The IDEA charter chain hopes to double its enrollment in Texas. This is the free-spending chain that planned to lease a private jet for $2 million a year but backed off after bad publicity; that flies its executives and their families in first-class; that bought premium box seats for professional basketball games; that pays its executives exorbitant salaries; that has received more than $200 million in federal funding from Betsy DeVos.
If the expansion plan goes forward, the IDEA enrollment will grow from 50,000 to nearly 100,000; its annual budget will grow from half a billion to one billion. This is larger than the budget of the University of Texas at Austin. Just in the past five years, IDEA’s budget has tripled.
One state representative called for an audit, but was careful to praise the organization that is gobbling up public dollars and sucking the life out of community public schools.
STATE REPRESENTATIVE TERRY CANALES CALLS FOR COMPREHENSIVE STATE AUDIT OF IDEA PUBLIC SCHOOLS
For Immediate Release
August 18, 2020
Contact: Curtis Smith
(512) 463-0426 office
AUSTIN, TX – In a letter addressed to Commissioner Mike Morath of the Texas Education Agency (TEA) and Texas First Assistant State Auditor Lisa Collier, State Representative Terry Canales calls for a comprehensive and multi-agency audit of the IDEA Public Schools (IDEA) after recent disclosures of lavish expenditures for its executives. These disclosures included leasing of a private jet solely for the use of top IDEA officials and their families, chauffeured limousines, advertisements during the Super Bowl and World Series, travel expenses of over $14 million, and many more similar expenditures.
IDEA receives approximately half a billion dollars a year from the State of Texas to educate students. It has plans to almost double its enrollment to 97,000 students and add 27 new campuses by the end of 2021. If approved, state funding could double to approximately $1 billion annually. Additional state oversight is needed to ensure that state dollars are spent for their intended purpose and to prevent questionable use of state funds in the future.
“As public servants, the State has an obligation to ensure that taxpayer dollars are used for their intended purposes, and the recent disclosures of the expenditures at IDEA are alarming—to say the least,” said Rep. Canales. “Texas must ensure that our tax dollars are not being used for purchases like private jets and Super Bowl advertisements. I believe IDEA’s recent actions have raised clear and pressing concerns surrounding IDEA’s financial decisions. Other contracts, state agencies, and even universities that receive far fewer state dollars than IDEA receive more state oversight. So, given IDEA’s questionable expenditures, a financial audit of IDEA only makes sense,” continued Canales. “Let me be clear, I do not believe any of our neighborhood schools are at issue here. I salute the hardworking teachers and students of IDEA, and I wholeheartedly support the work that they are doing. I believe this issue is solely at the executive level of the school district.” said Rep. Canales.
A state audit conducted jointly by the Office of the State Auditor and TEA may ensure that public funds are used efficiently for their intended purpose and may improve public trust. An audit also may reveal the need for possible legislative changes to increase oversight and reduce risk to the State of Texas. For more information, contact the Office of State Representative Terry Canales.
Rep. Terry Canales, D-Edinburg, is the Chairman of the House Committee on Transportation and a member of the Sunset Advisory Commission. Rep. Canales represents House District 40 in Hidalgo County, which includes portions or all of Edinburg, Elsa, Faysville, La Blanca, Linn, Lópezville, McAllen, Pharr and Weslaco. He may be reached at his House District Office in Edinburg at (956) 383-0860 or at the Capitol at (512) 463-0426.
Is Commissioner Mike Morath in IDEA’s pocket? Stay tuned.
The expansion of charter schools and vouchers was a recurrent theme during the recent fascist Trumpfest 2020. Trump promised again in his Acceptance Speech and Fascist Tirade against an Imagined Enemy Within that he would make school choice the rule across America and that he would ensure that K-12 schools are required to “teach patriotism and American exceptionalism.” In other words, he has committed himself strongly to destroying public schools and to turning the social studies curriculum into fascist indoctrination.
And I thought, listening to Trump the Fascist talking about turning social studies into indoctrination that it is our job as teachers to teach our students about the history of fascism, including
–its surge in this country before World War II (e.g., illegal support by U.S. automakers and oil companies for the Nationalists in the Spanish Civil War, the Nazi rally at Madison Square Garden 1939, Henry Ford’s anti-Semitic newspaper and his propagation of the myths in Protocols of the Elders of Zion, the loans to Hitler by Prescott Bush’s bank, U.S. racial quotas, the eugenics and Nazi Bund movements in the U.S.);
–the constellation of ideas and techniques indicative of fascism (exceptionalist ultranationalism and/or racial superiority, nepotism, authoritarian replacement of the rule of law with rule in accordance with the will of a “Great Leader,” centralized control of the courts, legislatures, education, media, the police, the military, and state violence generally), promise of a return to a mystical, mythical golden age), monolithic and monumental architecture and design, staged mass rallies, staged events showing the mercifulness and other qualities of the Great Leader, the manufacturing of alternative history in real time, the consolidation of the state and corporate power, propaganda, the creation of populist militias serving the Great Leader, the myth that only the Great Leader can bring about the return to greatness, appropriation of national symbols to the Great Leader, and, importantly, indoctrination in and action by the state against an imaginary, constructed enemy within.
–the horrific consequences of fascism, including the history of the Holocaust. The big idea: it can easily happen again if we don’t know this stuff.
–its resurgence in this country and around the world today
I also thought, it is our responsibility as teachers to make sure that the education deformations that have pushed social studies instruction aside are undone and that we insist upon curricula and curricular materials that tell the truth, for a change, about our history, warts and all, including the truth about the history of systemic and government-run racist policy. The big idea: the difference between us and the fascists is that we are all about recognizing and addressing our imperfections via messy democratic processes, not about pretending that we have arrived at some state of perfection already.
I keep thinking about: “Manifest Destiny.”
https://www.history.com/topics/westward-expansion/manifest-destiny
These yahoos have not moved beyond this stupid notion.
Good point, Yvonne!
same scary stuff going on in Brazil: the religious right pushing to eliminate native people in the name of “having the right of dominion”
Well written and thoughtful comments!
Thanks, Ms. Eckert!
Ditzy DeVoid sat, maskless, in the mostly maskless crowd (chairs set up right next to one another) at the Trump model fascist speech that concluded his Fascism Fest (was the speech written by Propaganda Minister Stephen “Goebbels” Miller?), beaming. The expansion of charter schools and vouchers and Christian fundamentalist indoctrination are her agenda, and these were recurrent themes in Trump’s speech and in throughout the convention. Advocates of public schools, in the post Espinoza time, should be very, very worried about a Trump reelection.
All of the ed reform “analysis” of how schools handled Covid excludes public schools and only looks at “top performing charters”:
“On this week’s podcast, Gregg Vanourek joins Mike Petrilli to discuss Fordham’s new report that Gregg authored, Schooling Covid-19: Lessons from leading charter networks from their transition to remote learning.”
Ask yourself- if these folks were really interested in “education” (rather than privatization) wouldn’t they also look at public schools? It’s impossible for the echo chamber to even imagine that a public school might have done something right?
Do you want these folks in charge of “public education policy” with this ridiculously biased approach? Why? How is that possibly going to turn out well for a student in a public school?
“Other contracts, state agencies, and even universities that receive far fewer state dollars than IDEA receive more state oversight. ”
That’s the special charter exception. They’re not given the regulation and oversight of other publicly-funded private contractors because….no one knows why. Also don’t call them “contractors”. That’s what they are but for some reason we’re forbidden to use plain language and must call them “public schools” although they’re identical to every other public service that has been privatized and are, in fact, contractors.
If the charter chain wants all that money, surely its private board members and fat cat executives welcome the oversight that must come with it. Those executives and board members, by the way, are all Texans, I assume, and none of them are from JP Morgan Chase or Wells Fargo. Right? They must be open to regulation since they’re stakeholders, not shareholders. Right?
So, not one single dollar is to be spent on executive salaries above what the local public school district spends on management. Not one dollar is to be spent on advertising. Not one dollar is to be spent on first class transportation of any kind, not one first class air fare, not one limousine. No tax dollars will be spent on perks, not one steak, not one hot dog at the ballgame. This is good, I look forward to seeing a doubling of proper regulation to make sure Texans aren’t getting screwed by bankers from Wall Street.
They are going to double the oversight, aren’t they?
Reblogged this on David R. Taylor-Thoughts on Education.
Where IDEA is intending to set up shop is mostly in areas along the southeast Texas border where many of the residents are poor and have limited skills in English. Did anyone do a needs assessment to determine if more schools are needed in this community? Did anyone bother to explain to these residents that these are private schools that will not provide their children with the same level of service and legal protection that public schools offer? Most likely the IDEA Charter Chain see a mostly poor immigrant community that will offer them little resistance to them moving in so they can start making money by monetizing poor brown students. IDEA sees an easy opportunity to profit.
“Let me be clear, I do not believe any of our neighborhood schools are at issue here. I salute the hardworking teachers and students of IDEA, and I wholeheartedly support the work that they are doing. I believe this issue is solely at the executive level of the school district.” said Rep. Canales.
Wake up Rep. Canales. Audit every IDEA school. These are not neighborhood schools but part of a huge franchise designed to make profits the highest priority.
designed to make profits the highest priority
You are right, ofc, Laura, that that’s what charters do. The business model is this: you get a per-pupil allocation from the state, and anything that you don’t spend on students, teachers, and facilities from those funds can go into salaries and perks for the managers. That’s why one goes into these places and they have no theatres or media centers or science labs or supplies or libraries or nurses or school psychologists and only the most minimal sports and recreation facilities. And, of course, the managers typically have the facility in their own names and lease it to the school at inflated rates and use this money to recoup their cost and so build equity. This is the scam that Trump and No-Cluella DeVos want to see become universal. Not surprising from the guy who gave us Trump University and the woman who inherited breathtaking amounts of money and married into the Amway multilevel marketing fortune.
The difference between Trump and DeVoid, ofc, is that while Trump mouths platitudes about God and pretends to be a Christian and to love the Bible in order to keep the evangelicals trailing along in his train, DeVoid is an actual extremist fundamentalist “Christian,” though her understanding of what Christ was about is extraordinarily warped.