Georgina Cecilia Perez is an elected member of the Texas State Board of Education. She is a new member of the board of the Network for Public Education. She writes in this post about the damage that charters are doing to public schools.
Charters in Texas do not outperform public schools. Most are far worse than public schools. They keep expanding not because of demand but because the law allows a charter to multiply without getting additional approvals from the state or local districts. and that’s the way the dreadful Governor and Lt. Governor like it.
Perez writes:
Charter school chains serve 7% of Texas students yet take up 15% of Texas’ education budget. The number of charters in Texas has nearly doubled over the past decade, putting a strain on the state budget and wreaking fiscal havoc with education budgets in districts like Houston Independent School District. Most of this vast growth has occurred without the knowledge or consent of Texas voters.null
The Texas Education Agency reviews charter applications, and finalists are presented to the State Board of Education, on which I serve. We are allowed to interview applicants and may either approve or veto each application. Whatever happens after that is out of our hands.
As the only elected representatives in the approval process, we have taken our job as safeguards of taxpayer dollars very seriously. What we’ve found has been troubling.
The TEA and Commissioner Mike Morath have routinely recommended awarding your tax dollars to applicants who lacked even the most basic plans for things like transportation, food service, and providing for students with special needs. Many finalists acknowledged they would offer nothing different from the school district in which they would be placed. Others would have imported unvetted curriculum while exporting our tax dollars to operators in California and New York.
I’m proud that the SBOE has fought to protect Texans’ hard-earned money; at the last board meeting, we vetoed four of the five finalists up for consideration. But that is where our authority ends.
The vast majority of charter growth in Texas has occurred through expansion amendments under which an existing charter chain is allowed to open additional campuses. Expansions fall entirely under the authority of the TEA and Commissioner Morath. That means a charter could expand to your school district and siphon away funding without you finding out until your taxes go up and bus routes and campuses begin to close.
Fortunately, the Biden Administration has issued new federal rules cracking down on fraud and deception within the charter school industry. Any new charter or expansion applicant must now reach out to the community and hold a public hearing before being granted federal funds. Charter schools must also explain their plans to ensure diversity and provide a community impact analysis.
These gains are significant, but the charter school lobby has already engineered a failsafe.
This past election cycle, charter school profiteers led by billionaire Netflix founder Reed Hastings and Walmart heir Jim Walton contributed nearly $2 million to pro-charter candidates in Texas – including candidates for the SBOE. One SBOE candidate received more than $250,000 and several others more than $180,000. Compare that to the $2,000 I spent on my first campaign, and you get the picture – charter tycoons have decided to literally buy the elected body that considers charter applications.
It’s time for an intervention.
The Texas Legislature must expand SBOE authority to include charter expansion amendments and must prohibit SBOE candidates from accepting political contributions from charter schools and organizations that represent them. Texas taxpayers deserve better. Our kids deserve better. Let’s break the addiction before there’s no public school system left to save.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
During the pandemic my daughter and her family moved from the Houston suburbs to the El Paso area. The size of the house and lot were about the same in both towns, a modest 1600 sq.ft. Her property taxes are about $2,000 more in El Paso. To be fair, her former district did have some industry in it, and there is less industry in El Paso. There were no charter schools where she lived before, but El Paso city and the surrounding suburbs have multiple charter schools.
When unlimited charter schools appear, the funding keeps going to more and more schools while the public schools keep getting less while they still must pay for fixed costs. We cannot pay for quality public education and a series of parasitic schools for the same dollar. The Texas system gives the local community no control over its budget. The local district must either cut services or raise property taxes to keep the public school going.
Charter schools should have to demonstrate need before they open. They should be required to provide an impact study in their proposals. Otherwise, the public schools are no more than a host to multiple parasites, and eventually the host will whither and die. Maybe that’s a goal of the radical right wing plan.
Your articles and commentary on charter schools in Texas and El Paso are spot on. I am grateful that you uncovered the lie that is Beto O’Rourke. I think there is more of a story in El Paso than meets the eye. As you are most likely aware, there was a supposed cheating scandal in El Paso. At this point, it can be called fake or contrived. Like the Atlanta “cheating” scandal, land grabs were and continue to be a motivation. Currently in El Paso, two major middle schools have closed down with little to no explanation. The high school they feed to now has no feeder schools. I smell a charter stench all over this. And the city’s news sources remain conspicuously silent. The oligarchy of El Paso is living well and prospering off the backs of its laborers.
John,
I oppose all privatization in all its forms, whether charters or vouchers.
But make no mistake: I support Beto O’Rourke 100% against the vile Greg Abbott.
Looking east from Texas, the former CEO of the Robin Hood Foundation, Wes Moore, won the Democratic nomination for Maryland Governor. Marian Wright Edelman praised Moore from her position on the R-H Board. (Roland Fryer was/is also on the board.) The Edelman family is likely cheering the win. One son is Bill Gates’ man in the U.S. Dept. of Ed., another son is the Stand for Children guy. And, the husband was/is on the action board at CAP. Private schools were the Edelman’s choice for their sons.
The teachers union endorsed Moore, maybe they’re hoping for scraps from the plutocrats’ table.
Wes Moore’s entire educational experience is with private schools.
He attended Riverdale Country School- $54,000 a year.
For some select men, I don’t doubt that a pipeline exists from school to political office. I surmise the pattern includes an obligatory brief stint in the military.
In Ohio, J.D. Vance, IMO, fits the bill, from a “hillbilly” milieu, no prior experience in elected office, directly to the Senate (financial backing from Thiel). The long game.
Vance’s opponent, Democrat /Third Way, Tim Ryan, has an effective ad targeting Vance’s false image.
Reportedly, Moore claims he opposes expansion of charter schools. If people want to believe him. o.k. His background includes BridgeEdU. The mission and photo array of the organization’s management and directors – each person can draw his/her own conclusion. How much of Gates is in the Blueprint for Maryland’s Future, which Moore supports, is also open for assessment.
Texas has a large number of Gulen charter schools. Before the attempted Turkish coup, tax dollars were going to Turkey. They are part of the Harmony charter school network.
There are three Harmony schools in El Paso, but I count about twenty total charter schools for a population of about 700,000. That’s a lot of charter drain.
Gulen has a very large number of charters in Texas. A few years ago, a large number of legislators went to Turkey, all expenses paid, guests of Gulen.
The documentary “Killing Ed” by Mark Hall is very good, in addition to the 2012 CBS 60 Minutes segment from ten years ago.
Fascist Republicans, in a destructive relationship with parasite Traitor Trump (who will destroy everything, even them), are a malignancy devouring the United States and its public schools
Charters, everywhere (not just Texas) are parasites on the public schools system.
So sad that in the ‘early days’, public school proponents thought that ‘charter schools’ would point the way toward improvement, since teachers could avoid those pesky local Boards. How naive they were, and how quickly they found that the genie, once released from the bottle, was pretty hard to stuff back in.
I’ve tutored kids who went to charter schools. Some did well and just needed some strategies or a bit of catchup, others went to schools that were little more than indoctrination day care centers. Had one student who was bullied in public school because of a disfigurement and grandma pulled him out in 1st grade and put him in a religious charter. He was sent to us to help because he was a 7th grader, but operated on a 3rd grade level at best (and behaviorally about the same). A very good-natured, sweet kid, but was also the kind who waited for you to get frustrated and just give him the answer. He hated working with me– at first– because I wasn’t afraid to be the mean teacher and make him work for it. He made some progress, but family couldn’t keep up the expense and after a year he stopped coming. Hope he’s found ways to self-improve since. Some of those kids I worry about the most.