Michael Kohlhaas is combing through the treasure trove of leaked emails about the inner world of the Los Angeles charter industry.
He recently posted about the short and strange debut of Ganas Academy.
It got a grant of $325,000 from the Walton Family Foundation. The founder proceeded to pay herself $13,000 a month, spent $63,000 on consultants, and another $15,000 on lawyers, and so on, and soon the money was all gone. But the school wasn’t ready to open, even though the founder was paying a recruiter a bonus of $850 to sign up students.
Kohlhaas writes:
I just got a small set of records from everybody’s favorite star-crossed charter school horror show, that is to say GANAS Academy. The set is woefully incomplete, and it’s pretty clear that Sakshi Jain is lying to her lawyer about it yet again, but nevertheless there is some essential material in there, and you can browse through the whole pile of it over here on Archive.Org.
And by far the most important material in here is GANAS Academy’s general ledger in MS Excel format1 along with monthly bank statements through June 2019. The ledger shows every credit and every debit from the inception of the school in August 2018 with very detailed descriptions. The story kicks off with a $325K grant from the Walton Family Foundation, deposited in the California Credit Union on August 11, 2018 as shown on that month’s bank statement and it’s all downhill from there.
In September 2018 she began paying herself $13K per month, as shown in that month’s statement and this continued at least through June 2019, which is the last monthly statement I have.2 But like I said, the real action is found in that ledger. It’s there that we learn that the $325K Jain has been burning through came from the Waltons. That she spent about $63K on recruiting students, which no doubt includes the $850 per kid bounty she paid her recruiter. And last but never least $15K to charter school contract killer law firm Young, Minney, and Corr.3
So that, friends, is the charter school innovation laboratory model. Get a ton of free money from an appalling gang of zillionaires and proceed to burn through it at an astonishing rate. A quarter of a million dollars between August 2018 and June 2019.4 And at the end, you don’t even have a damn school. Although I will say that given the horrific nature of these schools, the world is clearly better off having her spend all that money and not start a school than otherwise.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
How come these stories never make it to the mainstream media? It doesn’t matter if you are a charter supporter or not, corruption is corruption!
LikeLike
I’ve been saying that to myself for the last month or so since I discovered Kohlhaas.
If, hypothetically, there was a gadfly blogger who was uncovering and then publishing secret emails, email attachments, “confidential documents,” etc. .. showing that UTLA, CTA, or any LAUSD Board Members were totally and utterly corrupt — as corrupt at these emails show that CCSA, Broad, Beutner, Reeding Hastings, and their puppet LAUSD Board Members (i.e. Nick Melvoin) —- then you know damn well this stuff would be front-page, above the fold, large-head-line font stories.
When it’s evidence exposing corporate ed. reformers … ehhh, not so much.
The L.A. mainstream media almost certainly is aware of Kohlhaas dogged and unpaid work exposing all of this. Indeed, certain ed. journalist may even be chomping at the bit to write about the revelations brought to light by Kohlhaas (i.e. Howard Blume at the L.A. Times), but the powers-that-be in charge has put out the word to spike any such stories, and directed editors and writers to ignore this Kohlhaas stuff, and treat it as if it never existed.
LikeLike
I have joked before that non-profit charter schools are just a variation of the Enron shell company, three card monte scam.
I guess that’s not even a slight exaggeration.
What are the odds the money made it back where it started after justifying a nice tax deduction?
LikeLike
The mainstream L.A. media has the documentation from Kohlhaas, and has had it for over a month, yet it still refuses to write about all that’s been exposed by Kohlhaas.
Oh Hell, anyone with an internet connection and a computer or whatever portable device also can easily access this info, with just a few clicks or keystrokes.
However, so far, this is sadly playing out the way a certain scenario played out for Harvey Weinstein, in the days before his expose and fall.
Weinstein is angered that two reporters, one male and one female, have recorded Weinstein saying something he wished that he hadn’t said”
*”I’m glad I’m the f—–g sheriff of the sh-t-ass f—–g town!”
Impulsively, Weinstein, not wanting this to get in the press, attacks them, attempting to take away their recording devices. Failing this, he drags the male reporter, with the female reporter following, out to the sidewalk, then gets the male reporter in a headlock, and then proceeds to punch him into senselessness.
Here’s the point that make this relevant to the Kohlhaas situation.
DOZENS OF PHOTOGRAPHERS AND VIDEOGRAPHERS RECORDED THIS ASSAULT, yet, according to this article from “Salon”, (link BELOW) “not one photo was published afterward. Or, by Traister’s reckoning, since.”
(Traister is the female reporter. Goldman is the male reporter.)
“ ‘The lesson I learned was, as great of a line as ‘I’m glad I’m the f–king sheriff of the sht-ass f–king town’ is, it doesn’t work unless you really ARE the sheriff,”* Goldman says. “And he was, at that point. He could do ANYTHING.”
So who the Hell is “the Sheriff” in control of the L.A. media who is now keeping the lid on the Kohlhaas revelations? Eli Broad? Reed Hastings?
Who?!
That’s what I want to know.
Here’s the link to the full Salon article about Weinstein, including the incident described above:
https://www.salon.com/2019/09/01/untouchable-harvey-weinstein-everyone-agreeing-with-dave-chappelle-on-metoo-needs-to-watch/
LikeLike
CBS evening news on Monday didn’t have a single segment about Labor Day. Corporate media, by failing to report, hide Bill Gates’ agenda, the Kochtopus, and the colonialism of the richest 0.1%.
LikeLike
Michael Kohlhaas is doing a great service. I am still working on finding the IRS 990 forms and flows of money into the groups that received the memo from Ben Austin under the banner of the “Kids First Strategy Group.” The interlocking and overlapping activities of groups connected to the California Charter Schools Association is amazing, as is the mega-bucks flowing into this effort to eliminate democratic governance of public schools and make profits from charter school wheeling and dealing.
LikeLike
It should be a criminal offense to spend money to destroy public services
LikeLike
I’m probably going to get myself into trouble for saying this, but I’d just like to point out that this goes to show that leaked emails and other “secret” information are good things when they shine a light on the corruption that our leaders engage in behind our backs. This is true whether it exposes charter schools or primary election shenanigans. Whether the leaker is Chelsea Manning, Edward Snowden, Katharine Gun, whoever leaked these emails, or even whoever leaked/hacked the DNC emails. Sunshine is good, even when it’s the supposed “good” guys who get exposed.
LikeLike
I agree with this. The problem, of course, arises when people who have a very different agenda take a leaked e-mail and pretend it is something it is not.
The e-mails leaked here are very specific. Michael Kolhaas is not leaking emails with some charter employee’s dislike of public schools and saying “look, the principal of this charter school sent an e-mail saying ‘doesn’t that public school stink’ — it’s corruption!!!” He is leaking e-mails that show specific actions or how money was spent.
If a charter CEO wrote an e-mail saying “I really like that Betsy DeVos” is that corruption? If she wrote an e-mail saying “this representative from Betsy DeVos is coming to us with illegally obtained dirt on the politician who doesn’t like charters and all our top charter officials are meeting with him to see what dirt he has” then that is very different. Of course some would say the first is terrible, but we have no idea if there is anything wrong with the second because who knows, it might be totally innocent that they called a meeting to get dirt from representatives of Betsy DeVos.
Read Kolhaas for how to interpret leaked e-mails and how he isn’t trying to push a false agenda by trying to convince us that because someone at the charter said something mean about a public school, it’s totally corrupt and should be shut down.
Of course, if you had complete access to the e-mails and you desperately were looking through them to find something — anything! — to show corruption and the only thing you could find was that a high level official said something mean about a public school, then you would release that and pretend it was corruption.
Michael Kolhaas has real honor and credibility and the e-mails he is presenting aren’t about pretending that just because someone has an opinion and expresses it in an e-mail, it gives him license to claim that opinion itself is corruption.
That is what Republicans and others with no real integrity do to try to undermine people when they have no real evidence that corruption took place.
High ranking official ordering the FBI Director to stop an investigation into his pals is real corruption.
An FBI agent who complains about both Democrat and Republican candidates in a private e-mail or text is not.
A Republican Secretary of State giving specific advice to the Democrat who is succeeding him in his job that he used a private e-mail server for his correspondence is apparently not a crime since he is a Republican. A Democrat doing the same is committing treason, if your goal has nothing to do with bringing to light the facts, and everything to do with a smear campaign.
Michael Kolhaas isn’t interested in a smear campaign. He is presenting a terrific model for how to present leaked e-mails and information.
LikeLike
Maybe we could encourage all the billionaire vampires like Gates and the Waltons to give their money away to crooks like this one. In the end, all the manipulating, malignant, corrupt billionaires (I’d list their names but their names have appeared on this site so many times, I do not see a need to repeat) would be broke and the war to destroy the public schools might be over because the crooks took the money and didn’t open any corporate charter schools.
Remember when Zuckerberg and his wife gave a $100 million away and none of it went to improve education — every penny went into someone else’s pockets.
LikeLike
The Waltons are worth$100 billion.
They grow richer by the hour.
The millions they throw away on privatization is like you dropping a dime in the Salvation Army bucket
LikeLike
I was going to post, “You’d think the Waltons would get a clue”– but this puts their contribution in perspective. To them it’s chump change.
LikeLike
“That she spent about $63K on recruiting students, which no doubt includes the $850 per kid bounty she paid her recruiter.”
Yet every day we hear about “charter waiting lists” from ed reformers.
Has anyone ever seen these wait lists? Who compiles them? The same people who are are paid to recruit children for charter schools?
The schools are basically unregulated so it wouldn’t surprise me if the wait lists, too, are “self reported” and rife with conflicts.
LikeLike
CCSA’s student waitlists — students / parents wanting to be admitted to charter schools, but can’t because there are not enough opened and operating currently — are as phony as a Chinese redhead.
Check out this confidential memorandum to LAUSD Superintendent Austin Beutner (and thankfully leaked by who-knows-who).
Go to the first two paragraphs of Page 2 of this document:
Click to access Enrollment-Analysis-Charter-Schools-11-05-18.pdf
x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x
JOSE COLE-GUTERREZ,
Director, LAUSD Charter Schools Division (CSD):
“During 2017-2018, there were 224 LAUSD-authorized independent charter schools. The aggregate enrollment projections from the schools anticipated that 128,374 total students would be enrolled. The official Norm Enrollment figures show that the actual number of students for 2017-2018 was 112,492 students (or 15,882 fewer students than the schools projected).
“Approximately (and only … JACK) 34 of the 224 schools either met or exceeded their enrollment targets, while the remaining 190 did not. This trend appears consistent with both small and large charter operators.
x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x
Yes, you read that right folks, and in an official confidential LAUSD document, no less
Do the math. … 190 of the 224 schools
82% (!) of LAUSD Charter Schools are under enrolled, yet CCSA leaders (such Myrna Castregon) and spokespeople (such as Cassy Horton) and their bought-and-paid-for LAUSD Board Members (such as Nick Melvoin) — who are no doubt fully aware of this data, as they are quite cosy with LAUSD CSD Director Cole-Gutterrez — continue to make the totally and demonstrably false claim that there are “over 100,000” (!!!) students on waiting lists clamoring to be admitted to charter schools, but can’t enroll until more charters are opened. (That’s CCSA’s main argument against a moratorium on opening more charter schools … a bogus argument.)
They’re lying!!! (Unless that 18% / 34 non-underenrolled charters account for that “over 100,000” wait list figure .. not bloody likely.)
LikeLike
Another issue, at least in NYC, is that the charters actually don’t want to teach the most of the kids on their waitlist. They will demand more space in a neighborhood where they claim they must give priority to neighborhood residents (even if the waitlists in that neighborhood are small or non-existant) instead of opening up another charter where the wait lists are longest.
So you have the absurd situation where the oversight agency is happily allowing charters to open multiple schools where they have no demand because the charter claims that they have waitlists of students and the oversight board doesn’t care that those students on waitlists don’t get to attend that new school.
LikeLike
Whoever was getting $850 a recruit was working a tough gig:
How’d ya like to come to the new charter school?
••How are the teachers? Are they credentialed and experienced?
We don’t have any teachers yet. We don’t need any stinking teachers!
••Where is the school? What kind of facilities and resources are there?
Lawyers are working on it. They’re trying to steal your local public school’s computer lab. Actually, you might say right now the lawyers are the school, heh heh.
••Who’s paying for this?
The out of state Republican billionaire owners of Walmart, one of the most hated businesses in Los Angeles are paying for the time being, but we hope to soon be taking money from everyone in the area.
••How did you get this number?
LikeLike
Funny stuff.
I had a teacher friend and parent go to one of the charter schools’ community outreach, and I had them ask the CEO or principal equivalent some of those same questions during the Q & A.
Q: As CEO, did you personally select, or were you part of the selection team that interviewed and chose your school’s teachers?
A: Yes.
Q: Are any of them credentialed with the state?
A. Uhhh … yeah .. sure.
Q. All of them?
A. Yeah.
Q: Great. Could you provide me a list of those teachers so I can check their credential status out on the state (CTC) website? I’ll use my laptop (points to the laptop in her lap.)
A. (long pause … deer in the headlights expression)
After the meeting’s over, sure.
Q: Aaah, c’mon. Just give me three names, and I’ll check to see if they’re credentialed.
A. No, I’d rather not. Let’s change the subject.
I wish that I’d gone to that meeting.
LikeLike
Wow, wow, wow!
LikeLike
“Although I will say that given the horrific nature of these schools, the world is clearly better off having her spend all that money and not start a school than otherwise.”
What she’s really talking about is saving children FROM school. How did we get here?
Whoever thought that we’d become this?
LikeLike
Clearly, neither Walton heirs nor the DeVoses are embarrassed by their stupidity- Theranos.
LikeLike