Online charter schools have a problem. Most get full tuition for each student, but they have few expenses. No campus, large classes, no services other than a computer and online instruction. So much money rolling. Problem: What to do with it?
A few online operators have been convicted of stealing millions, like Nick Trombetta in Pennsylvania. The founder of ECOT in Ohio diet get charged or convicted of anything, but he collected $1 billion over 19 years while having the lowest graduation rate in the nation.
And now comes a case in Michigan where an Online charter operator was charged with stealing over $100,000.
Why so little?
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Actually, Nancy Paris was charged with embezzling $800,000. The charge is “$100,000 or more.”
Charter lobbyists in Ohio are demanding more money for charters:
“As the DeWine administration crafts a new two-year state operating budget, a conservative school-choice advocate is highlighting that Ohio charter schools are getting thousands of dollars less per pupil than traditional public schools.
“Ohio has woefully underfunded public charter schools, even as they serve large numbers of low-income and minority students,” said Chad Aldis, vice president for policy and advocacy at the Thomas B. Fordham Institute. “No child’s education should be worth less just because her parents choose a different public school that better meets her needs.”
This lobby has not been straight on funding from the start so I hope Ohio lawmakers do their jobs and collect some independent, reliable information on charter school revenue and outlays before they turn over more money to contractors.
I want an independent analysis, where ALL sources of revenue are counted and all outlays are revealed to the public.
For example: charter schools are eligible for special dedicated federal funding that public schools do not get and cannot even apply for- I want this counted. Charter schools can apply for all the federal funding that is available to public schools but public schools cannot apply for all the federal funding that is available to charters.
I want an independent analysis of exactly what charters receive and what they spend- and I want it done by someone than charter lobbyists, even if lawmakers have to hire someone to do it.
Tell you state legislators to DO THEIR JOBS and question these claims. We are not paying them to be a rubber stamp for the ed reform lobby.
If you read Checker Finn’sstayements and books about charters, from the early 1990s, you will find the claim that charters will cost less and save money
Betsy Devos, her family and her nimwit supporters in Michigan have single handed the destruction of education in Michigan. I find myself shaking my head back and forth knowing that most of this is the result of Betsy Devos and the Devos family yet this woman somehow is the Secretary of Education for the US!!!
As they say, you cannot make this sht up.
https://ny.chalkbeat.org/posts/detroit/2019/01/23/report-michigan-has-biggest-school-funding-decline-in-nation/
exactly