Lindsay Wagner of the NC Policy Watch reports that the NC House passed a bill to guard the privacy of salaries paid to employees of for-profit charter management companies, even though they are paid with public funds. The bill also removes protection of LGBT students that had been in earlier versions.
She writes:
“While the bill, SB 793, or Charter School Modifications, clarifies that the salaries of charter school teachers and non-profit boards of directors are subject to public disclosure, employees of for-profit companies that are contracted to manage the operations of charter schools would not be subject to those rules.
“In a prior version of the bill, language simply required charter schools to publicly disclose all employees’ salaries.
“The change comes at a time when one prominent Wilmington-based charter school operator, Baker A. Mitchell Jr., has been fighting media requests for months that have asked him to fully disclose the salaries of all employees associated with his charter schools – teachers as well as those who work for his for-profit education management organization (EMO), Roger Bacon Academy.
“Mitchell, who also sits on the N.C. Charter School Advisory Board that is tasked with approving and monitoring charter schools, operates four charter schools in southeastern North Carolina through his for-profit company.
“Roger Bacon Academy has raked in millions of dollars in profits that consist of public funds since 1999 – and Mitchell himself has profited to the tune of at least $16 million in management fees over the past several years.
“While debating the conference report of the charter school bill, Cotham told fellow lawmakers this bill protects Mitchell and others like him who are free to hire family and friends through a private company that runs charters, and then pay them anything they like with public funds.”
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Outrageous of course. Every salary paid with pubic dollars to any school or school affiliate (i.e. management co.) and PROFITS made and disbursed should be disclosed to the public.
Do they even bother to spin or engage in sophistry to rationalize this stuff anymore, or do they just do it?
No, this General Assembly is so brazen they don’t hide anything. They have such a powerful, money back majority they do whatever they want. This state is not to be believed!
No sunshine laws for where public funds go in North Carolina. Corruption endorsed by legislators. I wonder how many of legislators are on the take or counting on campaign contributions from these masked bandits.
In a similar vein of keeping charter finances hush , Judge Breslin in NYS ruled that NY Charters cannot be audited!!!
hush:http://perdidostreetschool.blogspot.com/2014/03/court-rules-charter-schools-are-not.html
We had this same fight in Ohio and citizens lost there, too. The OH lawsuit was interesting, because charter school parents sued. They lost. Well, we all did.
“New York charter schools won a big victory Thursday when a judge ruled the state’s top fiscal officer can’t follow the money and look at their books.
Charter school crusader Eva Moskowitz filed suit to bar state Comptroller Thomas DiNapoli from auditing her 22 schools, all of which are publicly funded but also receive private donations. On Thursday, Manhattan Supreme Court Justice Thomas Breslin ruled DiNapoli did not have the authority to audit any New York charter because the schools are not technically “units of the state.”
I don’t blame the judge in NY or Ohio. They wrote the laws to impede transparency. If lawmakers wanted to change the law, they would do so. It isn’t the judge’s job to do their work for them.
We had an AG who argued that the schools WERE public entities, but he lost. That was 8 years ago. They still haven’t regulated any of them, nor are they going to.
They try to post the scores of children’s tests, the salaries of public school administrators and often teachers and yet they try to exclude the outrageous salaries of these people nor audit the charters.
INCREDIBLE!!! AND where are the media to report this? The same place they were when the drum beat to invade Iraq took place and now, at the last I heard, the cost when including the health care for veterans of that war are included range from 5 to 6 TRILLION dollars. And remember, not getting into the politics of the thing but as fact, when Clinton left office we were PAYING OFF our national debt.
Such shenanigans as this are killing our country AND the media pays way too little attention to that, just continues way too often excoriating the job which our public schools are doing under often horrendous difficulties.
Perhaps the free press isn’t free anymore. While the LGBT protection removal was mentioned in the news, I see no outcry from that community or those who feel strongly that any school taking public money should have no bias when taking students.
We North Carolinians just take our sucker punches and say, “Oh Well”.
Hopefully the Moral Mondays crowd will toss this onto the ever growing pile of issues they have so courageously addressed.
Cartwheel. . .not so.
I think there are just so many hits being delivered right now, that this is just another punch. I don’t think “Oh well” is really the silent majority’s view. At all.
The institution of public school was already on the ground and is being kicked continuously.
But look up Aim Higher Now NC.
Note the last paragraph: “While debating the conference report of the charter school bill, Cotham told fellow lawmakers this bill protects Mitchell and others like him who are free to hire family and friends through a private company that runs charters, and then pay them anything they like with public funds.”
What about all those arguing in favor of charters & vouchers & privatization that loftily proclaimed that they were gonna teach them public school wastrels and misfits a thing or two about quality and ethics and transparency and fiscal responsibility?
¡¿NEPOTISM!? That’s what they mean by “disruptive cage busting achievement gap crushing innovation”?!?!?!?
😱
Those leaders of the “new civil rights movement of our time” are not the rising tide that lifts all education boats but the pulverizing tsunami that destroys decency and morality and excellence in all things educational.
😡
And they will not stop themselves. When an old dead Greek guy won’t do, a vintage Roman can come in handy:
“For greed all nature is too little.” [Lucius Annaeus Seneca]
😎
I feel sorry for them. This sounds like Ohio, Michigan, Florida and Pennsylvania:
“Mitchell, who also sits on the N.C. Charter School Advisory Board that is tasked with approving and monitoring charter schools, operates four charter schools in southeastern North Carolina through his for-profit company.”
Welcome to a club you don’t want to belong to, North Carolina. It just gets worse from here. Maybe it wasn’t such a great idea to have 150 well-connected think tankers and lobbyists design a “governance system” for charter schools, huh?
Which will be the first state to get rid of public schools completely? My money is still on Florida, although NC is moving up fast and Michigan is now competing for the title with Ohio. We should lay bets.
Chiara,
2 years ago when I discovered this blog I would talk to people about all the things I was reading about going on around the country. They mostly figured I had a tempest in my teapot. BUT we now know that real storm clouds have been and had been brewing.
It’s painful to watch, but there is action against it and in making sure people are aware.
I think our culture is numb and a bit complacent with some of the perks of a democratic republic such as public school. Seems we are going to have to learn the hard way, as so many already are. At some point even those on the top will suffer for the weakening of their own country. Or, we can try to turn it around as best we can. Quickly.
Should our Assembly’s picture be next to brazen or corrupt in the dictionary?
It should be next to ALEC.
And somebody needs to push that ALEC be declared the lobbyist group that it is.
Here’s the story on the charter operator they’re protecting:
http://www.starnewsonline.com/article/20140109/ARTICLES/140109710/1177?p=1&tc=pg#gsc.tab=0
Sadly, the investigation is being conducted by the USDOE, so I don’t expect a whole lot of revelations there.
His schools have low enrollment. I’m told over and over how in-demand these schools are, which is why we keep having to build more while lawmakers abandon and then shutter public schools. Why are they always having to cook the books on enrollment, then?
North Carolinians have forgotten how far we’ve come in a short time, and how even more quickly it seems to be slipping away. Lest we forget. . .
Heartfelt … an excellent reminder of how people have struggled and continue to struggle. Thank you.
These are the same people who bark and fight when tax dollars go to social services and claim wasteful spending. That’s because poor people can’t line their pockets.
Another reason to leave NC….and I don’t even like Texas.