A reader writes:
“How do you like this for accountability???
Lack of regulations, accountability and transparency invites charter school fraud
“Pet care, alcohol, vacations and other personal purchases were charged to taxpayers via Cincinnati College Preparatory Academy charter school, according to a 2013 state audit. The school misspent $520,000 in public money. Two former officials from the Cincinnati College Preparatory Academy are awaiting trial in Hamilton County Court of Common Pleas for theft in office and tampering with public records. Based on the states past record of recovering misspent funds by charter schools, the school districts from which these funds were extracted will not receive reimbursement
“In the now-closed Lion of Judah charter school fiasco, $1.2 million in public funds were lost but the court agreed to a settlement of $195,000 in restitution from the charter school operator. It is interesting that the Cuyahoga County Common Pleas judge approved a payback of less than 20% of the funds misspent and indicated that a prison sentence was not proper because the state didn’t properly anticipate the mistakes that could be made when citizens tried to run charter schools. It appears that the charter school operator received a lenient sentence for the fraud committed due to the judge’s view that the charter school law in Ohio is defective.
“On February 25, the State Auditor issued a finding for recovery in the amount of $507,206 against a Cleveland businessman who had unlawful interests in public contracts awarded to the now-closed Greater Heights Academy. Other persons involved in this charter school operation have been charged with a conspiracy to defraud the charter school of over $400,000.
“In a news release regarding the Greater Heights Academy charter school case, the State Auditor said, “…I’ll never understand what motivates people to steal from children.” An equally puzzling incomprehension is what motivates state officials to enact and continue to support charter school laws that provide for a license to steal.
“When will lawmakers regulate charter schools in ways to stop the fraud on the public and the low quality education provided to charter school students? Not until the public becomes outraged and demands that state officials refuse campaign contributions from charter school operators and advocates and begin to regulate charter schools.
“But hey, you know they are all in it for the kids. Aren’t you just wowed by the “innovation”? I’m sure people in NYC would love to know what is happening in the charters that they pay for.”
And what happens when the State Comptroller is legally barred from auditing charter schools, as in Néw York, because charter schools are not “a unit of government.” That means they get public money but they are not public schools and may not be audited by public authorities.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
How accessible to the public are the finances of true public schools? I have just never tried, and don’t know if it is easy or not?
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Here’s a financial report from an Ohio public school district, to give you an idea.
Click to access 2013%20CAFR_Digital2.pdf
It’s 163 pages. Anything one would ever want to know is in this report 🙂
They’re required to file a report with the state auditor and then “publish the availability” of the report. It’s in the state code.
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“Publish” is a term of art in the Code, and there’s a whole set of rules depending on what what kind of notice is required.
It just means “public notice”, really. Either provide it or tell the public it’s available and where to get it.
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Well done, Chiara!
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For Twitter: Just copy and paste and then ReTweet as often as possible. The short link leads to this post and was created through Bitly to make more room for more content.
https://bitly.com/shorten/
Why do people steal from children
Unregulated private charter school theft of taxes
Meant to educate our children
http://bit.ly/1dcx1gU
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I wonder why the elites are going so slowly. Those in power could privatize all the schools tomorrow. They don’t need any public referendum. As a teacher, I would almost prefer this, instead of all the nonsense about strange evaluations, declaring schools as “failing” etc. Maybe they are going slowly for a reason. They don’t want to shock the public.
Hitler said, “The best way to take control over a people and control them utterly is to take a little of their freedom at a time, to erode rights by a thousand tiny and almost imperceptible reductions. In this way the people will not see those rights and freedoms being removed until past the point at which these changes cannot be reversed.”
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So this is a good rundown of the questions one should ask. The first thing I would want to know is who owns the property purchased with public funds:
“Another question raised in the case is who owns the property that White Hat purchased for the schools with state money. Saxbe said the court has essentially backed White Hat’s argument that it owns whatever it bought with the 96 percent contractual fee.”
In Ohio, the answer is “the private company”.
The community isn’t gaining any equity, any ownership interest in these schools, over time. That would seem to me to be a very bad investment for them, compared to investing in something that would be an actual, tangible asset, like a public school or equipment, etc.
This case came down to whether White Hat had to open their books- the idea there would be to pursue fraud or mismanagement (and they’re still stonewalling) but the big question “who owns the property purchased with public funds?” is resolved. That part’s done. They own the property.
http://www.cleveland.com/metro/index.ssf/2013/07/white_hat_managements_ohio_cha.htm
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White Hat is the biggest con game in Ohio.
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And so the reason people might want to invest in a school that they actually then own after paying for it, is because it’s a public asset and assets can be held or sold and the money can be used for other things the community needs:
“The school property, on the corner of King Road and Central Avenue in Sylvania Township, has two parcels with about 13 acres. The property at 3124 and 3364 King Road has commercial zoning.
The purchaser indicated the future use of the property may be business service, clinic, financial institution, a professional office, or research facility.
Mr. Spiess said that Ohio law does not allow the sale proceeds to be used for the school operating expenses, such as books. Instead, they are to be used for capital improvement projects which have more than a five-year life span.
Superintendent Brad Rieger said the sale money is to be earmarked for several projects, with repairs to school parking lots topping the list, followed by bus purchases and roof repairs. The board and administration is expected to finalize a project list to present to the public.”
https://www.toledoblade.com/Education/2013/11/08/Closed-Central-Elementary-sold-by-Sylvania-school-board-to-developer.html
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A partial list compiled by a single person in their spare time. http://charterschoolscandals.blogspot.com/
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The judge says, “I’ll never understand what motivates people to steal from children.”
In order to find out, all he needs to do is to conduct a survey among supporters of the Common Core State Standards, VAM, standardized testing, and a national database of student responses and test scores.
education. n. The 21st-century investment opportunity.
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Here’s one for the Deformer’s Lexicon, Bob:
Child (n): a conglomeration of neuro-biological data sets that, when placed in an institutional setting known as ‘school,’ becomes a highly marketable asset capable of being monetized prior to its introduction into the labor markets.
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Ah, Michael, your insight into the peculiar Rheeformish tongue is uncanny.
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“$4 billion taxpayer dollars with no real oversight.” “18 Philadelphia charter schools are reportedly under federal investigation. Several charters have involvement of legislators, family members and staffers. Representative Matzie introduced HB 1740 earlier this session which is modeled after House Rules that prohibit members and immediate family members from association with gambling interests.”
http://keystonestateeducationcoalition.blogspot.com/2012/05/pa-charter-schools-4-billion-taxpayer.html
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What have we seen over and over again when you have a deregulated industry with access to government money? You get some truly creative accounting or justifications for purchases, or outright theft.
I really understand the whole concept of less regulation over finances for more accountability trade off that was supposed to happen. I don’t understand why less regulation means NO regulation or ability to look at the books when it comes time for charter renewal, or that purchased property doesn’t become the property of the public school district of which they are a part for when they move to a different school.
Are we even sure that charters that are being granted are being created free of nepotism or cronyism?
If a charter were to then respond (and this is admittedly a little straw man I’m building) that so long as they get the results they promised, who cares, then it really calls into question what they are doing in their model that is getting that success and how can we create economies of scale if they won’t let us look at what goes into the secret sauce of their “success”.
Are we buying a “year of success” from them (or years in multi-year agreements). It feels a little to me like the analogy of renting an apartment vs. buying a house.
The apartment you own no equity, but have more flexibility in where you move, and you are less responsible for anything that happens to the property that you don’t directly cause. It seems to me, like public education is moving towards the apartment model – we don’t want to have to worry about the boiler exploding – just buy what we need at the moment and move on if the cost becomes too great or our needs change.
Where this falls apart is that communities don’t change that rapidly, and, if we are the renters, we should be able to take our property with us to the next operator – yet if we fire a charter under these terms, the landlord owns the couches and beds and we need to rebuild from the ground up which is an unsustainable cost if you really want flexibility in switching operators.
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I agree with renting versus owning.
It’s worse than that in Ohio.
In Ohio, if a public school closes, they have to offer the property for sale to a charter school first before they can sell to anyone else. Lobbyists have essentially put a deed restriction on every public school property in the state. Charter schools get first dibs on public property.
These are outright sales. The property goes from public ownership to private ownership. It’s now a “public school” but the public doesn’t own the property anymore.
“A school district’s board of education must offer to the governing authorities of start-up community schools located within the school district’s territory, any real property that is suitable for classroom space for academic instruction, administration, storage, or any other educational purpose, if the property has not been used for one full school year and the board has not adopted a resolution outlining a plan for using the property for any of those purposes within the next three school years. The property must be offered at a price not higher than the appraised fair market value of that property, and it must be sold to the first bidder. The same is true if the board of education decides to dispose of such real property that has been used within one year [ORC §3313.41 and §3314.051].”
I think it’s outrageous. They’re transferring property from public ownership to private ownership, but it remains publicly-funded. They’re making us all renters instead of equity owners.
This seems like a very important issue to me, a crucial distinction that is never discussed. It matters a lot down the road, ten years, twenty years. Who owns these properties and where does the equity go when they’re sold or transferred? I think it isn’t discussed because ed reformers never valued the “public” in public schools to begin with. Schools are just service providers. But they’re not. They’re investments a community makes.
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And you see the appeal of this to lawmakers who have a short-term focus and just want to get thru to the next financial quarter or win the next election, right?
They don’t have to invest in building public schools. They don’t have to raise public money. They can just outsource all of that to private parties who buy or rent the facility and run the school.
Is it any wonder they’re so willing to “relinquish” public schools? They’re off the hook! They just have to provide a kind of clearinghouse for information for consumers to “choose” a school and a per pupil allotment of money and they can wash their hands of the whole deal.
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I wonder if some day we’ll get the equivalent of a charter school union – only instead of union workers demanding fair pay, it’ll be charter schools who have grown to own so much public property, that they’ll be able to dictate the terms of their contracts. If they are indeed coming to own public property this way, there can be almost no other outcome over time as the state will undoubtedly lose more property than it buys.
We also see a public property real estate bubble in NY as Bloomberg was very eager to sell of library spaces for luxury apartment condo builders for pennies on the dollar for a smaller library space in the now privately owned building. The Donnell library and the attempted sale of parts of the main NYPL branch are exhibit A.
Once they own the land, it will become almost impossible to build our own school system again, and it will be either pay what they want, or have no schools…that’s a scary thought.
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This is the 1851 Center in Ohio. They’re a far Right legal group who defend charter school property sales in Ohio.
I don’t know if they’re just the worst lawyers in the world and if they don’t release they’re transferring public assets to private ownership, and the import of that, or if “choice!” ideology blinds them to the basic question of “who owns the property?” (which should be a lawyer’s FIRST question) but it doesn’t make a whole lot of sense to me to call yourself a “conservative” when you’re eagerly selling off assets that were accrued by the public for decades.
I feel like we’re going to wake up one day and wonder why we don’t own our public schools anymore. How we went from owners to renters. When that happens, a whole lot of people will have been responsible for allowing this to happen, but these lawyers had a lot to do with it in this state 🙂
http://www.ohioconstitution.org/2012/06/06/high-court-rebukes-attack-on-cincinnati-charter-schools/
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But they do such a GREAT job. It must be so. They keep telling us they do. Perception is reality?????
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My fear is that this will become more and more common in all states. Most teachers enter education with a love of kids and learning, most charter operators seem to enter education to make money. And of course therein lies the crux of the problem.
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Let’s not forget that this big push for more charter schools in every state legislature arrived by accident. Obama/Duncan’s Race to the Top “awards” included money for increasing the number (getting rid of caps) of state charter schools. Thanks a bunch to both Democratic and Republican lawmakers.
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I see Obama and Arne talk about education and think to myself, “Do you have any idea what is going on out here?” The corruption that they have helped to unleash is staggering. The Gates’, The Waltons, The Broads, etc are absolute fools.
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I meant “did not” arrive by accident!
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Hey people in Ohio and elsewhere, when you paid your taxes did you realize you would be paying for a con artist’s vacation to a place you could only dream of????A house of the size you could never own?? Super expensive cars and fancy suits???? It is all so disgusting.
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