Mercedes Schneider: How “Non-Profit” Charters Make a Profit

8 Comments Post your own or leave a trackback: Trackback URL

1. dienne77 says:

   July 11, 2019 at 9:25 am

   It is way past time to still allow Democrats to get away with this. Any “ignorance” about so-called “non-profit” charters is willful at this point. Bernie has set the bar. Every other candidate needs to put their cards on the table.

   LikeLiked by 1 person

   Reply
   • ciedie aech says:

     July 11, 2019 at 1:23 pm

     any ignorance about the entire school privatizing/testing/labeling/closing/segregating agenda now feels WILLFUL. Yes.

     LikeLike

     Reply
2. Chiara says:

   July 11, 2019 at 10:17 am

   “The charter school leases some of its facilities from Los Angeles Schools Services Inc., a California non-profit corporation. The property is owned by a related party of the charter school who leases the property to the California non-profit corporation. The rent in the amount of $810,201 for year ended June 30, 2017 was paid to the California non-profit corporation. …”

   This would be so easy to fix that the fact that charter cheerleaders refuse to fix it to me shows they don’t want to stop this fraud and skimming.

   Public schools hire contractors too. The difference is they aren’t permitted to enter into these ridiculously corrupt related party transactions. Why do charter cheerleaders allow this to continue year after year?

   Regulate your schools properly. Stop allowing them to do whatever the heck they want with public money. Admit your ideological devotion to deregulation is harming your students. My God, there are thousands of paid ed reformers who do NOTHING other than work on promoting charter schools. After 20 years they still can’t come up with a regulatory scheme that actually works?

   They invented these charter governance schemes. They don’t work because they’re based on ideological beliefs rather than ordinary ideas about good government. They make bad government.

   LikeLike

   Reply
3. Chiara says:

   July 11, 2019 at 10:25 am

   Wait until ed reformers put vouchers in in every state. They won’t be able to regulate tens of thousands of publicly-funded private schools at all.

   They’re all pushing vouchers as fast as they can. They haven’t put any thought at all into regulating the tens of millions of dollars of public funds that will be flowing to private schools in the privatized education system of their dreams.

   The massive voucher scandals are about 5 years away. They’re pumping in tens millions of dollars of public funds and not putting any financial controls or oversight or even transparency in. Wait until it’s hundreds of millions.

   Pure ideology.

   LikeLike

   Reply
4. Chiara says:

   July 11, 2019 at 10:32 am

   It won’t even be existing private schools that commit fraud and theft. It will be the brand new private schools that spring up to accept all that unregulated voucher cash. The vouchers are low value, which will create demand for cheaper private schools, so the voucher push will result in a whole bunch of new low quality private schools that exist solely as contractors for public dollars.

   They’re already seeing this happen in Florida. “Voucher schools”. Private schools that would not exist but for being pumped full of public dollars. They almost guaranteed it would happen with the design of the voucher schemes. The upcoming voucher scandals will dwarf the charter scandals because they will be much more difficult to detect.

   LikeLike

   Reply
5. retired teacher says:

   July 11, 2019 at 11:05 am

   At this point many Democrats are willfully naive if they can say they do not support “for profit” charters. Non-profit charters have endless opportunities to game the system. Exorbitant leasing deals with relatives or separate companies owned by the charter owner are the most common lucrative scheme in this corrupt industry. With billionaires and corporations writing the laissez-faire, deregulated guidelines and states unwilling to interfere, the charter industry is rife with self dealing and fleecing of public education funds. These wealthy parasites feed on the common good while many politicians, including Democrats, willfully ignore the problem.

   LikeLike

   Reply
6. GregB says:

   July 11, 2019 at 6:51 pm

   This kind of nonprofit chicanery is not exclusive to charters. It is a way of business for some (but certainly not a majority of) disease-focused nonprofits.

   LikeLike

   Reply
   • Máté Wierdl says:

     July 12, 2019 at 7:28 am

     What does disease-focused mean? Do you mean literally?

     I wonder if we can say “behind the majority of nonproifits, we can find profitmaking”. If there is no explicit, general control, I am sure, profitmaking is behind nonprofits: rent is paid to private companies, cleaning or building maintenance are outsourced, or simply much more buildings or vehicles are purchased than really needed just so that actual money is not accumulated.

     I think not only many of us know about cases where profitmaking is behind nonprofits, but we can easily design schemes of moneymaking in a given nonprofit environment.

     LikeLike

     Reply