Tom Ultican, retired teacher of advanced math and physics in San Diego, is a dogged investigator. In this post, he traces the ongoing efforts to reform the weak charter law in California.
California has more charter schools than any other state, with more than 1,300. The original law capped the number at 100. Since then, the money of the California Charter Schools Association has blown away the cap as well as all previous efforts to regulate charters. Billionaire Reed Hastings served as chair of the state board and demolished the meager limits that existed.
In this huge state, the law allows a district to authorize a charter in another district hundredsof miles away and collect a commission for every student who enrolls. It allows charter applicants to appeal all the way to the state board and ignore the needs and wishes of the local district. The law assures that charter schools will have little or no oversight, since the state education department does not have the staff to oversee them.
The current law is an invitation to fraud, embezzlement, and corruption. This is not to say that all charters are run by corrupt individuals, but the constant revelation of financial scandals in the charter industry demonstrates the need for revision of the law to protect the public interest. Only a few weeks ago, eleven people in the charter industry were indicted for stealing more than $50 million.
Yet, as Ultican shows, the road to charter reform has been rocky. Governor Jerry Brown, whose leadership was admirable in many other ways, adamantly refused to rein in the charter industry. Governor Newsom is indebted to powerful families in the charter industry, and his chief of staff is a charterista.
Yet Ultican holds out hope that some actual reform might yet survive. Anything, he says, is better than the complete deregulation that has currently allows unscrupulous grifters to feast on the money intended to pay for education.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
The fact that private charter schools waste and embezzle is, of course, concerning and wrong. Private charter schools undermine public education, and so-called competition does not improve public education, particular when the rules allow corporate schools to drain funds from the public schools. All that talk is for the PR machine. In a competition, however, both competitors should be treated fairly. What we see repeatedly at both the state and federal level are private charter interests placed ahead of public schools, public students and democracy.
Privatization is anything but fair. The charter lobby is funded by a corporate cabal of billionaires with barrels of dark money. They do not play fair. They buy puppet politicians to create an unfair playing field with rules rigged by pay to play. What is happening in Bedford, Massachusetts and California is an example of the rigging of the game by the charter lobby. They are reminding Newsom that they own him. It is time for Newsom to dance to their tune.
As a California teacher I don’t know anything about Massachusetts charter law. But, as a California teacher now retired, I’ve been advocating against California charter school law as bad destructive public policy since it was passed in 1992.
Unlike what might of happened in Massachusetts, California charter law was not “rigged” by the charter lobby from the beginning. “the game was rigged” after the 1992 charter law was written by State Senator Gary Hart as an experimental idea that was intended to make public education better but, that like Dr. Frankenstein’s monster that escaped the confines of a laboratory, under charter law Senator Hart’s laboratory cap of 100 charter schools was destroyed, with help from the charter lobby. Now under California law, the current cap on charter schools is 2,250 statewide, but the cap is raised by 100 schools each year. There are currently 1,253 charter schools open in the state.
California charter school Frankenstein needs to be checked; but unlike Frankenstein, the California’s unleashed monster is not alone but protected by wealthy and effective charter school lobby.
In a recent interview of former California State Senator Gary Hart, he had indicated he had not written California charter law to take in fiscal impact on public schools because it was written with the 100 cap in mind.
Charter school Frankenstein damage to public schools will not be contained unless the fiscal impact of charter school on existing public schools is considered in a reform of Senator Hart’s charter law.
Charters were viewed as benign and “innovative” in the beginning. Now that we have had twenty years of them we have seen their inequity, profiteering, politicking and undermining of public education. Private charters are neither benign nor needed in most cases.
Sickening.
I hope i am wrong, but scams like this have $$$$$$ behind them. Wouldn’t be surprise if these charter folks are backed by Russia, China, Gulen, and most of congress, and the occupants of the wh. There’s probably more and all we see are the “tips of the icebergs” falling apart like Global Warming.
I posted. link to Tom’s post at https://www.opednews.com/Quicklink/Reforming-California-s-Dys-in-Best_Web_OpEds-California-Politics_Charter-School-Failure_Charter-Schools_Grifters-190719-49.html#comment739732