Diocese for $246,000, but charges the city of New York a whopping $2.76 million for rent and related charges.
Nice work if you can get it.
That extra $2.3 million could pay the salaries of quite a few teachers and reduce class size for many children. Instead it will fatten the profits of a charter corporation.
Diane
Diane Ravitch's blog 
This is what Imagine Schools have been doing all around the country.
Follow the money trail! Privatizing– charter/choice/voucher schools are all about money. Greed and control also plays a part in this psychological madness that has invaded our great democratic nation. We must expose these “snake-oil” peddlers for what they are -snake-oil peddlers. Keep the messages flowing from every end. Send Diane’s blogs far and wide; media, educators, friends, the skeptics, and on an on…….
It has always amazed me that Mr Bloomberg the genius of the business world always get the worst deal for the city when tax money has to be handed to private corporations. Best example is the City Time scandal where the city handed half a billion dollars to a private corporation for a project that was supposed to cost sixty million dollars, not to mention, the product was never delivered. Bloomberg nickle and dimes the teachers and ask for more work and more accountability for better paychecks but when it comes to private contractors blank checks of tax payer money are always in abundance. It a form of Socialism for the rich and ruthless Capitalism for the rest of us.
National Heritage Academies is based here in Michigan, and in a state where nearly 80% of charters are run by for-profit management companies NHA is notable for making no disclosure of their management fee. Other charter networks at least disclose a percentage fee in their annual audit reports. NHA says that it simply takes the entire per-pupil funding as a fee and in return manages the school. (That also prevents the school from independently accumulating any sort of fund balance.)
One NHA charter near me, which occupies a building owned by NHA (which is more common around here than leased school properties), pays the firm nearly $1 million per year for the lease. My best guess is that building leases forms a substantial part of the firm’s profits. (Since NHA is privately held, we have no information about their internal finances.)