Florida has low standards for opening and running charter schools. Oversight is almost non-existent.
The Eagle Arts Charter School is deep in a fincial hole and can’t pay its teachers.
”In a raucous board meeting on the school’s campus, Gregory Blount, the school’s executive director and founder, revealed that the financially struggling school has little money in the bank and that the school has been operating on short-term loans since November.
“The tumult raised fears that the 425-student school might be forced to close later this month if the school can’t persuade enough teachers to continue working.
“Accusing Blount of misleading the staff, the school’s two principals resigned during Monday’s board meeting, and the board chairman and the school’s special-education coordinator threatened to quit as well if Blount wasn’t removed from his position. Several other staffers also threatened to resign.
“I can no longer support something that I feel is an absolute charade,” board Chairman Tim Quinn said.
“Blount has been criticized for steering more than $150,000 of school money into his own companies since the school opened in 2014. In 2016, he was forced to repay $46,000 after The Palm Beach Post revealed that the school gave him the money in the guise of a loan.”
Diane Ravitch's blog 
“She then revealed that she had learned that, in the weeks before the school ran out of money to make payroll, Blount has directed a payment to his private company, Element Management Group, purportedly for “brand licensing” services.”
Blount has a whole set of subcontractors he’s paying- they’re all owned by him:
https://www.corporationwiki.com/p/2zdwup/element-management-group-inc
And Florida has known about the scam since 2015:
Eagle Arts Academy, one of Palm Beach County’s largest charter schools, opened last August with the goal of establishing a performing arts mecca for children on a sprawling campus in the heart of Wellington.
But while the publicly funded school ran up hundreds of thousands of dollars in debt and struggled to put in place its arts-infused curriculum, a Palm Beach Post investigation has found that it served a very different purpose: filling the bank accounts of its founder’s private businesses.
As the K-8 school opened last year, 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 events producer.
Though Blount’s company marketed itself to parents and the county school board as a “foundation” to support Eagle Arts, The Post found that the company is not a federally recognized nonprofit and that little of its revenue from uniform sales went to the school.
Blount’s company also offered after-school courses to students but charged them for the classes and kept the profits, Blount admitted. Though his business operated on school grounds for three months, records and interviews show it did so with no lease and paid no rent, an arrangement that a school district administrator called “unusual.”
https://www.mypalmbeachpost.com/news/local-education/investigation-founder-cashed-wellington-eagle-arts-charter/dYkrfrj0QAeOqCFQfYsj8N/
Have you noticed how the whole Deformer house of cards seems to be collapsing?
The rash of charter closings and frauds is just a symptom of massive systemic failure.
Criminologists will study this for years to come, like they study the massive fraud that led to the S&L Scandal and housing bubble.
It’s just another case of the totally predictable “problems” that result when you remove regulations.
Yes, Duncan’s pathetic article was evidence of the collapse of “reform”
The question then is: Will anything be learned by the powers that be from this and similar scandals?
My money is on NO!
Doesn’t mean we give up, just means we have to shove it down into overdrive: