From Bill Phillis of the Ohio Adequacy and Equity Coalition:
Another charter school will close down: corruption, ethics, nepotism and poor performance, at issue.
The superintendent of the VLT Academy, a charter school of 600 some students, was making $140,000 per year; her daughter was making $92,000 per year for data entry; and her husband was making $62,000 in addition to running his company that performs the charter’s janitorial services, under a highest bid contract, for $323,000 per year. The family was receiving nearly $1,000 per student for central office duties and cleaning.
The board of this VLT Academy charter school recently voted to start closing procedures. The operator (family) is shopping for another sponsor. The current charter school sponsor is dropping authorization for VLT Academy.
This charter school, in six years of operation, has been rated academic emergency, two years; academic watch, three years; and continuous improvement, one year.
State officials, via the laws they have enacted, have invited this kind of nepotism, mismanagement and low academic performance in the charter school industry. At least a half dozen charter school accountability and transparency bills are pending in legislative committees, but are not being heard, in the 130th General Assembly. Apparently the current Governor and majority leaders in the General Assembly are either oblivious to or unconcerned about this kind of reckless charter school operation.
Remember, this wasted money was extracted from school districts to the detriment of public school students. Where is the outrage from taxpayers and public school advocates?
William Phillis
Ohio E & A
Ohio E & A | 100 S. 3rd Street | Columbus | OH | 43215
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Ah, those “Chains of Trust”, to con a phrase, just what confidence artists of every genre need to bind and gag their marks.
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For those who missed the reference, here’s the cream of the jest from the usual joker —
☞ Chains of Trust
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And the effectiveness of local government might be measured in Rialto Unified School District where among other things, the accountant for the nutrition program stole between $1.8 and $3.2 million dollars over the 14 years she worked there. At least some of it stolen by stuffing the cash into her bra.
You can read about it here: http://www.sbsun.com/social-affairs/20140330/exclusive-rialto-unified-shows-history-of-dysfunction
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So you’re saying that two wrongs do make a right?
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Indeed I am not.
I am saying that there can be bad actors in any organization of schools. Bad supervision of small organizations like individual charter schools allow for overpayment of individuals in charter schools. Bad supervision of larger organizations like public school districts allow for embezzlement of millions of dollars. The connection is the poor supervision and regulation.
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So your proposal for improving supervision is —
1. Fragment responsibility for supervision across hundreds and hundreds of supposedly self-regulating private entities that operate according to a mare’s nest of different rules that they largely make up themselves?
2. Outsource regulation to private operators, a large number of whom operate from outside the state’s jurisdiction and who have shown no scruples about claiming corporate privacy or trade secrets or some such nonsense when called to account for audits?
3. Or just skip town when the sheriff comes knocking?
Sounds like a plan … a plan written by ALEC.
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Jon,
The responsibility for regulation is already fragmented across state departments of education, the 13,588 school districts, 98,817 public schools, and the various levels of state and federal courts. Just because the government directly employs the millions in the public school system does not mean that there is no administrative burden on the government to ensure all regulations are enforced.
Using the traditional all and only geographically based admission system results in a need for more regulation to ensure quality and uniformity across schools than is needed in a system where students can choose which schools to attend.
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After numerous court cases, the Pocono Mountain Charter School is closing. http://tinyurl.com/llyhcoz
Also in Pennsylvania, the Bethlehem School District has raised real estate taxes 5%. In the tax bill sent to residents, they include a letter blaming charters for the raise.
http://tinyurl.com/qaf6rs2
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Ma & Pa Charters, along with employment for the kidlets?
What a great idea to increase the Middle Class, pay off student loans, keep your children from moving back into your basement and make quick money the ‘Gates/Duncan/Obama anointed’ US Industry…on the backs of children and their teachers.
All in the name of improving US Education.
This is a mass accident waiting to happen & unraveling, as we blog.
Why can’t the US population see this?
Tune into TV on the ‘American Greed’ show…TBA? Many scenarios similar to these.
Outrageous!
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So now this charter school administrator and her family have raped the school to get rich and taken tax payer money and done nothing but squander it on their salaries and left the kids to God knows what. Why and how can this keep happening in a Democracy I’m alarmed and upset but I’m the choir and your preaching to it with me. How to get this message to everyone out their that loves kids without getting lost in the mass of PR put out by the reformers?
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No wonder Duffy, the ex head of the union for LAUSD ( Los Angeles) wanted to be principal of a Charter after he left office. Of course he did NOTHING for teachers and students in LA but hand us over to the reformers but he could see how he could get rich quick and he tried to go for it. Never could understand his motive before now.
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“The operator (family) is shopping for another sponsor.”
This is where I get tripped up. How is it possible for these people to be “shopping” for anything? These people should have their wardrobes provided for them (in stunning County Orange), along with three hots and a cot, by the taxpayers of Ohio.
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Outside of education, in any other realm, we would be calling this what it is: government contractors with no transparency and no competitive bidding process for sub-contractors.
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The Ohio Department of Ed jumped in and wrote a stern letter to charter school authorizers after the last scandal and round of closings.
That preempted any legislation to re-regulate, and let lawmakers claim the problem was solved. Newspapers chimed in to congratulate the ed reform community on their vigorous oversight and the status quo remained in place.
It’s been 15 years, Diane. They are never going to regulate these schools.
We use the federal model of “regulation” in Ohio, where we beg the contractor to pretty-please draft some “best practices” and then follow them. It’s very business-friendly.
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There won’t be much change in this arena until the Public at Large begins to realize that Running It Like A Business is just con artist code for Running It Like A Scam and Running It Into The Ground.
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I think there’s growing recognition in this state, actually. I think they’ve done real damage to their own reputations.
The same thing happened here with rip-off online for-profit colleges. It took a while for word to get around, but they’re completely discredited. Sadly, too late help those who took on 30k in debt, but it did get around.
I’m not in education so I look at it a little differently and I think one of your problems with THIS issue reaching a national tipping point is public schools are STATE-specific. They’re local.
The national narrative on charter schools is at odds with the lived reality in this state, and it takes a while for that disconnect between narrative and reality to come clear.
It will though. The two always collide. It just takes a long time.
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Totally agree. Hostile takeover of revenue stream, liquidation of assets, buildings, pensions. When did the movie Wall St. come out, the eighties? These guys have vampire capitalism down to an art form by now.
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But what happened to the unspoken but heartfelt charterite/privatizer edumantra of “unfettered greed will answer every need”?
Or is that the sound of the “invisible hand” of the real (not rheeal) market trying to slap us around?
😡
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It’s those Invisible Sharp Elbows you really gotta watch out for —
http://wikipediareview.com/index.php?showtopic=23108
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TAGO!
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Hi again –
I’ve written a draft of a petition to Congress. Comments?
We, the undersigned, petition Congress to hold hearings on the role of Bill Gates in the creation of the Common Core standards and their adoption by 45 states as well as 100 Catholic dioceses.
We believe the public has a right to know:
1. The mechanisms through which Mr. Gates seeks to “leverage private money in a way that redirects how public education dollars are spent” (“The Saturday Interview: Was the $5 Billion Worth It?,” Jason L. Riley, Wall Street Journal, 7/23/2011)
2. The sum total of public dollars redirected, and to what ends, as a result of Mr. Gates’s efforts
3. The identities of Mr. Gates’s “partners” in “work[ing] together to make sure the Common Core State Standards help teachers prepare their students for success.” Do Mr. Gates’s partners include state legislatures and boards of education? (“A Letter to Our Partners, Vicki Phillips, Director of Education, College Ready, 6/10/2014)
We take no position on the quality or desirability of the standards.
We seek, instead, a public investigation into and formal record of the process through which the Common Core standards and their adoption came to pass, and the role Mr. Gates and his foundation have played in that process.
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cijohn,
2 is not clear. What money is redirected?
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You guys might find this educational! 🙂
An actual legal expert’s analysis of the teacher tenure decision in California as opposed to, say, Michelle Rhee’s spin disguised as legal analysis:
Not only did the Obama Administration endorse an opinion that is poorly-reasoned and almost devoid of facts (within the opinion itself: I have no idea what the judge relied on in the “causation” section of the opinion) the Obama Administration also did this:
“But people think it will potentially have great political significance.
Oh, yeah. To the extent that it’s a persuasive opinion and to the extent that simply by somebody saying it then [it] becomes more permissible for other judges to say it — that it could have a legal impact in that way as well.”
So is it okay that the Obama Administration publicly endorsed this trial court opinion before it went up on appeal? Should they be held partly responsible if this opinion is broadly applied and extended, as seems likely given the immediate rush to extend it to other states?
http://www.salon.com/2014/06/19/this_is_a_b_student%E2%80%99s_opinion_why_the_education_reformers_latest_victory_is_built_on_sand/?utm_source=facebook&utm_medium=socialflow
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Here’s my theory, in the old days the greatest thinkers went into law. Now the upper half of critical thinkers end up in computer science or electrical engineering.
When they make that argument that teachers are the bottom of the academic barrel? I say, same goes for law students and business.
Looking at the current state of legal thought, I am struck by the lack of logic and critical thinking, and abundance of opinion and witchcraft.
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I don’t know; I think it’s suspect to go after whole professions whether it’s teachers or lawyers or judges.
My eldest son is in computer science as a career and he has the same complaints about that field as people in any other field have about theirs.
I DO think it’s amazingly tone-deaf for people in government to slam public schools, because, come on, there’s wide public recognition of lobbying and self-serving behavior by a lot of these ed reformers.
Why don’t they reform their own side of the street?
Exhibit A, Scott Walker, who seems to have some serious ethical issues:
http://www.jsonline.com/news/statepolitics/federal-judge-unseals-hundreds-of-documents-in-john-doe-probe-b99295017z1-263839791.html
I listen to them slam public schools and all I can think is “reform government!” “reform yourselves!”
Who are they kidding with this? Congress has like a 8% approval rating. Let’s talk about hard work and effectiveness, absolutely, except why is it limited to teachers?
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Chiara, I agree. I say all this in jest, just to point out how simple minded judgements are easy to concoct, yet ridiculous.
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It is amazing that Dr. Oz was called on the Congressional carpet & investigated for using words like ‘miracle’ ‘super drug’ and some other words related to weight loss & dieting. Seriously! Not to minimize his role & responsibilities. Seriously? Congressional Hearings for Dr. Oz, and Bill Gates can buy every US kid, do what he wants, take over US Education with the Obama Ponzi scheme, and Congress does not raise an eyebrow. Gates bought them too? His $$$ will never dry up & neither will American Greed.
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Oh, you don’t get the difference?
Stumping for cheap natural cures is just asking for a trip to the woodshed with Pharma Brown.
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Same bat time-same bat channel. Have we heard this story before? It is predictable…same crimes and abuses. Did I say crimes? Yes I think I did. What was the name of the school? Doesn’t matter – Just use the words success, achievement, academy, positive, basis, prep, and also magic and magical thinking.
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You want nepotism…..attend a private school. Oh, my!
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