The Los Angeles Times published an article exposing the bloated expenses and income of the CEO of the Celerity Charter chain.
No shame or embarrassment. The charter chain defended the CEO’s salary and perks.
http://www.latimes.com/local/education/la-me-edu-celerity-response-20170321-story.html
Diane Ravitch's blog 
You could hire 4 teachers with half his salary. Think how many students would benefit from the smaller class size. We started our school year (in Philadelphia) with three 4th grades, each having 20 students. Because of budget constraints we lost one of the fourth grade teachers.
So now we have 2 fourth grades with 28 students in each and one 3rd/4th split. The impact on the quality of of a students learning experience when you cram 28 kids into one room with a host of academic and social challenges can’t be over stated!
This CEO shod be both ashamed and embarrassed.
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They should prolly rename it Celebrity Charter, cuz their CEO sure gets paid like one.
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Or, like another predatory cult located in LA, Scientology, just turn it into a Celebrity Center.
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It is this type of behavior, when made public, will help to make the case against charters’ crooked practices help garner support for democratic public schools in which the public has access to records with built in accountability. I wonder how much a teacher is paid in this charter? Communities need to realize that millions of dollars are falling into the hands of the people at the top while they often hire minimally trained people that actually work with the students. Many charters are operated by scammers and grifters.
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“Unused sick time” accounts for roughly $200,000 she’s received. At her rate of pay (which even at $267,000 is obscene), that’s roughly 200 sick days, give or take. How many sick days does she get a year? How many years has she worked there?
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I have written here about Celerity a number of times in the past few weeks. The LA Times did an incisive investigative article on the CEO and her schools some weeks ago in which they detailed her profligate spending, including designer clothing, using the non profit charter schools credit card. She ostensibly, when caught, did pay back some charges. However she used the taxpayer money to drive around in chauffeured limos, fly first class to luxury resort meetings, and further enrich herself at the public’s expense. For all this, she has been allowed to continue opening charter schools beyond those in California.
The ludicrous juxtaposition reported by the Times first article, was the small salaries that teachers are paid, the lack of repairs to the crumbling facilities, and the fact that education accouterements such as pencils and paper, books, etc, have teachers paying for them out of their own pockets. The photo of the students shows them mainly to be Black children walking with crossed hands (and sad faces) as though in prayer, wearing expensive looking uniforms.
Another coffin nail in the lax oversight of charters and their highly paid CEOs.
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Speaking of the LA Times today, and ed issues.
George Skelton, our respected Sacramento reporter, today writes of “free state college tuition” and calls it “the right idea…the wrong plan” and I agree.
He states the “soak-the-rich” financing based on the past elections whereby our Guv Brown convinced us to vote for his Prop.30, promising it as a “one time tax the rich” plan. Then, in turn about, in our recent election, with Prop.57, this same funding was a redo, but for the next 12 years, to find cash for K -12.
Bad idea, bad legislation, that I wrote about at great length here months ago. Terrible way to fund Ca.education perpetually on the backs of a small group of moderately high earners starting at $250K. If that proposition had been for the true high earners, starting at $5 M, and had it been for a greater rate, it would have brought in far more money…but the outcome has been to drive more high earners to leave the state to join our neighbors and reside in Nevada which has NO state income tax. Ca. has the highest tax in the nation. And no one mentioned, at least no one but ME, that the 12 year, “soak the rich” proposition which won handily, also funds CHARTER SCHOOLS.
When out of state endorsers decide “soak the rich” is the way to go, watch out, for those folks what are thousands of miles from our state have no real insight into the long range damage they are doing. If a really creative and long lasting funding source were to be proposed, it would pass without the input of interlopers into California elections.
Wonder how NY taxpayers would react to Californians endorsing endless new taxes for them to pay? Wonder how many in NY who have both earned and investment income of $250K would react?
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Sorry..typo…meant folks WHO are thousands of miles away….
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Just a few months ago, another California charter chain got in trouble for what appears to be a very similar situation:
http://www.ocregister.com/articles/school-736820-oxford-charter.html
Los Angeles Assemblyman, Jones-Sawyer, has introduced a bill, AB 1478, that appears to extend the conflict of interest and open records requirement for charter schools to include their EMOs. Can’t wait to see how the California Charter School Association will respond to this. Clearly, if this passes, it will severely limit profit-making opportunities for those who have taken advantage of this apparent legal loop hole.
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