Given the recent scandal over Jumoke Academy and its sponsor, FUSE, you would think the State Board of Education and State Commissioner Stefan Pryor would be extra careful when authorizing new charters, but you would be wrong.
Civil rights attorney Wendy Lecker writes here about the Board’s perfunctory scrutiny of applicants and the absence of any due diligence when someone wants a charter. The charter world, it turns out, is very cozy indeed. Michael Sharpe, the ex-CEO of Jumoke Academy was supposed to run a new charter called Booker T. Washington Academy in New Haven. After Sharpe resigned, the founder of the school wanted to proceed without Sharpe.
“Given Pryor’s and the Board’s gross negligence in allowing the first application to sail through without scrutiny, it was incumbent upon them to exert real oversight when the BTWA founder, Reverend Eldren Morrison, decided he still wanted to open a charter school. Since the original application was invalidated, Pryor and the Board should have required that BTWA repeat the same legally required process all charter school applicants must undergo.
“Instead, Commissioner Pryor and the State Board of Education rushed through a “modified” application ignoring both the charter law and SDE’s own procedure, which mandated, among other things, a local public hearing. The cut-and-pasted new application was presented directly to the State Board on August 4.
“Astoundingly, the State Board once again abdicated its responsibility and approved this modified application without any scrutiny.
“The most outrageous illustration of the Board’s negligence was its treatment of the school’s new director, John Taylor. Taylor, who had worked at the Northeast Charter Schools Network, co-founded by Michael Sharpe, touted his success founding and running a charter high school in Albany, called Green Tech.
“One board member questioned his record there, based on an article in Albany’s Times-Union. The newspaper reported that when Taylor ran the school, performance was abysmal- with a four-year graduation rate of only 36 percent and only 29 percent of students passing the English Language Arts Regents exam.
“When confronted with this data, Mr. Taylor flatly denied this report, claiming he had wanted a retraction from the newspaper.
“A quick check of the New York State Education Department website proves that the Times-Union`s data were accurate. Moreover, my source confirmed that Mr. Taylor never requested a retraction.”
Furthermore, writes Lecker, the close connections of the cozy charter world demand scrutiny, yet there is none:
“The new application is rife with dubious connections. Derrick Diggs of Diggs Construction Company submitted a letter of recommendation for the initial BTWA. Now, Diggs Construction will be handling the renovations for the new BTWA’s temporary and permanent buildings; which cost several hundred thousand taxpayer dollars. Jeff Klaus wrote a letter of recommendation for the initial application. Klaus’ wife is Dacia Toll, CEO of Achievement First Charter chain. Achievement First now has a contract with BTWA to provide professional development; and Achievement First is subletting its vacant building to BTWA as its temporary home. BTWA will return to AF a building renovated on the public dime. Given the self-dealing that permeated FUSE/Jumoke, it is shocking that the Board did not probe these questionable relationships.”
Neither the State Commissioner nor the State Board is willing to scrutinize these relationships. The situation is ripe for more trouble. No one is minding the taxpayers’ dollars or the children’s well-being.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
This is how I see charter schools. Please correct me if I’m wrong:
Laws now allow private individuals to take over urban schools, mainly those that serve children of color, and turn them into private enterprises. As long as these privateers save money for the cash-strapped cities, they will be rewarded with profits and almost no oversight.
What I don’t understand is this: Where are the taxpayer watchdogs, the Civil Rights people, the media? I just don’t understand how and why this charter fraud has been allowed to flourish.
If you can explain how this happened and why it’s allowed to continue, I’d be grateful. Thanks.
Great questions. Although we can all see the cynicism of the charter advocates who say that school choice (= the option of a charter) is the civil rights issue of our time, quite a lot of people who should be sympathetic to the plight of children in distressed, poor districts are too busy moving to places where their children can go to upper class, lavishly funded public schools. Taxpayer watchdogs? No one wants to face the fact that equitable funding, so that public schools in poor districts look like public schools in Greenwich, means rethinking the tax structure and the way the state pays for public education.
In other words, “I don’t care what is done with these schools, as long as it doesn’t affect my kids.” Sadly, you are probably right.
What people don’t understand is this: “Those kids” are our kids and if we don’t concern ourselves with equitable access to a quality education, it will hurt continue to hurt all of us, as it does now.
The rub is, Linda, that the charters do not save the city or county money.
las, the funding follows the pupils with ADA, average daily attendance, funding which is paid for by the taxpayers. The charters scim off the best of the public school students and leave the hard to teach, the special needs, and the English language learners, for the taxpayers to fund while they are in the public school system.
Plus embedded charters, in existing school sites, are legally allowed to demand equal facilities such as playing fields, auditoriums, libraries, etc.
In addition, these public schools then are subject to mass failures of CC testing and lose their federal funding while teachers are blamed and fired. It is a conundrum that can only be solved by educating the American public as to how they are being scammed by Wall Street and Washington, DC.
The game afoot has only one rule — kick the cash box down the road to any player who will kick a “choice” bit of it back to the starting kicker.
I don’t see how the charters are saving taxpayer dollars versus public school expenditures. The principals and supers of charters make 2 or 3 x what the dupe of an entire district earns, and there are initial expenditures of building or renovations, and rent. Also top heavy administrations and management companies. Where is the $aving$?
They save money by hiring lots of TFA, novice teachers who make less money, staff with alternative or non-existent credentials, etc. Having students sit in front of computer screens with a non-certified “proctor” or tutor means you can have 50 students per adult… Don’t forget the Family Urban Schools of Excellence (FUSE) penchant for hiring individuals with criminal records.
“dupe”
TAGO❢
These charters usually take less money than the traditional schools and then make it work by paying teachers less and providing fewer resources and services for the children.
In Utah, many legislators also have their hands in the charter school money pot, thus even if the charters cost taxpayers more, you’d never know it, as they wouldn’t want to shut off their stream of cash and a good source of employment for their numerous (unqualified) family members.