How gullible are taxpayers in Ohio? How long will they remain willing to pay millions of dollars to a charter founder who is best known for campaign contributions? Why does Ohio’s ignore this outrage?
Plunderbund documents the empire created by William Lager, founder of the Electronic Classroom of Tomorrow (ECOT) was paid $1 million in the first year his school opened. It is now the largest charter school in Ohio.
Frankly, it is a sickening story.
Not until 2007 did state officials suggest that Lager should provide detailed invoices for the public money he received.
Writes Plunderbund:
“At this point [2007], according to the official audits released by the Ohio Auditor of State, William Lager had received exactly $28,354,426 over a seven-year period without ever submitting one single invoice documenting the services provided by him or his company.
“Readers, Lager’s fleecing of Ohio’s taxpayers in order to build his personal wealth under the guise of providing an alternative educational option for children is nothing new; he has engaged in a systematic process of pocketing millions of dollars since he founded this public charter school back in 2000 — over 13 years ago. William Lager has been drawing an annual salary of over $1,000,000 since his first year as the CEO of the school’s management company.
“And so we’ll ask again, don’t you think Ohio’s and national newspapers be running front page stories if a public school superintendent in the state of Ohio was drawing an annual salary of over $1,000,000? Why is it that William Lager can receive a six-figure, publicly-funded annual salary without a single article questioning this appalling misappropriation of school funding dollars?”
Why do you think that Ohio news media don’t care about this?
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Lager is or was on Jeb Bush’s digital learning lobby shop roster.
Lot of prestigious Big Names in ed reform on this list:
http://www.whiteboardadvisors.com/news/launch-digital-learning-council
Why don’t ed reformers ever call out one of their own? Are they proud that this guy is stealing from poor and working class students (not to mention every public school kid in the state, as we devote more and more public resources to rip-off cybercharters).
I keep hearing how “brave” ed reformers are, when they’re going after middle class teachers.
Why don’t they ever go after anyone with any power and/or money?
Here’s Kasich endorsing his political donor at an ECOT graduation.
http://www.plunderbund.com/2011/06/12/kasich-speaks-at-ecot-graduation-supports-one-of-the-gops-biggest-donors/
Kasich, working with ed reform lobbyists like StudentsFirst, has gutted funding to existing public schools in Ohio, yet they always find money for the “darling” of politicians and media, charter schools.
Politicians turning their back on public schools turns out to be a savvy political move. Meanwhile, kids in existing public schools in this state, the vast majority of kids, get hot again and again and again by funding cuts.
If this is what “agnostic” looks like for kids in existing public schools, I would hate to see “hostile”.
Meanwhile, the Obama Administration continues their laser-like focus on opening charter schools, measuring teachers, and testing students:
“Other Obama administration education redesign priorities got slight increases. Charter school grants would be financed at $248 million, up $6.6 million from last year. The Teacher Incentive Fund, which provides grants to help districts create pay-for-performance programs, would get $288 million, up $5 million from last year. And state assessments would see a $9.1 million boost, to $378 million. ”
Public schools are apparently not a “priority”. Does anyone know why charter schools get double funding? Why do they get a share of public school funding and also get dedicated funds to replace existing public schools with new charter schools? Other than their political clout and powerful and wealthy friends, I mean.
“. . . measuring teachers. . . ”
Oh, 6′, 295 lbs, size 11 1/2 E, 46″ waist, 29″ inseam, 7 7/8 crown size (yeh, it’s not pretty). Let’s see do they need anything else? Oh, and I just threw out some numbers, they weren’t really measurements but what the heck they’re more accurate than the edudeformers’ “measurements” of teachers.
I’m not a teacher, and even I think the bizarre focus on teachers as responsible for everything in the world including income inequality and the trade balance, apparently, is a dodge by cowardly politicians.
I saw Christie is planning one of his patented and wildly popular teacher attacks for his state of the state address. Anything but talking about what’s really going on in that state. Let’s berate some more teachers! That always gets huge media kudos! It’s become a political tactic.
It’s ridiculous, and it’s a dodge by politicians. It doesn’t matter what the problem is, they all retreat to blaming teachers. Who buys this nonsense? Obviously it’s a dodge.
“And so we’ll ask again, don’t you think Ohio’s and national newspapers be running front page stories if a public school superintendent in the state of Ohio was drawing an annual salary of over $1,000,000? Why is it that William Lager can receive a six-figure, publicly-funded annual salary without a single article questioning this appalling misappropriation of school funding dollars?”
7, you mean a SEVEN figure annual salary.
It’s incredible that this has been going on for well over a decade and was only just caught now. If a million dollar salary had been paid to a district superintendent, it would have caused immediate outrage.
I would say unbelievable, but this lack of regulatory oversight of charters is so typical that it’s not hard to believe at all.
Maybe public school advocates should add campaign finance reform to our agenda.
How come I never read about any of this in a newspaper or see it on 60 minutes?
“No CORPORATION left Behind at the cost of our young” is happening. Name it.
I e-mailed this story to several reporters at the Cincinnati Enquirer when Plunderbund broke it a couple weeks ago. I only received a reply from one who said he would pass the story along for somone to look into. I posted the story on their FB page and received this response:
“Hi Katie. Thanks for the link. This charter school is located in Columbus, which is out of our typical coverage area. We do plan to examine statewide charter school operations and oversight later this year.”
I replied, “Well gee thanks for responding but that isn’t good enough. As an ELECTRONIC charter, the school services students from the Greater Cincinnati area which IS in the Enquirer’s coverage area.” I suggested they look into exactly how much Cincinnati area schools actually lose to ECOT and that could be their angle. No reply. I’m not holding my breath.
I’m waiting to find out how much the school DEformers have paid Gannett to bury these stories….