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California: A Charter Chain So Awful That the Charter Lobby Expelled It

By dianeravitch
October 4, 2019 //
3

Inspire Charter Schools does not inspire confidence in its academics, its finances, or its integrity. Inspire makes money by getting state money to underwrite home schooling, with state-subsidized field trips and lots of folderol.

Things got so bad that the Inspire chain was kicked out by the California Charter Schools Association, the powerhouse lobbyists for the charter industry. There is just so much embarrassment that the CCSA can tolerate and this is one of those rare occasions. In the past, CCSA has defended criminal charter operators, but drew the line at Inspire and called for an independent audit of its financials.

The California Charter Schools Association has expelled the Inspire home charter school network from its membership and is now calling for a third-party investigation, citing concerns about the network’s operational and governance practices.

At the same time, a group of county superintendents from across the state has asked a state agency to audit Inspire, though the scope of that audit request and the list of superintendents requesting it have not yet been finalized.

Meanwhile, a tiny California school district said it believes an Inspire school it oversees has been violating state law. The district, Winship-Robbins Elementary, said it may shut down the school if it fails to address several concerns that the district has about its finances, academics and organizational practices.

The California Charter Schools Association announced in a statement posted Tuesday on its website that the association and its Member Council have decided to revoke Inspire’s membership. They made that decision based on a review of Inspire that the association had launched in October after hearing concerns from other charter schools….

An investigation by The San Diego Union-Tribune in August found that Inspire has grown rapidly in recent years in numbers of schools and students while relying on heavy loan borrowing, consistently posting below-average academic performance and engaging in what several say are questionable organizational practices.

Inspire allots $2,600 or more of public school funds to each student annually to spend on a list of thousands of vendors who sell field trips, academic and extracurricular classes, curriculum and more, including items such as horseback riding lessons and ski passes.

Public scrutiny of Inspire grew after 11 people were criminally indicted in May in relation to another statewide charter network called A3. San Diego County prosecutors accused A3 executives of manipulating enrollment numbers and using charter schools to funnel more than $50 million into their own pockets.

Among other “unethical” practices, Inspire was poaching students from other charter schools with promises of free tickets to Disneyland!

Another critic is Terri Schiavone, the Founder and Director of Golden Valley Charter School in Ventura. Schiavone says her school is one of many that are losing students to Inspire Charter.

“They target a school and then they try to get as many of their teachers and students as possible,” Schiavone said.

Schiavone said families and teachers are enticed by incentives like using instructional funds to buy tickets to Disneyland and other theme parks. Schiavone says there is a lack of oversight and accountability.

No one is making sure teachers are checking up on students’ work, and Schiavone says parents can buy whatever they want from vendors who she says are not fingerprinted or even qualified.

“It’s very desirable for some parents to enroll in schools in which nobody’s looking over their shoulder,” said Schiavone. “They can utilize whatever curriculum they want, including religious curriculum, which is illegal if using public dollars.”

Inspire found parents to defend the glory of home-schooling with public subsidy.

A few days ago, Inspire announced that its CEO and founder was taking a leave of absence. 

 

Categories Accountability, California, Charter Schools, Education Industry, Education Reform, Home Schooling, Privatization

Michael Kohlhaas: The California Charter School Association’s Secret, Reprehensible Goals

By dianeravitch
October 1, 2019 //
11

Last June, blogger Michael Kohlhaas received a huge trove of documents from the Green Dot Charter Chain in response to his request filed under the state’s Public Record Act. He has been reviewing these documents and releasing them.

In this post, he summarizes a Powerpoint presentation (and provides a link to the actual document) in which the California Charter Schools Association lays out its goals.

He headlines the post:

A SECRET POWERPOINT FROM THE CALIFORNIA CHARTER SCHOOLS ASSOCIATION REVEALS 2019 LOBBYING PRIORITIES AND STRATEGIES — IN PARTICULAR THEY CONSIDER POSITIONING THEMSELVES AS CHAMPIONS OF EQUITY AND EQUALITY BUT WORRY THAT THEIR SUPPORTERS MIGHT SEE THAT AS “MISSION CREEP” — THEY CONSIDER SUPPORTING EQUAL ACCESS TO HIGH QUALITY SCHOOLS BUT WORRY THAT SUCH A POSITION MIGHT ALIENATE THE “CHOICE WING” OF THEIR BASE — THEY LIST AMONG THE GREATEST THREATS THE BARE POSSIBILITY THAT CHARTER SCHOOLS MIGHT BE REQUIRED TO EARTHQUAKE PROOF THEIR BUILDINGS TO THE SAME STANDARD AS PUBLIC SCHOOLS — IN SHORT THIS IS A SEETHING STEW OF PRIVILEGE — AND ARROGANCE — AND CLUELESS SELF-EXPOSURE — IN OTHER WORDS MORE OF THE DAMN SAME STUFF!…

If you want to understand this powerful lobbying group, which spends millions of dollars every year to protect the charter industry and to block accountability and transparency, you have to read the post.

He adds:

As you must know by now the California Charter School Association is the premiere wingnut loony tunes mouth-frothing privatization advocacy organization in the state. And we’ve been learning an unprecedentedly awful1 lot about them since June due to a huge set of records2 released by Green Dot Charter Schools in response to a request I made of them under the California Public Records Act.

These records are so rich, so complex, so voluminous, that it’s taking me freaking forever to go through them, sort them, write about them, and I’m therefore laying them on you in increments. And the increment at hand is this powerpoint presentation, created by the CCSA in August 2018 to explain the next year’s goals and fears to their members. I have also exported this as a PDF for ease of use.3There are also JPEGs of the slides at the end of the post if that’s better.

And my goodness, what a revealing heap of steaming and pernicious arrogance we have here. Under recent wins, for instance, we learn that the CCSA “Conditioned Legislature to defeat a half dozen harmful policy and budget proposals in preparation for less reliable Executive branch.” That’s the California Charter School Association right there telling how they “conditioned” the Legislature in preparation for Gavin “Less Reliable than Jerry Brown” Newsom’s ascension to the throne.

And further down the line we learn the assumptions behind CCSA’s policymaking agenda for 2019, probably actually for always, but I don’t (yet) have the evidence. And again, what’s revealed is appalling but not surprising. For instance they pledge that “CCSA will seek compromise on legislation that minimally constrains flexibility but only in exchange for new entitlements.” This item casts the CCSA’s support of SB126, which makes it exceedingly clear that charters are subject to both the CPRA and the Brown Act, in an interesting light.

Perhaps in 2018 they thought that this new law only “minimally constrain[ed] flexibility” and that they were going to get a bunch of goodies in return. But I’m willing to bet they’re rethinking that concession now given that the fruits of a single CPRA request have subjected them to months of pain-writhing exposure, some scathing articles in the Los Angeles Times, and may ultimately end the career of theirmanchild knight in shining hair product, Nick Melvoin.

And their listing of what they see as the greatest threats against them for 2019 is very instructive as well. I’m not up on the details enough to comment on all of these but the ones I do understand are as appalling as the rest of it.

If you thought that the CCSA was discussing how to improve education for all of the state’s children, you would be wrong. Their discussion is about power and protecting the self-interest of their industry.

Categories Accountability, California, Charter Schools, Education Industry, Privatization

Red Queen in L.A.: No, We Do Not Need a Yelp for Schools

By dianeravitch
September 30, 2019 //
12

The charter Industry faction on the Los Angeles School Board wants to introduce a Jeb Bush-style evaluation system to rank and rate schools. It hasn’t worked anywhere else in the nation, so why not introduce it in Los Angeles.

Every other state has demonstrated that the school grading system ranks schools by the income of parents. Schools that enroll the poorest children get the lowest grades. Schools that enroll affluent children get the highest grades.

The purpose of school grades is to set schools up to be privatized.

Sara Roos, who blogs as Red Queen in L.A., writes that the school district does not need a Yelp system. She is right.

She points out that board member Jackie Goldberg wants the school system to help schools that are in need of support, not devise a system to call them “failures.”

The charter advocates are pushing the Jeb Bush Plan because it will help build the charter industry. It will do nothing for children.

Categories Accountability, Bush, Jeb, California, Charter Schools, Education Industry, Education Reform, Fraud, Los Angeles, Privatization, Testing

Los Altos, California, Fights Elite Charter School

By dianeravitch
September 13, 2019 //
11

 

Los Altos has a problem. Wealthy residents opened a charter school for their children, drawing money from the public schools to support their charter. The Bullis School is a private school that calls itself a “public” school and is funded by public dollars.

Vladimir Ivanovic wrote the following update on the community’s efforts to compel the Bullis School to act like a public school, not a private academy. Vladimir is a member of the elected Los Altos school board. He is also earning his doctorate in education policy at San Jose State University and has been a member of the Network for Public Education since 2013.

He writes:

This week, the Los Altos School District (LASD) in Santa Clara County’s Silicon Valley formally asked its County Board and Office of Education to take action against the discriminatory enrollment practices at Bullis Charter School (BCS).  The charter school began its enrollment marketing for the 2020-21 school year by announcing the reinstatement of a geographic enrollment preference for children who live in one of the most expensive zip codes in the nation, the exact opposite of the stated purpose of charter school law. This is an example of how charter law can be used to exacerbate inequities in education.  (BCS was in the news before for its exclusive enrollment practices: “Taxpayers Get Billed for Kids of Millionaires at Charter School.”)

BCS was authorized by the county 15 years ago over the objections of LASD, and so the District must appeal to the charter’s authorizer for changes that will ensure equal access to education for all students at all public schools. The District’s letter to the Santa Clara County Board of Education and its Superintendent cites data from the State of California regarding the charter’s demographics that clearly show it is underserving students with special needs, English Language Learners, and socioeconomically disadvantaged children and asks for the same kind of remedy that California’s Attorney General obtained from the Sausalito Marin School District: a timely and effective desegregation plan.

Here is LASD’s press release: https://www.lasdschools.org/District/News/10840-Press-Release-September-10-2019.html

Categories Accountability, California, Charter Schools, Education Industry, Privatization

Carl Petersen: The Flaw in California’s Charter Reform Legislation

By dianeravitch
September 6, 2019 //
7

Carl Petersen, a veteran of the charter wars in Los Angeles, writes her about the serious defect in the charter reform law.

The law finally allows local school boards to determine whether proposed charter schools will damage the fiscal stability of the public schools, a welcome change.

But it also allows the unelected County Board of Education to overturn the decisions of the elected district school board. If the elected school boards determine that the proposed charter will damage the district, the unelected County Board can reject the decision of the local elected board. That is just plain wrong.

And nowhere is it wronger than in Los Angeles, where Corporate Reformers funded by billionaires fight to control the LAUSD school board. When the public manages to get the upper hand, the decisions of the school board can be overruled by a charter-friendly unelected county school board.

The county board in LA is dominated by phony Reformers, including the candidate who lost to George McKenna, a true friend of public schools, and Kate Braude, the executive director of astroturf Speak Up, the voice of the charter industry.

Elected officials should have the last word, not charter shills.

Categories Accountability, California, Charter Schools, Education Industry, Education Reform, Hoax, Los Angeles, Privatization

California: Charter Reform Will Allow Districts to Consider Fiscal Impact

By dianeravitch
August 29, 2019 //
7

The bill to revise the California charter law has not yet been finalized, but the agreement between the charter lobby and the public school allies will allow districts to take into account the fiscal impact of adding new charters. The financial stability and survival of public schools can be grounds for denying a charter application. At present, charters can expand at will, with no oversight or accountability.

Governor, lawmakers agree on new controls on California charter schools

This revision is the first effort to rein in wildfire charters since the law was passed in 1992. Since then, the charter lobby has grown very rich and powerful (income over $20 million a year) and has blocked all efforts to curb their growth or their frauds.

John Fensterwald writes in EdSource:

School districts for the first time would be able to consider the financial and academic impact on the district or neighborhood of a new charter school or a charter school that wants to expand. Districts like Oakland Unified that could show they are under fiscal distress will be able to deny any proposed charter from opening. “The presumption in those districts will be that new charters will not open,” said a statement from the governor’s office.

The changes mark a victory for school districts and the teachers unions that have been clamoring for tighter restrictions and more local control. They argued that legislators who approved the 1992 charter school envisioned a small number of taxpayer-funded charter schools created by teachers and parents, not a sector that has grown to more than 1,300 schools – the most in the nation – often run by nonprofit management organizations with additional funding from wealthy donors. Charter schools serve more than 10 percent of California’s 6.2 million public school students.

Leading charter school advocates have expressed fears that allowing school districts to take financial impact into account would give districts an excuse to reject a charter petition – and bring charter school growth to a halt.

The new version of Assembly Bill 1505 builds on an initial compromise that Newsom’s aides presented in July. It includes revisions to all key aspects of the charter law: the approval and renewal of charter schools; the appeals process for charter denials; and the credentialing requirements for charter school teachers.

The language of the final version may not be in print until after the Senate Appropriations Committee votes on Friday to forward the bill to the Senate for approval. It will then be sent back to the Assembly with the final amendments. The Legislature must pass all bills before Sept. 13.

Please take note of this crucial sentence:

They argued that legislators who approved the 1992 charter school envisioned a small number of taxpayer-funded charter schools created by teachers and parents, not a sector that has grown to more than 1,300 schools – the most in the nation

Charters in California have turned into a parasite that wants to utterly consume its host.

Categories Accountability, California, Charter Schools, Education Industry, Education Reform, Fraud, Privatization

Bombshell in California: E-Mails Reveal Charter Lobby’s Goal of Complete Privatization of All Schools in the State

By dianeravitch
August 29, 2019 //
42

Blogger Michael Kohlhaas received a huge trove of leaked emails from the Green Dot Charter School organization in Los Angeles.

He has been releasing them as he reviews them.

No one has disputed their accuracy.

Yesterday, Kohlhaas released one of the most startling of these documents, in which the charter lobby reveals its ultimate goal: by 2030, every student in the state of California will attend a charter school or a “charter-like public school.”

He writes:

It’s not clear at all what they mean by “charter-like public school[s]”. It’s especially unclear given the amount of time they spend ranting about how charter schools are in fact public schools, so presumably charter schools are the most charter-like public schools of all, but whatever. The point is that this is an acknowledgement by the CCSA that they are in fact trying to destroy public education in California by removing ALL students from it or, if that’s not possible, making public schools be so much like their private charters that there might as well be no public education. In any case, please read the whole document. It is a revelation.

And they’re not just trying to destroy all public schools in California by taking away their students and, with them, their funding. They’re also trying to take away all their land. On a local level they have been working with LAUSD Board Member Nick Melvoin on a proposal to take facilities away from putatively low-performing schools and hand them over to putatively high-performing schools. And before facilities can be confiscated on the basis of performance, a ranking system is necessary. Melvoin’s recent school performance ranking proposal is step one in this playbook.

And the CCSA and its member schools don’t just want control or ownership of the property to help them educate children. Real estate is a key element of the private charter school investment market. The more real estate charter schools control the more money the private investors can make. This is a huge business.

Thank you, Michael Kohlhaas, for performing a public service.

And thank you, also, to the anonymous leaker who provided this frightening insight into the nefarious machinations and goals of the charter school lobby.

Categories Accountability, Billionaires, California, Charter Schools, Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, Education Reform, Privatization

Breaking News: California Strikes a Deal to Reform Charter Law

By dianeravitch
August 28, 2019 //
9

After months of debate and disagreements, the charter lobby and its critics have reached an agreement to reform the current charter law, the first time it has been reformed in 25 years. Both Governors Schwarzenegger and Brown protected the charter industry. Gavin Newsom took an active role in bringing the two sides together.

According to the LA Times, both sides gave up ground.

The deal, announced Wednesday, gives public school districts more authority to reject petitions for new charter campuses, phases in stricter credentialing requirements for charter school teachers and places a two-year moratorium on new virtual charter schools…

Charter schools in California are publicly funded and independently operated. Originally authorized in 1992 legislation to promote educational innovation, charter schools have evolved from an experiment to a system that enrolls more than 600,000 students across the state. California ties education funding to enrollment, and charters have often been pitted against traditional neighborhood schools in a competition for students…

Under the bill, local school boards would be allowed to reject new charter petitions based on the school’s potential fiscal effects on the district and whether the charter seeks to offers programs that the district already provides, according to the governor’s office.

The deal would require all new charter school teachers to hold the same credentials as traditional public schools next year and phase in requirements for existing teachers over five years, the governor’s office said.

The proposal would also eliminate the state board’s role as a chartering authority, allowing it only to weigh appeals to determine whether a school district abused its discretion in denying the petition….

In a concession described as a bonus for charters by people involved in the deal, the legislation would allow county boards of education to retain their role in reviewing appeals for denied charter petitions. The two-year moratorium on virtual and other non-classroom-based charter schools also falls short of calls by unions for a statewide freeze on all new charters.

Additional provisions of the agreement would require charter schools to meet the same performance standards as traditional public schools, the governor’s office said. The law would build on legislation passed this year to ensure charters reflect the demographics of special education students, English language learners and other groups in the communities in which they are located, according to the governor’s office.

Categories Accountability, California, Charter Schools, Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, Education Reform, Privatization

Los Angeles: Controversial Charter Leader Takes Over Low-Performing “Learn4Life” Centers

By dianeravitch
August 28, 2019 //
3

Caprice Young is a star of the charter industry in California. She was a member and president of the board of the Los Angeles Unified School District. She was founder of the California Charter Schools Association, the well-heeled lobbyists for the private charter sector, which fights off accountability and transparency with the help of billionaires like Reed Hastings and Eli Broad. She is a graduate of the unaccredited Broad Academy. She led an embattled chain of Gulen charter schools in Los Angeles called Magnolia.

And now she will serve as superintendent of California’s floundering “Learn4Life” Centers.

The press release from Learn4Life says the chain enrolls 20,000 students in California, Ohio, and Michigan, but the Broad Center says it enrolls 40,000, in those states.

The Learn4Life charter schools are basically operated in malls and storefronts. Students drop in once a week to pick up their assignments. The schools collect huge sums from the state for low-quality “education,” if you can call it “education.”

Investigative reporter Will Huntsberry of the Voice of San Diego has written a series of blistering exposes of Learn4Life. See here and here and here.

Carol Burris wrote about the “Learn4Life” Centers in her report called Charters and Consequences.

Bryan Juan was falling behind in high school credits. Desperate to graduate on time, he left his public high school and enrolled in Desert Sands Charter High School. “I started off ok,” he said. “But even though I went almost every day and worked hard, I could not catch up and do all the paper packets—especially on my own. I got discouraged. I left and went back to my public school.”

Bryan was not alone in his failure at Desert Sands. The 2015 four-year graduation rate of the charter was a dismal 11.5%. Even worse, over 42% of the students who should have graduated that year dropped out of school altogether.

Desert Sands Charter High School enrolls nearly 2000 students; almost all are Latino. It is part of the Antelope Valley School District, but you will not find it listed on Antelope’s website. Nor will you find Desert Sands at the Lancaster, California address given on its own website. Bryan’s classroom was located in an office building across from a Walmart, nearly 100 miles away from both Antelope Valley Schools and the Desert Sand’s address.

Desert Sands is one of 15 independent learning center charter schools, which are defined as non-classroom based independent study sites, connected to Learn4Life, a network of schools that claim to provide personalized learning. On its website, Learn4Life tells prospective families that it connects students to resource centers so that they can receive one on one instruction because “no two students are alike.”

Bryan’s classmates, Mayra and Edith, who also returned to the public school from Desert Sands, found their experience at the charter to be anything but “personalized.” They described education at Desert Sands as no more than a continuous cycle of paper packets, optional tutor appointments and tests that students continue to take until they pass.

Three calls to three different Learn4Life charter schools confirmed that the instructional program was driven by paper-packets that students pick up and complete. After packet completion, students take a test to earn credit. Although students can make an appointment for help with the packet, they are required to come by only once a week.

Of the 15 charters authorized to Learn4Life operated corporations, 13 are required to operate high-school grade levels. Each school has its own name, principal
and sponsoring district, but uniqueness ends there. The schools are in reality a web of resource centers sprinkled in office buildings, strip malls and even former liquor stores. They advertise themselves with nearly identical websites with the same pictures, quotes, descriptions of program, principal letters and a common phone number andaddress. The homepage of the Desert Sands High School is indistinguishable from the homepage of Diego Valley, as well as the homepages of 11 other high schools that are part of the chain. All that differs is the name of the school.

Diego Plus is one of the many corporations operated by Learn4Life. Diego Plus and its three Learn4 Life charter schools (Diego Valley, Diego Hills and Diego Springs), are defendants in a lawsuit filed by Grossmont Union High School District, San Diego Unified School District, and Sweetwater Union High School District. The three charters opened their resource centers in the three complaining districts without notifying them. They were authorized by and are the responsibility of the Julian, Dehesa and Borrego Springs school districts, each of which receives considerable income for supervising these charters located far beyond their boundaries.

In total, the three Learn4Life Diego Plus charters enroll almost 2000 students. Their respective four-year 2015 graduation rates are 10.8%, 19.3%, and 0%. 45% of the students in that Diego Valley cohort dropped out of the charter school. It does not appear that long distance supervision of storefront schools is working out well for kids.

Transparency and accountability, as well as legal efforts to force legal compliance, have been stymied and complicated by the continual changes in Learn4Life corporate names and addresses. A recent petition to the court on behalf of the Grossmont Union High School District lists 13 corporate names located at the same Learn4Life address. In 2014, there were no less than eight not-for-profit corporations listed at that Lancaster address that filed tax returns.

Each of those eight corporations received funding from the state of California. During the 2013-14 school year, the sum of all government grants given to those eight related corporations was a whopping $61,476,306. About 11,000 students are enrolled in the 15 Learn4Life schools.

Officers of the Learn4Life corporations play musical chairs with titles, often receiving compensation from several different corporations. For example, Steve Gocke is listed as the Superintendent of Desert Sands Charter. In 2014, Gocke received $139,750 for serving as the secretary for the two different Learn4Life charter schools. Dante Simi served as the CEO of six different Learn4Life related corporations, and the CFO of two others. According to the organizations’ 990s, his
2014 compensation was $270,200. Dante’s son-in-law, Skip Hansen, serves as a Senior Vice President, and received a six- figure salary for his services. Simi’s wife Linda is also listed as a key employee of one of the corporations.

Perhaps all of the above attempts at obfuscation might be forgiven if the schools were actually getting the job done. But they are not. The average 2015 graduation rate for the schools was 13.73%. Two of the schools had graduation rates of 0%. Dropout rates for cohorts ranged from 27.6% to 53.9%.

Are these alarming rates solely a result of serving at-risk students? Although Learn4Life advertises that its mission is to serve students who dropped out or are at risk of dropping out, its schools take students as early as ninth-grade, including those who simply want a quick and easy way to graduate early. There is no requirement for prior failure before entering the schools.

Categories Accountability, California, Charter Schools, Education Industry, Gulen Charter Schools, Los Angeles, Privatization

California: Schools Tied to Massive Online Charter Scandal Are Closing

By dianeravitch
August 27, 2019 //
7

Will Huntsberry of the Voice of San Diego reports that all the online charters connected to the biggest charter fraud in U.S. history will close.

Huntsberry writes:

An online charter school empire whose leaders have been charged with enrolling fake students and misappropriating $80 million in public funds will be forced to close all of its schools across California.

In May, the San Diego district attorney’s office charged 11 people in a corruption scandal of historic proportions. Prosecutors say Sean McManus and Jason Schrock, who operated A3 Education, were the ringleaders of the operation. Several who worked with McManus and Schrock have also been charged with crimes, including the superintendent of the Dehesa School District in San Diego County.

At its peak, A3 operated 19 online schools across the state, including three in San Diego, according to investigators. One closed before the charges were filed. And two more – one in San Diego and another in Los Angeles – were slated to close. But now a court-appointed receiver has decided to shutter all of the remaining schools.

Students’ records at each of the closing schools will be transferred to their school district of residence by Sept. 30, according to a letter obtained by the Marin Independent Journal, which was sent out to districts associated with the A3 schools. Richard Kipperman, the court-appointed receiver, confirmed to Voice of San Diego that all the schools will close.

How the Scam Worked

Prosecutors painted an intricate picture of a complex organization that managed to turn student records into giant sums of cash. A3 Education enrolled many students who took actual classes, but it also enrolled many students who never did any schoolwork, prosecutors say.

Most of the fake students were participants in summer athletic programs, according to the indictment. Enrollment workers would approach a football program, for instance, and offer as little as $25 a head for each player’s records. The enrollment worker would also get a commission on however many students he or she enrolled. The rest of the money – which totaled in the thousands of dollars for each student – went to companies controlled by McManus and Schrock.

In one instance, Luiz Rigney, an enrollment worker, carried several suitcases of student paperwork, worth roughly $5 million, to one of A3’s offices. Rigney had been asked to backdate that paperwork so A3 could get maximum profit, prosecutors say.

In another instance, two workers texted each other back and forth about the large sums of cash flowing through the company: “I had the weirdest dream last night! One was about us growing all Sean’s schools. I was running all the Facebook campaigns and you were running around my office drinking champagne throwing money everywhere yelling I love bonuses,” the texts read, according to court documents.

Categories Accountability, California, Charter Schools, Education Industry, Education Reform, For-Profit, Fraud, Los Angeles, Privatization, San Diego, School Choice, Virtual Charter Schools
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