EduShyster, tongue firmly planted in cheek, defends the huge salaries collected by charter operators in New York City. That’s the price of excellence, she says. She links to an article by Rachel Monahan of the New York Daily News, who listed 16 charter executives who make more money to run a small charter school or a small charter chain than the chancellor of the City of New York. Missing from Monahan’s list was Geoffrey Canada, who is paid somewhere between $400,000-500,000. .
Some of those on Monahan’s list have charters in other cities, and it would be interesting to know if they are receiving additional payments as executives in multiple sites.
When you see these rewards, you can understand the lure of charters for those young people who are eager for fame and fortune. They won’t win it in the classroom, so it makes sense to open a charter, spend huge amounts of money to market the product and lure customers, conduct a lottery (thus excluding the families who are not alert enough to do the paperwork for a lottery), exclude students with severe disabilities and students who don’t speak English, and counsel out troublemakers and students with low scores. It is a formula that always works!
And those who follow the formula get very rich and are idolized by the media.
Collateral damage: America’s democratic public school system.
Tough. But that’s the price of excellence for the few.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Charter operators are in the business of delivering excellence.
Excellent yachts to their marinas, excellent jewelry to their lovers, and excellent campaign contributions to their wind-up toys in state houses and in Washington.
BTW, the salaries are NOTHING compared to the earnings of the folks who run the online virtual charters.
And then there are the non-salary earnings. One prominent charter school operator explains it this way to investors: He says that he is not in the school business. He’s in the real estate business. He takes out loans to buy buildings. The schools receive state tax dollars. They use these to lease the buildings from him. He uses the payments form the schools to pays off the loans on the buildings. He is left with enormous amounts of real estate belonging solely to him and paid for by the taxpayers.
It’s a great business. But don’t get any ideas. You have to know people to play.
This doesn’t make a ton of sense though since why would any city/state rent property that they intend to use for ostensibly decades and pay rent on it when they could buy? If you mean they buy buildings and lease them to charters, it doesn’t explain what happens to the charters that are displacing public schools whose land is already owned by the state.
Of course you can make a real estate killing with a long term tenant like the government who is unlikely to disinvest and has little incentive to argue a hard bargain.
The question is – assuming this explanation is on the up and up (and I’m aware of the huge tax breaks for buying charter school property and citizenship perks etc) – why is the government choosing to rent long term properties rather than purchase them? It doesn’t make a lick of sense except that buying needs more upfront cash than renting – and these people don’t seem to be renting for cheap.
Why would charter schools operate in a way that doesn’t make any sense at all to the taxpayer? Because that’s the huge door that was opened by FUNDING charters via the government, but largely removing their MANAGEMENT from meaningful public supervision.
Two common scenarios:
1. The people who found and operate the charter — i.e. those who make all the financial decisions about how to appropriate the government funding for their students — decide to rent property that they already own. They decide how much the rent will be as the landlord, and then approve that rent as the tenant. In these “negotiations” with themselves, the public charter is often charged above-market rents that go straight into the picket of the founder on top of their salary is for managing the school.
2. Someone else involved in the process makes the money. Here in Utah, multiple past and present legislators, as well as prominent lobbyists and their families, are involved in charter school construction and/or “charter management companies.” The idealistic charter founders contract with this outside company for administration, computer support, and obtaining facilities. The costs are beyond anything a district would pay, but the charters cover it by paying their teachers poorly, not providing transportation and extra-curricular activities, etc. The legislators authorize more and more money for more and more new schools that utilize these services.
Utah HAD a law prohibiting conflicts of interest on charter school boards, but a couple of years ago, our full-time lobbyist/part-time senator and our Speaker of the House co-sponsored a bill specifically changing the law to allow charters to purchase services from their board members.
Utah teacher your description is right on the mark.
in a harlem charter school, i taught with the wife of a cluster director for the new jersey schools of the same CMO. she and her spouse lived in a west-side luxury building and she would take taxis to work (from 40th-125th) instead of taking the subway. her spouse had taught as part of TFA for two years before climbing the ranks to new jersey director. in the same school there were teachers working 90 hour weeks with the hope of earning a leadership position within the org…one teacher was devastated because he felt his efforts had gone unnoticed and he wasn’t moving up. two TFA teachers, one with a total of four years teaching, moved up rapidly. one into the Fellowship pipeline and then opened his OWN school! the other now works for NYDOE as a director of operations. after jumping from one CMO to the other. no experience ever working in a non-charter public school. turnover is high when there are so many opportunities to LEAD, expand your potential and income.
Re charters, let me plug a new book: Educational Delusions? Why Choice Can Deepen Inequality and How to Make Schools Fair, by Gary Orfield and Erica Frankenberg (Univ of California Press, 2013). This book backs up Diane Ravitch’s Reign of Error and blasts both charters and vouchers with facts.
I am NOT speechless. BOONDOGGLE!
“Charter school boards defend the top salaries in part by noting they’re not relying on the public dime to attract their talent, while at the same time arguing they’re public schools that deserve public space.
“Leadership salaries are competitive and come from private donations and do not take so much as a dollar from schools or students,” said Ed Lewis, former board chairman of Harlem Village Academies, which, he noted, is now expanding its work to include a school of education.”
It’s a terrible model for a “public” school.
They’re beholden to the donor and this isn’t sustainable, where billionaires are paying their salaries.
Charter school parents will regret going along with this. When the billionaires are down the road, who subsidizes these schools? They built a school system that is wholly dependent on charity? That’s crazy.
Charter school parents better get something in writing from the billionaires. What happens when the “leadership salary” donations dry up?
If you like Obamacare, make sure everyone must receive their education in federally supervised schools. LOCAL CONTROL of public schools is the ONLY thing that enabled them to be successful even though they were government run schools. The Feds should get out of education and out of health care.
“. . . public schools is the ONLY thing that enabled them to be successful. . . ”
You’re coming around HU, coming around!!!
Shyster, when will they be holding seminars teaching us about how to swindle the American public while performing “miracles”-shortchange teachers, staff, and students while making a mint!! Wow shyster, you made me realize how fantastic they all are and they deserve every penny of the $500,000 they earn a year!!
Reblogged this on Middletown Voice and commented:
Our good friend who came to speak about education reform at Ball State makes between $400-500,000 running a charter school in New York. Is it any wonder the private sector is wanting to destroy public schools in this country, so they can get their hands on taxpayer dollars and Wall Street monies.
Unfortunately, it’s like No Child Left Behind in reverse – it’s skimming from the top and leaving the students who cannot perform or have special needs for the underfunded public school system.
Sound familiar?
It should. It’s the exact scam we’ve watched health insurance companies running for years in this country and why the Affordable Care Act was implemented – to stop the fraud perpetrated on taxpayers by the wealthy.
It was so profitable for years in the healthcare system, they’re just using the exact same scheme on education.
Neat trick, huh?