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How Andre Agassi and His Partner Are Profiting in the Charter Sector

By dianeravitch
May 9, 2019 //
6

 

Andre Agassi was once a famous tennis star. Several years ago, he decided to open a charter school in Las Vegas, with his name on it. It was going to be a national model for sending poor kids to elite colleges. But it failed and was eventually taken over by charter chain Democracy Prep. During the school’s first decade of operation, it went through six principals and multiple teachers. Former teachers said there was “a chaotic learning environment.”

Then Agassi went into partnership with an equity investor who put up $750 million for a new company that would build and lease charter schools. This is a very profitable venture.

Unfortunately, the charter schools it builds are forced into financial straits by the burden of the rent they must pay to Agassi and Turner.

In Detroit, a school built by their firm is closing, in part because of the crushing debt required to pay the landlords, Agassi and Turner.

A Detroit charter school is shutting down amid financial woes brought on by its lease agreement with an investment fund headed by tennis star Andre Agassi.

The closure of Southwest Detroit Community School, which was announced to teachers at an emergency meeting at the school Tuesday afternoon, caps a six-year existence marred by academic struggles and, more recently, dissatisfaction among parents and the teaching staff over the school’s direction. 

“I feel one part betrayed, but also, I think it was inevitable,” said Mitzy Tripp, who has two children at the K-8 school, including one who will soon graduate from eighth grade. “But I honestly didn’t think that they would do this to the families.”

When Michigan lawmakers lifted the cap on new charter schools in 2011, it sparked a spree of more than a dozen school openings within a few years. Several have since closed, including Delta Preparatory Academy for Social Justice, which shut down abruptly at the beginning of this school year.

It’s the latest upheaval for a city where the school landscape has become severely fractured, forcing schools to compete for teachers, students, and resources without some of the safeguards that bring order to charter school systems in cities like New Orleans and Washington. Efforts to put such controls in place in Michigan have been stopped by well-funded political opposition…

The closure means the families of 347 students, many of them Spanish-speaking, will have to find a new school for their children. School changes have been shown to hurt student learning and behavior at school…

In the end, though, any hope for the school’s future collapsed under the weight of its lease with Turner-Agassi, an investment fund connected to the retired tennis legend that helped open the school as well as 89 others across the country.

The lease was designed like a residential rent-to-buy plan. The school would pay rent for the first few years, then, once it had enough students, it would buy the building outright. Turner-Agassi would make roughly $1 million on the deal, according to the lease agreement.

These arrangements aren’t unheard of in the charter sector. Michigan charter schools get no money from the state for facilities, often forcing them to rent buildings. Traditional schools generally own their buildings, taking advantage of public bonds that aren’t available to charter schools.

When the school failed to amass the more than $8 million it needed to buy the building, it paid a steep price. The rent went up sharply, increasing by 57 percent between 2017 and 2018, per the lease.

The school’s inability to keep up with its lease payments set off alarm bells within the Michigan Treasury Department, which flagged it as a “potential fiscal distress school” and required it to submit regular reports.

The rent, which grew to $769,910 annually this year, was higher than what other schools in the neighborhood pay. The payments suck up 19 percent of what the school brings in from the state to educate children.

Agassi and Turner made a handsome profit.

 

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Detroit, Education Industry, For-Profit, Privatization

Carol Burris: Florida Charters Are a Swamp of Waste, Fraud, and Profiteering

By dianeravitch
May 5, 2019 //
11

 

Florida is controlled by Swamp creatures who want to divert money from public schools and send it to charter schools and religious schools. Jeb Bush is the puppet master who has demanded strict accountability for public schools, minimal oversight of charter schools, and no accountability at all for religious schools.

In this article, Carol Burris—the executive director of the Network for Public Education—examines the charter school mess. Florida has about three million students. About 300,000 attend charter schools. Some members of the Legislature have direct conflicts of interest but nonetheless vote to shower favors and money on the state’s charters.

Burris reports that nearly half of the state’s charters operate for profit. Entrepreneurs have flocked to Florida to get the easy money.

Burris begins:

Schoolsforsale.com claims to be “the largest school brokers in the United States that you will need to call.” Its owner, Realtor David Mope, is a broker for private schools, online schools and preschools. He will also help you start your own virtual school by providing certified teachers, marketing expertise, and assistance in securing accreditation.

Mope is not a newcomer to the for-profit school world. He was the owner and CEO of Acclaim Academy, a military-style charter chain. Acclaim’s “cadets,” who were predominantly minority students from low-income homes, wore army fatigues and engaged in drills. The schools’ education director, Bill Orris, had previously led a charter school that was shut down after its management company abandoned it.

Warning signs of failure were there from the beginning. The chain aggressively attempted to open new schools in multiple districts before establishing a track record in its two existing schools. Most districts saw red flags, but two did not. In the fall of 2013, two more Acclaim schools were approved, bringing the total schools in the chain to four.

As school grades came in, unsurprisingly, the Acclaim Academy charter schools were rated “F.” In 2015, three closed their doors, leaving families in the lurch in a manner that parents described as chaos. Although Florida’s State Board of Education had allowed the schools to stay open to finish the school year, Mope filed for bankruptcy, sending students out on the street scrambling to enroll in another school with only a few weeks left in the school year. Vendors would never be paid. Parents helped teachers pack up. Nevertheless, Mope pretended the schools were solvent and continued to broker a deal to purchase hundreds of thousands of dollars of equipment.

How could Acclaim Academy ever open in the first place? Who would give this risky charter chain the seed money to get started? The American taxpayers did. A U.S. Department of Education Charter Schools Program (CSP) grant for $744,198 helped get the Acclaim Academies off the ground.

Acclaim Academy charter schools were among 502 Florida charter schools that received grants from the Department of Education between 2006 and 2014. All but two came from federal money given to the state for distribution. According to the CSP database, these Florida charter schools were awarded a total of nearly $92 million in federal funds between 2006 and 2014.

At least 184 (36.6 percent) of those schools are now closed, or never opened at all. These defunct charter schools received $34,781,736 in federal “seed” money alone.

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Education Industry, Failure, Florida, For-Profit, Fraud, Funding, Privatization

BASIS Private Schools Sold to Chinese Investors, Parents Object

By dianeravitch
May 3, 2019 //
14

 

BASIS is a corporate charter chain with about 20 charters, mostly in Arizona. The chain is known for high test scores, high attrition, and high returns to its owners and operators, Michael and Olga Block. It also owns private schools, and these have run into problems.

BASIS has private schools in the US, Silicon Valley, NYC and Virginia, all of which are owned by the REIT, Entertainment Properties.  https://www.eprkc.com/portfolio/education/private-schools/property-list/
Its DC charter school was owned by Entertainment Properties, but BASIS ran into problems meeting the rent for the second year of operation as it had nearly doubled from the first year when it had been about $1 miilion.  In addition to an OCR complaint re special education, enrollment declined and the DC charter board refused to increase its enrollment cap, which the school said was necessary to meet their rent.  Apparently, the DC school was sold as it is no longer listed on Entertainment Properties portfolio of charter schools.
https://www.wsj.com/articles/parents-voice-concern-over-sale-of-basis-independent-schools-11556583203

Parents Voice Concern Over Sale of Basis Independent Schools

New York City families say they worry about possible curriculum, tuition changes following the purchase by a company backed by China-based investment firm

By

Leslie Brody

More than 190 New York City families at the private Basis Independent Schools sent a letter to its leaders Monday to express concerns about its recent purchase by a company backed by a China-based investment firm.

The letter from parents at the Brooklyn site of Basis questioned whether the sale might prompt the school in Red Hook to change curriculum, lose teachers, boost tuition, increase class size and lose its reputation among top college admissions offices.

Basis has five for-profit schools in the U.S., including sites in California and Virginia. It also has a charter arm run by a nonprofit, which wasn’t part of the purchase.

Categories Accountability, Arizona, Charter Schools, Education Industry, Education Reform, For-Profit, New York City, Privatization

Oklahoma: For-Profit Online Charter Chain Gobbles Up Rural Districts

By dianeravitch
May 1, 2019 //
23

 

Oklahoma has underfunded its public schools over the past decade. Many districts have switched to a four-day week to save money.

Some rural districts, facing insolvency, are turning their schools over to Epic, a for-profit online charter chain, which can balance the books by putting kids online and cutting teachers’ jobs.

Like all online charter schools, EPIC overstates its “gains” while its actual results are less than mediocre.

“To save his financially imperiled school district, Panola Superintendent Brad Corcoran in 2017 pitched a plan to convert the traditional public district into a charter school. 

“In becoming a charter, Panola Public Schools would turn over its management to a company affiliated with Epic Charter Schools, the largest online school in the state. The school board agreed. 

“The Epic-related firm contributed $100,000 toward Panola’s debt as part of the agreement. That company manages the small district for a more than 10 percent cut of its funding.  Panola’s high school students now have the option to attend most classes online from home.

“The deal was unprecedented. Not only was it one of the first conversions-to-charter in the state, it allowed Epic’s company to operate a school and gain many benefits denied other charter schools: It could tap into and spend local property tax revenue to cover costs of student transportation, school buildings and sports facilities, like traditional school districts.

“And Epic didn’t stop at Panola….”

Epic has 23,000 in Oklahoma and it is growing in California as well.

”Trice Butler, superintendent of Wilburton Public Schools, which neighbors Panola, said she is concerned that Epic is looking to replicate what it’s done in Panola in other districts.

“Butler said her primary concern is her belief that students at Epic are receiving a subpar education. She cited Epic’s low high school graduation rates and high numbers of students leaving Epic and returning to traditional schools with academic credit insufficient for the time they were enrolled. (Epic maintains that some students come to them behind in credits and the school helps them catch up.)

“Epic’s presence in Panola has also raised concerns about aggressive attempts to attract students and teachers from surrounding school districts even in the middle of the academic year.

”Panola spent $650 for postcards, and at least some were sent to addresses in nearby Wilburton school district, promising a customized education for students and touting the school’s “double-digit academic growth.”

“Butler called this “predatory marketing” and said the statements made on the postcard are misleading.

“Panola elementary students did post positive academic growth on the latest school report cards, with 80 percent of students improving between 2016-17 and 2017-18. But only 27 percent of those students scored on grade level, compared with 57 percent in Wilburton and 51 percent statewide.”

Oklahoma has followed a policy of large tax cuts for corporations, especially those in the oil, gas, and fracking industry, and budget cuts for education and other public services. The state is abandoning its future.

Categories Accountability, Budget Cuts, Education Reform, For-Profit, Funding, Oklahoma, Online Education, Virtual Charter Schools

Mercedes Schneider Investigates Joe Biden’s Brother and His Role in the Charter Industry

By dianeravitch
May 1, 2019 //
19

 

Mercedes Schneider reports on her examination of Joe Biden’s brother Frank and his role in the charter industry in Florida. 

Let me begin by saying straight out that I don’t judge people by what their relatives do. I have seven brothers and sisters (five living) and I am not responsible for their decisions and activities, as they are not responsible for mine.

Having said that, I think the public needs to know where Joe Biden stands on charter schools such as the ones in which his brother was deeply involved, as we should know where every candidate stands on the privatization of education.

The facts that Schneider has assembled are vastly Important as they reflect on the shoddy oversight of for-profit charters in Florida. Forget the famous name involved. Read this fascinating account to see how children and taxpayers are being bilked by shady operators who know nothing about education. Lousy results have no impact on the bottom line.

An awful lot of people are cashing in on kids and on the infinite gullibility of the public and the cupidity and greed of politicians who enable these for-profit frauds.

Categories Accountability, Education Industry, Education Reform, Florida, For-Profit, Fraud, Privatization

Betsy DeVos Gave This Charter Chain $225 Million. It Doesn’t Pass the Smell Test

By dianeravitch
April 29, 2019 //
10

 

Betsy DeVos recently gave $116 million to the IDEA charter chain, mostly to expand in Texas. Previously, she had already given millions to IDEA, altogether this lucky business has received $225 million in federal funds.

In El Paso alone, IDEA will open 20 new charters. That’s bad news for the El Paso public schools, because IDEA is known for pushing out the kids it doesn’t want and sending them back to the public schools, which will have to slash their budgets to adjust to lost enrollment.

Veteran Texas educator Tim Holt says that this IDEA invasion doesn’t pass the smell test. Parents and taxpayers are being fooled. He wrote this before DeVos gave IDEA its latest plum, $116 million.

“In the next few years, IDEA plans to increase from one school today in El Paso to over 20, making them larger than either the Anthony, Canutillo, San Eli, Fabens, or Clint ISD’s in terms of number of campuses. (“IDEA’s big goal is to serve 100,000 students by 2022” in Tejas according to the IDEA website.

“That would make them larger than Ft. Worth or Austin ISDs, which each have about 88,000 students each.) Of course, local districts are concerned because they get funding based on the number of students attending. Less students means less money. Even if it is for a year or so, as parents find out IDEA is not such a good fit for their kids. Less funding means more crowded classes, elimination of popular programs (say adios to that Mariachi band your young Vicente Fernandez wanna-be is in)…

“Public charter schools like IDEA use a combination of taxpayer funds, grants, and large-scale private donations to operate. Like public schools, they are accountable to meeting standards, but unlike public schools, they are businesses, beholden to those with a financial vested interest in their success or failure.

“Did you get that? They use your taxes to fund their business. You are paying for them whether they last a year or a decade. They can, as a business, pick up and leave at any time, shuttering their doors with no notice as many charter schools have done across the nation. Nothing prevents this.

“And like any business that needs to grow to get money, they have to advertise. Check out the slick work of this ad agency on behalf of IDEA.

“Smelly.

“Public schools in Texas have locally elected officials, that are responsible for watching the checkbooks of the districts. Don’t like the way money is being spent? You can vote them out and replace them. Not so with Public Charter Schools like IDEA. The Board of Directors of IDEA schools are mostly made up of well-to-do east Texas business people.

Think your kid is represented at the table? Check out the IDEA Board. Look like people from El Chuco? Yeah, maybe a meeting of the El Chuco Millionaires Club, but other than that, no, they are not your type. Unless you think that Dallas and Houston millionaires are your type.

Stinky.

“IDEA schools have a model of teaching that looks something like this: Curriculum is canned, pre-scripted and designed in such a way that even non-teachers can conduct classes. It is designed solely to focus on the standardized tests, that all students must pass. It is homework-heavy even though study after study has found that a heavy homework load is probably overall detrimental to students learning. Failure on tests mean dismissal from the school.

“Sorry kid, we don’t take no dummies.

“Since it is a scripted curriculum, IDEA can hire non-teacher teachers, ones that do not have any kind of education experience or degree. Think about that: Anyone that can read a script can teach at IDEA. That is perfect for young, inexperienced Teach-for-America rookies, from where IDEA likes to recruit their teaching ranks. Less experience equals less expensive to pay.

“Less pay means the chances that the teacher can deal with “non traditional” or troubled students is low. Want something for your kid that is innovative? Don’t bother enrolling at IDEA. Success is measured by how many pages the teacher can plow through in a week on the way to the test.

“Smells bad…

”Now consider this: On top of the millions in Federal funds that the State has awarded to IDEA, if they achieve their goal of having 100,000 students, that means, that every year, $915,000,000 will NOT be going to Texas’ traditional public schools, your neighborhood school, but into the hands of for-profit businesses that have little to no local accountability.”

Well, it’s a terrific article. Read it all.

And don’t believe those pundits who say that Betsy DeVos is so hemmed in that she can’t do any harm. Her $225 million gift to IDEA will eventually cause Texas public schools to lose nearly $1 billion a year, every year.  Really good for the IDEA bank account.  Terrible for the millions of children in Texas public schools.

That really stinks.

 

Categories Accountability, Betsy DeVos, Budget Cuts, Charter Schools, Education Industry, For-Profit, Funding, Graduation rates, Privatization, Texas

Florida: The State That Welcomes Conflicts of Interest

By dianeravitch
April 21, 2019 //
49

 

In most states and in the federal government, conflicts of interest are prohibited and even illegal. But not in Florida!

State legislators regularly vote on legislation that enriches themselves and family members, and NO ONE CARES!

Conflicts of interest are peachy keen. Doesn’t everyone line their pockets at the public trough?

This article in the Miami Herald describes a master at the game of doing what’s good for himself and his loved ones.

Fred Grimm of the Herald writes:

If Erik Fresen was … say … a county or city commissioner, a blatant conflict of interest would keep him from voting on charter school funding issues.

As my Herald colleagues Christina Veiga and Kristen Clark reported Sunday, laws governing ethical behavior would bar local officials from even discussing proposals at public meetings that have a direct or indirect financial impact on their interests. Or their families’ interests.

The Fresen clan has a lot riding on charter school construction funds. Erik Fresen earns $150,000-a-year as land consultant for Civica, an architecture firm that specializes in charter school construction. Civica has designed a number of schools for Academica, the largest charter school management company in Florida. Fresen’s sister and brother-in-law just happen to be Academica executives.

But state Rep. Fresen’s ethical deportment in the state Legislature is governed by such tepid regulations that the chairman of the House Education Budget Committee can get away with sponsoring legislation that would deliver a windfall to the family business.

The Miami Republican has fast-tracked a bill that would not only limit what school districts spend on their own capital projects, it would also force districts to share their construction money (even when that money was derived from local property taxes) with charters.

No worries. All that conflict-of-interest stuff only applies to local elected officials.

He has argued that his legislation was designed to rein in out-of-control construction spending by school districts (a characterization hotly disputed by the state’s school superintendents). Fresen, however, hasn’t had much to say about charter school building scandals. Last month, The Associated Press reported that since 2000, about $70 million in state money spent on charter school construction and building improvements had essentially disappeared when the schools failed. Out of that lost $70 million, the state Department of Education recovered only $133,000. The balance of those taxpayer-funded capital improvements now belongs to private interests.

See how easy it is to get rich in Florida? You just have to have the right political connections.

Read more here: https://www.miamiherald.com/news/local/news-columns-blogs/fred-grimm/article60512891.html#storylink=cpy
Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Education Industry, Education Reform, Florida, For-Profit, Privatization

Jan Resseger: Time to Close Down the Federal Charter Schools Program

By dianeravitch
April 20, 2019 //
17

 

Jan Resseger is a voice of moral clarity in a time of moral turpitude.she reflected on the NPE report “Asleep At the Wheel,” about the slipshod, failed federal program to pump money into the charter industry and concluded the program should be terminated, with the money transferred to high-needs schools. 

She writes:

“The Network for Public Education published its scathing report on the federal Charter Schools Program three weeks ago, but as time passes, I continue to reflect on its conclusions. The report, Asleep at the Wheel: How the Federal Charter Schools Program Recklessly Takes Taxpayers and Students for a Ride, is packed with details about failed or closed or never-opened charter schools.  The Network for Public Education depicts a program driven by neoliberal politicians hoping to spark innovation in a marketplace of unregulated startups underwritten by the federal government. The record of this 25 year federal program is dismal.

“Here is what the Network for Public Education’s report shows us. The federal Charter Schools Program (CSP) has awarded $4 billion federal tax dollars to start or expand charter schools across 44 states and the District of Columbia, and has provided some of the funding for 40 percent of all the charter schools that have been started across the country. Begun when Bill Clinton was President, this neoliberal—publicly funded, privatized—program has been supported by Democratic and Republican administrations alike.  It has lacked oversight since the beginning, and during the Obama and Trump administrations—when the Department of Education’s own Office of Inspector General released a series of scathing critiques of the program—grants have been made based on the application alone with little attempt by officials in the Department of Education to verify the information provided by applicants.  Hundreds of millions of dollars have been awarded to schools that never opened or that were shut down: “We found that it is likely that as many as one third of all charter schools receiving CSP grants never opened, or opened and shut down.”  Many grants went to schools that illegally discriminated in some way to choose their students and served far fewer disabled students and English language learners than the local pubic schools.  Many of the CSP-funded charter schools were plagued by conflicts of interest profiteering, and mismanagement. The Department of Education has never investigated the scathing critiques of the program by the Department’s Office of Inspector Genera; neither has the Department of Education investigated the oversight practices of the state-by-state departments of education, called State Education Agencies by CSP, to which many of the grants were made. Oversight has declined under the Department’s leadership by Betsy DeVos.

“One of the shocking findings in the Asleep at the Wheel report is that a series of federal administrations—Clinton, Bush, Obama, and Trump have treated this program as a kind of venture capital fund created and administered to stimulate social entrepreneurship—by individuals or big nonprofits or huge for-profits—as a substitute for public operation of the public schools. This use of the Charter Schools Program as a source for venture capital is especially shocking in the past decade under Presidents Obama and Trump, even as federal funding for essential public school programs has fallen. The Center on Budget and Policy priorities reports, for example, that public Title I formula funding dropped by 6.2 percent between 2008 and 2017.”

Betsy DeVos defended the high failure rate by saying that in the business world, some start-ups fail. Why is the federal government using education money to invest in start-ups? Why shouldn’t the federal government review the applications carefully before awarding millions of dollars? What bank will lend you money without carefully reviewing your proposal and financials? Since 1994, this program has been a giant cookie jar, filled with free money.

 

 

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Education Reform, For-Profit, Fraud, U.S. Department of Education

Peter Greene: Charter Thievery and the Worst Legislature in America

By dianeravitch
April 19, 2019 //
20

 

Peter Greene writes here about the open theft of public funds, transferred from public schools to to charter schools, in Florida. He raises a question that I have often wondered about: When did Republicans become the enemies of local control? The answer in Florida is obvious: when the money is there to pay the legislators to change their views, they change their views. It is not about improving education, since they are reducing the funds available to educate the vast majority of Florida’s children. This is a pay-to-play sellout of public education. When people vote to put thieves in office, they should not be surprised when the thieves rob them and their schools.

He writes:

“Imagine. You live on the 300 block of your city, and your neighborhood is starting to look kind of run down, mostly because the city has redirected a ton of your tax dollars to the neighborhood on the 400 block. You try to fight city hall, but that’s futile, so instead, you get the neighborhood together, and you collect money from amongst yourselves to upgrade sidewalks, clean the streets, refurbish the curbs, and just generally fix the place up. And then the city sends a message– “That money you just collected? You have to give some of it to the neighborhood in the 400 block.”

“Congratulations. You live in Florida.

“Florida’s elected Tallahassee-dwellers have pretty much dropped all pretense; under Governor Desantis, the goal is to completely demolish public education, with no more cover story than to insist that the resulting privatized system is still a “public school system.” I have seen better gaslighting from a fourteen year old saying, “I did not throw that pencil at Chris” even though he watched me watch him do it.

“The Tampa Bay Times offers some background:

“Let’s check the record. For years, Republicans who control the Legislature have attacked teacher unions as the enemy and complained about under-performing public schools while starving them of financial resources. They would not let local school districts keep additional tax revenue created by rising property values. They gave them little or no money for construction and renovation. And last year, they increased base spending per student by a grand total of 47 cents.

We’ll put Swampland Charter right here.

“Florida has been systematically starving its public school system, so some districts took the most logical step available to them– they levied taxes on themselves to raise teacher salaries, replace programs that were cut, and basically use their own local money to reverse the problems caused by state-level neglect. They stepped up to solve the problems the state caused.

“Last week, Florida GOP legislators pooped out a proposal to stop all this locally controlled self-reliant bootstrapping (because, you know, conservatives hate local control, self-reliance, and bootstraps, apparently, now). The bill, proposed by the House Ways and Means Committee led by Rep. Bryan Avila, R-Miami Springs, says those local districts must hand over some of those tax dollars to charter schools or the state will just cut their state funding even more.

“This is just nuts on so many levels. In addition to pissing on the conservative values of local control and self-reliance, this also thumbs its nose at one of the traditional arguments for charter schools– that competition will make public schools up their games. I’d call bullshit on that point, except that’s exactly what happened here– with their ability to compete hamstrung by Tallahassee tightwads, these local districts found a way to be competitive, including competing for teachers in the midst of Florida’s well-deserved and completely predictable teacher shortage.”

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

Pennsylvania: Court Rules that Charter Is Not Tax-Exempt

By dianeravitch
April 17, 2019 //
5

A judge in Berks County, Pennsylvania, ruled that a charter school’s property was not tax-exempt, prompted by some unusual financial arrangements. 

Judge Madelyn S. Fudeman upheld a ruling by the Berks County Board of Assessment Appeals denying I-LEAD Inc. an exemption from property taxes.

The building at 401 Penn St., which houses the I-LEAD Charter School, is assessed at $9.7 million, according to Berks County property records.

The property was placed on Berks County’s September upset tax sale for four years of unpaid property taxes totaling $2.8 million; the unpaid years spanned 2014-17.

The property’s owner, I-LEAD Inc., Philadelphia, was ordered to pay a bond of $500,000 to be removed from the tax sale list, which it did in December…

In her ruling, Fudeman takes I-LEAD Inc. to task, saying it appears to be more of a for-profit operation.

She said the testimony of [CEO David ] Castro and Angel Figueroa, the charter school’s CEO and chief operating officer, “fell far short of establishing” the charter school operates at a loss.

In her ruling, Fudeman noted a revenue-sharing agreement between I-LEAD Charter School and Harcum College.

Harcum is a two-year college offering associate degree that operates from the same building as the charter school.

For every student that I-LEAD referred to Harcum College, I-LEAD would receive 40 percent of tuition and fees received by Harcum, the ruling states.

I-LEAD received more that $8.6 million from Harcum from July 2014 to June 2017…

Castro was paid over $195,000 for the most recent year and Figueroa was paid over $240,000 for the most recent year, court documents showed.

“The salaries paid to Mr. Castro and Mr. Figueroa appears more in line with a profit making institution than a truly charitable organization,” Fudeman said in the ruling.

 

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Education Industry, For-Profit, Pennsylvania, Privatization
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