I’m posting again—this time with the link!
This interview with education journalist Jennifer Berkshire is worth reading. Good questions, sharp answers.
Shockingly, Berkshire predicts that several states will “phase out” public schools, presumably to be replaced by a smorgasbord of choices: charters, vouchers, online schooling, homeschooling, and more.
What do you think?
Tina Bojanowski is a teacher who ran for the Kentucky legislature after the teachers’ strike and won. She is the only active teacher serving in the legislature.
Right now, the legislature is debating whether to fund new charter schools. Tina wrote the following opinion piece. It does make you wonder when the Republican Party turned against local control, which they once championed.
I can testify to the pride that Kentucky communities feel in their public schools. A few years ago, I spoke to the Kentucky School Boards Association and, while waiting to go on, I wandered around the public space outside the meeting room. In the hall outside, the walls were covered with posters made by the children in each school district. Each one reflected their love of community and schools.
Tina wrote in the Lexington Herald Leader:
Kentucky families are proud of our public schools, and we should be. Our caring public schools staffed with dedicated professional educators are also wonderful reflections of our communities, even when there are challenging differences in ideas about the details of public education.
I would hate to lose that community identity, our local control of public schools, and the ability to have a say in how our taxpayer dollars are spent on educating our children. All of those blessings would be threatened if HB 9, pending in the legislature, is passed.
We have never funded charter schools because we have never wanted to take funding from our public schools. However, HB 9 would do just that. With every child who goes to a charter, all federal, state, and, yes, local tax dollars would go with him. And with HB 9, our school districts would even have to pay all the transportation costs.
Schools would immediately feel the pain as they transferred money out of their budget with little to no, if any, savings at all. That is because stranded costs are left behind. Lights must go on. Roofs must be repaired. Administration, school nurses, bus drivers, and other staff must still be paid. Unless large numbers of students leave, you cannot even reduce staff by one teacher. But thousands if not hundreds of thousands of dollars would leave the school. That means either local taxes must go up or children get less as programs are cut.
Right now, only our school districts and our mayors decide where a charter school pops up. If this bill is passed, political appointees, universities, and even nonprofits that have nothing to do with education at all will be the deciders. And they will all rush to authorize charters to cash in on the 3% cut of ALL tax dollars that will go to the charter school.
It doesn’t matter where you live in Kentucky, I am sure we all agree that we should be empowered to make our own decisions about our public schools and whether we want charter schools. Our strong sense of local control integrates parents into the education process that has created a successful and thriving recipe Kentucky students benefit from each year.
But you will never have local control over a charter school. You will never be able to vote for a charter school board member. That is because they will be appointed. Even though they will spend your hard-earned tax dollars, they can have unlimited terms, never being voted in or removed from office by the taxpayers who fund their schools. And all you need to do is to look to neighboring Ohio to see how that works out. Nearly half of their charter schools are run by for-profits, often with out-of-state corporate offices that run the schools for a nonprofit board that is merely a facade. Given the financial generosity and loose regulations of HB 9, they will rush into Kentucky. We will not have a few charter schools. We will have a tsunami of charter schools. It’s clear that HB 9 was written by the charter lobby headquartered in the DC beltway.
I ask everyone to join me in opposition to this naked financial and political power grab that robs local communities of political power, local students of education-centered schools, and taxpayers of funding for our communities’ common schools. Let’s work together to improve our public schools and say “no” to HB 9. Tina Bojanowski serves District 32 of the KY House of Representatives. She is also a teacher for JCPS and is the only active K-12 teacher in the General Assembly.
Read more at: https://www.kentucky.com/opinion/op-ed/article259276709.html#storylink=cpy
Like most states, New York has a limit (a “cap”) on the total number of charters permitted to open in New York State and in New York City. The state cap is 460 charters. The city cap is 242 (included in the state total). The charter lobby has urged an increase in the number allowed, because there is no room for growth. Recently, the State University of New York authorized a new charter high school in NYC, claiming that it was an expansion, not a new charter school. The city and state teachers’ union, along with parents, filed a lawsuit to require the State University of New York to follow state law.
From: UFT Press Office <press@uft.org>
Sent: Friday, March 4, 2022 3:09 PM
Subject: UFT, parents sue SUNY over charter school cap-busting scheme
For Immediate Release – Friday, March 4, 2022
Unions, parents sue SUNY over New York City charter school cap-busting scheme
NEW YORK March 4, 2022 — New York city and state teachers unions, joined by parents, have filed a lawsuit against SUNY and its Charter Schools Institute to block the creation of a new charter high school in New York City that would illegally pierce the state cap on new charters in the city.
The United Federation of Teachers, its state affiliate, New York State United Teachers, and parents allege that SUNY circumvented the clear statutory cap on new charters by authorizing a new Bronx high school, Vertex Partnership Academies, disguised as an expansion of existing charters through a new partnership, Ventoux Partnership Network. That partnership made between Brilla College Preparatory Charter Schools and Public Prep Charter School Academies would funnel students from both networks to the new high school, an agreement designed specifically to evade both the cap and statutory requirements for the creation of new charter schools.
The scheme not only was called out by the State Education Department and Board of Regents in July as clearly violating state law, the lawsuit states that SUNY itself is treating the high school as if it’s a new charter, requiring accountability measures that in SUNY’s own words are “normally reserved for new schools.”
What’s more, Ventoux founder Ian Rowe publicly touts in his biography for the Thomas B. Fordham Institute the creation of “a new network of character-based, International Baccalaureate public charter high schools to open in the Bronx.”
“Put simply, if it looks like a new charter, is held accountable like a new charter, and is structured like a separate and new charter, then it is indeed a new charter and not an expansion,” the lawsuit states.
The lawsuit can be read in full here: https://files.uft.org/nysutvny.pdf
“This is a clear end run around the charter cap. Once again, the charter sector is acting as if the rules don’t apply to them. We are here to say – you have to follow the law,” said UFT President Michael Mulgrew.
“The SUNY Trustees and their Charter Schools Institute may think this scheme to create new charter schools is clever, but the law is still the law,” NYSUT President Andy Pallotta said. “Those who view the charter cap in New York City as a suggestion instead of a statutory mandate are living in a fantasy land. We look to the courts to give them a reality check.”
“City schools already have struggled enough as these charters siphon resources away from our students,” said Ana Rivera, a plaintiff and mother of a Bronx 12th grader. “Enough is enough. We as parents won’t stand for charters that think they exploit the law and take more from our students.”
The St. Louis Post-Dispatch published a front-page story about the financial shenanigans associated with a charter school founded by two TFA teachers (one of whom was the son of the former mayor). The school has a large number of uncertified teachers and an uncertified high school principal and boasts of its staff’s lack of credentials. Its teachers have a high attrition rate. And its academic performance is mediocre. The school handbook says that staff must keep all financial records confidential. Nonetheless, the school Hoovers up millions of taxpayer dollars from local, state and federal governments and claims it wants to “proselytize” about its “method.” Whether they mean to spread their “method” of sucking up public funds or producing unimpressive academic results is not clear.
Despite stories like this one, the Republican-led legislature wants to authorize more charters.
ST. LOUIS — The sponsor of Kairos Academies, a charter school in the Marine Villa neighborhood, has raised red flags over the school’s financial and leadership practices involving a shadow group that employs nearly two-thirds of the staff.
The school’s founders created Kairos Academies Vanguard for “charitable and educational purposes” before the school opened three years ago, according to records with the Missouri Secretary of State. The nonprofit has since grown to employ 36 staff members out of 56 who work at the school, including 10 teachers and all administrators.
Kairos has funneled millions of taxpayer dollars to Vanguard for bookkeeping, human resources, student recruitment, special education and other services, all without a contract. While Vanguard staff members work full time at Kairos, are listed in the school directory and share a staff handbook, school leaders say they are exempt from state laws requiring the release of financial information and participation in an educators’ pension fund.
Vanguard qualifies as a quasi-governmental body subject to Missouri Sunshine Law because its primary purpose is to contract with a taxpayer-funded school, said St. Louis lawyer Elad Gross.
“Schemes like this one to spin off a nonprofit organization are trying to do what a lot of corporations do,” Gross said. “Folks are using those same Wall Street-type practices to avoid liability and public transparency.”
In a “letter of concern” sent this month, the Missouri Charter Public School Commission that sponsors Kairos outlined a 13-point correction plan for the school to complete by March 31. The plan calls for an approved contract with Vanguard, separate audits of the school and the nonprofit, and legal oversight and training on open records laws.
Kairos violated Missouri regulations by not following policies regarding its relationship with Vanguard including approval from its sponsor, according to Robbyn Wahby, the charter school commission’s executive director.
“These requirements exist to ensure that public funds for the education of Missouri students are managed transparently and appropriately,” Wahby wrote in the Feb. 4 letter.
After receiving Wahby’s letter, Kairos set up a mailbox for Vanguard at a coworking space across the street from the school on south Jefferson Avenue. The Kairos board held a special meeting Wednesday to approve a temporary contract through March that pays Vanguard $282,480 per month. Clayton lawyer Hugh Eastwood serves as president of the board of both organizations.
The charter commission “is demanding that the school have a detailed contract with Vanguard so that the commission and taxpayers will know how public funds are used” by the March 31 deadline, Wahby said. “We are pleased that Kairos Academies’ board agrees with our findings and is working to put in place the remedies we are requiring of them.”
Kairos Academies opened in fall of 2019 led by CEO Gavin Schiffres and chief strategy officer Jack Krewson, son of then-mayor Lyda Krewson. The founders were both 25 at the time and graduates of the two-year Teach for America program. The education reform group Opportunity Trust contributed more than $300,000 in startup costs and continues to provide annual grants.
Kairos now enrolls about 400 students in fifth through eighth grades and will start a high school with ninth graders in the fall. Last spring, 35% of students tested proficient in English and 33% in math on state standardized tests. Only eight current staff members, including Krewson and Schiffres, were with the school when it opened in fall of 2019, according to the school directory.
Schiffres said Vanguard was formed with the “idea of creating a vehicle where we could take what we learned and potentially bring it to other regions, take the Kairos method and proselytize that.”
Charter schools are publicly funded and independently operated. Under Missouri law, charter school employees are required to participate in the Public School Retirement System of the City of St. Louis. Kairos pays 15% of the salaries of 20 teachers into the retirement fund, according to an audit of fiscal year 2021 by St. Louis accounting firm KEB.
The school’s administrators, plus Spanish, art and special education teachers, the principal and head of athletics and secretarial staff are considered contractors who are exempt from the fund. Those 36 employees can receive up to a 3% match for a separate retirement fund, according to the Kairos staff handbook.
The audit of Kairos included Vanguard as an affiliate because “the entities are commonly managed.” It shows the two organizations combined received $3.3 million in local, state and federal tax revenue in fiscal 2021.
A review of state and school records shows other examples of Kairos operating like a private organization:
• Eight teachers including three English teachers have no Missouri teaching certificates. An additional seven have substitute certificates, according to the Missouri Department of Elementary and Secondary Education. Nilesh Patel, who is slated to lead Kairos’ high school this fall, has no state certification. The Kairos community handbook reads, “Please assume that your child’s teachers are not certified to teach in their assigned grade level or subject. Although most are, Kairos takes cues from the best private schools around the country and recruits talent with diverse, real-world experience.”
• Like traditional public schools, charter schools are not allowed to discriminate in admissions. The Kairos staff handbook suggests that family income can play a role. “Enrolling another low-income student will make it harder to get the high academic results my team is striving for … disadvantaged students tend to come in below grade level,” the handbook describes as a hypothetical admissions decision. “On the other hand, our Finance Team understands the economic value associated with any student: they’re ‘customers’ the state pays us to educate.”
• Kairos received $163,000 in 2020 through the U.S. Small Business Administration’s Paycheck Protection Program. The school also anticipates receiving about $2 million in coronavirus relief for public schools from the U.S. Department of Education, according to its records.
• The Kairos handbook says staff must keep financial information, vendor contracts and curriculum confidential.
Do it the Kairos way!
Pastors for Texas Children have worked with a bipartisan coalition to support public schools and stop privatization. Rural Republicans have been an important part of the coalition that has repeatedly stopped voucher legislation and slowed charters.
Big Night for Pro-Texas Public School Legislative Candidates
GOP Candidates Again Rebuke Extremist Insurgents Financed By Ultra-Right-Wing Billionaires
Candidates that support Texas public schools celebrated significant victories in the Republican primary last night. On the eve of Texas Independence Day, these incumbents declared their independence from the deep pockets of right-wing extremists that are trying to destroy your neighborhood schools. We congratulate those candidates: Stan Lambert, Ken King, David Spiller, Gary VanDeaver, Travis Clardy, Reggie Smith, Ernest Bailes, Giovanni Capriglione.
“Yesterday’s primary elections proved decisively, in the reelection of pro-public education incumbents, that Texans overwhelmingly support their neighborhood and community public schools – and oppose the privatization of them through vouchers and charters,” said Reverend Charles Foster Johnson, founder and Executive Director of Pastors for Children. “These House seats cannot be bought by a couple of right-wing billionaires, no matter how many millions they put up.”
Pastors For Children will continue the fight in the upcoming May runoffs and launch an unprecedented pro-public education campaign for the November General Election.
Pastors For Children stands firm for the belief that there is a moral obligation before God to educate every school kid in Texas. We are also strong proponents of Article 7 in the Texas Constitution, which mandates the State Legislature to support and maintain a free public school system. It is the only way for the Texas economy to continue to outpace the rest of the country.
Pastors For Children is a 501c4 that engages parents, teachers, and all Texans to fight for Texas neighborhood public schools through their votes in the ballot box.
Florida Senator Rick Scott released his 11-point plan for the future. It contains every “culture war” issue that gets Republicans riled up. Abortion, gays, race, gender, patriotism.
It contains not a single proposal to address climate change, the economy, jobs, healthcare, or any other idea to address real problems of real people.
Rick Scott’s agenda:
Back in the early days of charter schools, their advocates imagined that most would be run by teachers or local educators with a passion to run their own school. The charters would be innovative and accountable, working closely with public schools to share good ideas.
That was then, this is now.
No one back in the late 1980s envisioned huge charter chains like KIPP.
Nor did they imagine the emergence of for-profit chains owned by entrepreneurs.
Nor did they imagine that a state like Nevada would have most of its charter school students in schools managed by Academica, a Florida-based for-profit chain.
Academica’s politically connected owners have amassed over $100 million in Florida real estate. Real estate: that’s where the profit is. Running charters schools is a lucrative business, especially if you have influential friends and family in the legislature.
The charter industry has set its sights on Texas, since the state has a rightwing Governor and Lieutenant Governor and Republicans control the state legislature.
So charter money is flowing to candidates for State Board of Education. In El Paso, board member Georgina Perez decided not to run again, so the charter industry is backing a charter school leader to take her place. Perez is a charter critic who recently joined the board of the Network for Public Education.
The charter industry has donated more than $200,000 to Omar Yanar. Yanar leads a small charter called the El Paso Leadership Academy.
The money behind the money: billionaires Reed Hastings and Jim Walton.
Charter Schools Now reported spending more than $1 million on various primary candidates throughout the state from Jan. 21-Feb. 19. That includes a $1,000 donation to state Sen. César Blanco, D-El Paso, who is unopposed in the March 1 primary, according to the PAC’s Feb. 22 filing.
The PAC gave to three Republican incumbent SBOE members’ reelection campaigns in addition to three Republican primary candidates and five Democratic primary candidates.
Charter Schools Now is heavily funded by two well-known charter advocates: Netflix co-founder and CEO Reed Hastings and Jim Walton, a member of the Walmart family.
Hastings is on the board of directors of KIPP Public Schools, a national charter school chain with campuses in Austin, San Antonio, Houston and the Dallas-Fort Worth area. He was previously on the national board of Rocketship Public Schools, which is opening its first Texas campus in August in Fort Worth.
Hastings gave $1.5 million to Virginia-based Educational Equity PAC on Feb. 15, the same day that PAC gave $570,000 to Charter Schools Now. Days earlier, Educational Equity gave Charter Schools Now $70,000.
Walton gave Charter Schools Now $450,000 in December 2021. The Walton Family Foundation has invested millions over the years to support public charter schools across the country.
One way to win elections is to buy them.
Reed Hastings lives in California.
Jim Walton lives in Arkansas.
Neither lives in Texas but they arrogantly assume that their money gives them the power to buy seats on the Texas Board of Education.
The charter industry wants to eliminate public schools or keep them as dumping grounds for students the charters don’t want.
Amy Frogge was elected twice to the Nashville Metro school board. She is a lawyer, a public school parent, and executive director of Pastors for Tennessee Children.
As a board member, Amy quickly learned about the big money behind charter schools, especially when she was outspent 5-1 when she ran for office. Tennessee received a grant of $500 million from Arne Duncan’s Race to the Top competition and spent $100 on its “Achievement School District.” The ASD gathered the state’s lowest scoring schools into a new district and handed them over to charter operators. The leader of the ASD promised that within five years, the schools at the bottom would be in the top quarter of schools across the state. The ASD was a complete failure. None of the lowest performing schools reached that goal and remained at the bottom.
Amy Frogge posted the following thread on Twitter about the charter scandals in Tennessee.
Tennessee is considering opening 100 new charter schools, removing ALL local control of charter approvals, and giving charter schools free access to public school buildings. Last week, I shared charters’ dismal performance rates. Now let’s consider 10 horror stories:
1. Memphis Academy of Health Sciences closed after 3 leaders were indicted for stealing $400k for personal use- for Vegas trips, a hot tub, NBA tickets, auto repair, etc. 750 students were displaced.
2. The Executive Director of Legacy Leadership Academy was charged w/2 counts of theft and 3 counts of forgery after the comptroller found she inflated amounts on phony invoices to steal $4595 from the school.
3. New Vision Academy in Nashville shut down after state and federal investigation into financial irregularities and failure to comply with federal laws re: EL students and special needs students. Its leaders- a husband/wife team- earned $563k per year to oversee a school serving only 150 students. New Vision also violated the fire code by cramming too many kids into classrooms.
4. Knowledge Academies in Nashville failed to pay teachers, used uncertified teachers, lost hundreds of thousands in an online phishing scheme, changed grades and transcripts, understaffed the school, forced poor kids to buy expensive uniforms, failed to properly serve. special needs and EL students, ran for-profit businesses out of the school, posted terrible academic results, and more. After $ went missing, its CEO/founder disappeared. Nashville shut it down and THE STATE FORCED IT BACK OPEN. It’s now operating w/a $7.9 million deficit.
5. Two KIPP charter schools in Memphis abruptly closed without notice or community discussion, displacing about 650 students.
6. Gateway University Charter School in Memphis shut down after it falsified grades, used uncertified teachers, gave credits for a geometry class that didn’t exist, and pulled children out of class to clean school bathrooms, classrooms, and hallways. (!)
7. Southwest Early Charter School in Memphis closed after using uncertified teachers, failing to serve special needs students, losing its partnership with a community college and having “no institutional control,”according to the district.
8. Rocketship in Nashville forced open a brand new ASD school, even though its school was in the bottom 3% of schools statewide. (The ASD is supposed to bring up low-performing schools, not open new ones.) This new school closed after only one month. Rocketship, based in CA, is amassing millions in TN tax dollars through substantial management fees, facilities fees and “growth” fees. It also accessed a nearly $8 million tax-free bond for facilities through a back room deal.
9. Drexel Preparatory Academy in Nashville closed after using unlicensed teachers, a carbon monoxide leak that impacted students, and ongoing poor performance.
10. Boys Preparatory Academy in Nashville shut down after only 2 years after district officials found flaws in its special education services, manipulation of enrollment data and “other troubling patterns.” – And this is just a sampling. THERE’S MORE.
Charter schools are unregulated, and there is essentially zero oversight into their use of public tax dollars. Meanwhile, only 5 TN charter schools (out of over 100) has a success rate over 20%, according to the state Report Card.
Wake up, Tennessee! It’s a scam.
Ask our senators to vote no on SB2168. Please contact: Sen. Akbari @SenAkbari; Sen. Mike Bell; Sen. Rusty Crowe @RustyCroweTN; Sen. Farrell Haile; Sen. Joey Hensley @joey_senator; Sen. Brian Kelsey @BrianKelsey; Sen. Jon Lundberg; Sen. Bill Powers; Sen. Dawn White @VoteDawn @MarkWhiteTN
BONUS: A friend reminded me of perhaps the most egregious charter scandal in Nashville- Nashville Global Academy. It was poorly planned from the start and delivered students home after midnight on the first day of school. Then it forgot a student on a bus, leaving the child on the bus parked offsite all day. An investigation of the school revealed poor communication, a non-workable transportation plan, inadequate board oversight, poor administration of exceptional education, failure to meet accepted standards of fiscal management & accounting practices, failure to administer required state assessments, failure to pay teachers, etc. The school misappropriated funds to the tune of $149k and failed to pay food services ($35k), gas charges ($14k), bus leases (over $23k) and employee benefits ($200k). It also failed to reconcile Charter Startup Program Grant funds totaling $81k. It collapsed nearly $500k in debt, leaving the district, teachers and vendors holding the bag. Guess who paid? Us- the taxpayers (not once, but twice).
My comment: Despite this long record of failure and fraud, Tennessee Governor Bill Lee and the Legislature want more charter schools! Gov. Lee has invited conservative Hillsdale College of Michigan to open 50-100 Christian-themed charters. Who knew that Republicans despise local control? Why would they want to outsource Tennessee public education to a Michigan college?
John Oliver explained the Republican hysteria over “critical race theory.” At bottom, as he shows, the GOP goal is to persuade parents to escape “CRT” by abandoning their local public schools and enrolling in charter schools or seeking vouchers. The leading anti-CRT crusader, Chris Rufo, made this linkage explicit, as Oliver demonstrates, as did Betsy DeVos. The big money supporting the anti-CRT campaign is coming from the same people funding school choice. And, as Oliver explains, “school choice” has its roots in the fight to block school desegregation in the 1950s.
The fight against CRT is being used to silence any teaching about racism today. Teachers are supposed to teach slavery and racism as a strange aberration from our founding principles and to pretend that it no longer exists.
But if it really were the terrifying problem that people like Rufo describe, why was there no uprising against it in the past 40 years? Why didn’t George W. Bush speak up about CRT? WhY was Trump silent about it until 2020? Why now? Is it mere coincidence that the anti-CRT madness took off after the murder of George Floyd and the nationwide protests against racism?
