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Ohio: Kucinich Blasts Charter Frauds and Scams

By dianeravitch
April 29, 2017 //
10

Former Congressman Dennis Kucinich, who may be thinking of a run for Governor of Ohio, launched a four-city speaking tour across the state, castigating the corruption in the charter industry at every stop.

Kucinich understands that every dollar that goes to a charter is taken away from a public school. He is the first politician who understands the shell game. Defund public schools while funding a dual system.


“Former U.S. Rep. Dennis Kucinich launched a four-city, anti-charter school tour in Columbus, Ohio on Monday, telling attendees at a press conference that “public education’s financial base is being destroyed by private, for-profit corporate interests.”

Kucinich, who served 16 years in Congress, was Cleveland mayor in the late 1970s, and ran for president in 2004 and 2008, plans to hold town hall-style forums across the state in Centerville, Columbus, Parma, and Elyria Monday through Thursday. He kicked it off by talking to reporters at the Ohio statehouse.

“When state revenue for public schools decreases because of money which goes to private for-profit charters, public school officials must make up the difference by asking local property taxpayers for more money,” Kucinich said. “It represents a deliberate, destructive undermining of the public education of Ohio’s children. What is our educational philosophy today? Let for-profit corporations exploit the mass of children by controlling the state government?”

“With that last line, he was referring to state legislators “who have accepted millions of dollars in campaign contributions from charter-school operators, notably William Lager of the Electronic Classroom of Tomorrow and David Brennan of White Hat Management,” according to the Columbus Dispatch….

According to a report released in advance of DeVos’ visit, since the 2012-2013 school year, $3,744,988 in state funding originally meant for children attending Van Wert County’s local public schools “has instead gone to privately run brick-and-mortar and online charter schools.” In turn, said the report from Innovation Ohio, “local taxpayers in Van Wert…have had to subsidize these larger state payments to charter schools to the tune of $1.4 million—money that should have supplemented the larger state aid amount but is now being used to subsidize poorer performing, privately run charter schools.”

Supporting Kucinich’s criticism, the report pointed out that indeed, “local property taxpayers in Van Wert County schools are paying $3 million more in property taxes in 2015 (the most recent available data from the Ohio Department of Taxation) than they did in 2013, which is increasing those communities’ reliance on property taxes to pay for education—a result deemed unconstitutional four times by the Ohio Supreme Court.”

According to a report released in advance of DeVos’ visit, since the 2012-2013 school year, $3,744,988 in state funding originally meant for children attending Van Wert County’s local public schools “has instead gone to privately run brick-and-mortar and online charter schools.” In turn, said the report from Innovation Ohio, “local taxpayers in Van Wert…have had to subsidize these larger state payments to charter schools to the tune of $1.4 million—money that should have supplemented the larger state aid amount but is now being used to subsidize poorer performing, privately run charter schools.”

Supporting Kucinich’s criticism, the report pointed out that indeed, “local property taxpayers in Van Wert County schools are paying $3 million more in property taxes in 2015 (the most recent available data from the Ohio Department of Taxation) than they did in 2013, which is increasing those communities’ reliance on property taxes to pay for education—a result deemed unconstitutional four times by the Ohio Supreme Court.”

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

Preston Green: Will Charter School Fraud Be the New Enron?

By dianeravitch
April 29, 2017 //
18

Preston Green III is a scholar at the University of Connecticut who studies the legal and political issues associated with school choice. He fears that school choice, unregulated and unaccountable, will be the new Enron, a financial scandal of massive proportions.

Professor Green says:

“As school choice champions like Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos push to make charter schools a larger part of the educational landscape, it’s important to understand the Enron scandal and how charter schools are vulnerable to similar schemes.

Enron’s downfall was caused largely by something called “related-party transactions.” Understanding this concept is crucial for grasping how charter schools may also be in danger.

Related-party transactions are business arrangements between companies with close associations: It could be between two companies owned or managed by the same group or it could be between one large company and a smaller company that it owns. Although related-party transactions are legal, they can create severe conflicts of interest, allowing those in power to profit from employees, investors and even taxpayers.

This is what happened at Enron. Because Enron wanted to look good to investors, the company created thousands of “special purpose entities” to hide its debt. Because of these off-the-books partnerships, Enron was able to artificially boost its profits, thus tricking investors.

Enron’s Chief Financial Officer Andrew Fastow managed several of these special purpose entities, benefiting from his position of power at the expense of the company’s shareholders. For instance, these companies paid him US$30 million in management fees – far more than his Enron salary.

Fastow also conspired with other Enron employees to pocket another $30 million from one of these entities, and he moved $4.5 million from this scheme into his family foundation.

Enron’s collapse revealed the weaknesses of the gatekeepers – including boards of directors and the Securities and Exchange Commission – that are responsible for protecting the markets. Because of lax accountability and federal deregulation, these watchdogs failed to detect the dangers posed by Fastow’s conflict of interest until it was too late. Congress responded by passing the Sarbanes-Oxley Act, which tightened the requirements for oversight.

Forty-four states and the District of Columbia have legislation that allows for charter schools. Just like public schools, charter schools receive public funding. However, unlike public schools, charter schools are exempt from many laws governing financial transparency.

Without strict regulation, some bad actors have been able to take advantage of charter schools as an opportunity for private investment. In the worst cases, individuals have been able to use related-party transactions to fraudulently funnel public money intended for charter schools into other business ventures that they control.

Such was the case with Ivy Academia, a Los Angeles-area charter school. The co-founders, Yevgeny Selivanov and Tatayana Berkovich, also owned a private preschool that shared facilities with the charter school. The preschool entered into a sublease for the facilities at a monthly rent of $18,390 – the fair-market value. The preschool then assigned the sublease to the charter school at a monthly rent of $43,870.

The Los Angeles district attorney’s office charged the husband-and-wife team with multiple counts of fraud. Selivanov was sentenced to nearly five years in jail in 2013.

Fraudulent related-party transactions can also occur between education management organizations (EMOs) and their affiliates. EMOs are for-profit or nonprofit entities that sometimes manage charter schools, and might also own smaller companies that could provide services to those schools.

For example, Imagine Schools is a nonprofit EMO that runs 63 charter schools enrolling 33,000 students across the country. It also owns SchoolHouse Finance, a for-profit company that, among other things, handles real estate for many of Imagine’s charter schools. Though charter schools typically spend around 14 percent of their funding on rent, some of the Imagine Schools were paying SchoolHouse Finance up to 40 percent of their funding for rent.

One of the charter schools operated by Imagine Schools, Renaissance Academy in Kansas City, sued the company for charging it excessive rent. In 2015, a federal judge agreed, ordering Imagine Schools to pay almost $1 million in damages to Renaissance. The court’s ruling suggested that Imagine Schools was essentially taking advantage of the charter school: The EMO profited from the excessive rent and failed to tell the school’s board of directors how the cost might disrupt the school’s ability to pay for textbooks and teacher salaries.

Because of insufficient oversight, Fastow’s fraudulent use of related-party transactions at Enron was not stopped until it was too late. Similarly, the Ivy Academia and Renaissance Academy examples reveal insufficient checks and balances in the charter school sector. In both cases, the monitors responsible for protecting charter schools found nothing wrong with the rental agreements.

Green says these cases are not isolated. The risks grow as degulation grows. It is already obvious that DeVos and Trump will prevent regulation to the greatest extent possible. The conditions will be right for massive fraud.

Categories Accountability, Betsy DeVos, Charter Schools, Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, Fraud, Privatization, Trump

Gary Rubinstein: The 4th Best High School in New York State Doesn’t Exist

By dianeravitch
April 29, 2017 //
11

Gary Rubinstein wrote a post about the curiosity of the KIPP high school in New York City that was ranked one of the best in the nation by U.S. News & World Report, even though it had only 58 students and the three other KIPP high schools had zero students who took and passed AP exams. The name of the school is KIPP Academy Charter School. Were they trying to game the system, he wondered? But some comments on his blog alerted him to the fact, if fact it is, that the only KIPP high school is KIPP NYC College Prep High School.

Gary untangles the puzzle here.

“The reader informed me that there are not four KIPP high schools in New York City, but just one, KIPP NYC College Prep High School. This was puzzling to me since the school that was ranked 29th in the country and 4th in New York was not called KIPP NYC College Prep High School, but called KIPP Academy Charter School.

“When I went to look at the data at the public data site for school report cards, there was no report card for a KIPP NYC College Prep High School, however. But there were report cards for the four MIDDLE schools, KIPP Academy, KIPP AMP, KIPP Infinity, and KIPP STAR. On these report cards, it shows that 5-8 middle schools also have students in 9th, 10th, 11th, and 12th grade, in small numbers.

“One of those four middle schools is the KIPP Academy with its 58 12th graders, and this is the ‘school’ that was rated so highly on the U.S. News ranking.

“But the reality is that there is just one high school and it does not have just 58 students, but around 150 students, basically the four 12th grade classes from the four middle schools are actually not attending that middle school but all attending the KIPP high school.

“Why the students are still ‘officially’ in their middle schools is a mystery to me and why there is not report card for the KIPP high school is also pretty baffling.

“The non-existent KIPP Academy Charter High School that was ranked 29th in the country and 4th in New York claimed to have 58 students with a 100% AP participation rate and a 98% passing rate. We now know that these 58 students are only a subset, around a fourth, of an existing school KIPP NYC College Prep. Though there is no state report card for KIPP NYC College Prep, the school has one on their website for the 2014-2015 school year on which the U.S. News ratings were based.”

Read Gary’s analysis.

One thing is clear: the U.S. News & World Report ranking of high schools is phony. A fraud. Meaningless. They rank high schools to sell magazines. They don’t fact-check. They set themselves up as the arbiters of which are the best high schools in the nation, based on flawed data, and they are not qualified to do this work. Of what value is their product?

Categories Charter Schools, Fraud, Hoax, KIPP Charter Schools, New York

Barbara Byrd-Bennett, Former Chicago Leader, Sentenced to 4 1/2 Years in Prison

By dianeravitch
April 28, 2017 //
13

Barbara Byrd-Bennett, once Rahm Emanuel’s choice to lead the Chicago Public Schools, was sentenced to 4 1/2 years in prison for her role in a kickback scheme intended to gain her hundreds of thousands of dollars. She has lost her job, her career, her reputation, and now, her freedom.

http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/local/breaking/ct-barbara-byrd-bennett-sentence-met-20170428-story.html

One of her co-conspirators received a sentence of seven years, another got 18 months.

MORE BREAKING NEWS: Cook County judge rejects CPS lawsuit seeking more money from the state. The district may close schools June 1 because of lack of funding.

Judge rejects CPS’ state funding lawsuit, gives district option to refile
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/local/politics/ct-chicago-schools-funding-lawsuit-ruling-met-20170428-story.html

Categories Accountability, Chicago, Education Reform, Equity, Fraud, Funding

Michigan: Officials Promise Investigation of Charter Board Decision Not to Seek Repayment of $5 Million from Convicted Director

By dianeravitch
April 26, 2017 //
8

Blogger Anita Senkowski has kept a close watch on the Grand Traverse Academy charter chain in northern Michigan. Two years ago, its founder was convicted of tax evasion, but apparently the board of directors did not require repayment of the $5 million that went missing. Now, due to Senkowski’s persistence, the state has promised an investigation. The founder of the charter chain, Steven Ingersoll, is an optometrist who claimed to have a unique way of teaching children through a method he called “integrated visual learning”; he recruited other optometrists to serve on the charter board.

Two years after Steven Ingersoll’s March 10, 2015 federal tax evasion and conspiracy convictions, Michigan authorities, including the office of its Attorney General, Bill Schuette, are finally investigating Ingersoll’s related-party financial transactions, the GTA’s debt write off process and its decision not to seek repayment of the money that may have been misappropriated by Ingersoll between 2007-2013, estimated at $5.0 million.

Kicked into action by a formal complaint I filed on March 31, 2017, the Michigan Department of Education confirmed to me in an April 4, 2017 that it is investigating the decision by the GTA’s Board of Directors to “write off” a $1.6 million debt owed to the school by Ingersoll, its calculation of the amount—and the three optometrists who looked at a charter school full of children and saw only a cash-rich “golden goose”: Steven Ingersoll, Mark Noss and Brad Habermehl.

After dithering publicly for months in 2014 about its “plan” to collect money owed to the Grand Traverse Academy (GTA) by its former manager, optometrist Steven Ingersoll of Smart Schools Management, Inc. (SSM), the Traverse City, Michigan, charter school’s annual fiscal audit revealed its board decided to just “write off” $1,623,000 to bad debt, and not pursue collection.

The GTA board included a $1,813,330 “repayment” by Ingersoll into its write off calculation — an amount credited against his debt, estimated in by Ingersoll at $3.58 million as of June 30, 2012.

Ingersoll began serving his 41-month prison sentence in February in Minnesota.

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, Fraud, Michigan, Privatization

Florida: Stop the Charter Theft of Public Schools!

By dianeravitch
April 25, 2017 //
8

Kathleen Oporeza, executive director of Fund Education Now in Florida, urges all Florida citizens to contact their legislators–by email, by telephone, in person–and urge them to vote against any legislation that refers to “Schools of Hope,” which is a blatant effort to hand public schools over to charter entrepreneurs.

Urge the House & Senate to oppose any bill containing “Schools of Hope/HIgh Impact Charters” language

This dangerous concept has worked its way into at least a dozen bills, making it intentionally harder to track. All of this activity feeds the goal of making it easier to slip this bad public policy into one of several massive “train” bills far removed from public view.

Take action now. Tell our Senators and Representatives to oppose all bills, including HB 5105, SB 796, and SB 1552, that contain “Schools of Hope/High Impact Charter Networks” language.

“Schools of Hope”/“High Impact Charter Networks” create two separate, unequal publicly funded school systems – one under the control of duly elected school boards and the other controlled by outside private corporations under the direction of the appointed State Board of Education.

The deck is stacked. The BOE picks and chooses which district turnaround plans are accepted or rejected while at the same time exercising oversight authority over competing High Impact Charter Networks.

Because the BOE determines cut scores on state assessments and the calculation of school grades which can be manipulated to increase the number of D and F district schools this language will clearly drive the expansion of “Schools of Hope/High Impact Charter Networks.”

Use your voice now! One click easy. Please do not let “Schools of Hope/High Impact Charter Networks” trigger the immediate transfer of 115 “D & F” public schools and their 77K students into private, for-profit hands.

This isn’t about helping our most vulnerable students; it’s about promoting unmitigated charter school growth in an effort to erode district schools.

The Charter “Schools of Hope/High Impact Charter Networks” exponentially expand the effort to allow for-profit charters to keep grabbing tax dollars and tapping new markets to beef up the annual reports of corporate charter chains. None of this has been proven to help students or improve education.

Please tell the Florida Legislature to vote no on the “Schools of Hope/High Impact Charter Networks” language, SB 796, SB 1552 and HB 5105 with its $200M slush fund and block its inclusion in the Senate Budget and prevent it from being slipped by either chamber into a “train” bill.

Your voice has power. Our children are depending on us

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

In the Public Interest: Why the Trump-DeVos Choice Agenda Won’t Work

By dianeravitch
April 22, 2017 //
15

Donald Cohen, executive director of the nonprofit group In the Public Interest, wrote the following (co-posted in Huffington Post):

Conservatives seem to have a thing for fast food.

The founder of what would eventually become the country’s largest private prison corporation, CoreCivic (formerly CCA), once declared, “You just sell [private prisons] like you were selling cars or real estate or hamburgers.” More recently, the Foundation for Excellence in Education, an organization founded by Jeb Bush that has lobbied for its corporate funders, including the world’s largest education corporation, Pearson, wrote that public schools should be thought of as fast food restaurants.

But providing public goods and services is nothing like selling hamburgers. In a democracy, human beings should control the public schools, infrastructure, and social services in their communities. Fast food customers vote individually with their wallets, which means they really have very little say. Does anyone really want a handful of corporations, the likes of McDonalds and Burger King, teaching children and locking people up in prison?

This point is especially true of public education, and is driven home by a report we released last week authored by Gordon Lafer, an associate professor at the University of Oregon. Lafer found that taxpayers have spent hundreds of millions of dollars on charter school buildings in California, yet the state has little to show for it.

In the past 15 years, charter schools, which are privately operated, have received $2.5 billion in tax dollars or taxpayer subsidized financing to lease, build, or buy facilities. Yet much of this investment has gone to schools built in neighborhoods that don’t need them and schools that perform worse—according to charter industry standards—than nearby traditional public schools. Taxpayers have provided California’s underperforming charter schools—an astounding three-quarters of all the state’s charter schools!—with an estimated $750 million in direct funding.

Public support has even gone to California charter schools that discriminate against students with poor academic records, limited English-speaking skills, or disabilities. Taxpayers have given a collective $195 million to the 253 schools found by the American Civil Liberties Union of Southern California (ACLU) in August 2016 to have discriminatory enrollment policies.

Most alarming is the fact that much of the funding has gone to a handful of large charter school chains, and some have used the money to purchase private property. In Los Angeles, for example, the Alliance College-Ready Public Schools network of charter schools has used subsidiary corporations to build a growing empire of privately owned real estate now worth in excess of $200 million. State and federal taxpayers have given Alliance more than $110 million in support, yet, because of a loophole, the schools built with these funds will never belong to the public.

Simply put, California’s leaders are treating schools like fast food restaurants. Local school boards, who are democratically elected, have little say in whether a new charter school is good for their community’s students. The boards charged with authorizing new charters aren’t allowed to consider the impacts on existing public schools—or whether a school is even needed. On top of that, state and federal taxpayers are subsidizing failing and discriminatory charter schools to the tune of hundreds of millions of dollars.

California needs common sense regulation that returns decisions about charter schools to local school districts. Short of that, the state is slowly handing the keys to its public education system over to the charter school industry and the likes of Donald Trump and new education secretary Betsy DeVos, who are pushing the “school choice” narrative.

Categories Accountability, Betsy DeVos, Bush, Jeb, California, Charter Schools, Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, For-Profit, Fraud, Privatization

Betsy DeVos Withdraws Protections for Students from Predatory Loan Agencies

By dianeravitch
April 13, 2017 //
16

In an inexplicable move, Secretary of Education DeVos canceled rules–some of which date back to the first Bush administration–to set standards for student loan agencies.

This benefits the industry that fattens on student loans, but it will harm students.

The New York Times editorial board asks “Whose Side is Betsy DeVos on?” I think we know.

“Education Secretary Betsy DeVos is inexplicably backing away from rules that are meant to prevent federal student loan borrowers from being fleeced by companies the government pays to collect the loans and to guide people through the repayment process.

“On Tuesday, she withdrew a sound Obama administration policy that required the Education Department to take into account the past conduct of loan servicing companies before awarding them lucrative contracts — and to include consumer protections in those contracts as well.

“The department is doing the loan industry’s bidding at a time when student debt has crippled a generation financially and the country’s largest loan servicing company, Navient, is facing several lawsuits accusing it of putting its own interest before that of the borrowers it is supposed to help.

“A suit brought by the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau claims that Navient saved itself money by steering borrowers into costly repayment strategies that added billions in interest to their balances. But as Stacy Cowley and Jessica Silver-Greenberg reported in The Times on Monday, states’ lawsuits are especially damning with respect to Sallie Mae — the company that spun off Navient in 2014.

“The Illinois and Washington attorneys general argue that Sallie Mae engaged in predatory lending, saddling people with private subprime loans that the company knew in advance were likely to fail because borrowers would not be able to repay them. The two attorneys general — part of an investigative coalition of 29 states — argue that borrowers deserve to have these tainted private loans forgiven.

“The scenario outlined in the court documents bears a frightening resemblance to the subprime mortgage crisis of a decade ago — when mortgage companies caused millions of borrowers to lose their homes by steering them into risky, high-cost mortgages they could never hope to repay.

“The Illinois and Washington lawsuits argue that Sallie Mae used subprime private loans to build relationships with exploitative schools that then helped the company make more federal loans to their students. Those loans were the jackpot for the company, the lawsuit argues, because they were guaranteed by the government, which steps in to reimburse the lender when a borrower defaults.

“The defaulted private loans destroyed the financial lives of students. But they benefited the schools — which sometimes made deals with Sallie Mae to subsidize the losses — allowing them to comply with federal rules requiring that no more than 90 percent of a school’s revenue can come from federal financial aid. The case shows the dangers inherent in letting companies service federal and private loans simultaneously.”

Will it make America “great again” by impoverishing a generation of students?

I thought she was a Christian. What would Jesus do? Didn’t Jesus throw the money-lenders out of the Temple?

Categories Accountability, Betsy DeVos, Education Industry, For-Profit, Fraud, Higher Education, Student Financial Aid and Student Debt, Students

Gayle Green: Corporate School Reform and the Cynical Manipulation of the English Language

By dianeravitch
April 11, 2017 //
22

Gayle Green is a professor of English at Scripps College. She is writing a book about the corporate reform in higher education.

In this article, she describes how corporate reformers have taken guidance from Orwell’s “1984” in their deliberate distortion of language to mask reality.

She writes:

“In this post-truth age that’s done away with facts, George Orwell’s 1984 has soared to the top of the charts. But in the world of public education, it’s been 1984 for quite some time. And we didn’t even need the clumsy apparatus of a totalitarian dictatorship to bring it about. All we needed was some slick PR and smiley corporate faces and a media ready to spit back the buzzwords they’d been fed – failing public schools, no excuses, accountability, choice, access for every child, closing the achievement gap – repeating them so often that they passed for truth.”

In the current dystopian world of public education, the new Secretary of Education is the leading enemy of the nation’s public schools.

DeVos should be no surprise. She is the culmination of nearly two decades of creeping privatization.

“But DeVos should come as no surprise: she is the culmination of the way things have long been headed. No Child Left Behind, signed into law in January 2002, brought to us by George W. Bush and the moneyed interests he represented, arrived in clouds of rhetoric about “access” and “civil rights.” It announced itself as “an act to close the achievement gap with accountability, choice, flexibility, so that no child is left behind.” But this was never about reform or access or leveling the playing field: it was about opening up public education as a market, siphoning off tax dollars to charters and for-profit vendors, shifting public funds from a system that had public oversight and control to private interests. Education was a rich, untapped market with billions of federal dollars there for the taking. Schools, panicked at having their survival based on standardized test scores, invested heavily in testing technology. Multinational testing corporations, publishing companies, ed-tech ventures rushed in with their wares: software for administering tests, test preps, pre-tests, post-tests, tests scoring, lesson plans, teaching modules, assessment devices; entire new industries sprang into being….

“It’s been quite a feat, transforming teachers, who were once our friends and allies, to the enemy. A real sleight of hand, getting the public to trust those altruistic billionaires over those greedy, opportunistic teachers. Trust a billionaire to have the public’s interest at heart – that spin worked so well it landed us with Trump. But in the world of 1984, two plus two equals five: “Not merely the validity of experience, but the very existence of external reality, was tacitly denied by [the Party’s] philosophy.”

Put kids in front of computers, increase screen time, increase class size – and call it personalized. Depersonalized might be a better word – or perhaps personalised, for Pearsons, the multibillion-dollar transnational corporation that’s siphoned off untold billions of federal money. When teachers protested that students from disadvantaged backgrounds tend not to test well, having not had the benefit of tutors and test-prep programs, GWB said they were making “excuses,” showing “the soft bigotry of low expectations.” Yet it’s painfully clear that using test scores to determine the survival of schools only further disadvantages the disadvantaged, and, far from leveling the playing field, tilts it even more. “No excuses” became a mantra of corporate reformers, an excuse for shutting down public schools and moving in with charters, an excuse to ignore poverty and blame teachers for conditions that make teaching impossible – conditions assured by inequities that billionaire reformers have themselves brought about.”

Hundreds of schools have been closed. Thousands of teachers drummed out of their profession. Philadelphia’s Rescue Plan devastated the public schools. Arne Duncan’s Renaissance 2010 came and went with more public schools closed, more children sent to privately managed charter schools. “Choice, choice, choice,” the corporate reformers say, but neglect to mention that the schools make the choices, not the families. The one choice that is off the table is the neighborhood school.

“The confounding of language at its most basic level reduces us to a state of civic catatonia: we can’t think about these issues, let alone discuss them or act against them, when they’ve been so obfuscated, when words have been so twisted.”

The deliberate distortion of language has enabled a corporate coup, the selling out of public education to billionaires and entrepreneurs.

This is an article you can send to your friends who want a short summary of one of the biggest scam of our lifetimes.

Categories Accountability, Betsy DeVos, Billionaires, Charter Schools, Corporate Reform, Corporate Reformers, Democracy, Education Industry, Fraud, Hoax, Privatization, School Choice, Testing

Laura Chapman: California Loves Waste, Fraud, and Financial Abuse So Long as the Money Goes to Charters

By dianeravitch
April 10, 2017 //
24

In response to the report from “In the Public Interest” about waste, fraud, and abuse of taxpayer dollars in California facilities funding, Laura Chapman responded that the state doesn’t care if it wastes money:

This shows why the state will do nothing about fraud, waste, abuse. This is current information about charter school financing in California.

Begin Quote:
Through the passage of Propositions 47, 55, and 1D, and most recently, Proposition 51, $1.4 billion has been made available to charter schools for construction of new facilities or rehabilitation of existing school district facilities.

The state-funded Charter School Facilities Program (CSFP) is jointly administered by the California School Finance Authority (CSFA) and the Office of Public School Construction (OPSC). CSFA directs the financial soundness review process for the CSFP and provides certification of financial soundness for purposes of Preliminary, Advance, and Final Apportionments.

The Charter School Facilities Program (CSFP) provides fixed rate, long-term debt to schools at underwriting terms that are set by the state – not the capital markets.

A $1.4 billion program, CSFP provides low-cost financing for charter school facilities; 50% grant, 50% loan. This money is used to finance the construction of new, permanent school facilities or rehabilitation of existing school district facilities for charter schools throughout the state.
End Quote.

Nobody cares about fraud waste and abuse.

A quick check at the Gates Foundation website shows $31 million invested in amping up charter school facilities in Los Angeles, 24 million in the state of Washington, and some recent funding to promote facilities financing in Boston–not much about $20,000–sent to Bellwether Education Partners , the go-to consultancy for all things for all charter schools.

From http://www.treasurer.ca.gov/csfa/charter.asp

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Fraud, Funding, Privatization
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