Under its CEO Tom Torkelsen, the charter chain IDEA experienced explosive growth, dramatic success in winning nearly $200 million in federal funds from Betsy DeVos and the federal Charter Schools Program, but multiple scandals involving lavish spending on personal perks, like a lease on a private jet, first-class travel, and box seats at sporting events.
Torkelsen announced his resignation in April, and the board has agreed to give him severance pay of $900,000. Just like a public school superintendent, right?
Diane Ravitch's blog 
It’s all about the kid$$$$$$$$$$ …
Terrible! He should be ashamed of himself.
I will never understand how schools spend their money. Take the one I am in. Now, we all know next year will be tough and we will probably have less money in the school system. So why would they want to buy a whole new ELA and Math curriculum? They are never satisfied.
endless change allows endless lack of actual accountability?
Some public Superintendents get that much of more, often when the school board is trying to get rid of them for screwing things up andthee board figures that keeping the Superintendent around will end up costing even more than paying them to go away.
Mary Ellen Elia got paid over $1 million to go away and leave Hillsborough schools alone.
And soon after, of course, Andrew Cuomo hired her to screw things up in New York.
And she did not disappoint him.
Elia nearly bankrupted Hillsborough by her deal with the Gates Foundation. When the deal fell apart, Gates held back his money and the district was left with a hugely expensive teacher evaluation program that emptied its reserve fund. Then she was hired as state commissioner in New York. It could not have been based on her record in Hillsborough.
Broken Records
Cuomo loved the Core
And testing even more
Elia worked for Gates
And hence their twisted fates
Getting people to pay you $1 million go go away and leave them alone is quite a talent.
I wish I knew the secret.
PS
I’d do it for much less ($100)😀
The wealthy know how to make golden parachutes out of straw. I think they had a straw to gold parachute division at Enron. Heck, there was a whole movie made with Gordon Gekko detailing the straw to gold process with an airline company. It’s simple: You scare a board, whether school or corporate, into thinking they’re about to go bankrupt without streamlining labor costs, and get yourself hired as executive to ‘save them’. Tell them they need to fix the airplane while it’s flying. That’ll freak ‘em. You set the terms of your contract with reward packages for cost cuts. Then, you knock the straw out of labor, bring the district or company to the brink of insolvency by ruining production quality, and bail out of the airplane you “reformed” while it falls from the sky, with all the straw turned into gold. It’s an old tale.
The people of Texas should be upset that they are paying for Torkelsen’s golden parachute, and they have no say about it since public money was handed to a private corporation. It is taxation without representation. Privatization funnels public money to private companies that can do with it as it pleases. In the case of public schools, services to students such as art, music, PE, libraries, school nurses, etc.are curtailed so that Torkelsen can ride off into the sunset with a boatload of public money. Is this sound public policy?
cx:do with it as they please.
FYI: The below is about a survey of superintendents who are “not impressed” with covid-era marketing approaches. I think it’s a toned-down report on the same “Stop It!” survey that Diane posted under another blog title.
The virus, however, is exposing to the light the heretofore-buried fault-line between the principles that govern (a) public institutions, and those that govern (b) capitalism and its pay-to-play competition . . . At the bottom of things, they are different animals, so to speak, and their vast differences concern their purposes and their methods–what they will and won’t do and say. CBK
https://marketbrief.edweek.org/marketplace-k-12/survey-k-12-superintendents-not-impressed-vendors-covid-marketing-approaches/?cmp=eml-enl-eu-news3&M=59584475&U=&UUID=19a3bfa50e7c3500ca6359b823d96d69
Back in 2011, when she was forced out as superintendent in Philadelphia, Arlene Ackerman received a $905,000 severance payment from the district. There was a lot of anger that she was making off with that much public money from a financially strapped district.
$900,000 of taxpayer dollars. This would be illegal for any civil servant or public official. All because of legal and accounting fictions. Mull that over for a while.