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Florida Governor Rick Scott Found Ways to Protect His Fortune While in Office

By dianeravitch
October 24, 2018 //
3

The New York Times reported that Governor Rick Scott created a “blind” trust that was not at all blind. He has been plagued with ethical problems because…he is unethical.

TALLAHASSEE, Fla. — Rick Scott had been governor of Florida for barely three months when questions first mounted about conflicts of interest. Fabulously wealthy but a newcomer to politics, Mr. Scott mandated random drug testing for state workers in March 2011, and was pushing the legislature to require it for welfare recipients. The Republican governor, who had made his fortune as a health care executive and investor, also proposed reorienting the state’s Medicaid system toward managed care.

As it happened, those moves would have created vast potential markets for the chain of 32 urgent-care clinics that Mr. Scott had co-founded a decade earlier, after his forced resignation as chief executive of the hospital company Columbia/HCA. News reports about the governor’s personal stake in the Solantic clinics, which he transferred to his wife shortly before taking office, stifled the momentum of his first months in office.

To shield himself from future conflict charges, Mr. Scott, who is now running to unseat the incumbent senator Bill Nelson, created a $73.8 million investment account that he called a blind trust. But an examination of Mr. Scott’s finances shows that his trust has been blind in name only. There have been numerous ways for him to have knowledge about his holdings: Among other things, he transferred many assets to his wife and neither “blinded” nor disclosed them. And their investments have included corporations, partnerships and funds that stood to benefit from his administration’s actions.

Only in late July, when compelled by ethics rules for Senate candidates, did Mr. Scott disclose his wife’s holdings. That report revealed that his wife, Ann Scott, an interior decorator by trade, controlled accounts that might exceed the value of her husband’s. Their equity investments largely mirrored each other, meaning that Mr. Scott could, if he wanted, track his own holdings by following his wife’s.

The filing revealed that the Scotts together were worth between $254.3 million and $510 million. (The Senate requires that assets be valued only in ranges.) They own a beachfront mansion in Naples, Fla., valued at $14.1 million (along with a $147,000 boathouse) and a Montana residence on 61 acres worth $1.5 million. The governor, who has banked more than $200 million in investment income while in office, forgoes his $130,000 state salary and jets across Florida in his own plane.

If he wins a tight race for the Florida seat, which is central to control of the Senate, Mr. Scott could well become the richest member of the next Congress. His broad menu of investments might regularly present conflicts that require recusal. He has declined to say whether he would use a blind trust in the Senate, where the rules controlling them are far more stringent.

Mr. Nelson, a 76-year-old Democrat who is serving his third term, has made campaign issues of Mr. Scott’s wealth and the blindness of his trust. “Governor Scott has been in public service for himself,” he charged in August.

Time for Rick Scott to return to the private sector!

Vote for Bill Nelson.

Categories Education Reform, Ethics, Florida, For-Profit

I Endorse Andrew Gillum for Governor of Florida

By dianeravitch
October 21, 2018 //
12

Andrew Gillum is an exciting new face in the Democratic party. He has pledged to reverse the damage inflicted on Florida’s infrastructure and education if he is elected Governor.

I am happy to endorse Gillum!

Here are good reasons to change the leadership of the state:

1. The Republican party has inflicted pain on the public school system and its teachers. They have enacted very loose charter laws and voucher laws. Florida has three different voucher programs, despite the fact that vouchers are specifically banned in the State Constitution, and despite the fact that voters rejected an effort to change the State Constitution to allow vouchers in 2012. The legislature and the governor have given away hundreds of millions of dollars to private and religious and charter schools, which have minimal accountability. They have enacted laws to judge teachers by test scores, even though this method has been proven ineffective and harmful in Florida and everywhere else.

2. The Republicans have run the state like their private candy store, bestowing millions on charter chains owned by their family and friends and ignoring rampant corruption via real estate deals in the venal charter industry.

3. The Republican party is the party of climate change denial. The current governor, Rick Scott, now running for the Senate, is a prominent denier of climate change, even though Florida is ecologically fragile. See this article in Politico, which shows the green slime that is infiltrating the state’s waterways. Scott is notorious for ignoring the environmental damage caused by his policies.

Vote for Bill Nelson for Senator and Andrew Gillum for Governor.

Andrew Gillum is a good man with solid experience as Mayor of Tallahassee.

Florida has a chance to start fresh and break free of the grip of the greed hogs now running the state and destroying its education system and its environment.

Vote for Andrew Gillum!

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Education Industry, Environment, Florida, Privatization, School Choice, Vouchers

What Do Kanye West and Betsy DeVos Have in Common?

By dianeravitch
October 15, 2018 //
22

Answer: They both visited rapper Pitbull’s charter school in Miami.

Pitbull, I have heard, is a misogynistic, foul mouthed rapper who has made a lot of money being crude while singing.

According to Wikipedia:

He attended South Miami Senior High School before graduating from Miami Coral Park High School, where he focused his career on rapping.

Who knew that “rapping” was in the curriculum. Well, it worked for him. Bigly.

Of course, he had to have his own charter school.

His school is part of the for-profit Academica chain.

Happily for Academica, it has close relationships with certain state legislators, so accountability is light to non-existent. Today, he calls himself (according to the NPR story linked below) “Mr. Education.” The National Charter School Conference invited him to be its keynote speaker.

Pitbull’s SLAM Academy has the full support of the national charter leadership. He is a celebrity, so they don’t mind his profanity or his history as a drug dealer. Nor do they care that he never went to college. He has fame, and how he got it doesn’t matter.

Nina Rees, who heads the National Alliance for Public Charter Schools, says she’s not about to apologize for supporting the rapper’s school.

“Whether it’s Pitbull or Meryl Streep in Rhode Island or Sandra Bullock in Louisiana,” she says, “charters do benefit from celebrities because public schools, they do have to market themselves to families because these are schools of choice.”

Rees says she has no problem with Pitbull’s music, either.

“We’re not endorsing his music, but welcoming him as an investor,” Rees says. Besides, she adds, everybody is entitled to their own tastes. “I admit that I’m a fan of his music.”

Three of Pitbull’s six children attend charter schools.

“I’m not just a charter school advocate. … I’m a charter school parent,” Pitbull said when talking at this year’s National Charter School Conference in D.C. “And that makes me one of you.”

Indeed.

I wonder if children in his charter study his lyrics.

More news about Pitbull, AKA “Mr. Education.”

He plans to open another charter school in Arizona.

https://www.azcentral.com/story/news/local/arizona-education/2018/10/12/pitbull-plans-slam-charter-school-sports-management-arizona-wozu/1578767002/

Thus ends American education, washed up on the rocks of capitalism and vainglorious egotism, turned into an international joke, as rappers, sports stars, celebrities, grifters, and entrepreneurs claim public money to open their own school. No experience needed.

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Education Industry, Education Reform, Florida, Privatization

Miami: Teacher’s Favorite Literature Textbooks Disappear: Who Done It?

By dianeravitch
October 6, 2018 //
83

A highly experienced, very successful high school English teacher clung to her favorite literature textbooks.she preferred them to the digital textbooks adopted by the district. One day recently, she arrived in her class to discover that all her textbooks were gone. Her defiance was unacceptable to the state, the district and the principal. The state wants all children using digital material. It is de-emphasizing fiction and literature, replacing them with “informational text.” In short, the Common Core strikes again.

Audrey Silverman arrived at Dr. Michael M. Krop Senior High last week ready to finish “The Necklace,” the English class staple short story about the deceptiveness of appearances and the dangers of martyrdom with her gifted, honors ninth-grade students.

But when the literature teacher entered her classroom Thursday morning, 50 textbooks, including the teacher’s edition with years of annotations Silverman said she personally purchased, were missing from the baskets beneath the students’ desks. A student told Silverman she saw the books carted away the prior evening.

“They’re gone,” said Silverman. “Nobody knows where they are.

What happened next has culminated into a tussle between teacher autonomy and embracing new, digital curriculum. Silverman filed a pre-grievance with the teachers’ union against her principal, Allison Harley, for breached academic freedom. Harley, Silverman says, launched an internal investigation with Miami-Dade County Public Schools against her for improper use of email.

Silverman, a 30-year veteran teacher whose scores deem her one of the best teachers in the state, has been using a textbook called “McDougal-Littell Literature” for a decade, although students were using an edition from four years ago. It’s got poems, essays, short stories, Edgar Allan Poe and Shakespeare — a curriculum she says challenges and rivets her students.

But the Florida Department of Education phased out that textbook five years ago and introduced new titles that districts could use. A committee of teachers picked “Collections“ by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, a digital textbook that aligns with new Florida standardized tests that heavily emphasize nonfiction and informational texts.

That digital book was adopted by the district in 2015 while rolling out a tablet-based program for high school freshmen, who could bring their own device or check one out from the school.

“It makes the learning a lot more interactive,” than using just a static book, said Lisette Alves, the assistant superintendent over academics.

Silverman had been quietly hanging on to her hardcover books until last week, when a group of district officials stopped by her classroom. District spokeswoman Jackie Calzadilla said an instructional review of all subjects took place at Krop on Sept. 26 and determined that the material Silverman was using “was not aligned with the Florida Standard” and was outdated.

The next morning, the books were gone. Not in the closed cabinets where she kept the spares, not under desks, not in her own desk.

“I felt that this may happen one day,” Silverman said.

Alves and Sylvia Diaz, assistant superintendent over innovation and school choice, say the district does not make the call to remove books. That decision was made by the principal.

“We do occasionally hear about a teacher using older materials,” Diaz said. “We advise the principal.”

“If we see it as we’re doing reviews, then we advise the principal to make sure they’re using [the adopted books],” Alves said.

Harley, the principal at Krop, would not comment and referred a reporter’s questions to the district. The district said Harley repeatedly asked Silverman to use the approved material and she refused.

Spokeswoman Daisy Gonzalez-Diego said books were removed from Silverman’s class two summers ago, “but the teacher retrieved them and brought them back into the classroom.”

“So, they had to be removed again,” Gonzalez-Diego wrote in an email.

Silverman said this incident has been the first and only time books have been removed from her classroom. She said she’s kept these books in her cabinet for three years.

“That is an outright lie,” she said.

The district also said all other language arts teachers at Krop were using the approved material.

Ceresta Smith, a 10th-grade intensive reading teacher who returned to Krop after a decade at John A. Ferguson Senior High, said she doesn’t use any of the approved material. She uses a collection of materials she’s put together over her 30-year teaching career.

“I said to the principal when I … came back to Krop, I said, ‘Don’t expect me to follow the pacing guide. I’m a veteran and I’m a professional and I know what I’m doing.’ ”

Read more here: https://www.miamiherald.com/news/local/education/article219197755.html#storylink=cpy

The story goes on with more horrifying detail.

Celesta Smith, be it noted, is a National Board Certified Teacher, a founder of United Opt Out, and a BAT. Nobody dares to tell her what to teach.

No one should tell Audrey Silverman what to teach. She is a professional.

LEAVE HER ALONE.

Ms. Silverman, google the literary selections and forget about the textbook.

Categories Academic Freedom, Accountability, Common Core, Education Industry, Florida, Miami, Teachers and Teaching, Technology

Florida: Voucher Fraud Stiffs Teachers, Taxpayers, No One Cares

By dianeravitch
October 5, 2018 //
13

Scott Maxwell of the Orlando Sentinel writes here about a voucher school that is a sham, but the state doesn’t care. Does anyone in Florida care about accountability for taxpayers’ money, or about the quality of education?

I urge you to subscribe to the Orlando Sentinel to follow its fearless coverage. I did.

And remember, when you read this story, that this is what Betsy DeVos describes as the “best” state because she wants everyone to follow Florida’s example of charters, vouchers, and no accountability for public dollars.

Maxwell writes:

Two years ago, the Beta Preparatory school in Orlando was being run — with your tax dollars — inside a commercial complex on South Orange Blossom Trail, alongside eight bail-bonds businesses and a drug-testing company.

With no outdoor space for recess — and fellow tenants such as “Drug Tests R Us” — it wasn’t most parents’ vision of an ideal learning environment.

Apparently Beta wasn’t an ideal tenant either. The private school that takes state vouchers was evicted for not paying its rent.

Yes, the entire taxpayer-subsidized school. (Class, the words of the day are: “Final notice.”)

So last year, Beta moved to a new locale — a church campus in Orlando, where it continued to take more of your tax dollars … until things went south there, too.

Teachers filed formal complaints about a “lack of basic school supplies,” academic “irregularities,” student safety, inadequate staffing and a “lack of professionalism.” Multiple teachers said the school stiffed them on salary. The church said the school stiffed it on rent.

Ultimately, the school shut down for good.

You might think that would be the final chapter in this sorry story.

But not in Florida.

As Sentinel reporter Annie Martin reported last weekend, the owner of the Beta school simply opened another school a few weeks ago with a new name; this time in Volusia County … once again with your tax dollars.

Court records show the school’s owner filed the application for the new school the same week a court ordered him to pay $18,793 for not paying a teacher at his last school.

Florida education officials and politicians didn’t seem to care. They seem content to send your money — and children’s futures — down a black hole.

They scream about “accountability” for public schools, but have few checks and balances on the private schools that take public money to supposedly better serve low-income and special-needs students.

In its “Schools Without Rules” series, Sentinel reporters found voucher (or “scholarship”) schools faking safety reports, hiring felons, hiring high-school dropouts as teachers and operating in second-rate strip malls. They discovered curricula full of falsehoods and subpar lesson plans.

If you confront defenders of this system, be they legislators or school operators, many start mumbling about the virtue of “choice”— as if funding a hot mess of a school is a swell thing, as long parents choose that mess.

Horse hockey. I choose accountability. And transparency. And standards.

And the estimable Mr. Maxwell goes on to write:

Florida legislators — such as House Speaker Richard Corcoran — claim to support all those things as well.

If a tourism bureau makes headlines about questionable activities, Corcoran issues subpoenas and screams that taxpayers have a right to know how “every penny” and “every dollar” is spent. (He’s right.)

When a university is accused of improperly spending $38 million on a construction project, he demands an “immediate investigation.” (He’s right there, too.)

But as nearly a billion dollars — a mix of tax dollars and corporate tax credits — are siphoned away to voucher schools, many with proven problems, Corcoran and his buddies look the other way, meekly mumbling: Um … choice.

Mr. Speaker, you should choose to do your job.

Instead, the Sentinel’s been doing it for you. Last year, our journalists personally inspected more voucher schools in six months than every state education official combined visited in a year. And we found problems galore.

Some voucher schools whine: You’re focusing on the bad apples.

You’re damn right we are. That’s what news organizations do. We focus on problems — whether it’s dangerous airlines, corrupt toll-road agencies or, yes, shoddy schools — so we can fix them.

We’ve done it for decades at public schools — exposing safety violations, unfit teachers, absentee school board members and failing schools. And in every case, elected leaders demanded fixes.

But when problems are found at voucher schools, defenders simply whine about being picked on.

Grow up. You sound like an airline exec asking news teams not to cover a crash.

Lawmakers should require all voucher schools to hire certified teachers, or at least college grads. Schools should be inspected every year. Curriculum plans should be filed with the state. Graduation rates and nationally accepted test scores should be publicly reported. And school operators who fail shouldn’t be allowed to re open.

If you want those standards — all basic, yet none of which are in place for voucher schools — demand them from your legislator. (Contact info at http://www.leg.state.fl.us)

No decent school should be afraid of standards. If you don’t want accountability, don’t take public money.

And if you’re an elected official who doesn’t care about accountability — for all schools — find a new line of work.

Categories Accountability, Corruption, Education Reform, Florida, For-Profit, Vouchers

The Business of Charter Schools: A $45 Million Charter Deal

By dianeravitch
September 23, 2018 //
28

Long, long ago, almost everyone went to the neighborhood public school. The school had a principal, who was overseen by the superintendent. The superintendent answered to a local school board. Those were not idyllic times, to be sure, but no one ever imagined that there was profit to be found in the public schools, or that the public schools would one day be part of “the education industry.” All that is changed now. There are still neighborhood public schools, but now there is an industry that relies on entrepreneurs and market forces. You don’t have to be an educator to manage or operate or start a charter school (think tennis star Andre Agassi or football hero Deion Sanders). There are tax breaks for investors in charter schools. Charter school properties are bought and sold, like franchises or just ordinary real estate. They have no organic connection to the local community. The profit for entrepreneurs is to be found in the real estate transactions.

A recent real estate deal brought this change into focus. There is a buyer and a seller; there are investors. There is return on investment. The world has changed. The charter industry has profits and losses. They open and close. It is not about education. It is a business.

school

[more intro]

A $45 million charter deal suggests profits on the horizon

by Tom Chorneau
Graduation mortar board cap on one hundred dollar bills concept
August 09, 2018(Fla.) A private real estate fund, which boasts of pioneering big money investments in charter school properties, announced this week a $45 million deal to buy four schools in three states.

ESJ Capital Partners, based in the Miami area, added the schools to a portfolio that includes a number of more traditional investments, including apartment buildings, medical offices and tourist attractions.

But the firm also owns 28 charter school properties that they say are valued at more than $650 million.

The firm promises to “provide optimum returns for our investors through disciplined procedures, selective investment criteria and structured processes,” according to their website.

Although for-profit investment in charter schools accounts for only a small slice of the movement nationally, there are examples of commercial enterprise within the system.

In some instances, a lender might be able to take advantage of a tax break because of their investment in a school that is located in an economically challenged neighborhood. In other cases, an investor might be interested in the consistent, government-back rent that charters can pay.

There is probably far more invested by a handful  of very wealthy patrons of charters, who view the movement has providing a much needed competition to traditional public schools.

Whether driven by profits or politics, the growing availability of financial support for charters is much needed, supporters say.

In comparison to traditional public schools, charters have much more difficulty borrowing money. The banking community has traditionally viewed charters operators has carrying far more risk of insolvency than traditional public schools.

Charters in most states must also pay for school improvements or new construction out of operating budgets.

A number of big philanthropic organizations have stepped in to improve the fiscal landscape for charter facilities.

The Eli and Edythe Broad Foundation has been very active in the Los Angeles area, as has the Gates Foundation in Washington State.

Earlier this year, the Walton Family Foundation—led by the heirs of Walmart founder—announced the creation of two nonprofit entities to help finance the cost of building and maintaining new charter schools. Combined, the investment from the foundation is expected to be close to $300 million.

But there apparently is also money to be made too.

In 2016, ESJ sold five Florida charter schools for $72 million to Charter School Capital, a financial services company specializing in charter schools. The partners did provide the purchase price of the schools.

The partnership’s latest acquisition are schools located in in the Phoenix area, Washington D.C. and Toledo, Ohio.

All of them are operated by Virginia-based, Imagine Schools.

ESJ reportedly has $100 million invested in properties operated by Imagine Schools.

“The Imagine campuses that we just acquired have been open over 13 years and are thriving financially and academically, with consistent high enrollment,” Matthew Fuller, chief investment officer of ESJ, said in a statement.

According to a release from the partnership in announcing the 2016 transaction, ESJ was one of the first investment groups nationally to see the potential in charter schools.

“At the height of the Great Recession, ESJ identified a niche in developing charter schools as an alternative to their traditional commercial investments,” the release said. “The real estate asset management group predicted this asset type would evolve and scale into a mainstream, single tenant investment category, attracting more institutional investors, lenders and bondholders.”

…read more

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, Education Reform, Florida, For-Profit, Privatization

Florida: The Hidden Costs of Charter School Privatization

By dianeravitch
September 20, 2018 //
10

Florida has about 650 charter schools. Nearly half the charter schools in the state operate for profit. Charter schools on average do not get better results than public schools. Charter schools are rife with nepotism and conflicts of interest. The Leislature favors charter school expansion because many important legislators have ties to the charter industry and engage in self-dealing. Since 1998, 373 charters have closed, indicating that this is an unstable sector.

These are just a few of the conclusions of this important report about the toxic growth of charters in Florida.

The report urges serious review of the charter law. Otherwise the charter industry will continue to strip resources from public schools and create a parallel system that is wasteful, inefficient, and corrupt.

Here is a newspaper article about this report that summarizes it and includes responses from critics.

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Competition, Corruption, Education Industry, Florida, For-Profit, Privatization

Sue Legg: Behind the Scenes in the Battle for Public Schools in Florida

By dianeravitch
September 19, 2018 //
5

Sue Legg is a retired assessment and evaluation expert who worked for three decades at the Florida Department of Education; she is past president of the Alachua County (Florida) League of Women Voters.

She writes:

>Amendment 8 Behind the Scenes: Political ideology, religion, dark money, billionaires, and of course, the money trail

Florida’s 652 charters run the gamut from small ‘mom and pop’ charters to large chains organized by for-profit management companies. Some serve children and districts well. Many others tell different stories. They involve not only political ideology but also religion, dark money networks, billionaires, and of course, self-interest.

The Erika Donalds version of the charter story starts simply. A small group of members seceded from the Florida School Boards Association (FSBA) in 2015 to form the Florida Coalition of School Board Members (FCSBM). Erika Donalds, a member of the Collier County school board and wife of Florida Representative Byron Donalds, fronts this coalition, but the political network behind it is extensive. It goes all the way to our nation’s capital.

About 14 of the 50 alternative school board association members have been publicly identified, including:

Rebecca Negron, who has just been defeated for a seat on the Martin County school board even though her supporters raised over $250,000 to unsuccessfully attack her opponent. She is the wife of Senate President Joe Negron. Senator Negron wrote the initial legislation for the Florida Tax Credit Scholarship program to give corporate taxes to private schools.

Some FCSBM members also have strong dark money ties to national conservative political advocacy groups.

Erika Donalds openly displays the Americans for Prosperity logo on her Collier 912 Freedom Council website. This is a tea party group supported by the Koch brothers and others.

In the March 29, 2018, article in the Tampa Bay Times, Speaker of the Florida House Richard Corcoran’s wife Ann, who operates her own charter school, is identified.

Shawn Frost, who is Chair of the Indian River school board, is part of this coalition.

He announced in the Indian River Guardian that he expects to be appointed to the Florida State Board of Education. Frost reported campaign contributions from Betsy DeVos, the U.S. Secretary of the Department of Education. In 2014, Frost received $20,000 in campaign contributions from the American Federation of Children run by Betsy DeVos. Frost lives in Vero Beach, but maintains a room in his father’s house in Indian River to meet the residence requirements for being on the school board. He is also the head of MVP Strategy and Policy which specializes in consulting for school board races.

A Duval School Board member Scott Shine has reportedly joined the FCSBM. He withdrew from his 2018 reelection campaign due to ‘personal attacks’.

Sarasota school board members Erik Robinson, a former Republican Party Chairman and Bridgit Ziegler are listed members. Ziegler’s campaign reported $45,000 in donations from the out of state Phoenix Media LLC. According to the Herald Tribune, the money was funneled through a PAC run by fellow board member Erik Robinson, who is often called ‘The Prince of Dark Money’.

Some FCSBM members are collaborating to build a Florida chain of Classical Academy Charters. This isn’t just any group of charter schools. They are sponsored by the Hillsdale College Barney Charter School Initiative. The College, located in Michigan, has a long religious/conservative/libertarian agenda. The DeVos immediate family and close business associates have several Hillsdale graduates. \The Barney (SmithBarney) and Stanton Foundations fund the initiative. There are 17 of these charters nationwide. In Florida, there are four: Mason in Naples, Pineapple Cove in Palm Bay, St. Johns in Fleming Island, and the newly formed Pineapple Cove in West Melbourne. Donalds and her husband have been active with the Mason Classical Academy in Collier County. Donalds is currently seeking to add a Classical Academy in Martin County where Rebecca Negron was running for school board.

Erika Donalds has more than running a charter school on her mind. She was appointed by the governor to the Florida Constitutional Revision Commission (CRC) which is convened every twenty years to consider proposals to amend the constitution. Donalds is a strategist to divide the Florida public schools into two separate systems, one for ‘independent schools’ and one for public schools established by locally elected school boards. Essentially, it would allow one system for charters and private schools receiving tax credit scholarships and one for traditional public schools.

This year the CRC was plagued with ‘log rolling’. It is a technique to bundle dissimilar proposals into one law. There is a spate of these ‘logs’ projected to be on the November ballot. Multiple lawsuits have been filed against them, and the Florida Supreme Court ruled that the League of Women Voters was correct in its opposition to at least one. This proposed Amendment 8 to the Florida constitution must be withdrawn from the November ballot. How this amendment came to be is a story in itself.

Amendment 8 combines three separate proposals: school board term limits, civics literacy and a clause stating that school boards are only responsible for schools they create. This third proposal is the heart of the amendment. The title for the amendment, however, is: “School Board Term Limits and Duties; Public Schools”. Voters might be in favor of one part of the combined proposals but opposed to another. It was a ‘take it or leave it’ strategy. The wording, even the title was intended to confuse voters.

Term limits and civics education may seem innocuous, but they are not.

Erika Donalds is also the Florida sponsor for the US Term Limits organization. This group has a well-documented conservative political agenda that targets school boards to create more opportunities to influence policy. The Koch brothers founded the US Term Limits group. The civics course requirement proposed by CRC member Gaetz, the former President of the Florida Senate, made no sense. Civics was already required by the Florida Department of Education. Former Governor Bob Graham, long a champion of civics education, stated that not only is Amendment 8 a hodge podge, it is not even good for civics education. The CATO Institute has a major focus on civics education and provides free civics material to k12 schools. Its message is clear. According to the Huffington Post, the CATO group states: “The minimum wage hurts workers and slows economic growth. Low taxes and less regulation allow people to prosper. Government assistance harms the poor. Government, in short, is the enemy of liberty.”

The third component of Amendment 8 was to remove local school board control over the authorization of new charter schools. This too represented the national move to privatize our schools by creating charters and funding vouchers to private schools. In the proposed Amendment 8, however, the schools were called ‘independent’, not charter schools. Florida Commissioner of Education Pam Stewart stated that removing local school board control over the establishment of charter schools goes too far. CRC member Patricia Levesque, CEO of Jeb Bush’s education foundation however, supported the amendment as did Marva Johnson, the President of the State Board of Education.

Erika Donalds formed a Political Action Committee called ‘8 is Great’ to sway voters to support Amendment 8. According to the Vero Communique, Howard Rich, a wealthy New York real estate investor, invested $100,000 in the ‘8 is Great’ PAC. Rich serves on the Board of the CATO institute which was founded by the Koch brothers. David Koch ran for Vice President of the U.S. in 1980 on a platform opposing social security, the FBI, the CIA and pubic schools. The billionaire Koch brothers have a long and intensive interest in promoting school choice through their Americans for Prosperity organization. They are concentrating on Florida, Arizona, Colorado, Nevada, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Texas, Virginia and Wisconsin. Their presence takes many forms. Watch for everything from donations to school board races, charter and voucher expansion efforts and state election campaigns. John Kirtley, the founder of Step Up for Children was a major donor. Step Up is the agency that administers a billion dollars for the Florida Corporate Tax Credit Scholarships for private schools. Indian River School Board member Shawn Frost and Duval School Board member Scott Shine have joined the PAC according to the Tampa Bay Times.

Recognizing that term limits and civics education are popular among many voters, former Supreme Court Chief Justice Wells submitted a brief to the Florida League of Women Voters in which he stated: “This change from local county school board control…is hidden by packaging the change with what are thought to be attractive proposals for term limits and civics education.” These schools were planned to be charter schools but the word ‘independent’ was substituted for the word ‘charter’.

There is a watchdog coalition of about 20 public interest groups, headed by the League, to follow and evaluate CRC proposed amendments. Amendment 8 was identified early by the coalition as part of a package of amendments intended to seize local control from city and county governments. The League of Women Voters and the Southern Poverty Law Center joined forces to file a lawsuit against Amendment 8 asking that Amendment 8 be removed from the November ballot. The suit claimed that the amendment was deliberately vague and intended to confuse the public. The circuit court in Tallahassee agreed. The State filed an appeal.

The Appellate Court immediately referred the case to the Florida Supreme Court saying, “The case involves a question of great public importance and requires immediate resolution by the Supreme Court.” The vagueness of the amendment language and its misleading title: “School Board Term Limits and Duties; Public Schools” was the basis for the justices’ 4 to 3 ruling against Amendment 8. The decision puts a roadblock in the effort to create an alternative charter school system. Some legislators will no doubt continue to push proposals to remove any local school board control of charter schools. In reality, local public schools have very limited responsibility to oversee charters, but they and the local press can shine a spotlight on what is at stake.

After sixteen years of choice, it is clear that choice divides communities, segregates children, and dissipates funding without making any appreciable improvement in student achievement. The Supreme Court has another case before it now, ‘Citizens for Strong Schools vs. Florida State Board of Education’ that has been working its way through the courts since 2009. The plaintiffs contend that Florida’s choice policy has failed to adequately fund schools and does not provide the quality education for all children that the Florida constitution requires. Of particular interest is whether there should be justiciable standards to define a ‘quality education’. The hearing is set for November 8. The future of our public school system will depend upon the ruling from the bench. The future of our public school system will depend on the ruling from the bench.

In the lawsuit that Sue Legg refers to in the last paragraph, a group called “Citizens for Strong Schools” argues that the state “is funding two separate systems of public education through its use of privately-run yet publicly funded charter schools, and vouchers that allow kids to attend private schools for varying reasons. Opponents say such programs take money away from traditional public schools.” Florida courts have rejected that argument in the past.

Categories Accountability, Betsy DeVos, Bush, Jeb, Charter Schools, Dark Money, Education Industry, Florida, Funding, Koch Brothers, Privatization, Resistance, School Choice

Orlando Sentinel Investigated Florida Voucher Schools and the Results Were Alarming

By dianeravitch
September 18, 2018 //
20

The Orlando Sentinel spent months investigating voucher schools in the state of Florida, and the results were alarming.

Even though the state constitution forbids any public money going to any religious school, whether directly or indirectly, the state has created multiple voucher programs and ignored the state constitution.

Even though voters refused to repeal or revise the section of the state constitution prohibiting public money being spent on religious schools, whether directly or indirectly, the state now spends $1 billion each year paying for private school tuition, mostly spent to pay for religious schools.

The voucher schools are completely unregulated.

They teach whatever they want, including racism and scientific nonsense.

They discriminate against students who are not “their kind.”

They do not have to take state tests.

They do not have to meet any academic standards.

They are allowed to hire not only uncertified teachers, but “teachers” who never finished college.

This series is so powerful that I urge you to subscribe to the Orlando Sentinel to read it.

I did.

A sample:

Unlike public schools, private schools, including those that accept the state scholarships, operate free from most state rules. Private school teachers and principals, for example, are not required to have state certification or even college degrees.

One Orlando school, which received $500,000 from the public programs last year, has a 24-year-old principal still studying at a community college.

Nor do private schools need to follow the state’s academic standards. One curriculum, called Accelerated Christian Education or ACE, is popular in some private schools and requires students to sit at partitioned desks and fill out worksheets on their own for most of the day, with little instruction from teachers or interaction with classmates.

And nearly anything goes in terms of where private school classes meet. The Sentinel found scholarship students in the same office building as Whozz Next Bail Bonds on South Orange Blossom Trail, in a Colonial Drive day-care center that reeked of dirty diapers and in a school near Winter Park that was facing eviction and had wires dangling from a gap in the office ceiling and a library with no books, computers or furniture.

This is one of the schools visited by the Sentinel reporters:

“We are able to really change these students’ lives, and I believe that would really be the highest standard of accountability that a school can have,” said Bryan Gonzalez, the 24-year-old principal of TDR Learning Academy in Orlando who is a student at Valencia College.

The school, founded by a pastor and housed in a shopping center on Curry Ford Road, relied on scholarships for most of the nearly 100 students enrolled last year.

Like many of the Christian schools that take state scholarships, TDR uses one of a handful of popular curricula that, as one administrator explained, teach “traditional” math and reading but Bible-based history and science, including creationism.

TDR uses ACE, which includes workbooks for every subject. Students are to complete up to 70 a year. Gonzalez, the pastor’s son-in-law, said students benefit from doing ACE workbooks at their own pace.

Gonzalez also said parents don’t seem to mind his young age or that he and some TDR teachers lack college degrees. TDR’s enrollment has grown since it opened five years ago.

At Harvest Baptist Academy in Orlando’s Parramore neighborhood, parents choose the 20-year-old school for its academics, Bible-based lessons and no-nonsense discipline that includes spanking children, said Harry Amos, recently retired principal.

“The scholarships are fantastic,” Amos said.

All two dozen students at the school used them to pay tuition last year.

Parents “just want a different environment,” he said. “Our leader is the Lord Jesus.”

Categories Florida, Religion, Vouchers

NPE Action Enthusiastically Endorses Andrew Gillum for Governor of Florida

By dianeravitch
September 13, 2018 //
7

At last, a gubernatorial candidate who wants to rebuild public education and throw out the profiteers, frauds, and grifters! Voters in Florida have a chance to clean the Augean stables and elect a great Governor for public education!

The Network for Public Educatuon Action Fund is thrilled to endorse Andrew Gillum for Governor of Florida!

The Network for Public Education Action is proud to announce its endorsement of Andrew Gillum for Governor of Florida.

Andrew Gillum is a strong supporter of public education and he calls Florida’s corporate school reforms “a failure.” He has proposed a $1 billion increase in funding for public schools, which would include a minimum starting salary of $50,000 for teachers and an expansion of Pre-K opportunities.
Mr. Gillum believes that high-stakes testing reforms have failed our students and schools.

When it comes to charter schools and vouchers, Andrew Gillum had the following to say:

“Charter schools have a record of waste and unaccountability that we would never tolerate from public schools. Yet, our state’s education budget continues rewarding charter schools at the expense of public schools; for example, the 2018-19 budget allocates $145 million to charter school maintenance — three times the amount allocated to public schools. As a product of Florida’s public schools, I believe we make a promise to our state’s children to provide high-quality, accessible, public schools. We weaken that promise every time we divert taxpayer funds into private and religious education that benefits some students, but not all.”

On November 6, please cast your vote for Andrew Gillum.

Categories Charter Schools, Corruption, Courage, Education Reform, Florida, Fraud, Networkfor Public Education Action Fund, School Choice, Support for public schools, Vouchers
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