No one has yet gathered a complete list of charter schools that collected funds from the federal relief fund for small businesses called the Paycheck Protection Program. The list was released just a week ago, and there were more than 600,000 recipients. The Network for Public Education is creating spreadsheets and hopes to compile a comprehensive list.
Salon estimates that the charter industry may have received as much as $1 billion from PPP. That’s a lot. But think of it this way. Charter lobbyists made sure that charters were eligible for the money (public schools are not), then let charters know that they could apply. There are about 7,000 charters (enrolling 6% of the nation’s children). If only 1,000 were funded for $1 million each, that’s $1 billion.
Roger Hollenberger, a staff writer for Salon, reports:
One network alone, the Knowledge Is Power Program (KIPP), appears to have pulled somewhere between $28 million and $69 million in taxpayer dollars.
Another network of publicly-funded, privately-run schools, Achievement First, appears to have taken in between $7 million and $17 million in PPP loans. The network also received $3.5 million from a special $65 million federal grant that Education Secretary Betsy DeVos awarded to 10 charter management organizations in April, weeks after the PPP was passed, to “fund the creation and expansion of more than 100 high-quality public charter schools in underserved communities across the country.
Citizens of the World Charter Schools in Los Angeles received $1.7 million of the DeVos grant, and also took between $2 million and $5 million in PPP money.
Mater Academy, Inc., in Miami received $19.2 million of the grant, the most of the field. Three days later, on April 13, it took out more than $1 million in PPP money…
Treasury Department does not disclose specific dollar amounts, but breaks loans into maximum and minimum ranges. Salon’s research did not make clear whether this analysis covered every charter school in the nation, but that seems unlikely. Regardless, the minimum total is roughly $500 million, and t the maximum, the total would appear to exceed $1 billion.
Organizations don’t have to pay back their PPP loans if certain employee retention criteria are met. At least 15 charter schools that reported receiving more than $1 million in payroll protection from the government reported putting that money towards zero jobs. At least seven of the schools left the field blank.
One school, Idaho Arts Charter School, Inc., received between $1 million and $2 million in forgivable relief loans, and reported putting it towards one job…
When Congress passed the the Coronavirus Aid, Relief and Economic Security (CARES) Act in March, it allocated $13.5 billion in grants to K-12 schools. Most of that money was intended for public school districts, which share funds with charters.
Public schools shared the CARES Act funding with charter schools, which claim to be public schools but only charter schools could apply for the PPP funding, not public schools. Whatever the total, the charters scored a coup with PPP funding.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Every public school in the country shuts down as a result of a pandemic and the singular focus of ed reform is to assist charter and private schools.
This is why one shouldn’t elect ed reformers to public positions. They don’t work for public school students. It’s all about promoting, marketing and funding the privatized or private schools they prefer.
Public school students always, always come out the losers under ed reform governance.
A wholly ideological preference for charter and private schools that always puts public students last.
Hire people who value your schools and students. It’s really that simple. Until you do they will get the short end of the stick.
Here’s what the US Department of Education contributed to public schools in this crisis:
” U.S. Department of Education
Jul 8 Today, BetsyDeVosED joined VP and the WhiteHouse Coronavirus Task Force at ED to further discuss how American educators and community health leaders can work together to safely reopen schools this fall.”
A political stunt where they all got together to bash public schools and issue meaningless orders and directives and demands.
Imagine if we hired people who actually support public schools and public school students rather than paying this vast army of professional public school critics. I would suggest we start with hiring at least a couple of people who attended public schools and send their children to them.
“WhiteHouse Coronavirus Task Force at ED”
Anyone know what this task force has accomplished? Anything at all? Other than a ridiculous demand that every public school open immediately with no concern at all for the students who go to the schools or the people who work in them, I mean.
One person could have handled that. In fact, the President already did it. By Tweet. Now they can all take the rest of the month off.
What are the thousands of education “experts” in ed reform working on in this crisis for every public school student in the country?
Opening religious charter schools:
“Seventeen long years ago, I urged the creation of “religious charter schools,” either encouraging their start from scratch or—more realistically—allowing extant Catholic and other faith-based schools to convert to charter status without having to forego the religious elements that distinguish them and that many parents crave for their children.
With hundreds more Catholic schools having perished in the interim, that idea seems more important than ever—and with the Supreme Court’s Espinoza decision now in hand, the biggest single obstacle to realizing it may have fallen.”
How many people do we have to pay to get one or two to expend some effort on the 90% of students in the country who attend public schools? 10,000? 20,000?
How did we end up with “public education policy” that either excludes or bashes public school students, who comprise 90% of students? This is capture by a lobby. They’re utterly captured.
Diane
We are asking our State candidates To insider the private (accepting PPP) vs public (accepting state per Pupil funding). How did the lobbiest, as per your article, get the charge eligible for PPP. THANKS. Tom Duffy ( Bloomington IN. ICPE MC
Sent from my iPhone
The charter industry has lobbyists in DC and they have allies in Congress. In a big complicated piece of legislation, it’s easy to insert a clause that opens the door for your clients. They did.
yes — and over the years they have become masters at doing just this
Every action taken by the leadership in the United States, including public education, is totally backwards from what the majority of what other world leaders are doing to combat the COVID-19 virus. Far too many leader in the United States refuse to take responsibility for their actions regarding this battle. This includes trying to force public schools to open when it clear this nation has not reached a point where it is safe for students, teachers and administrators to be as close together as it will require for good education to happen.
it is unforgivable that leaders are more interested the damn election and economy than the health and welfare of the citizens. Leadership from the top to the bottom have failed in their oaths of office to protect the citizen so this country. Leaders from top to bottom have blood on theirs because of the decisions they have made. They will have more blood on their hands when they force school to open in August or September.
This country has a long, long way to go before it is ready to again become part of the civilized nations of the world.
I suspect that this type of greed-based corruption mostly flows through the GOP and if we ever get rid of them as a majority for anything (governors, state legislatures, both houses of Congress and the White House), that rampant greed based corruption will never stop sending public money to the wealthiest one percent.