Florida has more than 600 charter schools. It has a significant number of for-profit charter schools that make money on management fees and paying rent to their own corporations. Many charter schools have failed and closed. But charter schools fund candidates for the state legislature who support the expansion of charter schools, and some of their champions hold key positions in the state legislature.
Governor Rick Scott announced that he wants $100 million for construction and maintenance of charter schools. He didn’t mention whether he would propose any funding for construction or maintenance of public schools. At his side in Miami was the rapper Pitbull, famous for his misogynistic lyrics. The announcement was made at the charter school founded by Pitbull, called the Sports Leadership and Management Academy (SLAM). It is managed by the politically powerful Academica charter chain.
It is all about politics, money, and power. Not kids or education. Politics, money, and power.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
I sure would not want any of the people I vote for voting for something like this. But the 100 million amounts to the salary of an assistant administrator. One too many.
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This sounds so much like Indiana! Whose script are they following??
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ALEC’s
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Indiana has been following Florida’s script.Florida is where it all began with Jeb Bush. To think some States are upset about recently adopting A through F grading criteria for their schools. Florida has been doing that since about 1997.
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And in Utah, a bill would transfer a school with three years in a row of “failing” grades would be made into a charter school. Four schools have “failed” two years in a row. One of them is already a charter. Two more are on the Navajo reservation, and the other one might be on the Ute reservation. Here we go again: http://www.sltrib.com/news/2067872-155/bill-would-turn-failing-schools-into
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According to Florida School Choice.org, more than 270 have opened taken public money and failed.
http://jaxkidsmatter.blogspot.com/p/blog-page.html
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The public in Florida is being bilked by Scott and his pal, Jeb Bush. This is where accountability should be front and center. How can we justify spending millions on money making schemes that purport to offer students a quality education? States should be required to report the failure rates of charter schools and the amount of public money wasted on these failed ventures.
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Just the other day that dirt bag Scott was bragging about raising the per student allocation to a record high. What he fails to tell you is that the previous record high was in 2008 nearly 7 years ago. So what has he been doing all of these years in office? Even with his record per student spending, (the devil is in the details) when adjusted for inflation falls short of the 2008 per student spending. Florida is ass backwards on all fronts; housing, salaries, education ect. Here is the real kicker though; Florida now spends $7,176 per student. This is an abysmal number and definitely nothing to be bragging about and toting as a historic accomplishment as this pathetic excuse for a Governor has been doing.
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Why don’t they put charter facilities funding to Florida voters? Find out if people want to invest public money in facilities that are owned by a private entity.
Because when they DO put it to voters, it fails:
“Voters, for the first time, are being asked to approve local property tax funds for independently run charter schools. The Charter school sharing proposal is the most controversial policy aspect of the $75 million request.”
“All the people that I talked with that there was no way in the world that they were going to vote for a combined levy sharing money with charter schools,” Wiles said.
The charter sharing plan was first recommended by the mayor’s education commission and then approved by the school board. But it took a change in state law to allow local tax funding of charters.”
It went down 60/40.
http://wosu.org/2012/news/2013/10/21/charter-schools-would-benefit-from-levy/
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Scott prefers to operate in the shadows behind closed doors. He and the complicit legislature prefer to vote when the press and public have gone home. That’s what they did with a voucher bill last year.
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No surprise. Scott should be in federal prison not in any elected position for his role as CEO of Columbia-HCA’s $1.7 billion medicare fraud.
http://www.tampabay.com/blogs/the-buzz-florida-politics/hca-whistleblower-revives-claim-that-scott-knew-of-fraud/2200916
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Ah, the rise of the edupreneurs in all their glory! And one of the most glorious of all, Mr. Armando “Pitbull” Pérez. His Own Bad Self!
😏
Well known expert in 21st century cage busting achievement gap crushing pedagogy, creatively disrupting all those tired old notions of teaching and learning and such. Rheeally! And in the most Johnsonally sort of ways!
😕
From “Juicebox” on the album REBELUTION (2009), begins with and repeats:
“Money, ay, oh, ay, oh, ay, oh, wah
Money, ay, oh, ay, oh, ay, oh, wah
Money
I want, I need, I like to get
Money, money, money, money
I want, I need, I like to get
Money, money, money, I like”
😧
His students are going to learn a lot from him.
Like the price of everything and the value of nothing.
Really!
😎
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Maybe he can teach them how to market drugs, his earlier profession.
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retired teacher: but if you’re an “education reformer” don’t you want to teach students to respect and emulate entrepreneurs?
😎
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Who owns the facilities after the public finishes paying for them? Who is the title owner? Pitbull’s company?
How is that a good deal for the public? Would any of the Wall Streeters who are backing this pay for property where they get no ownership interest? Of course not. Why do they want us to?
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Just a guess but I don’t think the public ever finishes paying for the charter chain facilities.
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And yet charter school funding will remain in ESEA seemingly unchallenged. And what about the plans to revise funding of Title I to divert funds from poor children to the private sector? http://publicschoolscentral.com/2015/01/16/esea-reauthorization-beware-whats-on-the-table-and-whats-under-the-table/
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Democrats decided they’d just ask for testing of public school students. There won’t be any money to go along with it. That’s not their “line in the sand” priority. Just tests!
It’s a great deal. All stick, no carrot, unless you’re a charter school.
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Your link offers insights into how privatizers may be able to subvert the invent of Title I funds. The potential for abuse is alarming!
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Thank you, retired teacher. It truly is alarming.
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Fiscal conservatives strike again! They buying of the Florida legislature and others look so much like the NY legislature in the 1800s being bought and sold during the steamship and railroad wars.
It really only about money and whatever it takes to get there.
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“Fiscal conservatives” are as mythical as unicorns. Anytime someone proclaims themselves one, hide your wallet.
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please comment on my blog posts its required for a grade in my web class. Thanks!
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Might help to include a link, but then again it might not since this seems to be spam of some sort.
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If you click on her name it takes you to a blog that has nothing to do with education.
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Why do I think money laundering when I read a post like this? $100 million proposed by a fellow convicted of the largest Medicare fraud in US history too date. Yikes! And the re-elected this moron.
http://www.politifact.com/florida/statements/2014/mar/03/florida-democratic-party/rick-scott-rick-scott-oversaw-largest-medicare-fra/
Some, but not a lot of sympathy for Floridians. He should have been ousted!
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The other choice was garbage as well! No difference when the two choices both will ultimately lead to the same outcomes
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NB: And they re-elected this moron.
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The Florida ALEC reformists are also destroying democracy by preparing, yet again, to circumvent the will of the people, who voted twice for the class size amendment to our state constitution. The state board of education was quoted this week talking about how they can modify the small class size requirements through legislation since they couldn’t get the voters to do so. It chilled me to the bone but didn’t seem to faze the reporter or the board members.
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The class size amendment was never funded appropriately. That is the way they killed it from ever truly becoming law. In my former District, they just simply waited until the FTE counts had to go to Tallahassee and then shortly after they would load your classes up to around 26 or 27 knowing damn well the limit was 22. But on paper they looked and seemed compliant. Another scam is that Tallahassee directly negotiates with class size amendment violating Districts and cuts their fines by as much as 80%. So I ask, what incentive is there to follow a law if the people who are supposed to be enforcing the law are merely doling out slaps on the wrist for the violators? Currently, the State is allowing for the use school wide averages to determine class size in order to further mask the schemes they have perpetuated on the voting public. This ploy is no different than the Charters who collect the per pupil funding from the State for certain students who they know they do not want attending their schools and shortly after the Charters recieve those funds, they remove or withdraw those students all while pocketing the yearly appropriated funds for those students in mention. The cost is then shifted and absorbed by the Public Schools all while the Charters basically engaged in an act of theft only to get off Scott free (no pun intended). They don’t call it Floriduh for nothing!
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As a public school teacher I am enraged at our situation in Florida. Just this year we lost more than 300 students to a local charter chain (the nearby Academica). Because of this they relocated 16 teachers, closed the third floor, and the library is closed for the students with no librarian. I called around to neighboring schools and the situation is just as bad at other schools. Now I am stuck in a room of 40 or so students in which 20% barely speak english and I have major behavioral problems that charters don’t have to deal with. How much longer can we stand for this? Has the democratic party abandoned its union interests? It is time for real “Systemic Reform” that works.
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You are absolutely correct. The scheme is working to perfection. My former school had a total population of over 1500 students in 2010. Today those student numbers are a little over 700. Charters are sprouting up everywhere and killing off the remaining Public Schools. One example I can think of is Renaissance Charter School; in my area they have 2 schools less than 3 miles apart from each other and are currently planning on opening others. Talk about cornering the market! Don’t put your faith in the Democratic Party they have been bought a long time ago by Corporate interests and in principle are no different from Republicans.
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