This is breaking news.
The Ohio Supreme Court let stand lower court rulings that require the White Hat charter corporations to open its financial records to the board members of the charters.
White Hat is owned by David Brennan, one of the state’s biggest contributors to GOP campaigns. It is the state’s largest charter chain.
The boards of 10 White Hat charters sued the company to gain access to the finances of their schools. White Hat, a for-profit management company, collects 96% of the revenues but insisted it had no obligation to disclose how it spent the money or anything else about its finances because it is a private corporation. Brennan makes millions of dollars each year.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
That’s great news. I’ve commented more than once about Brennan and White Hat, having had the unfortunate displeasure of having worked for one of their schools in Michigan. There has been a great deal of scrutiny pointed towards Brennan’s purchasing of the Ohio Legis. . . um, generous campaign donations to many key members of the Ohio Legislature, and it seems like something good may finally come of that. Here’s hoping.
Did you work at a “Life Skills”? It’s about time he had to reveal how the public’s tax money is used.
Yes.
It should be called “Black Hat.”
This is a big deal. White Hat is so corrupt it got national attention when the lawsuit was in the lower courts in Ohio. Gail Collins wrote about it. She is from Ohio. If she is on Twitter, one of you twitter people should send her the link. Maybe she’ll do an update. Her column is syndicated, and it appears in Ohio newspapers, as well as national papers. Media is so lock-step reform friendly I was surprised she dared to touch charter corruption. I found talking to people that they had no idea many charters are for-profit. They hear “public” and they assume “non-profit.”
I followed the case when it started, then White Hat stalled and stalled, so there was nothing new for years.
Opening those books should be really enlightening. We know the money isn’t going to teachers. Charters in Ohio pay teachers substantially less than public schools do.
They’re no more generous in Michigan where, at last check, they are still looking to pay new teachers (new to THEM, that is), about 40K +/- a couple of thousand, REGARDLESS of education or experience. Fifteen years ago, starting near the bottom of the scale (but not quite at it due to education and credit for one year’s experience) at a public high school in southeastern Michigan, I was making $38K.
My experience with LifeSkills and White Hat was abhorrent. And I saw things that shocked me despite some previous exposure to for-profit charters in the area. I tried to interest the press, to no avail.
I noted that a year or two later, there were no LifeSkills Centers in Detroit (there had been four in 2008). But it looks like they’ve sprung up elsewhere in the state (like mushrooms and other fungi). And unless miracles have occurred in the last 5 years, I expect the worst from those, too.
It’s been going on for years. The state auditor slaps them on the wrist and they close a couple of schools and open more. This is from 2011, but the record goes way back. The fact is, they could have shut White Hat down years ago, and they never have. He gets more contracts every year.
“And of the 27 Life Skills and Hope Academy schools they still operate in our state, 17 are in academic watch or academic emergency.
And yet, these schools receive an average of $7,044.88 per student despite the fact that many of their schools have graduation rates in the single digits. (details included at the end of this post). By comparison, Franklin County public school districts receive on average $3,957.94 per student.
The state of Ohio is paying White Hat Management Company nearly $74 MILLION DOLLARS A YEAR – nearly twice as much as it pays to public schools – to completely fail our state’s kids.”
The lawyer for the charter authorizer is amusing. She feigns general outrage and trashes Ohio public schools to distract from the crooks. She seems incapable of uttering a paragraph that doesn’t include how terrible Ohio public schools are, when we’re, you know, talking about a CHARTER and White Hat has nothing to do with Ohio public schools. It’s comical.
Sounds like what I would have expected from what I’d read about how WH operates in Ohio. After all, if you own the legislature. . .
I agree that this is good news. Public schools should be transparent about how they are spending public money.