Stephen Dyer crunched the numbers and discovered that charter schools in Ohio received more than five times as much federal coronavirus relief money as public schools. Some received more than entire districts.
He wrote:
Included in the $2.3 trillion CARES Act passed in March to cope with the COVID-19 crisis was something called the Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief Fund, or ESSER. This fund set aside $13.2 billion for K-12 schools to cope with the new normal in preparing education spaces for COVID-19. Things like enhanced cleaning, or preparing online learning material, or maximizing spaces to ensure social distancing for potential return to school were the expenses contemplated for this money.
Every school qualified, including charter schools, for this money, some of which was passed out again last week. The money was and is essential to maintain public education through this crisis.
However, only charter schools would qualify for another program included in the CARES Act – the $669 billion Payroll Protection Program (PPP) — a fund meant to keep small businesses and non-profits afloat during the economic shutdown. Public entities like school districts and local governments did not qualify for the program, which has been essential to keeping businesses from collapsing.
But charter schools, which are organized as 501c3 non-profits, did qualify.
So did their sponsoring organizations.
So did their management companies.
All tolled, a charter school could receive federal money four ways:
Through ESSER, just like every school district in the country
Directly to the school through the PPP
Indirectly through their sponsoring organization through the PPP
Indirectly through their management company (which could be non-profit or for-profit) through the PPP
This resulted in the typical Ohio charter school receiving as much as $817 in total federal CARES Act funding while the typical Ohio public school district only received $150.
The disparities are mind-boggling.
Charter schools got the same aid as public schools. Then many double-dipped and collected federal PPP funds. Then their sponsoring organization picked up PPP money. And their management company collected more.
Dyer reminds us that charter schools are not public schools.
It is unfair that charter schools – which have for years insisted they are “public schools” – be granted more opportunities to access federal funding than the schools that educate 90 percent of our children simply because of their corporate structure.
What an outrage!
Diane Ravitch's blog 
And here’s another point to add to number 2 of Robert Rendo’s excellent post from yesterday:
Give massive amounts of federal monies to charter and private schools so THEY can reopen safely and have enough resources to follow all CDC guidelines to protect THEIR staff, teachers and children.
Sure! Why not! Humans inhabiting public schools are expendable . . .
I’m starting to question if the grifters at charters and private schools consider those at public schools to be human. Maybe expendable suckers, but human?
The numbers in Michigan?
A difference would indicate a Democratic governor can stop Betsy et al from exploiting taxpayers.
About Ohio’s recent $60 mil. bribery scandal- the FBI (a group often slow to report about investigations in the state) was fast to bring down Kasich allies. This headline from July 21, “First high-profile Republican defection (Kasich) to Biden comes from swing state Ohio”. Two of the 5 arrested have links to Kasich. In June, Matt Borges (ironically, the reported architect of egregious gerrymandering in the state) set up a super pac for Biden. Borges who was arrested along with Householder is a long time ally of Kasich.
The DOJ (and, FBI) under Barr’s control, are they running interference against Trump’s enemies?
Shout out to Fordham for the privatization policy that rips off taxpayers. Shout out to the politicians who allow the billionaires’ agenda to rob Ohio’s communities.
Excellent info. Have shared to hopefully get more reporting.
One of Utah’s local news stations reported on this last night. It’s not on their website yet, but I will post the link as soon as I get it.
As much as I sort-of like John Kasich (former Ohio gov.), the one thing that doesn’t square with the rest of his ideology is charter schools. He’s for them. Not much of a big public school supporter, more like ‘parents want choices’ crap. Which is not surprising that we haven’t heard anything from him (that I can find) in which he should be aghast that the “business” schools are getting getting PPP money (which is for real businesses) and still blood-sucking public funds from public schools. There’s oversight to be had or get rid of charter schools.