California must be so flush with cash that it simply doesn’t care how many millions are lost to charter school scams.
In California, accountability ranges between lax to non-existent, and charter leaders use public money with no oversight. Sometimes they are honest; sometimes they are not. Does it matter? Apparently the public doesn’t mind squandering its tax dollars to help charter owners get rich.
“LIVERMORE — An audit released Thursday suggests Livermore’s two charter schools misappropriated public funds, including a tax-except bond totaling $67 million, and mainly pointed the finger at former CEO Bill Batchelor.
“The audit was ordered by the Alameda County Office of Education in November and conducted by the Fiscal Crisis & Management Assistance Team (FCMAT).
“Analysis shows that the Tri-Valley Learning Corporation, which oversees the charter schools: Failed to disclose numerous conflict-of-interest relationships; diverted, commingled and/or misappropriated public funds, including tax-exempt public bonds totaling over $67 million with various private entities; and contributed to an environment of significantly deficient internal controls, according to a county statement.
“The lack of internal controls coupled with financing schemes designed to divert millions of dollars by Batchelor and others through relationships fostered between board members, close associates and other professionals with his nonprofit public and private companies created an environment that made it possible for the essential elements of fraud to occur,” the report states.
“The audit states that internal controls were “so weak” that Batchelor was able to divert $2.7 million of public charter school funds without any supporting documents, covering a span of five years.
“Nathan Ballard, Batchelor’s spokesman, maintained Batchelor’s innocence.
“Mr. Batchelor is innocent of any wrongdoing, and this audit doesn’t change that fact. He is just seeing the audit for the first time, but one thing is clear: Its conclusions are vague and are based a series of inaccurate assumptions,” Ballard said.
“The audit revealed that Batchelor controlled to some degree eight different entities at once during the time that a 2015 bond was issued for TVLC.
“TVLC and California Preparatory Academy went before the Alameda County Board of Supervisors to seek approval for a $30 million municipal bond to finance the purchase of a new high school building at 3090 Independence Drive in May 2015.
“The bond was approved and the Livermore Valley Charter Prep high school and the private school now share the same space.
“At the time of the bond, Batchelor, was the manager of Goldstone United Investments — the seller of the buildings and owner of the land purchased with public bonds. Batchelor was also the owner of California Preparatory Academy and San Francisco Bay Preparatory Academy, which were the co-tenants to the property at 3090 Independence Drive in Livermore.
“FCMAT points out conflicts of interests that Batchelor did not report. The paperworks reveals “a significant lack of disclosure of numerous entities in which Batchelor represented both sides of contracts and lease agreements, which benefited him personally.”
Here is a link to the audit.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Seems like the normal now on these charter school scams. Private 1% er for profit for public education, what else would you expect out of the POS betsy devos family and mindset?
This charter school situation in California has been in process long before Trump/deBos (and Obama and his basketball buddy) butchery of public school education.
Charter School law passed in 1994 and we have been going downhill ever since. With the advent of the 2010 Parental Involvement law (parent trigger), which is full of holes, our most diverse and populace state now has the wealthy colluding with legislators to impose charters on us. And with only a 7.3% voter turnout for school board elections as the one only weeks ago, those of us who do NOT sit quietly, but fight back every day, are in a quandry.
Not all charters are scams, and some like Alliance are reaping awards for high graduation and college entry records. But many are run by grifters who belong in prison. If enough of the public does not give a damn, then they should pay the huge tax assessments to cover the costs of the CEOs high living. I have grown to think that too many fellow citizens are too ignorant and uninformed to vote for anyone or anything….yet they did come out to vote for the worst administration in history.
And like the banksters, none of these grifters and cheats who run so many charters are NEVER indicted. Our entire system is full of mold.
Ellen, I am doing face-to-face voter outreach for Swing Left in CA-10. I find profound ignorance among the adult population. They don’t know their representative. They don’t have a clear idea of what Congress is. They don’t know about the policies. They don’t understand how voting could make a difference in their lives. They think both parties are the same, or don’t know much about the parties. They don’t have any conception of how democracy is better than despotism. As a teacher, I am not surprised. There is a significant percentage of kids (at least 25% in my district) who drift through school without ever paying attention. This is not hyperbole. They simply tune out the lesson. Their mind is on socializing, their phone, their daydreams. But EVEN IF they listened, what would they learn? Thanks to Dewey and his heirs, the project of transmitting knowledge is on its last leg. Making sure kids memorize how a bill is passed? Stultifying drill and kill! Lower level thinking! Regurgitation! The brainwashing of our teaching force is almost complete. Teachers are after much loftier game than mere facts these days: critical thinking skills! Problem solving skills! 21st Century Skills! Complex text reading skill! Writing skill! Sadly, these are chimeras, and the real gold we need to impart, knowledge of the world, is hidden away from the kids. How can we expect anything other than an ignorant electorate if ed school orthodoxy expressly denigrates transmitting knowledge?
My dear colleague Ponderosa…your observations coincide with mine, and you do indeed say a mouthful. Suggest Diane use your statement as a post, for your reporting reflects the endemic problems American public education is facing, and this IMO is a reflection of the greater horrors of our society.
We in California have the nation’s greatest number of hard to teach, ELL, and probably even Special Ed students with almost the lowest ADA funding in the country. The philosophy of our free market economy, which has presented for decades entertainment and technology that leads to the lowest common denominator of education, now wants to solve a problem of its own creation.
‘Pop’ culture and advertising, plus easy credit to keep most people in life-long debt, combined with the primary goals of the nation to make the most money possible for any and all products, and the Balkanized philosophy of newcomers to the US who live in isolation from the greater community, have made us a land of enraged separatists who are mainly lazy undereducated thinkers.
Now it is Trump who leads this charge for keeping the focus on ‘differences’ rather than on ‘similarities’, and creating ‘the other’ on all sides, which makes for more anger and hatred and misplaced blame.
Unless more people become better educated and involved, I think our noble ‘democratic republic’ experiment is headed for the graveyard. Fox faux news is not filling the bill in developing informed voters. I have been in this public policy business for all my long life and have little faith that we can turn this around without a dangerous civil uprising.
Re Alliance charter schools — I have a young friend who’s a teacher in one of them and is leading a unionizing effort — she’s been quoted a lot in national press coverage. Alliance has violated a number of laws in its effort to crush that crusade. But also, my friend says Alliance blatantly handpicks its students and imposes illegal requirements on parents so as to weed out less successful students and those with unsupportive, unmotivated families. So all praise of them needs to include those enormous asterisk.
Thanks Caroline for this important asterisk. Alliance has been adamantly anti union. Best wishes to your young teacher friend for hanging in and fighting to unionize.
Nathan Ballard, spokesperson for the charter operator, has longtime San Francisco and statewide Democratic Party ties, as a publicist/strategist — he has worked for Lt. Gov. Gavin Newsom (likely next governor), and is tied to current San Francisco Mayor Ed Lee. But lately, he is specializing in damage control. This is an interesting sub-specialty in PR, in which the press (and the clued-in public) immediately recognizes that the client is in deep trouble if the damage-control specialist suddenly pops up as the spokesperson.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nathan_Ballard
Caroline in SF,
Where is Gavin Newsom on charter issues?
Newsom is progressive compared to Eli Broad’s lapdog Democratic gubernatorial candidate, Antonio Villaraigosa. Big Charter and Big Oil donate to every Democratic politician in Democratic California, though.
Newsom doesn’t have a track record on charter schools (as opposed to Villaraigosa, as LeftCoastTeacher points out). When he first ran for San Francisco mayor in (I believe, without checking) 2003 against a candidate from the left who came close to beating him, though, Newsom made a point of speaking up for S.F. public schools, while the left/progressive candidate (Matt Gonzalez) was oblivious to the issue, ignored the school community almost entirely, and made some pro-charter statements. This was back in the day when left/progressives weren’t at all clued in that charters were based on far-right free-market policies and admired the “whoopee, no rules” aspect. So public-education supporters who were paying close attention viewed Newsom as their champion. That was a long time ago, but it’s something.
There is a far better candidate running for Governor…his name is JOHN CHIANG. Over the past 15 years he has filled various roles in California government and has been highly successful in each role. He brings intelligence and ethical behavior to his candidacy, unlike the others mentioned here who were embroiled in personal scandals.
Newsom is a light weight who should not continue to feed at the public trough. And Villaraigosa is both a lightweight charter lover and a Broad puppet and was a terrible Mayor in LA. Both of these men were involved in personal sex scandals and left each left their cities, San Francisco and Los Angeles, in worse condition that they found them. Google them for info.
I would hope that NPE chooses to endorse JOHN CHIANG.
It’s painfully obvious that the United States, thanks to the conservative-dominated U.S. Supreme Court and the ruling on Citizens United has set the stage for legalized fraud of public funds and turned the U.S. Constitutional Republic into a crime ridden oligarchy ruled by a flock of demons known as greedy, narcissistic, serial lying, psycho billionares.
The Kremlin’s Agent Orange, that serial lying, psycho, the malignant narcissist in the White House is not alone. He is one of many greedy abusive, autocrats with too much money and power.
Are they even human or are they a corrupted, deranged sub species that crawled out of the slime?
Totally agree, Lloyd. Love your comments and your last line.
While canvassing yesterday I spoke to an articulate Jewish woman who supports Trump. I got the impression that she wants an authoritarian leader who will keep us safe and make the whiny liberals and lazy people shut up. I have such a horror of authoritarianism. I wish our schools made it a priority to teach about authoritarian regimes. We can’t leave learning this knowledge to chance. It seems to me the only way to make people deeply appreciate democracy and separation of powers.
Yes, the deplorable fools fall for the authoritarian’s false promises of safety and secure jobs, and then end up with a worse situation, a monster full of greed, a fascist, a hater of all things decent thinking he is an orange haired human god without fleas and lice but he is infested.
Ignorance is an excuse I will not accept from the deplorable fools once they wake up – if they wake up. As Lincoln said “some people can be fooled all of the time” because they love being ignorant (know-it-alls).
Here is what newly elected board member, Nick Melvin, said about charter oversight in the LA Times article you already posted.
”Some charters have been around for 25 years,” Melvoin said. “Why can’t there be a reauthorization process that’s less laborious [for them] than for new charters?
This is a very dangerous position for him to take. Charters, like traditional schools, change leadership on a regular basis. For charters, that means that new board members routinely replace older board members. As a result, attempts to lessen oversight of any charter, regardless of how long the school has been in existence, would signal increased opportunities for more charter fraud, waste and abuse.