This post is part 4 of a series published by northjersey.com and USA Today New Jersey. Written by Jean Rimbach and Abbott Koloff, it is called “Cashing in on Charter Schools.” It explores the many ways that charter operators exploit taxpayers.
This post describes how charter operators and real estate developers are cashing in.
“Interest-only mortgages with rates that grow each year. Multimillion dollar fees for paying off loans early. Property that quickly doubles in price. And buildings sold with markups as high as 70 percent.
“Deals like these inked by New Jersey charter schools — or the private groups that support them — highlight how tax dollars meant for public education can reap profits for investors.
“But they also illustrate the lack of options some charter schools face when trying to find and finance facilities — and an absence of state oversight in the process.
“State education officials say they have no authority to review financing or lease agreements struck by charter schools before they are signed. And they don’t police the private organizations, often called “Friends of” groups, that are created to support charter schools by owning or financing their real estate and, in many cases, enter into contracts on a school’s behalf.
“That includes groups like the Friends of Marion P. Thomas Charter School, which agreed to buy two former Newark public school buildings and paid a deposit but said they couldn’t get financing to complete the purchase. So the group struck a deal with a developer who bought the buildings, which documents show needed “limited” work, and sold them to the Friends at a $10 million markup.
“Other schools, such as the International Academy of Trenton, turned to a Kansas City-based real estate investment trust, or REIT, for financing. The charter school, which the state shut down in June, signed a lease that didn’t allow it to buy its building for five years. At that point, after spending near $8.4 million in rent, it would have been required to pay 120 percent of the total development cost.”
Open the link and read the whole article.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
One really cannot overstate how little regard ed reformers have for public schools, students and families.
This is Tennessee and the US Department of Education yesterday:
“One of Lee’s proposals would start a new type of education voucher program, and the other would create a state commission with the power to open charter schools anywhere across Tennessee through an appeals process.
The charter plan — billed as a way to open more high-quality charter schools and close struggling ones — is also slated for hearings this week in two committees.
“This is about children and not about systems,” the governor said. “The goal here is to provide children in all systems that have these low-performing schools — five of which exist in this state — an opportunity to access a higher-quality education, which will ultimately strengthen the public schools in those districts as well.”
Absolutely nothing for public school students in the state. Nada. They are dismissed with a throw-away line about how their preferred charters and private schools will “ultimately” strengthen public schools.
They take public school voters completely for granted. There isn’t even a minimal effort to offer them anything, speak to them, allow them into discussions. The ONLY public school students and parents who are permitted into ed reform events to speak are families who “flee” public schools. DeVos goes further- she depicts public school STUDENTS as violent and low performing.
Something like 90% of the students in that state have no one in either the federal or state government working on their behalf, and this isn’t just accepted in ed reform- it’s the norm. You see it again and again and again.
Here’s another example- this is the Facebook ed reform initiative:
“What also stands out is the lack of traditional public school districts receiving direct grants,” said Michigan State’s Reckhow. “CZI [is] largely supporting charter networks, nonprofits, think tanks, and other third party entities. This was already a trend among major funders — but CZI seems to take it to another level.”
They are pushing “blended learning” product into every public school in the country, public schools are BY FAR the biggest buyers of ed tech, yet we are completely excluded from ed reform grants, leadership and debates.
Public school students are good enough to act as guinea pigs for Summit and Facebook, but they won’t be at the table when the Best and Brightest make decisions, because they are deliberately and carefully excluded.
Public schools need not apply, unless of course we’re buying billions of dollars in ed tech product and devices and these people are selling it to us. But no grant money for you! Our schools are public, so therefore ideologically incorrect.
Absolute contempt for our schools, students and teachers. It runs through the whole “movement”. The fact that public schools are the biggest buyers of this product is just amazing. We’re buying from people who won’t sit in the same room with us and wouldn’t even consider us for a grant.
https://www.chalkbeat.org/posts/us/2019/04/01/chan-zuckerberg-initiative-100-million-education-grants-disclosure/
It is up at Oped news. https://www.opednews.com/Quicklink/New-Jersey-Expose-Part-4-in-Best_Web_OpEds-Charter-School-Failure_Contracts_Education_Expose-190402-85.html
If I were a public school I would find a vendor who respects my work, students and teachers and skip the vendors who don’t.
If they won’t let you sit at the leadership table then don’t push their product into your classrooms and don’t spend millions of dollars supporting their companies, who then take that money and use none if it to support public schools and in fact use a large portion to attack public schools. You’re funding this. You benefit not at all from any of it.
And now you know…
The rest of the story
Paul Harvey, good day!
“Summit Public Schools is a key player in the push for “personalized learning,” a charter network that has created an online platform and pedagogical approach now used by nearly 400 schools. NewSchools Venture Fund itself issues grants to support education technology, diversification of educational leadership, and innovative schools (largely charter schools).”
Pushing it into hundreds of public schools, with not a soul from a public school in any leadership position and while completely excluding public schools from grants.
What a deal for Facebook and ed reform. They’re “transforming” public schools without having any public school input at all, or supporting public schools at all. Our schools are the silent (sucker) partners. Then when Facebook finishes this experiment they can sell the finished product BACK to public schools, right? If there are any left given their relentless cheerleading and financial support of charter and private schools.
Charter schools have always worked hand in hand with developers in gentrifying neighborhoods. The way in which charter facilities are funded have always been opaque, shady and very manipulative. It is not surprising since many of those financing charter schools are from the financial services industry, and money manipulation is their stock in trade. Taxpayers in the state need to demand accountability. Otherwise, the process is like taxation without representation, and the taxpayers are on the hook for the failed plans of corporations.
The net result has created a tiered education system that has enhanced segregation and under funded the public schools that still serve the neediest students that are rejected by the charter industry. This result is nothing to be proud of when well funded public schools could do a better job more efficiently instead of creating splinter schools operated by amateurs and corporations that fleece New Jersey taxpayers .
If they can’t regulate them in states like NJ and CA, imagine what’s going on in the states that don’t regulate at all.
Imagine Arizona. Or Florida. We already know the mess in OH and MI.
This is going on in the HEAVILY regulated states. This is the BEST case.
In Florida DeSantis wants a universal voucher, which I hope gets struck down in the courts, but probably not in the Florida courts. DeSantis has positioned a number of tea party judges in the courts to green light his bad idea.
DeSanris stacked the Floridacourts with like minded conservatives. I no longer rely on the USSupreme Court to stop vouchers since Trump added two religious zealots to it. Remember the people who said Trump’s election wouldn’t make a difference? It did.
Since Betsy DeVos and her political appointees constantly depict public school students as dangerous and low performing, students better students must “escape from” and since they’re talking about OUR students I think it’s worth pointing out that DeVos’ religious school is accused of covering up an abuse case.
They’re wrong to depict all public school students in this way and if I wanted to I could find, now, today, numerous examples of danger in their preferred private schools.
It’s political hackery on her part and smearing public school STUDENTS with the full force of the mighty federal government bully pulpit is a new low for ed reform. They should cut it out. It’s nasty and unfair to public school students and families and it’s also untrue.
Bashing public schools and public school teachers NEED to just STOP.
So much of what those deformers turn out has not been vetted well, and if they were, those awful online everything and lock-step lessons developed by those far away from the classroom would not pass the muster.
It’s like blaming the computer rather than the person(s) who wrote the code.
Yes
It’s actually hilarious to listen to people who know absolutely nothing about technology blame hacking for all the problems with online testing (and everything else attached to the internet)
Most of them don’t even understand what real hacking is.