The title of this article has a one-word answer: money. In this shocking article, journalist Owen Davis explains how the expansion of charters in Newark is driven by two factors:
1) the availability of millions of dollars in federal school construction bonds that have been showered on the charter schools but not the public schools;
2) the Chris Christie administration’s decision to withhold funding specifically designated for the repair and renovation of existing public schools.
Put these two factors together and you get a city with gleaming charter schools and crumbling public schools.
The story is framed around the struggle of a family and a community to keep its public school, Hawthorne, from being shuttered. They eventually win a one-year reprieve, but it feels temporary. The governor and some very wealthy people plan to turn Newark into a free market of schools, and part of their plan is to let them rot, then close them down.
Here is a key element:
“When a charter school moves into a new building, it’s not unusual to see millions of dollars poured into renovations ranging from structural repairs to slick paint jobs. In the case of a school like Hawthorne, plugging the leaky ceilings and safeguarding against mold would likely be top priorities.
“The 2009 federal stimulus authorized states to allocate $22 billion in qualified school construction bonds (QSCBs), which allow cash-strapped schools to secure interest-free bond financing. Banks that finance school construction receive subsidies from the feds equivalent to some benchmark interest rate around 5 percent. Banks can pull in a tidy profit, as can the motley cast of counsels and intermediaries who ink the deals.
“Of the $440 million in QSCBs New Jersey received, nearly three-quarters have been approved – and so far, every penny has gone to charters. TEAM Academy alone gobbled up $138 million. This exclusive allocation of QSCBs to charter schools is highly unusual. California and Texas, for comparison, each allocated less than one-fifth of their QSCBs to charter schools.”
But while all the new money was dedicated to charter schools, state money for repairs dried up:
“Just as New Jersey earmarked its federal school bonds for charters, Christie was busy slashing education budgets and hobbling the department charged with repairing needy urban schools, the School Development Authority (SDA).
“Established in 2000 to remedy stark funding disparities, the SDA controls billions of dollars for construction in disadvantaged districts. When Christie entered office, he shrunk the department’s staff by 30 percent and restricted its outlays to a trickle.
“Basically there wasn’t any work being done,” says Moriah Kinberg of Healthy Schools Now, a coalition that advocates for school repairs. While over 700 projects broke ground in the decade before, not a single project was initiated and completed between 2010 and 2013.”
Newark elected Ras Baraka as its mayor to protest the Christie plan to eliminate public schools. But Christie doesn’t care. He is still in charge of the schools. He is the master.
Chris Christie is absolutely repulsive.
…and don’t forget to mention the planned “teachers village” for TFA. Amazing what THEY will do to stick it to public schools kids and public school teachers…but they roll over for charters and TFA. THAT is where the profits are…but remember, “its all about the kids.” Up is down. Down is up.
A beginning teacher or any teacher who is not TFA can not live in the village? By the way, I am a teacher. I wouldn’t want to live with T’s 24/7.
No. Just TFAs teacher can llive there. May as well call it TFA village, not teachers village. Always the spin the politicians put on it. Also, I work in downtown Newark. After 5:30, it is a ghost town. While there are a few apartments now (like the Rock Lofts), parking is difficult at best. Car jackings happen along Route 21 at 6am while most of the downtown area is empty. Imagine what could happen to you coming home at midnight. Downtown Newark is not “neighborhoody” – it is loaded with office buildings, and a few businesses that close when the workerbees go home. Not much is open to the public past 7pm. When there are events at the Rock, there are usually muggings afterwards. Once after a concert, some MEN were beat up on Broad St., 1 block from the Rock, by a gang of GIRLS. No one stopped to help them either. 1 got a broken jaw. Why would anyone want to live in downtown Newark? It isn’t Manhattan; it will never be Manhattan.
See this too, closing but read all:
Scamming the city. Its parents. Its children.
“One Newark” is illegal. It’s illegal because it discriminates on the basis of race. It is illegal because it violates a raft of state laws and regulations.
And it is illegal because it violates the charter school law.
But, in a New Jersey operated by Gov. Christie’s Mafia, illegal is only what the governor says it is. And Hespe and Anderson do his bidding.
http://bobbraunsledger.com/how-hespe-and-anderson-scammed-newarks-children-to-help-charter-school-friends/
Christie is trying so hard to do away with career educators. It is so alarming to me how he is trying to make our professions into a freak show. He makes me sick. I am so relieved that his bridge controversy happened. To think he could have been headed to the White House is a horrific thought. Christie annoys me the minute he opens his mouth to talk. What a loud mouth…
Let’s expand the subject title: “What is Driving Charter Expansion Everywhere?”
The answer is simple: money and who ends up with it.
I’m thinking of narratives that appear a lot in comments sections of my two local dailies, The Detroit Free Press and Detroit News. There are typically two:
Public schools are failing.
Charter schools are better.
But those are always done through declaration rather than evidence. And what evidence gets used is cherry-picked frequently.
Invariably, those who insist that public schools are failing, I’m talking about the lightly informed general public, always point to one culprit: unions. Those who deride public education are more commonly, though not exclusively, people who dislike unions. These people are in favor of charter schools because they are non-union in nearly every case. That’s really all it is.
The evidence does not clearly show that either sector is better. In fact, most evidence demonstrates little to no difference between charter and traditional public schools. So what’s the single biggest difference? Union versus non-union.
Charter supporters don’t want to deal with collective bargaining, teacher voices and the higher labor costs that come from unionization. Especially in Michigan where it’s a for-profit Wild West. (Remember, these are often the same people who bemoan that it’s hard to get the best and brightest to teach. Good luck getting them if the wages are sinking or stagnant, benefits have been decreased and pensions disappear.)
The more I examine the charter school movement, the more obvious it becomes that this is an ideological fight and not truly educational reform. It’s a matter of who gets the money. Charter chain CEOs or school personnel.
I wrote years ago that charter schools are, among many things, a real estate play, and tied in with hyper-gentrification of central, cities. For example, it was no accident that one of the most active real estate developers in Harlem was on the Board of Evil Moskowtz’s Success Academies.
I’m glad that this is getting more attention.
Cross posted at Oped news with this commenthttp://www.opednews.com/Quicklink/Owen-Davis-What-Is-Drivin-in-Best_Web_OpEds-Decision_Diane-Ravitch_Funding_Mayor-140818-33.html#comment507136
My take-away shows the process in play across America,not just in Newark: “Of the $440 million in QSCBs New Jersey received, nearly three-quarters have been approved – and so far, every penny has gone to charters. But while all the new money was dedicated to charter schools, state money for repairs dried up!”
Add this to the removal of the professional teachers– who know what learning looks like and what must be present to enable kids to learn– and you have the end of a literate, educated citizenry. Does anyone see the threat to democracy????
Has someone informed Governor Chris Christie and the rest of the “education reform” movement that “charter schools” and “public schools” are one and the same and that the former are the rising tide that will lift all the latter? That you’re not supposed to favor one over the other?
Or is this a business plan that is masquerading as an education model that rigs the system in favor of edupreneurs and their enablers and enforcers at the expense of the vast majority?
The rhetoric is massively out of sync with the reality.
Hence the critical importance of this blog.
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