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Florida League of Women Voters Documents Charter Scams

By dianeravitch
January 18, 2017 //
14

I originally posted this story in October 2016. In light of the Trump-Pence privatization agenda, it is worth reading again.

Pat Hall and Sue Legg of the Florida League of Women Voters have performed a public service by detailing how for-profit charter companies rip off taxpayers and cheat children.

You can be sure Jeb Bush will not assign this report when he lectures at Harvard this fall about the Florida “miracle” that no one can see other than himself and his hirelings.

Here is the beginning. Please note that 40% of taxpayer funds goes to the management company, not to educating students. What a racket!

Hall and Legg write:

“ANALYSIS OF CHARTER SCHOOL USA REAL ESTATE BUSINESS PRACTICES

“Florida now educates more than 230,000 students at more than 650 publicly funded charter schools. While many of these schools are providing good educational opportunities, we have found that the fundamental structure of the for-profit management companies, specifically Charter Schools USA, must be questioned. The following outline summarizes a very detailed report given the LWVF Board this past summer.

“1. CSUSA has six non-profit school boards that operate 49 schools in 12 urban counties in Florida. Additionally, CSUSA operates 17 schools in 6 other states.

“2. The six governing school boards cover the 49 charters and are run by CSUSA; they are not independent of the management companies.

“3. Inter related affiliated businesses include Red Apple Development, Ryan Construction Company, the Florida Charter Education Foundation and Connex (curriculum software). Furthermore, we found over 300 limited liability companies (LLCs) initiated by CSUSA.

“4. Facilities financing incorporates all aspects of land acquisition, site clearing, construction, bond financing and multimillion dollar lease fees. CSUSA charges the Hillsborough County School district at one of their four schools more than $30/square foot, significantly higher than downtown Tampa skyscrapers!

“5. Tracking expenditures of taxpayer monies is impossible due to for-profit business practices which are not transparent.

“6. Long term lease agreements, after flipping (changing deeds from one related company to the next) from Ryan Construction to Red Apple Development, are charged out 40 years, and charge rent and interest amounts on top of the lease payments. Most CSUSA lease fees in Hillsborough County take 25% of all taxpayer dollars designated for educating children. Some are even higher.

“7. Another 13% to 15% is charged by CSUSA for management fees, hence 40% of public money is not spent instructing children. State auditors have questioned how these costs are reported.

“8. Evidence exists of real estate “flipping” by CSUSA in Hillsborough County. This results in new real estate appraisals to increase value. Lease and rent costs use these values to justify cost charged to charter budgets.

“INTERIM REPORT: ANALYSIS OF CSUSA REAL ESTATE BUSINESS PRACTICES

“By Pat Hall and Sue Legg, LWVF Education Team, June 2016

“Introduction. District school boards grant charter school contracts to private entities and monitor their financial balance sheets, but by legislative intent, they do not have responsibility for their management and operation. Charters have little regulation, and the result has been a continuing saga of scandals. This report goes beyond the mismanagement and corruption issues to the fundamental structure of for-profit management companies, and it questions the accountability of these companies for their use of public funds. Charters may be self-managed or operated by non-profit or for-profit companies. We focus on one for-profit charter management company, Charter Schools, USA (CSUSA). Florida has several others including, Academica which was the focus of a federal investigation, and Newpoint charters which face indictments. A detailed example of the complex facility transactions for CSUSA’s Woodmont K-8 school raises the issue of excessive profiteering. We have data that indicate these business practices are not specific to one school or one company. CSUSA organizational structure: CSUSA is owned and operated by the CEO, Jonathan Hage. It has multiple interrelated entities whose operations are difficult to track. CSUSA has created six non-profit charter school boards to operate 49 publically funded, privately managed charter schools in 12 Florida counties. Additionally CSUSA operates 17 schools in 6 other states. These non-profit boards subcontract to the CSUSA for profit educational management firm which founded them.”

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

Florida: Former Charter School Employee Accused of Stealing $100,000

By dianeravitch
January 14, 2017 //
16

A former employee of a charter school in Lakeland, Florida, has been accused of stealing more than $100,000 from the school. Don’t expect this to dim the enthusiasm of Jeb Bush or Betsy DeVos for unregulated charters.

 

“45-year-old Ginger Collins was a former Assistant Director of Academics for the school until her resignation on September 16, 2016. She is accused of stealing more than $100,000 from the organization and creating fake companies and website to make her purchases appear legitimate.

 

“Collins was charged is facing seven felony charges including Grand Theft, Obtain Property by Fraud, Fraudulent Use of Credit Card, Money Launder Transaction, and three counts of Criminal Use of Personal Identification.

 

“She took trips to Los Angeles, San Francisco, Cancun, Rhode Island, Atlanta, and mark these trips down as marketing expenses, and advertising,” Polk County Sheriff Grady Judd said.

 

“According to investigators her spending didn’t end there. The stolen money was used to buy items such as a fat blaster, a portable urine funnel, and an $85 “Nit Wit” brand beanie. A fitting purchase, according to Sheriff Grady Judd. “Well the nit wit hat goes on a nit wit,” he said.

 

“Despite all of that, it was the purchase of a prom dress and fake eyelashes on a school credit card that finally tipped someone off. “She went on a shopping spree of almost a year,” Judd said.”

 

Which public school employee has the opportunity to steal $100,000? The motive may be there but there are too many checks to provide the opportunity.

Categories Charter Schools, Education Industry, Florida, Fraud, Privatization

Sue Legg on the Chaotic School Choice Mess in Florida

By dianeravitch
December 27, 2016 //
4

Earlier today I posted a request by Sue Legg of the Florida League of Women Voters for your ideas about punchy slogans to support public schools.

 

Sue read the comments and sent this response:

 

“Sue Legg: Great comments. We are at a crucial decision point here in Gainesville. Our schools on the westside are over crowded and under enrolled on the east side Charter and tax credit vouchers have drained low income area public schools. This year we have put over $500,000 extra into a ‘turn around’ failing school to help its kids suffering from traumatic backgrounds. Five teachers of 20 have left this school this fall, and it is only one of several such schools. Will we build a new school on the west side and let the failing schools on the eastside dwindle? Will we rezone? If we do, will parents start their own charter schools? Florida is awash in charters–over 650 of them plus the voucher schools.

 

“I know it will take more than slogans to penetrate the fog generated by school choice. Yet, a few ‘choice’ words that convey the risk of social upheaval that privatization brings are needed. Hmmm, social cohesion or social upheaval, what is your choice?”

Categories Charter Schools, Florida, School Choice, Vouchers

Sue Legg: Time to Punch Back Against Corporate Education Reform

By dianeravitch
December 27, 2016 //
81

Sue Legg is a retired educator who now directs the education program of the Florida League of Women Voters.  The LWV has been very critical of the privatization movement in Florida, documenting the scams, frauds, conflicts of interest, and harm to public education.

 

Legg says that opponents of privatization must strategize and develop their own public relations ideas.

 

She writes:

 

“I am working on a set of ‘headlines’ and slogans that communicate the immediacy of the need to preserve our public schools. What do we value about our public schools? What are the threats to public education? Which solutions do we propose?

“Can we come up with short, single sentences that encapsulate a need or something you value. Then we can refer people to more in depth analyses and ways to respond.

“Let’s see:

“Vouchers segregate, not integrate schools.
Vouches for the poor pay for poor quality schools.
Vouchers help the rich get richer.
Private schools get public money with no strings attached.
OR

 

Public schools innovate, charters stagnate.
Public schools invite students in; charters counsel them out.
Charters profit from students; public schools invest in them.
When housing patterns limit access to quality education, fix it!
OR

School choice means all schools are under funded.
Teaching, not testing helps students learn.
We need more time, not more testing.
School choice is a distraction not an option to improve learning.
“You get the idea. Send me your captions and communication strategies. We will hone them and use them to target issues. We will discuss these at the League’s Orlando leadership conference in January.”

 

Make your suggestions here, and I will be sure Sue gets them.

 

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Corporate Reformers, Florida, Supporting public schools

Mercedes Schneider: Betsy DeVos on Video Explains How to Turn Corporate Taxes into Vouchers

By dianeravitch
December 7, 2016 //
8

The Nevada state constitution contains this language:

 

Article 11, Section 10: “No public funds of any kind or character whatever, State, County or Municipal, shall be used for sectarian purpose.”

 

Mercedes Schneider explains how the Nevada Supreme Court did a fancy rhetorical two-step to conclude that the state constitution does not forbid vouchers, it just forbids funding them. Got that?

 

She then shows a video of Betsy DeVos, Trump’s pick for Secretary of Education, telling a Florida lawyer how corporate taxes can be used to provide vouchers for use in any school, including religious schools. This, despite the fact that the Florida state constitution explicitly says in Article 1, Section 3:

 

“There shall be no law respecting the establishment of religion or prohibiting or penalizing the free exercise thereof. Religious freedom shall not justify practices inconsistent with public morals, peace or safety. No revenue of the state or any political subdivision or agency thereof shall ever be taken from the public treasury directly or indirectly in aid of any church, sect, or religious denomination or in aid of any sectarian institution.”

 

This, despite the fact that the voters of Florida rejected an effort to change this portion of the Florida state constitution to allow vouchers for religious schools in 2012. The so-called “Religious Freedom Amendment” was voted down by 55-44%.

 

US Secretary of Education nominee and “true pioneer of the school choice movement across the country,” Betsy DeVos, explains how the educational tax credit enables what would be public money (collected in the form of corporate taxes) from becoming public money at minute 4:45 in the 2015 Youtube video below in which Edward Pozzuoli, the president of Florida-based Tripp Scott Law Firm, interviews then-American Federation for Children (AFC) Chair DeVos, about tax credits.

 

The entire 9-minute video is an eye opener; DeVos talks about how the AFC does it all: finds the school choice candidates (she’s particularly keen on private school choice); puts “political effort” behind electing/defeating candidates; “works on the policies… the actual legislation,” and “helps parents and kids to find schools and schools to find parents and kids.”

 

“Reformers” intent on replacing public schools with for-profit charters and religious schools don’t let a little thing like the state constitution get in their way. Conservatives used to call themselves “strict constructionists” when it came to the federal or state constitution. They insisted on abiding by the original intent of those who wrote the constitution. It turns out now that they believe quite the opposite and are ready to reinterpret the clear language of state constitutions to achieve their goal of privatization.

Categories Accountability, Betsy DeVos, Florida, Nevada, Vouchers

Investors Buy Five Florida Charters for $72 Million

By dianeravitch
November 29, 2016 //
28

An investment group in Portland, Oregon, paid $72 million for five charter schools in Florida. The investors paid nearly $18,000 per student.

Do you think these are public schools? Do you think they are community schools?

http://therealdeal.com/miami/2016/11/21/schools-out-portland-investors-pay-72m-for-charter-school-portfolio-in-florida/

Charter School Capital, an academic investment group based in Portland, just scooped up five charter schools spread throughout Florida for $71.74 million. The sellers were MG3 Development Group and ESJ Capital Partners, a pair of local real estate companies.
The deal illustrates how investing in nontraditional real estate like schools can be lucrative, especially when other markets like residential and commercial properties appear to be cooling down.

According to a news release from Colliers International Education Services Group, which brokered the deal on behalf of the sellers, the portfolio encompasses 295,992 square feet split among five schools in Riverview, Vero Beach, Coral Springs, Davie and Plantation. Colliers’ Todd Noel and Achikam Yogev worked on the sale.

MG3 Principal Hernan Leonoff told The Real Deal that his firm developed the schools in Riverview, Davie and Plantation, plus renovated the facility in Coral Springs while ESJ acted as the lead company in building the portfolio. MG3 had no involvement with the Vero Beach charter school.

The ownership varied between properties: for most of the schools, MG3 had a minority interest while ESJ, led by principals Arnaud Sitbon and Gabriel Amiel, was the majority owner.

The sale breaks down to about $242 square feet, but Leonoff cautioned that a school’s capacity for students is a better gauge of pricing because common areas can skew square footage.

The five schools can house roughly 4,000 students, he said, bringing the price to about $17,935 per enrollee. That’s significantly more expensive than the $16,641 per student that tennis pro Andre Agassi and his partner Bobby Turner sold their Boynton Beach school for in August.

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

Peter Greene: Jeb Bush Is Still in the Education Reform Business

By dianeravitch
November 25, 2016 //
8

Peter Greene opened his email and found an invitation to attend the annual convening of Jeb Bush’s Foundation for Educational Excellence. Bush may have done poorly in the 2016 campaign but he still wants to remake American education in the image of Florida: charters, vouchers, high-stakes testing for students and teachers.

Greene wonders:

I am interested in seeing what happens next to Jeb!, who now occupies a weird sort of reformster twilight zone. On the one hand, Herr Trump appears to fully embrace Bush’s education policies, or at least the Let a Million Charters Bloom part. But Bush himself–well, it seems unlikely that Jeb is in line for Trumpian Ed Secretary. And that bitter taste resting on Bush’s ivy league palate must be getting only more and more bitter as it becomes obvious that President Trump will be following a lot of the policies that Candidate Trump used to smack Bush over the head. What happens when hated political enemies actually stand for pretty much the same policy ideas? How exactly do you criticize someone for pursuing policies that you totally agree with?

Who will the conventioneers hear from? Open the post.

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Common Core, Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, Florida, Privatization, Testing, Vouchers

Jeb Bush Will Lecture at Harvard This Fall

By dianeravitch
September 29, 2016 //
45

Jeb Bush has been advocating everything related to corporate reform for many years. As Governor of Florida, he imposed high-stakes testing, charters, simplistic accountability measures, letter grades for schools, and did whatever he could dream up to promote competition and choice. He tried to get vouchers, but was only able to get vouchers for special education (a program once described in a prize-winning article as a “cottage industry for graft”). He sought a constitutional amendment to make vouchers possible, and Michelle Rhee joined him to promote vouchers. But in 2012, voters said no by 58-42.

This fall, this hater of public schools will teach at the Harvard Program on Education Policy and Governance, which is supervised by voucher advocate Paul Peyerson. Students will no doubt learn that public schools must be replaced by a free market. They will learn that choice will create Mira Les. They will learn that families should schools just as they choose milk in the grocery store: whole milk, 2% milk, 1% milk, chocolate milk, buttermilk. No one will tell Jeb about Sweden and Chile.

Saddest of all is that he is giving the annual Godkin Lecture, an honor once reserved for distinguished scholars.

As the evidence piles up that choice is no panacea, do you think he will apologize for the schools and communities he has disrupted?

Categories Accountability, Bush, Jeb, Charter Schools, Corporate Reformers, Florida, Privatization, Testing, Vouchers

Sarasota: Charter School Kicks Out Second Grader Because His Parents Asked Too Many Questions

By dianeravitch
September 12, 2016 //
18

In Sarasota, the Island Montessori School kicked out a well-behaved student without giving a reason. The parents were active in the school and supported it. The child was thriving.

But the school hired a new principal, and the parents asked too many questions.

Unlike a public school, the kid was booted because of his parents’ actions.

Categories Charter Schools, Education Reform, Florida

Parent Revolution: Another Fiasco for Reformers

By dianeravitch
September 8, 2016 //
12

Caroline Grannan writes here about the rise and fall of a Big Reform Idea called “the parent trigger,” championed by an organization called Parent Revolution. Ben Austin started Parent Revolution as a way to empower disgruntled parents to take control of their low-scoring public school and turn it over to a charter operator. Austin led the charge for new legislation to codify Parent Revolution’s big idea (Gloria Romero claimed credit for writing the legislation; she became executive director of DFER after leaving the legislature). Parent Revolution attracted millions of dollars from the usual billionaires, including Gates, Broad, and Wasserman.

After many favorable articles, editorials, and massive publicity, what has PR accomplished?

Not much.

Grannan writes:


“Parent Revolution (PRev) started in Los Angeles in a blaze of publicity in 2009, predicting with great fanfare and much enthusiastic press coverage that it would transform many “failing” public schools into charter schools. PRev created the “parent trigger,” whereby a 50%+1 majority of parents at a school can sign a petition forcing “transformation” of the school, or forcing the school to close. PRev lobbying led to a California law in early 2010 allowing parent triggers statewide.

“Despite the fanfare, in those seven years, PRev has succeeded in turning only one school into a charter school – Desert Trails Elementary in Adelanto (San Bernardino County), Calif., in 2012. That effort ripped the school community apart — splitting up friendships, creating deeply hostile factions and even leading to schoolyard fights among the kids. Reports on the results of the charterization are wildly mixed, and the mainstream media, which descended on Adelanto eagerly to cover the battle, lost interest in following up afterward.

“Parent Revolution began in 2009 under the auspices of Los Angeles’ Green Dot charter school chain, launched by the mercurial, once-admired Green Dot founder Steve Barr. The intent appeared to be to enable Green Dot to take over schools.

“Barr’s name is no longer mentioned in connection with PRev, possibly because of his checkered history, including a rapidly squelched flap about misuse of funds and some much-publicized failed projects. The story of Barr and the Green Dot charters he founded has been marked by rifts, feuds and separations, as has the story of PRev itself. Since PRev began operating on a statewide and then national scope, there has never again been public discussion of Green Dot taking over a parent trigger school.

PRev has run parent triggers in a few schools around Los Angeles, claiming to have achieved some changes less drastic than charterization. In one case, its petitions got the principal fired – and all but one or two teachers left the school in protest, with many parents objecting that they hadn’t meant to get rid of the principal or drive out the teachers.
The

“There’s never anything but the most vague and sketchy press follow-up of PRev efforts. Reports pop up in the press trumpeting PRev efforts that are never heard from again. I started following PRev to begin with because former PRev Executive Director Ben Austin told the press he had operations going in my school community in San Francisco. Yet there has never again been a sighting of PRev operations here.

PRev moved to the national stage, lobbying to get laws allowing parent triggers in various states. Because my ability as a volunteer to keep tabs on every PRev activity is limited, I can’t give a complete count of what states PRev lobbied in and what states passed parent trigger laws, but the efforts and the story that the parent trigger was spreading nationwide were widely and enthusiastically covered in the press.

“During those campaigns, PRev had paid staffers pose as school parents and testify before lawmakers – as was known to happen in Florida and Texas – and PRev claimed routinely and falsely that it had successfully transformed many schools in California, as reported in the Florida press.”

In short, after spending millions of dollars, PRev took over one public school.

PRev now plans to advise parents on how to choose a school.

PRev has been yet another disastrous failure for corporate reform.

The parent trigger fires blanks.

Categories California, Florida, Parent trigger
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