Pennsylvania, like Michigan, is another state where the governor (Tom Corbett) and the legislature feel no responsibility to sustain public education. Philadelphia public education is under fire, as the privatization vultures circle.
Now the York City, Pa., public schools are on the brink of privatization. Seven national charter management organizations made presentations to take over the district’s operations.
Little by little, the privatizers are moving to grab as many public schools as they can. Sad.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
We have to stop defaming vultures …
Have to agree with you Jon. I live in an area where there are many turkey and black vultures-not seeing at least one a day is an anomaly. They are quite magnificent birds who perform a very vital function in the ecosystem. Think of the stench and flies that would be so prevalent without these birds.
The edudeformers are the ones who produce the rotting bodies with their policies that the “vultures” have to clean up.
Worse than sad. It is of course horrific. One wonders how they get away with this but it seems like one of the studies by a major university was correct: we no longer have a democracy but a plutocracy. Our nation will pay a huge price if this continues. this is preaching to the choir of course also but cannot but help to add my two cents worth.
The NAACP is contemplating a lawsuit, if parents step up, to fight such a conversion.
http://www.yorkdispatch.com/breaking/ci_26383497/york-naacp-mulls-suit-over-charter-schools
York is the home of Tom Wolf who is hoping to unseat the worst governor in the history of Pennsylvania, Tom Corbett, and Wolf is running on a platform which includes taxing the fracking in our state and using the proceeds to reverse Corbett’s public education funding cuts.
Has Tom Wolf said anything about this? I can’t find it. Is he still continuing to avoid saying anything specific about York, or Philadelphia — where very real problems are escalating?
Not that I’ve seen. Been waiting for it too.
They’re finally starting to look at the real estate/property aspects of the management companies in the unregulated charter states (OH, FL, MI and PA). This hasn’t happened yet in Ohio, but it will, because it’s the logical next question for journalists to ask:
“Charter Schools USA (CUSA) has been operating charter schools in Florida for 20 years, including recently-opened schools in Hillsborough County: Woodmont Charter, Winthrop Charter, and Henderson Hammock Charter. Although charter schools sometimes struggle financially at first, CUSA eventually collects a 5% management fee from each to provide administration and guidance.
But 10 Investigates found a much bigger pot of money CUSA has been able to tap into: rent. When the company helps open a new school, its development arm, Red Apple Development, acquires land and constructs a school. Then, CUSA charges the school high rent.”
Charter Schools USA is national, they’re in several states, and it turns out they have an actual real estate/property business that has been spun off the main corp.
The problem is the state and local nature of schools. The information about the management companies doesn’t travel outside what amounts to state-specific information silos. The companies open and operate in state after state because all of the entities providing the information are private charter lobbying groups who are obviously not disinterested. It’s incredibly frustrating to watch this happen in state after state. Local media can investigate all they want. If the information isn’t being disseminated nationally this will get worse and worse as the management companies get more and more entrenched and buy more lawmakers and spread to more and more states.
PA, OH. MI and FL is a HUGE swathe of the country. It has enormous implications nationally if charters aren’t regulated in these states, and they aren’t. I don’t understand why it doesn’t get more attention. It IS “national”.
http://www.wtsp.com/story/news/investigations/2014/08/21/charter-school-profits-on-real-estate/14420317/
After the U.S. Civil War (1861-1865), there were some politicians in some of the southenr states called scalawags who were often financially and politically corrupt, and willing to support bad government because they profited personally.
What we see today, thanks to the NCLB, Race to the Top, CCSS agendas of—mostly—Bill Gates, and Presidents G. W. Bush and Obama is the birth of the 21st century’s scalawags.
Charterbagger Is The New Carpetbagger
Charterbagger
That works for me.
What’s even worse is that only four months ago, the York City School Board shut down New Hope Academy, one of the largest charter schools in the area, for low student achievement and possible ethics violations. So the board revoked one unsuccessful charter, only to turn around and consider offering up the entire district up privatization!
http://www.ydr.com/local/ci_25520012/court-upholds-decision-not-renew-new-hope
http://www.ydr.com/local/ci_25314694/new-hope-hearing-focuses-charters-student-performance
http://www.yorkdispatch.com/breaking/ci_25764132/new-hope-board-officially-votes-close-charter-school
for privatization
xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx How could going all charter be an option unless the board can show the all-charter option is definitely cheap enough to meet financial goals? & then, if all-charter doesn’t meet performance goals either (or ends up costing more than they promised), can you revert to the internal transformation, or are your public schools gone irretrievably?
I’m going to take a wild guess & assume that this– “The city school district is in the midst of a financial recovery process guided by state-appointed chief recovery officer David Meckley”– means York is in a status akin to bankruptcy, & is being handled in the same manner as those Michigan towns run by an ’emergency manager’. Which means there is no democracy there, & people will get what they get.
This sort of arrangement illustrates the endgame of funding public schools via real estate taxes.
How can York be in financial distress when more than $7 million dollars just came back to the school district when they closed an unsuccessful charter. This is about politics, not education! The for profit companies applying to pick the bones clean of the residential tax dollars have no proven success rates. What happens when Mosaica or Edison or some other for profit company decides to pull out of York City because they aren’t financially profitable. Who will be left to educate the students? Who will be left that cares enough to stand up and say kids shouldn’t be used as political tools or experiments in privatization profiteering wars?
York is the home base of the democratic candidate for Governor….Tom Wolf. I wonder if this is a troubling sign of his “support for public schools?”
Good question. If you can find anything he’s saying about York schools — or about Philadelphia schools where our biggest crisis is — please do share. He’s very good at not saying anything.
He’s not saying anything. Purposely. Lookoup his involvement in York Counts, a group of wealthy businessmen who met to propose, lobby and were successful in bringinging in another charter schoo to the YC district. Their practices at the school would not be allowed in the public schools, but it is how they intend to maintain a certain clientele, Their talk is smooth, but their practices are shady. But you wont hear about that. Tom Wolfs wife is/was on the board for that school. He is another politician who believes this will “fix” urban schools. But I have emailed his camp with my concerns when they approached for my support. What I got was an all politics, avoiding reality, response. Why is it today the public is treated as if they are incompetent when pointing out statements that arent whole truth. It seems to be the big machine of government. I dont like or trust Tom Wolf, but I like Corbet even less. I’m not hopeful that any real public ed reform will occur to help end the segregation of goods and services for urban schools dealing with compounding issues associated with poverty.
Another note: the operator of the recently closed charter school threw in his pitch as a charter operator under a new company name. Big surprise. Thats how lucritive operating a privately owned school is in YC. In the end, the students are pawns in this experiment in education.
We have lots of York residents commuting to Maryland for the gov’t jobs, they use York County as their “bedroom community”, Taxes and property values are lower there.
Their “Governor” apparently won’t invest in their own libraries so they use Maryland’s, now we’ve had to add a fee to defray the added costs for all the out-of-state, meaning York Co., residents. Maybe their state motto is “we cheat the other guy and pass the savings on to you”?
Still, in the venerable state where the Declaration of Independence was adopted, how could they seriously consider the wholesale dismantling and selling out of their public schools to corporate thugs?
It is scary, and reminds me of a quote from Sheldon Wolin’s Democracy Incorporated, “the privatization of public services and functions manifests the steady evolution of corporate power into a political form, into an integral, even dominant partner with the state”.
Don’t feed the corporate beast, Pennsylvania! There is still time.
Where is the outrage in York County? Where is the self-respect?
What a shame…. sixteen thousand school districts in fifty states make this process invisible to a public busy watching Ferguson Mo, Gaza war,the Ukraine and all manner of entertainment news. Behind the curtain public education is being shredded and replaced with charters and private schools with no controls or scrutiny by the government.
End of public education, end of democracy
Click to access hirsch.pdf
When the dust clears, the United States will discover that the president and Congress are puppets of the Gates, Koch, Walton Cabal, and any other billionaires those three factions let in.
Yes. It is not a democracy. Most dont have enough money to really make a difference. Money makes our government go ’round.
While I am not happy to see this, I would like to see what happens if the Charterites get a whole system and are unable to weed out the low income, behavior problems, and low achievers. Let’s see how they do. I already know. They will do as well or less than our traditional schools when they have the whole plate to service. Years ago in Baltimore City, Edison took over 3 neighborhood schools without restricting who got to attend like most charters. They did not fail. They did about the same as the regular schools, so the city just said why pay for the same old, same old. It would be good to look into this example.
Tom Wolf’s wife was on the board of a York City based charter school until right before he announced his candidacy.
Is there a link to an article about this?