Florida is a welcoming state for charter school. It is easy to win approval to open, there is virtually no supervision or accountability, and public money flows freely based on enrollment.
In this environment, problems are inevitable.
The latest mess is the Eagle Arts Academy, a charter school in Palm Beach.
“Like hundreds of families before them, Jill Sheffield and her mother walked the halls of Eagle Arts Academy last summer with growing excitement.
“Touring the sprawling campus, the shy 11-year-old and her mother followed the school’s director across the dance studio’s shiny wood floors, through the guitar-filled music room, and into the gleaming computer lab, listening as he explained the school’s focus on arts and creativity.
“Everybody walking out of there was just like ‘Oh my God, this school is going to be amazing,’” Jill’s mother, Ashley, recalled later.
“But when school started in August, many classrooms had no textbooks. The principal resigned abruptly in the first week. The second principal was gone a few weeks later. The third one left two weeks after that.
“Soon, teachers were being fired or leaving in droves. Mothers complained that their children were not being enrolled in art classes. And then a fed-up parent put together an online petition to remove the school’s director, who responded by calling police.
“Before long, Jill and her mother realized that instead of signing up for an idealized education in academics and arts, they were watching a school be consumed by chaos, an unraveling that many parents say made it impossible for their children to learn and — in some cases — set their educations back by a year or more.
“It wasn’t supposed to be this way. When it opened in 2014, Eagle Arts – blessed with a compelling arts-themed marketing pitch and an enviable location on the campus of a former private school – had the makings of a marquee school.
“But by the time classes started this year, educators say erratic leadership, financial mismanagement and constant staff turnover had left the publicly financed charter school — one of Palm Beach County’s largest — opening its doors with a D grade from the state, a trail of spending controversies and some of the lowest student achievement in the county.
“Since then, parents and former employees say the school has been shaken by even more upheaval as its quick-tempered founder, Gregory James Blount, assumed direct control and drove it into deeper crisis, engaging in repeated confrontations with teachers, parents and administrators, including shouting fits that happened, in some cases, within earshot of children.”
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Oh, Florida just loves incompetence!
Watch this! http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/frontline/film/poverty-politics-and-profit/
SCAMS are the American Way! Sickening.
The Eagle Arts Academy highlights a major problem of many charters. They are conceived and implemented by rank amateurs that may have a global vision, but have no experience or training in education. Public schools have rules and regulations that ensure minimum safety standards and minimum qualifications for administrators and teachers. Non-educators have no idea of the planning and monitoring of all the moving parts that go into creating an effective school. Children become guinea pigs for someone’s grand vision that may be “free of bureaucracy,” and also free of content.
Devaluing experience is part of what led to Donald Trump.
This stupid idea has come back to bite all of us. What did they think was going to happen when they pushed the idea that it doesn’t matter what you know or what you have worked on? They thought that wouldn’t be applied TO THEM?
They believe in the “miracles of the free market” without any understanding about children, teaching, learning and project management.
Ah, but they’re unhampered by regulation and a “19th century mindset” !
These people know how markets are supposed to work, right? There are winners and losers. Markets aren’t about “equity”. Public schools may not be about equity either but the idea that schools run by contractors will fix that problem is delusional. “Markets” never promised anything like that. Ed reformers grafted their talking points onto a theory that was never intended to produce the result they claim to want.
Some rules are helpful like fire drills, crisis plans, fire exits, safe water quality, a school nurse with resources etc. If we can’t keep children safe, we really can’t do much else.
Reblogged this on David R. Taylor-Thoughts on Education.
See this about the same school, from a brilliant blogger
http://curmudgucation.blogspot.com/2015/07/florida-charter-scam-part-23174.html
Eagle Arts Investigation started three years ago in the Palm Beach Post: (Founder cashed in on Wellington’s Eagle Arts Charter)
July 9, 2015 : “Eagle Arts Academy opened last August with the goal of establishing a performing arts mecca. The school ran up hundreds of thousands of dollars in debt and struggled to put in place its arts-infused curriculum. Palm Beach Post investigation found that it served a very different purpose: filling the bank accounts of its founder’s private businesses.
“Eagle Arts Academy required its roughly 680 students to buy high priced uniform shirts from a company set up by founder Gregory James Blount, a former model and event producer.” Blount said he became interested in starting a charter after emerging from personal bankruptcy in 2010 and operating a small business that gave acting and modeling classes.
“Blount marketed his company to parents and the county school board as a “foundation” to support Eagle Arts,
the company is not a federally recognized nonprofit and little of its revenue from uniform sales went to the school.”
Blount arranged for his company to receive a contract to create the school’s art-infused curriculum despite the fact that he had no education background and had never designed a curriculum.
Chaos at Eagle Arts: Are kids being educated- Palm Beach Post investigation May 14, 2017. The school is into its third year. So the real question is are the people in Florida education agency’s, elected school board members, superintendent’s office, and district charter school offices doing a good enough job monitoring charters . The Palm Beach County director of the district’s charter school office said that if Eagle Arts continues to struggle to educate students, “it’s possible termination could be set.”