He writes:
Peter Greene reports on real estate transactions in the Florida charter industry, just one transaction that provides an insight into the financial interests getting rich by exploiting public dollars meant for education. Lots of millions changing hands, but nothing about children or education. This is the kind of “news” that makes my blood simmer.
It turned up as an item in the South Florida LBJ Business Journal, and the lead tells you just where we’re headed. The campuses of three charter schools in Broward County were purchased for a combined $49 million by a company in Boise, Idaho that specializes in charter school real estate investments.That just says a lot. Let’s look at some details.
The big deal involves–well, several companies. We’ve got AEP Charter Renaissance. These folks sold a school they bought back in 2017. That charter school was located in a former Target store in Tamarac that had been bought by an investment capital group and a development group for $6.3 million; AEP Charter Renaissance bought it for $22 million. That purchase was part of a two-school deal that merited this kind of language in industry blurbs:
Part of the Colliers team’s successful strategy required educating prospective buyers on each individual Charter Management Organization (CMO) and nuances of each charter school including charter terms, for this asset class considered a special purpose building. “This is a highly-specialized asset class which inherently requires a longer and more thorough phase of due diligence,” noted Colliers Senior Vice President and Education Services Group Member Achikam Yogev. “Because of the complexities, charter schools have traditionally sold individually and rarely as a portfolio, but the continued interest in this asset class has paved the way for more creative strategies and more complex deals being done on behalf of our clients.”
By “industry,” of course I mean real estate and investment, because none of this has to do with education. At any rate, AEP Charter Renaissance just sold that school (which has somehow shrunk to 85,233 square feet) for $26 million. AEP Charter Renaissance is managed by Charter School Capital, whose CEO and co-founder Stuard Ellis is based in Portland. They serve “charter school leaders, back-office/business service providers and brokers & developers” and they make a lot of money doing it. Also, “AEP” stands for “American Education Properties,” of which Ellis is also the CEO. FWIW, his degree from University of California, Berkley (1988), is in Political Economies of Industrial Societies. You can watch Ellis provide a history of charter school capital.
To learn more about the highly profitable news in the charter industry, open the link and read the rest of this post.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
And remember folks, Florida is the national model for ed reform.
They hope to take this exact same privatization agenda nationwide. There is no criticism of Florida’s approach anywhere in ed reform- it’s 100% cheerleading.
How can one be opposed to profiteering on charter schools yet promote these state schemes that allow and even encourage profiteering? Well, no one ever said that what they purport to believe had to have any connection to who and what they promote. They’re “opposed to for profit schools”, but only in a completely abstract and unenforceable way that isn’t actually operative anywhere. They’re opposed yet somehow none of the state law they draft and lobby for ends up that way. Just another unsolveable mystery in ed reform- gremlins must write these charter laws.
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I was watching a news program about nursing home abuses. The MO is similar to charter school schemes. They both feed on public funds. They buy property and lease buildings to themselves at exorbitant rates. They hire more assistants than RNs to cut costs, and they have a high patient to caretaker ratio. They fail to do background checks on the staff members, and some employees have felony records. They hire lobbyists in order to keep the money flowing. They both target marginalized populations, the elderly and poor black and brown students. It all seems strangely familiar. Privatization is more of a boondoggle than a boon.
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There have been news reports on this charter system profiteering for the last 20 years.
None of the charter laws reflect this reality. They’ve all decided to pretend it isn’t happening while lobbying for all schools to be privatized.
Anyone who cares to know how this plays out knows already. They’ll all claim “no one could have predicted” when they reach the goal of total privatization and the problems with privatization become impossible to ignore since all schools will be privatized, but anyone could have predicted. The problems have been apparent since the start. They’ve done nothing to address it- I would go further than that- they are more ideologically deregulatory now than they were even 5 years ago. Every ed reform iteration is less regulated. They don’t even pretend to regulate vouchers. No earthly idea what is going on in any of those publicly funded schools and none of them even ask.
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hard to think about: so many administrators/politicians/community leaders and councils complicit in knowing so little about what they vote to impose
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This is a perfect example of a much larger, deeper, and more sinister problem. For all the talk about innovation and all that, today’s economic thinking for young people wanting a secure financial future is mostly focused on manipulation (of the political process, laws, enforcement or lack thereof, etc) and extraction (of resources, classes of people, and so on) and when they overlap, the results are never good for humanity. And there is a strong dose of racist intent at its seminal core. As this case demonstrates.
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“At one high school in Brooklyn, hundreds of students were sent to the auditorium after about 50 teachers called out sick and not enough substitutes could be tapped to cover their classes.
At another school in the Bronx, just five out of 100 seniors showed up, forcing the school to resort to “Zoom in a room” with students on devices in largely empty classrooms.”
Chalkbeat should get some kind of award for consistently reporting facts that contradict whatever narrative the ed reform echo chamber is promoting.
They’re the only place in ed reformworld where this happens.
It’s more difficult to “open schools” than it is for 500 ed reform pundits and school privatization lobbyists to yell at the Chicago Teachers Union, apparently 🙂
https://ny.chalkbeat.org/2022/1/7/22872640/nyc-schools-buildings-open-remote-in-person-learning-covid-omicron
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It’s virtually impossible to track all the waste, fraud sexual abuse and other criminal activity associated with charters (aka “charter abuse”)
Much easier by far just to ban all public dollars to them.
The FBI would still have to track and prosecute criminal activity in private charters of course, just as they do in private schools.
But there would probably be much less of it if charters were not getting public funding and at the very least the public won’t be paying for any of the charter abuse.
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My guess is that if all public funding to charters were ended,over 90% of the charter abuse would magically vanish because there would no longer be easy fortunes to be made.
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Another example of why the public sector should be protected from greedy, ruthless, cutthroat capitalists that will do almost anything, even sell their children, to make money so they can buy mansions, yachts, and jets, along with a life of power and privilege.
Once addicted to greed, it isn’t easy to break the habit, the cravings for more never end, and become a normal human again that actually has empathy for others.
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The FL charter industry is taking money straight out of the pockets of Floridians. They have no say in it. This ridiculous grift comes straight from the FL legislature, Congress and the Dept of Education (DoEd).
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“Continued interest in this asset class has paved the way for more creative strategies and more complex deals being done.” Asset class. Creative strategies. Oh, but it’s all about the children! say the sellers of charter bridges in Brooklyn.
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“Creative strategies and complex deals” are the way Wallstreet perpetrates fraud while simultaneously covering their asset class.
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Covering their assets
With complex CDS’s
Wallstreet bilks the masses
With housing bubble messes
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When one’s society is based on I,ME,MINE avariciousness what else could one expect?
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That’s ENIME MI backwards
” I Me Mine” is “my enemy”.
In other words, I am my own enemy.
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