A former certified public accountant who helped hide the tax evasion by the leader of Pennsylvania’s first cyber charter was sentenced to prison for a year and a day.
The founder of the Pennsylvania Cyber Charter School, Nicholas Trombetta, will be sentenced later this month.
Trombetta scammed $8 million and didn’t pay taxes. By some fluke in the law, he was not charged with theft of public’s money, but only with failing to pay taxes on the money he stole.
The school was the state’s first cyber charter. It had 10,000 students, each producing a revenue of $10,000 to the school. That’s $100 million, just lying around. What was Trombetta to do with all that dough?
Don’t you think the legislature might reconsider the need for regulation and oversight of these sweet deals? No accountability, no transparency, no supervision. Just lots of money.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Pennsylvania still hasn’t regulated charter schools, even after this case and even after a decade of auditor’s reports where the auditor is pleading for regulation.
This won’t be the last operator going to prison. The sad part is how much they’ll rob in the meantime.
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And, if the guilty receive prison sentences, that costs taxpayers $60,000 a year, an expenditure that enriches private prisons backed by ALEC.
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What would it take for Pennsylvania to regulate charter schools, I wonder?
A spectacular scandal, like the one in Ohio, where 80 million dollars went missing? The largest scandal in dollar amounts in Ohio history?
That’s coming! It’s just a matter of time. Michigan will have one too.
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They need to vote out a bunch of grifters in the legislature, many of whom are making money from charters. Pennsylvania needs to overhaul the state legislature.
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I think it’s like what Lloyd said about Trumplings, always tainted bigly.
The attitude of Let’s disrupt, Let’s act fast, Let’s pretend there’s an immediate dire threat! attracts space-case zealots and scam artists.
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I do hope the good people of Pennsylvania vote out the crooked cabal in the legislature to help the commonwealth digs itself out of the hole that reckless privatization has produced. Taxpayers should be livid and eager for change.
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Center on Reinventing Public Education
In our #personalizedlearning study, we found that often teachers still directed most of the activity in the classrooms instead of enabling students to direct their own learning. How can leaders better support innovation?
Public school families should really be following the ed reform lobby and their hard sell of “personalized learning”
I don’t think public school families support sticking teachers on the sidelines and letting ed tech platforms direct all instruction. If you’ve seen personalized learning in action you know that when the teachers are sidelined we end up with the various canned ed tech platforms setting the agenda.
This is a bad idea and they’re all pushing it in unison with no dissent and no real analysis. This WILL land in your public school- lawmakers listen to these people and they get no input from people who work in public schools or public school families.
Please, please don’t sink a ton of money into this without getting some information from someone who doesn’t have a vested interest in selling you product. You will regret it. Don’t buckle to the pressure to adopt their agenda.
Like charter mania and voucher mania and teacher ranking mania, “personalized learning” is being oversold and it’s being sold by the same people who pushed all that other stuff. This movement is an echo chamber.
The LAST people public schools should be turning to for advice is people who are ideologically opposed to the continued existence of public schools.
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Chiara,
I suggest you check with the CPRE website and see how many people on staff have ever been a teacher
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There’s a new genre in ed reform opinion writing:
https://www.the74million.org/article/chris-cerf-when-support-is-no-longer-mandated-it-must-be-earned-how-will-the-unions-rise-to-that-challenge-under-janus/
It’s people who are opposed to labor unions “advising’ labor unions.
It’s like hiring an ed reformer for advice on a public school.
People who oppose the existence of labor unions are the not the best people to advise on labor unions.
Stop taking advice from people who oppose your schools and for God’s sake don’t pay them for it. They oppose your school. If they had their druthers your public school would not exist. Why are you paying them as experts and advisers?
If you must pay experts (and I’m not sure you should) at least find someone who values your students, your families, your teachers and your school. You have enough opponents among our current crop of politicians in DC and statehouses. Don’t hire them yourselves and pay them with public school funds! That’s nuts.
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“NBC4 recently revealed some shocking information about the way ECOT, Ohio’s now-defunct online charter school, was spending your tax dollars.
The state auditor’s office confirmed ECOT students were paid to attend their own graduation and take state tests. It said because the policy was approved by ECOT’s board and sponsor, the payments were legal. The auditor’s office said it has no legal authority over policies like this.
ECOT students from across the state claimed they were paid $25 to $50 to attend their own commencement and take state tests. Even lawmakers who are charged with funding state education did not know ECOT was spending money this way.”
The ECOT graduations were political events for ed reformers. Prominent ed reformers like Jeb Bush would use the graduations to promote privatization and schmooze with other ed reform lobbyists.
None of them ever showed up for a PUBLIC school graduation in Ohio. Only ECOT got the attention of the ed reform national celebrities.
“Gloria Livingstone, whose son graduated from ECOT in 2013, said in hindsight she thinks lawmakers looked the other way.
“Really made me mad if in any way my son was used as a pawn in this political fiasco that this was,” she said. “I can’t remember ever, anybody ever being paid to go to their graduation, that just blew me away.”
https://www.nbc4i.com/news/investigates/critics-react-to-ecot-s-use-of-tax-dollars-to-pay-students/1296708487
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Imagine if a public school district in Ohio had done 1/10th of the stuff ECOT got away with- people would be in jail.
Nothing has happened to anyone associated with the school. There has been no accountability at all for the loss of 80 million dollars.
When Columbus public schools cooked the books on enrollment stats the auditor raided the schools with armed agents. There were arrests and trials. Public school employees did jail time.
Compare with ECOT- the darling of the national ed reform movement- where no one has been prosecuted or even investigated.
They’re being protected by their powerful political patrons. Still. To this day. Not one person has been held accountable for any of it. They can’t even get the money back! They haven’t even tried to sue for it.
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