Leonie Haimson, executive director of Class Size Matters and a member of the board of the Network for Public Education, wrote “a short history” of the rise and meteoric fall of Seth Andrews. He founded a no-excuses charter chain called Democracy Prep, which received adulatory praise from the media and millions of dollars in grants from foundations and the federal government. He moved in the top Ed reform circles. He knew all the key players. He was one of them.
After Andrews invited Leonie to tour his charter school, she wrote:
I found him an intriguing character, obsessively throwing a rubber ball against the wall while we walked through the halls of the school, and never taking off his baseball hat though the network had a rigid dress code for students, who were forbidden to wear hats, wear the wrong color socks or the wrong kind of belt. When we were touring the school, he stopped one student in the hall and berated her for having her Uggs showing. I wondered how long he would last at his own charter school before being suspended or pushed out. I later learned that his baseball hat was something of a calling card for Seth, and it is even mentioned in the indictment document.
Democracy Prep is a “no excuses” charter chain, known for its strict disciplinary practices and high attrition rates. I questioned him about their demerit system which called for keeping students after school for small lapses of behavior, to sit in a room silently, without being able to read or do homework.
But then he was arrested for embezzlement of more than $200,000 from the bank accounts of the charter he founded. His schools were allegedly teaching civic virtue. He is not an exemplar of civic virtue, nor of following the rigid rules he set for his students.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
I could only get through about 1 minute of the embedded video. This guy oozes insincerity and hucksterism. And his tentacles are entwined with the usual suspects.
With market based education schools may be here today and gone tomorrow. Someone like Andrews with impressive credentials, connected to the Obama administration with friends with high places, still crashes and burns causing undue disruption for young people. It is fortunate that New York requires an audit of these “fly by night” charter chains. In other markets the financial misdeeds may not have been caught. After he does his plea bargained time, Andrews will likely emerge with a new Ted Talk. Maybe he can get his wealthy connections to back him in a new Pay for Success scheme designed to reduce recidivism in the formerly incarcerated population.
“fly by night” charter chains.”
I was taught to avoid redundancy in my writing.
LOL.
Apparently, SUNY found the irregularities described here.
“Nevertheless, SUNY recommended the renewal of these two charter schools.”
But, a well-functioning public school can be shuttered if their scores drop.
Can you say double standard?
Absolutely! The charter industry is a palm greased machine.
And that is a large part of the problem.
The SUNY Charter Institute is held up as a model of oversight when they are a model of apathy, ignorance, and total lack of real oversight by an embarrassingly sycophantic group of trustees who rubber stamp renewals of charters that have the backing of billionaire funders. I hope those trustees aren’t getting any taxpayer money for their groveling and lazy non-oversight. Tell us what to rubber stamp and we’ll do it seems to be their guiding mantra.
The SUNY Charter Institute has a legal obligation to do real oversight. Instead, their trustees, a group of white lawyers and businessmen (recently the much criticized Meryl Tisch joined them) appointed by Cuomo simply ignored a myriad of complaints. Despite knowing that their favorite charter network loses extraordinarily high percentages of their students, this oversight agency has never closely examined these extremely high attrition rates. Even more incriminating, the SUNY Charter Institute trustees were well aware there were elementary charter schools where as many as 20% of the kindergarten and first grade students were given out of school suspensions – some of those 5 year olds were suspended multiple times. And the trustees incredibly believed that those children – who just happened to attend charters with virtually no white students – clearly deserved those suspensions. The implicit racism of those white trustees is sickening.
If anyone is at fault here it is the SUNY Charter Institute and the lousy reporting of the NY media that has never once questioned why these white trustees appointed by Cuomo have always been so willing to embrace the myth that 5 and 6 year olds who win lotteries for Kindergarten and first grade seats in their favorite charters are disproportionately violent. I am sure the fact that those 5 and 6 year olds attended charters with virtually no white students had nothing to do with why the white SUNY Charter Institute trustees were so certain of their violent natures. No doubt there was some other reason that the SUNY Charter Institute condoned and rewarded charters that suspended and lost so many students. Lucky for them, the NY education media believes their reasoning is sound and gives its tacit approval by not actually asking them why they believe such a racist thing.
They are all complicit.
Pedro Noguera resigned from the SUNY Charter Institute board in early 2012. In those 9 years, the trustees seem to have been 100% white and 100% supportive of white CEOs of no-excuses charters, no matter how many 5 and 6 year olds were given suspensions and no matter how many students disappeared from what the trustees’ keep claiming is a highly desired charter school.
Andrew Cuomo did NOT appoint Pedro Noguero. But Andrew Cuomo sycophant Joseph Belluck – chairman of the SUNY Charter Institute – continues to advocate for more and more of the high attrition no excuses charters.
Not one education reporter at the NYT or Chalkbeat has ever asked SUNY Charter Institute chair Joseph Belluck why he is far more interested in what it’s like to teach in a school located near the entrance of the Lincoln Tunnel than he is about why that very same charter school would begin with a class of 9th graders EXCLUSIVELY from their top performing charter middle school and end up with nearly half of those 9th graders missing from the graduating class 4 years later.
That should be the SUNY Charter Institute tagline: “We don’t care how many students you lose along the way, and we will reward you for very high graduation rates of the students who are allowed to remain, but we deserve the public’s admiration for our excellent oversight in asking charter administrators the hard questions about what it’s like to teach near the Lincoln Tunnel.”
I don’t know which is more shameful — the trustees of the SUNY Charter Institute or the lousy education journalists who don’t even notice how poorly this oversight body does its job.
So, why did this guy make the rookie mistake of not simply raising his own salary by the $200K that he stole, which is what a lot of other charter operators would have done?
hubris?
Plus, Andrew’s wife works for CBS News. I imagine she makes a good salary. Maybe they are trying to live beyond their means?
Bob, at the time Andrew’s “borrowed” from the schools’ escrow bank account, I think he was no longer employed by Democracy Prep so he couldn’t raise his salary.
Ah, thanks, Diane!
Another Rise and Fall Narrative Emerging is from David Cay Johnston. It suggests a pattern and a profile. The Seth Andrews of the world are wealth-emaciated, low life hustlers. In this case, he jumps on Charter Schools to plump up his profits but in other cases, the public good plundered for personal financial rescue features the same behaviors, just a different supporting cast of crafty cravens.
“Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner walked into the White House with troubled finances but left with millions“ 1/20/22
https://inews.co.uk/news/long-reads/ivanka-trump-jared-kushner-white-house-finances-millions-dollars-net-worth-1410281?utm_term=Autofeed&ito=social_itw_theipaper&utm_medium=Social&utm_source=Twitter#Echobox=1642685381
He pleaded guilty last week to the charges. He’s facing a maximum of 20 years but more likely 2 years in federal prison if the judge abides by his plea bargain unless he thinks it’s not a fair deal
Sorry I meant to include a link https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/wireStory/white-house-adviser-pleads-guilty-218000-school-scam-82273251
Well, real estate in NYC is very expensive. I guess Obama didn’t pay him enough.
“In court papers, authorities said Andrew stole $218,000 from the schools he helped create and then used the money to obtain the best interest rate his bank offered on a mortgage for a $2 million Manhattan apartment he bought with his spouse.”
Bob’s EZ Entrepreneurial Guide to Charter Riches! (infomercial partial transcript)
Getting tired of being ripped of by scams like Trump University and emails from ex-princesses of Nigeria? Well, you came to the right place, because I, Bobby Warbucks, the guy who put the con in economy, am going to reveal to you, right now, THE SECRET to Making Million$ in the Charter Game. The nominal Membership Free you paid for this TOP SECRET information will be multiplied like a politician’s bank account on being elected to Congress!!!
But, they’s a hurdle up front. No way ‘round it. You have to learn THE FUNDAMENTAL EQUATION of Charter Management Operations because this is what’s it’s all based on. And it ain’t really all that bad. Remember, there’s Fun in Fundamental! So, with no further ado:
(FTE * n) – E = G
Where
FTE = the annual per-student funding, or full-time equivalency, that the state will provide you for every kid you sucker in or pretend to have suckered in
n = the number of students that you pretend to enroll in your school
E = costs of running the school
G = the grift, what’s left over for you
Now, it doesn’t take a stable business genius like Donald Trump or Big Daddy Ewing to figure out the secret here. ANYTHING YOU DON’T SPEND ON ACTUALLY PROVIDING AN EDUCATION, YOU GET TO KEEP.
YUP. IT’S YOURS!!! (Well, technically, it’s the school’s, but I’ll tell you how to get around that in just a minute! It’s slicker than a . . . hey, cut that part out, OK?)
First, create a CMO, which is short for Charter Management Organization, or Channel for Money Outflow. Via your CMO, buy an empty factory building or K-Mart or whatever. Gut the building and divide it up into classrooms, bathrooms, a lunchroom, and administrative offices. Don’t worry about frivolities like a library, science labs, a nurse’s office, a gym, or a theatre. Remember, anything you don’t spend is yours. It’s best if you have a field outside for PE.
Next, rent a buy a bunch of refurbished computer terminals in bulk from China. Line the walls with these. Use the same source for desks, chairs, filing cabinets, telephones, and security cameras.
Then, contract with a Virtual Charter School to provide online “Personalized Learning.” You will bill your school as a high-tech, innovative, personalized learning environment that leaves the old Factory Model of Education in the dust.
Now, here’s the biggie: Via your CMO, rent the building and the equipment to your school AT SEVERAL MULTIPLES of the market rents for these.
You might think, hey, that was easy! But no, you can’t just write checks to strip clubs and massage parlors and the like from the school or CMO accounts. NO. DON’T DO THAT.
Instead, pay yourself, your spouse, your children, your mistresses or misteresses, your ne’er-do-well cousins and golfing buddies, your pool boy, etc., exorbitant salaries, and load all these folks up on the perks. You will be one popular person!!!
And remember that every day in operation, you are building equity on the property the taxpayers are paying for!!!! That’s the real beauty. If you need a little infusion of cash, just tell investors that you are not actually in the education biz; you are in the real estate biz, just like Donald J. Trump.
Employ the most unemployable in your family and fiends network to do janitorial, waste management, and busing services, and make sure you get your Vig via the CMO.
Of course, in keeping with the fundamental equation, you must absolutely drive costs WAY below the FTEs. Pay the lowest possible teacher salaries. Churn those teachers so that they don’t build seniority and get uppity and expensive. Don’t by any means spend money on frivolous stuff like nurses or whiteboards or markers or paper or art and science supplies. Start a PTO to hold bake sales to raise money for sports equipment. DO NOT spend money on athletic fields. (If you insist on this, pouring concrete for an outdoor basketball court is pretty cheap.) You can pay a buddy or cousin with a start-up busing company to haul kids to a local park where they can play football, baseball, field hockey, and if there are fees, parents can pony up for those. Teachers can buy their own supplies. Who needs library books and textbooks when you are a next generation digital learning environment!
Practice in a mirror: “What? You want classroom libraries?!?!?!?! Do I look like freaking Santa Claus to you? And do I have to remind you that this is a next generation digital school of the future?” What is that teacher going to do? Complain to the union? LOL. In your school, there is no freaking union.
Now, I know that it’s easier to get these charters approved in poor neighborhoods because state legislators don’t give the-leftovers-on-the-country-club-luncheon-tray about those schools. However, take my advice and open in a nice (you know what that means–nudge, nudge), middle-class neighborhood where the kids will, by virtue of their ZIP codes, do reasonably well on the standardized tests despite the education you’re giving them. This will save you a ton of headaches. Oh, and maintain a “No Excuses” discipline policy. That way, you can make up reasons to kick out any kids with less than desirable demographic characteristics, with “needs,” and with potential to score very poorly on the state tests.
Revised version:
Flint schools, which were closed nearly the entire 2020-2021 school year l, have extended “remote learning” indefinitely.
Report about how much money the school system has to allocate for substitute teachers/staff and for safety protocols.
It is disgusting when privileged white folks who send their own kids to private schools profess to care about students in Flint.
Here is who cares about children in Flint:
“Last week, a group of community activists in Flint gathered to protest the reopening of schools after the holiday amidst the surge of COVID-19 cases and Omicron variant.
“The Omicron variant of the COVID-19 virus is highly transmissible, and schools are not safe right now, for students or staff,” Bishop Chris Martin in a statement. “We are recommending that schools remain closed until Tuesday, January 18th to forecast the impact of the latest COVID surge effectively.”
Flerp claims he is the only one who cares about the well-being of the children of Flint, while he makes the most ugly innuendoes about people like Bishop Chris Martin who Flerp wants us all to believe don’t care about those Flint students as much as Flerp claims he does.
Democracy Prep or Democracy Thwart
xxxx
Wikipedia lists Andrew’s history. He worked at the Gates/Zuck BIA.
The name Seth Andrews and some of the details reminded me of a story I read a couple years ago about the Marlboro Music Festival in VT. Marlboro College–where the Festival has been held since its inception–merged with Emerson College and put the campus up for sale. The Festival was outbid by a charter school crook, who was then caught embezzling money from his charter school to buy a NY apartment, and the deal fell apart in a complicated mess.
There was also a 3rd part involved, and a legal fight ensued with the outcome uncertain. As the article below explains, the judge’s decision gives ownership to the Festival!
https://vtdigger.org/2021/07/22/marlboro-music-festival-says-it-will-buy-former-marlboro-college-campus/Marlboro Music Festival says it will buy former Marlboro College campus
By Lola Duffort
Jul 22 2021
The Marlboro Music Festival has announced a deal to purchase the former Marlboro College campus, settling the ownership dispute between the scandal-plagued would-be college and mysterious Canadian company fighting over the property.
The 500-acre parcel known as Potash Hill has been the site of significant turmoil and controversy since 2019, when Marlboro College first announced that it would merge with Emerson College in Boston after years of steadily declining enrollment.
Democracy Builders Fund, a nonprofit helmed by a former Obama adviser, purchased the campus last year and pledged to create an alternative, low-cost college for marginalized students.
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But the project was beset by scandal and turmoil nearly from the start. “Degrees of Freedom,” as the initiative was called, never secured regulatory approvals to confer degrees, and its founder, Seth Andrew, was accused this spring by federal authorities of stealing over $200,000 from a charter school network he founded.
Before his arrest, Andrew also brokered a sale-leaseback agreement with Type 1 Civilization, an LLC owned by Adrian Stein, a Canadian businessman with grand plans to create a new cryptocurrency and tech hub at the campus. The deal between Andrew and Stein quickly went sour, with both claiming ownership of the property in filings with the town clerk’s office.
The college has been the world-renowned classical music festival’s summer home for over 70 years, and the music school holds a 99-year lease on the property. The festival had bid on the campus when Marlboro College first started looking for buyers, but lost out to Democracy Builders.
With Democracy Builders and Stein still at odds over ownership after Andrew’s arrest, the festival went to court this year to ask a judge to sort out to whom it should be paying rent. This deal settles that suit, according to all three parties.
“We are delighted to announce this historic agreement enabling us to protect Potash Hill and our use of the campus,” Christopher Serkin, Marlboro Music’s President and Board Chair, said in a joint statement with Democracy Builders and Stein.
The festival is exploring year-round use of the facilities, they said in the statement.
“I plan to ask our Board for a temporary moratorium on off-season use of the facilities,” Serkin said. “We will be using this transitional period to carefully study and assess the campus; to seek input from our friends and patrons, town residents, conservationists, and other vital constituents; and to evaluate our goals moving forward.”
Brian Potter, a spokesperson for the music festival, declined to name a purchase price. “We know this information will be made public at some point and may be able to comment further then,” he wrote in an email.
While both Democracy Builders and Type 1 have both signed off on the deal, “a number of legal and regulatory hurdles” remain, Potter said.
“It has been a pleasure working with Chris and his team to forge a stable future for the property, to settle campus-related debts, and to resolve the dispute between our organization and Type 1 Civilization,” Alize-Jazel Smith, the chair of Democracy Builders Fund, said in the statement released by the festival. “My colleagues and I remain deeply committed to our innovative vision for serving students from vulnerable populations, yet we have come to realize that Potash Hill is just not practical for our operations.”
Smith did not respond to follow-up questions sent via email.
Lola Duffort is a political reporter for VTDigger, covering Vermont state government, the congressional delegation and elections. She previously covered education for Digger, the Concord Monitor in New Hampshire and the Rutland Herald. She has also freelanced for the Miami Herald in Florida, where she grew up. She is a graduate of McGill University in Canada.
Email: lduffort@vtdigger.org
View all stories by Lola Duffort
That is a wonderful story! Thanks for posting it.