Ed Johnson, fearless advocate for public schools in Atlanta, obtained a list of the charter schools in that city that received Paycheck Protection Program funding from the first CARES Act. Public schools were not allowed to apply for PPP funding. But charters were, because…they are not public schools!
After reviewing the millions in CARES money that went to Atlanta charters, Ed Johnson wrote to members of the Atlanta Board of Education:
Atlanta Board of Education members:
Some of you are, of course, pro-school choice and pro-charter school, thus serving contrary to your sworn Oath of Office vis-à-vis the Charter of the Atlanta Independent School System.
Nonetheless, hopefully all of you now know and understand the truth that charter schools in Atlanta are not Atlanta public schools, to wit:
Thus:
· Public schools must be spoken truthfully of as public schools, and as public goods.
· Charter schools must be spoken truthfully of as charter schools, and as private businesses and corporations.
· Partner schools must be spoken truthfully of as partner schools, and as public schools the Board outsourced to private businesses and corporations.
Just three types of school, thank you.
Ed Johnson
Advocate for Quality in Public Education
Atlanta GA | (404) 505-8176 | edwjohnson@aol.com
As noted in the link in Mr. Johnson’s letter, here are a few of the big winners of federal dollars (they also received a proportionate share of the meager dollars allotted to public schools, so they were double-dipping in both funds):
- Purpose Built Schools Atlanta, Inc., received a PPP loan in the amount of $4,822,200.00, based on the business needing to protect 408 reported jobs, which figures to $11,819.12 per reported job. SBA reported the business as being located at 1670 Benjamin Weldon Bickers Drive SE, Atlanta, GA 30315.
- Form-990 #employed (#volunteers): 2018, 395 (1). 2017: 241 (2). 2016: 118 (2).
- Drew Charter School, Inc., received a PPP loan in the amount of $4,039,752.60, based on the business needing to protect 279 reported jobs, which figures to $14,479.40 per reported job. SBA reported the business as being located at 301 East Boulevard, Atlanta, GA 30317.
- Form-990 # employed (volunteers): 2017: 354 (356). 2016: 346 (327). 2015: 280 (220).
- Educational Holdings Foundation Inc
- Form-990 #employed (#volunteers): 2019: 0 (3). 2018: 0 (3). 2017: 0 (7).
- The Kindezi Schools Atlanta, LLC, received a PPP loan in the amount of $3,855,982.00, based on the business needing to protect 300 reported jobs, which figures to $12,853.27 per reported job. SBA reported the business as being located at 950 Joseph E Lowery Blvd, Atlanta, GA 30318.
- Form-990 #employed (#volunteers): 2017: 391 (50). 2016: 268 (50). 2015: 298 (50).
- Atlanta Neighborhood Charter School, Inc., received a PPP loan in the amount of $1,850,000.00, based on the business needing to protect 120 reported jobs, which figures to $15,416.67 per reported job. SBA reported the business as being located at 688 Grant St SE, Atlanta, GA 30315.
- Form-990 #employed (#volunteers): 2018: 173 (75). 2017: 171 (200). 2016: 158 (200).
Unlike small businesses which lost revenue and were forced to lay off employees or close their doors, charter schools never lost revenue during the pandemic. Their stream of government revenue never was cut off. Meanwhile, as they sucked up CARES dollars, hundreds of thousands of small businesses that needed the money went bankrupt and closed forever.
No public school received this large amount of money. The average public school received $134,500 in federal aid in the first CARES Act.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Sure shows how much our great public schools are our dedicated Public school teachers are valued.
Those in charge WANT to throw obstacles in the path of learning for all. The entitled don’t really want an educated citizenry for this would make things more equal.
Those who profit from an uneaual society want to keep Jim Crow in place.
This is disgusting.
“Those who profit from an uneaual society want to keep Jim Crow in place.”
Yvonne, here’s an example and it, too, is disgusting…
https://mailchi.mp/78bfa66b7b78/apsl-to-rename-brown-middle-school-rejecting-the-racist-person-keeping-the-racist-tradition
“Public” when I want to be called a public school so that I don’t look bad as a privatizer of public education and “private” when I need to be a business and suck more greedy tax dollars out of the tax payer. That’s me.
My name is Charter School. I guess so far, I can have it both ways.
a bit like the acronym DINO. PINO = Pubic In Name Only
“The pandemic could help motivate a renewed push to give state money to parents to pay for private or home schools”
The pandemic. Nonsense. They all pushed vouchers before the pandemic and they’ll all push vouchers amid and after the pandemic, because pushing vouchers is the only work they do.
The same stale list of ed reform initiatives has been relabeled “pandemic response”.
Standardized testing is also supposedly a “pandemic response”.
They just slapped a new label on the same three things they always push- charters, vouchers and tests.
https://www.fox5atlanta.com/news/georgia-lawmakers-eye-citizens-arrest-gambling-vouchers
Mendacious charter school owners are public when it benefits them, and private when it works to their advantage as with PPP funds. Charter schools suffered no revenue loss from the pandemic; yet they collect money intended for small businesses.
“The fact that these APS charter school businesses applied for and received PPP loans necessarily and unavoidably means that either any of their claims of being a “public school” is a bald-faced lie or they applied for and received PPP loans under false pretenses. Either they lied or they stole; there are no two ways about it.”
Likewise, when a school board, as in the case of the Atlanta Public Schools, is in on the heist of public money, charters grow like a cancer gobbling up public money, always expanding while the real public schools starve and rot. The public is largely unaware that the drip, drip of privatization is taking over public education, and they have no say in the matter.
Speaking of Covid, the conservative religious SCOTUS judges decided women must get abortion pills in person during the pandemic. Hope the women find doctors and pharmacists who are secularists because they are the non-sexist, humane ones.