Leonie Haimson writes that charter schools in New York City cleaned up with the Paycheck Protection Program, even none of them lost their secure government funding.
Payday!
Leonie writes:
In NY State there are 144 charter schools and management organizations that received PPP funding, the vast majority of which are in NYC. Fully 108 NYC charters and charter management companies received between $102 million and $236 million in these funds, with an average of between $940,000 and $2.2 million each.
The Charter Management Organization of New Visions and its assorted charters received between $6.7 million and $15 million dollars, despite the fact that they receive public school space free of charge and services from DOE. In 2018, they also received a $14 million grant from the Gates Foundation to “work with” NYC public schools — which to this day have not been identified. Coincidentally or not, the Gates Foundation director of K12 schools Robert Hughes came to the Gates Foundation from New Visions.One of their schools, New Visions Charter HS for the Humanities II, will be receiving an extra amount of between $2,000 and $4,000 per student, based upon their total enrollment last year of 496.
Harlem Children’s Zone was awarded between $4 million and $10 million, with Harlem Children’s Zone Promise Academy II receiving between $1,800 and $4,500 per student, based on their total enrollment last year of 1,093. The Hebrew Language Academies, heavily subsidized by billionaire Michael Steinhardt, received between $2.8 million and $6 million. One of their schools, Harlem Hebrew Language Academy, is receiving between $1,400 and $2,900 per student, based on their planned enrollment of 696 last year. Harlem Village Academy West Charter School received between $2 million and $5 million, from $2,200 to $5,500 per student based on last year’s enrollment of 902.
Williamsburg Charter High School was given between $2 million and $5 million, a total of $2,000 to $5,000 per student based on their enrollment last year of 963. Brilla College Preparatory Charter Schools received between $1 million and $2 million, $1,400 to $3,000 per student based on their enrollment of 677. Pave Academy Charter School, founded by the son of billionaire Julian Robertson, was awarded between $1 million and $2 million, equaling about $2,000 to $4,000 per student based on their enrollment last year of 490.
KIPP charter and KIPP LLC (which I guess is its Management Organization) is getting between $3 million and $5 million, despite also receiving $86 million from a federal charter school grant in 2019, and many millions more previously. Uncommon Charters, which has been criticized for its abusive disciplinary practices, received between $2 million and $5 million in PPP funds. The full state and city list is below.
So are charter schools public or private? Depends on where the money is.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
“will be receiving an extra amount of between $2,000 and $4,000 per student,”
Wow. That’s a huge bump.
People might be wondering what the Trump Administration are working on to lend a hand to the public schools that serve 90% of families and students in this pandemic crisis:
“Vice President Pence and Education Secretary Betsy DeVos visited a private school Wednesday to advocate for reopening schools across the country this fall.”
Truly extraordinary effort to pretend public schools and public school students don’t exist. They really go out of their way to make it clear that public school students are their last priority. It’s hard to manage to avoid public schools in this country, given that they are in every city and town, but the Trump Administration succeeds in doing no work at all on behalf any public school student in the country, which really takes an effort.
https://thehill.com/homenews/administration/509667-pence-devos-visit-north-carolina-school-to-advocate-reopening
Getting more money for public school teachers and staff is a good thing, whether district or charter. Is your point that charters got some funding that districts didn’t get that might partially offset the fact that charters get less all of the time?
Is it that charter school staff are not worthy of protection as employees of not-for-profits that you happen to dislike the mission of?
Is it that charter schools shouldn’t have taken the money even though they have a fiduciary responsibility to their families to do that? Is it that they took money that some other business needed more (perhaps you don’t know that there were PPP funds left over).
And please, don’t repeat the lie that charter schools didn’t get cuts due to Covid budget issues.
I get that many readers here believe there is some evil privatizing department within each charter school and they envision all of the PPP funds going to that, but in the real world of not-for-profit charter schools, PPP funds help keep teachers and staff employed during a crisis; something fellow teachers and public education supporters should be happy about.
Public schools were not eligible for PPP.
So charter schools acknowledge they are not public schools.
Yes, the legal structure of most charter schools is as not-for-profits, while district schools are “entities of the state”.
I support more money for public education, whether district or charter. I understand why district supporters would want money to go to districts vs. charters, but PPP funds don’t take away from district funding.
So charter schools are non-profit entities, NOT state agents, NOT public schools.
Glad we cleared that up.
The legal structure of MOST private schools is a “not-for-profit.”
John finally acknowledged that the legal structure of charters is exactly the same as most private schools and nothing like real public schools. I suppose that John believes that justifies all private schools – the non-profits like the private charter John is associated with and the private schools that billionaires send their kids, and the for-profit schools — getting PPE while real public schools do not.
PPP is going to private schools, period. Those private schools can be identified by their legal structure, and PPP money goes to privately operated non-profit charters, privately operated for-profit charters, and non-profit private schools and for-profit private schools. Public schools, which John has now acknowledged are different, does not get the PPP money that only goes to privately operated schools.
As you know full well, many state laws provide for more than one type of public school. Some are school districts that are entities of the state and some are independently operated charter schools.
I will say it again: No double-dipping, first as a “public school,” then as a “non-profit.” That’s unethical.
The frustrating thing is, at least in my state, most of the charter schools that got money do very poorly for students. Students would be better off in real public schools–but they get no money. Between $2000-$4000 per student is 1/3-over 1/2 of Utah’s entire per pupil expenditure.
on point
It’s double dipping from the taxpayer. The charters took money that should have gone to businesses that the taxpayer wasn’t already funding.
So no not-for-profit that gets government funding should get PPP funding?
Charters can’t be both public schools and not public schools.
No non-profit that received PPP funding also got money intended ONLY for public schools.
Enough of the scamming!
Some charter schools were decent enough and ethical enough to know that they should not ask for the money, that it was intended to save small businesses that were at risk of bankruptcy, not to add to the hefty bank accounts of charters supported by billionaires.
At long last, sir, have you no shame?
Not-for-profits should get government funding if they are at risk, like small businesses. They should not double-dip, as more than 1,000 charters did, first taking money that was public schools only, then taking PPP, which public schools could not access.
John represents the typical charter school supporter who claims to care about students.
If offered a choice between lots of taxpayer money going to for-profit private schools or private schools educating the children of billionaires or real public schools with 70% or 90% poverty rates, charters will support lots of taxpayer money going to for-profit private schools or “nonprofit” private schools educating the children of billionaires as long as their charters — both for-profit and non-profit – get some money, too.
PPP money is for small employers, which most charter schools are. If you were in charge of a small employer whose revenue had been cut, but who wanted to keep all of their employees on, would you have used the program?
Are charter schools public schools or small businesses?
IMO (FWIW) both. Public schools operated by private entities (most not-for-profit).
That’s what the laws say.
What you are describing is unethical and fraudulent. One school cannot be both a public school and a not-public school.
Read a charter law. What I’m describing is what the law says, hence neither illegal or fraudulent. I get that you object to anything but a district operated school being a public school, but that’s simply not true according to the law.
The charter law in most states—maybe all states—was written by charter lobbyists for their benefit. You can write a law that calls a camel a horse but it’s still a camel.
You have an amazingly warped sense of what charter schools are. The majority of charter students are from low income families. Most of their income goes to teachers, staff, facilities, and transportation; all in service of families and their children.
Why do they grab PPP $$$ when they lost no income? The money doesn’t go to the kids but to overpaid administrators.
John says: “The majority of charter students are from low income families. Most of their income goes to teachers, staff, facilities, and transportation; all in service of families and their children.”
The majority of PUBLIC SCHOOL students are from low income families. ALL of their income goes to teachers, staff, facilities, and transportation; all in service of families and their children. That’s why they are public schools.
Then there is Success Academy where about $800,000 goes to Eva.
“At long last, sir, have you no shame?”
In 1954, that phrase carried weight and caused the demise of Joe McCarthy. Alas! Today it is just a question to which the answer is a resounding “No!”
Schrödinger’s Charter
“Public and Private, imagine that!”
That’s what John has said
Charters are like Schrödinger’s Cat
Both alive and dead!
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schr%C3%B6dinger%27s_cat
John says:
“Getting more money for public school teachers and staff is a good thing, whether district or charter.”
No public school teachers or staff got more money from PPP. However, PRIVATELY operated schools — meaning the private schools that educate the children of the billionaires and the charter schools that educate the students that they want to teach — all got money from PPP.
What the schools that got PPP money have in common — which is what they don’t have in common with public schools — is that they demand the right to dump kids into real public school systems that are financially obligated to provide for their education even if that financially obligation means that they must pay $100,000/year for a severely disabled student to be in a special needs private school.
John, I get that many charter operators like you are thrilled that for- profit private schools are getting lots of taxpayer dollars because “PPP funds keep teachers and staff employed during a crisis”.
But what is strange is that you also aren’t objecting that the real public schools aren’t getting the same money from PPP that privately operated schools like charters and for-profit private schools receive. Don’t you care about the teachers and staff at real public schools as much as you care about the teachers and staff at the private schools that teach the children of billionaires and the for-profit charters where the CEOs work to become billionaires themselves?
This is no difference than rich private hospitals taking PPP money while poor public hospitals get none. And the rich private hospitals lecture public hospitals where the staff is overwhelmed with taking care of the most vulnerable patients that the public hospital staff should be grateful that already rich private hospital administrators and their hospital staff get to make more money, even if they don’t.
In the spirit of “public unity,” charters should share PPP cash with public schools the same way public schools must share their money with charter schools.
Great idea! I don’t expect to see any charters sharing their PPP winnings with public schools.
I’m happy to lobby Congress for funds for public schools. At the time PPP money became available, there was no COVID funding for schools at all. As not-for-profits with our budgets being cut, we took the offered government program so we could keep all of our teachers and other staff employed. I get why anyone would hope for more funding for district schools, but I don’t get all the time and energy being put into saying that charters shouldn’t have done that. Just unseemly to wish charters had laid off teachers instead IMO.
That’s not true, John. The PPP funds became available at the same time as the $13.2 CARES money for public schools. Charter schools double-dipped from both funds. Unethical cheaters.
Nobody had any idea whether charter schools would get any of the CARES act funding until long after PPP since it was only sent to district schools (LEAs). I don’t know if it was guidance that was released later or a state by state decision, but we didn’t know if we were getting any of that at the time we applied for PPP.
Public schools were not eligible to apply for PPP.
Charter lobbyists inserted their language into PPP to protect their own.
John, you are not that innocent.
AFAIK, there is no language in PPP related to charter schools. The program is just open to not-for-profits as well as other employers.
John,
As you will see if you read Carol Burris’s article on Valerie Strauss’s Answer Sheet blog, the National Alliance for Public Charter Schools sent out a notice to their members that it had successfully lobbied to get charter schools included in PPP.
“The National Alliance for Public Charter Schools informed its members via email in March that it had successfully lobbied for charter schools to receive PPP funds and provided instructions on how such funding could be obtained. The blog that contained the contents of that email has been removed, but you can find it in the Internet archives here. Not only did the charter school alliance encourage its members to apply, but the organization received its own PPP forgivable loan in the range of $350,000 to $1 million.”
And how to explain the many charter lobbying groups and chains that are flush with cash, but took big $$$ for themselves?
“Inspire Schools, whose founder and former CEO has recently drawn criticism for receiving more than $1 million in retroactively authorized payroll, took as much as $29.7 million in PPP funding. This home-schooling charter network was expelled last fall from the California Charter Schools Association, an organization that typically unabashedly defends its members.”
The Thomas B. Fordham Institute, where I was on the board until 2009, collected between $350,000-$1 million. When I left the board 11 years ago, TBF was sitting on an endowment of $40-50 million. Guess what? They didn’t need the money and it did not go to “the kids.” Why do you continue to defend the indefensible?
retired teacher,
I agree. But I bet that the people who claim charter schools are “public” schools when it suits them will not agree, since they say that because charters are not public schools and are like private schools and for-profit schools, they should get to keep all their PPP money and not share it with public schools who are very different from them when it suits them.
Now that the ed reform lobby has secured additional pandemic funding for the private and charter schools they prefer, could someone get around to addressing the crisis for public schools? Anyone? Clearly not a top priority but given that it’s almost August are there any indications that anyone in government is at all interested in serving the 90% of students who attend public schools? They’re aware our students exist, correct? That despite claims by ed reformers that public schools are “just buildings” there are tens of millions of students and families who use them?
Ed reformers are bemoaning the “lack of state leadership” on public schools.
I wonder if that has anything to do with the ed reform lobby packing our states with politicians who are hostile to public schools. Of course they’re not helping public schools. They don’t support them.
Let all these rich charters that receive hundreds of thousands of dollars each year in contributions and grants (check their IRS 990 forms) use those funds to pay their teachers, instead of claiming poverty and taking PPP funds. Let them share their contributions with the district schools they co-locate with. BTw-How many district schools amass hundreds of thousands of dollars from nameless hedge fund dealers (or bake sales????