Steve Hinnefeld warns that Republican legislators in Indiana are laying the groundwork to expand the state’s failed voucher program. The research on vouchers in many states has been consistent: Students who use vouchers fall behind their peers in public schools. Those who continue to push vouchers are either ideologues, religious zealots, or paid to do so. We know that they don’t help students. Increasingly the students who take vouchers already attend religious schools or planned to, and they are getting public money to pay private tuition.
Indiana legislators like to fund failure.
Don’t be surprised if lawmakers try to expand Indiana’s already generous private school voucher program in 2021. They’re signaling their intention with the issues surveys they send to constituents.
At least eight House Republicans include this question in their surveys, which are posted on their internet sites: “Do you support increasing the income eligibility for Indiana’s CHOICE scholarships, giving more low- and middle-income families the option to send their children to the school that best meets their needs?”
Note that the question contains a falsehood. Increasing the income eligibility for vouchers, officially labeled Choice Scholarships, won’t change anything for low-income families. They already meet income qualifications for the program, which provides state funding for private school tuition.
Under current law, students can qualify for vouchers if their family income is less than 150% of the threshold for reduced-price school meals. They remain eligible if their family income rises to 200% of the reduced-meal level. For a family of five, that’s $113,516, two times Indiana’s median household income.
In other words, low-income families and many middle-income families already meet the income requirements. According to the 2019-20 Indiana Department of Education voucher report, a quarter of voucher recipients came from families that made over $75,000 and 7% made over $100,000.
The suggestion in the survey that vouchers let families choose schools that meet their children’s “needs” is also questionable. Surveys have found that many voucher parents choose private schools primarily because they provide religious training, not because their children have unique needs. Research has shown that voucher students who leave public schools for private schools typically fall behind academically.
Last spring, you may recall, the CARES Act included $13.2 billion for public and charter schools. In addition, $660 billion was allocated to the Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) for small businesses and nonprofits that were struggling to survive due to the pandemic. Public schools were not allowed to apply for PPP. However, many charter schools learned through their lobbyists that they could apply for PPP. In other words, they double-dipped. They took the $134,500 or so that was available in the initial allotment for each public school. Then they went to the PPP and took another bite, which was far bigger than the funding allowed to public schools.
Which raises the interesting question: Are charter schools “public schools” or are they small businesses or private nonprofits? After all, public schools were not allowed to ask for PPP money, but over a thousand charter schools struck gold.
PPP awards ranged from $168,500 to the online charter Leadership Academy of Nevada to $4.6 million to Doral Academy to support its five brick-and-mortar campuses in Southern Nevada. Many of the forgivable loans were coordinated and handled by the same entity, Academica Nevada, a regional branch of the Florida-based for-profit company that manages some 200 charter schools nationwide and has a strong presence in Nevada.
The charters that qualified for PPP money did so because they are incorporated as nonprofits, something Nevada law allows them to do. Even pre-pandemic, being a nonprofit is often financially beneficial because it opens up additional funding opportunities, such as grants through the federal Charter School Program.
Scan the list in the article: Democracy Prep received $1 million; Odyssey Charter Schools, $2.28 million; Pinecrest Academy, $4.6 million; Sports Leadership and Management Academy (SLAM), $800,000. Pinecrest and SLAM are part of the for-profit Academica chain; SLAM was started by rapper Pitbull, widely celebrated for his misogynistic lyrics.
Joe Biden was very clear about his position on privately managed charter schools during the campaign.
In this video, he was asked by Lily Eskelsen Garcia what he would do about charter schools, and his position was clear: Charter schools should not be funded at the expense of public schools. No federal funds for privately funded charter schools. Charter schools should be subject to the oversight and governance of school boards. Charter schools should be held to the same standards of transparency and accountability as public schools.
I posted a delightful article by Jennifer Raab, President of Hunter College, celebrating the importance of public higher education, which has provided opportunity to so many students from low-income and immigrant families.
A faculty member of the City University of New York wrote to say that budget cuts are strangling the promise of public higher education.
He wrote:
Public education requires more than cheerleading: right now, we also need advocates who are willing to fight for it. And while Virginia may have been an impressive alumna of Hunter College, this year Governor Cuomo has held back 20% of CUNY funding based on an expectation of a dramatic state shortfall. While the shortfall has been much less than predicted, the cuts to public education have occurred anyways. At Hunter and other CUNY schools, those cuts have meant heavy lay-offs of adjunct faculty. Their courses have been cancelled and, as a result, students are being squeezed into over-crowded classes. A course that, a year ago, might have worked with 30 students in person, this semester will have 40 students in a Zoom room. That’s nowhere near the level of teaching and engagement that Virginia received. And that’s a real tragedy.
In a year in which our public officials have insisted they will fight for greater equity, we need leaders who will fight for the country’s largest public university to be fully funded and its students to be given the quality of education they deserve. We need leaders who don’t only celebrate CUNY’s past, but demand that its traditions of providing a first-rate education for all New Yorkers be maintained in the present and into the future. And if that requires fighting, let’s insist that they take up that battle.
There is no money in the COVID relief bill for states and cities that are verging on bankruptcy due to the collapse of tax revenues. Those states and cities support our schools. But there was lots of money for special interests.
The Washington Post reports that Congress tacked on billions of dollars in tax breaks to their favorite lobbyists. When a bill is more than 5,000 pages long, it takes time to find out what goodies were included for favored industries.
Congress on Monday unveiled a 5,593-page spending bill and then voted on it several hours later, with lawmakers claiming urgent action was needed to rescue an ailing economy ravaged by the coronavirus pandemic.
But tucked in the bill was over $110 billion in tax breaks that strayed far from the way the bill was marketed to many Americans. These giveaways include big tax cuts for liquor producers, the motorsports entertainment sector and manufacturers of electric motorcycles.
These measures, added onto the broader spending bill, are known as “tax extenders” — tax breaks targeted at specific, sometimes niche industries. And routinely extending these “temporary” measures has become something of a year-end tradition, despite loud complaints from some lawmakers who allege the votes largely benefit special-interest groups who stand to gain financially from the outcome.
These tax extenders are designed to be temporary but are frequently renewed, often at the urging of industry lobbyists, and done so during late-night votes at the end of the year. (The Senate vote Monday took place shortly before midnight.) The Joint Committee on Taxation estimated the extenders benefiting industry and special interests included in the stimulus bill would cost over $110 billion over 10 years.
Tax experts and good governance advocates have criticized such short-term tax relief extensions, arguing they hide the true cost of the cuts and advantage industries with the most well-connected lobbyists. “They are a gravy train for members and lobbyists, who repeat the same exercise every year or two,” Howard Gleckman, a tax policy expert at the Urban Institute, said in an email. “The lobbyists get to keep billing hours. The members get campaign money from the same people. Many of these are classic special interest tax breaks that do not benefit the overall economy in any way.”
The federal government collected $3.4 trillion in taxes in the 12 months that ended Sept. 30, but it typically allows more than $1.5 trillion in annual tax breaks, according to the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget. Some of these are locked into the tax code. Others, however, were initially designed to last only a year or two but continue winning extension after extension because of intense lobbying.
President-elect Joe Biden has been critical of the plethora of tax giveaways, but he will find that both Democrats and Republicans have been steadfast in their supportive of certain tax breaks. And to win passage each year, the tax breaks are bundled together into one package for votes to draw maximum support.
Congress is scrambling to pass a coronavirus stimulus bill before the end of 2020. Here’s what you need to know about what’s included in the legislation.
The enormous new bill packages together emergency economic relief, government funding and tax cuts. The economic relief component of the bill is worth around $900 billion. The legislation included a slew of provisions that had nothing to do with coronavirus relief or funding the government, including many of the tax extenders.
One measure, for instance, makes permanent a cut in excise taxes for producers of beer, wine and distilled spirits, which first became law in 2017 as part of the Republican-led tax cut package. The cuts were due to expire without congressional action, and the alcohol industry had pushed hard for their renewal, arguing that their businesses had been decimated by the pandemic. The industry has supporters among both Democrats and Republicans in Congress, who in turn pushed their leaders to include a bill making the cuts permanent “in the next appropriate legislative package.”
Andrew Ujifusa explains here what the latest COVID relief bill contains for education. Republicans refused to fund cities and states, which supply most of the funding for schools. They also insisted on setting aside $2.75 billion specifically for private schools. It remains to be seen whether charter schools will double dip into both the public school money and the money set aside for small businesses, as they did in the previous COVID relief.
K-12 schools would receive about $57 billion in direct aid under a new $900 billion federal COVID-19 relief deal reached over the weekend by congressional negotiators.
The vast majority of that amount, $54.3 billion, would be for public schools in an education stabilization fund, and 90 percent of that must ultimately go to local school districts, including charter schools that function as districts. According to the legislation, schools could use the relief to address learning loss, to improve school facilities and infrastructure to reduce the risk of transmitting the coronavirus, and to purchase education technology. This funding would be available through September 2022.
Education organizations that have long pushed for additional aid for schools grappling with the effects of the pandemic characterized the bill, which is much smaller than some previous proposals, as a down payment. President-elect Joe Biden has suggested he will pursue an additional relief deal after his inauguration.
The legislation does not include more funding for the E-Rate program that supports internet service for schools and libraries. The bill does provide $3.2 billion to an emergency broadband connectivity fund.
There is also $4.1 billion in a fund for governors to direct to both K-12 and higher education. Of that fund, $2.75 billion is reserved for private schools. This funding cannot be used to support tax-credit scholarships, vouchers, and other forms of school choice. Private schools seeking this aid must agree not to obtain additional funding from the Paycheck Protection Program. In addition, private schools that serve low-income students and have been “most impacted” by the virus are supposed to get priority for this funding.
The aid included in the bill “will help states deliver safe, high-quality education, expand access to technology, and recover academic learning loss,” Carissa Moffat Miller, chief executive officer of the Council of Chief State School Officers, said in a statement.
The deal does not include relief for state and local governments, a major source of contention during COVID-19 negotiations; a large portion of such aid would end up benefiting K-12 school budgets.
The bill says states must agree to maintain a certain level of education funding that’s proportional to prior funding levels, in order to receive the aid; however, the secretary of education may waive this requirement for states experiencing a “precipitous decline in financial resources.”
Ronn Nozoe, chief executive officer of the National Association of Secondary School Principals, called the agreement “woefully inadequate as the final word on COVID relief for schools.” The organization had pushed for $175 billion for K-12 relief and $12 billion for the E-rate program.
“Budgets are shrinking while needs are expanding from the pandemic,” Nozoe said in a statement. “Schools need funding not just to stabilize budgets shaken by local economies, but to accelerate learning after the pandemic. Unless Congress gets serious for the long term about supporting their own public schools, we’ll be cutting into bone—fewer teachers, larger classes, and less social support for kids at precisely their time of greatest need.”
While praising new funding for schools and vaccine distribution, American Federation of Teachers President Randi Weingarten faulted Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell for “obstructing the resources states and localities need to respond to the pandemic.”
“I worry that the package will be grossly insufficient to alleviate the hardships so many Americans are suffering,” she wrote in a column posted on the union’s website.
Congress was expected to approve the package Monday and send it to President Donald Trump for his signature. Unlike previous proposals by GOP lawmakers backed by Trump, the new deal does not require schools to hold in-person learning to receive aid.
Educators have been pressuring Washington for months, ever since the CARES Act became law, for more relief.
Although a large share of schools have reopened for in-person instruction, many in the education community say that schools need additional aid to address ailing HVAC systems, implement COVID-19 mitigation measures, and shore up shaky budgets amid fiscal uncertainty.
Phyllis W. Jordan of Future-Ed, a D.C. think tank, explains here what the latest Congressional agreement on COVID aid means for education and compares it to last spring’s CARES Act as well as to the HEROES Act passed in May by the House of Representatives. The agreement does not include any aid for cities or states. President-Elect Joe Biden has pledged another relief package after he takes office.
She writes:
The $900 billion package builds on a $908 billion stimulus bill introduced Dec. 14 and would include stimulus checks, small business relief, unemployment benefits, and support for vaccine distribution, among other things. The measure includes $82 billion for education, with $2.7 billion specifically for private and parochial schools. A detailed proposal has not been publicly released yet, but the Dec. 14 bill included the $82 billion figure and broke it down like this:
$54 billion of that for K-12 schools, largely delivered through Title I funding. That’s about four times what schools received in the CARES Act approved in March.
$20 billion for higher education with dollars set aside for minority-serving institutions
$7.5 billion for governors to spend at their discretion, including on private schools.
School meal programs and child care. and expand the Pell Grant program to support 500,000 new low-income college students. Separately, lawmakers have agreed to lift a ban on Pell Grants for prison education programs, an agreement that will be part of a broader bill to fund the government through the fiscal year.
The Covid relief deal that House and Senate leaders stuck is far below the $2.2 trillion Democratic leaders had been seeking for much of the Fall but higher than the $500 billion that Senate Republicans favored.
• Colleges and schools will have $82 billion to help cover HVAC repair and replacement to reduce the risk of coronavirus infections and reopen classrooms. The Republican summary specified $2.75 billion in designated funds for private K-12 education.
• Lawmakers also struck a deal on $10 billion for child-care assistance.
Manu Raju, senior Congressional correspondent, for CNN, reported on Twitter that the parties are now battling over how much money to send to private schools.
@mkraju
Two sides are still going back-and-forth over a handful of issues, including how private schools should be treated in the more than $80B in aid for education. GOP had been pushing for $5B for private schools — but Dems had tried to cut that to be about $2.5 billion, per sources
This is both absurd and unfair.
In the CARES Act, nearly 100,000 public schools (and charter schools) received $13.2 billion, while thousands of charters and private and religious schools collected more than $6 billion. Charter schools were allowed to double-dip from both funds. Some of the wealthiest private schools in the nation collected hundreds of thousands or more, while the average public school got only $134,500. More than 85% of students are enrolled in public schools.
The federal CARES Act included the Paycheck Protection Program to help struggling small businesses and nonprofits survive the pandemic. Lobbyists for the charter industry slipped in a provision enabling charter schools to apply for PPP funding, even though they experienced no financial losses. Charter schools got a share of the $13.2 billion allotted to the nation’s early 100,000 public schools. The average public school received about $135,000 to meet the expenses of the pandemic. On the advice of their lobbyists, some 1200 charters also sought and won PPP funding. Thus charters drew funding from two sources; public schools were not eligible for PPP funding. Charters that applied for PPP funding won six times as much federal money as public schools.
Primavera online charter school, like many businesses this spring, sought help from the federal Paycheck Protection Program to weather the economic disruption of the COVID-19 pandemic.
The Chandler-based school received a PPP loan of nearly $2.2 million, the largest forgivable loan among the 132 Arizona charter schools that obtained them.
But Primavera’s loan appears to have been more of a bonus than a lifeline.
The school, which like all Arizona public schools didn’t lose state funding because of the pandemic, ended its fiscal year on June 30 with $8.8 million in the bank — almost double the annual payroll costs for its 85 teachers, records show.
The school also shipped $10 million to its lone shareholder: StrongMind, an affiliated company owned by Primavera’s founder and former CEO Damian Creamer.
The school’s annual audit indicates Creamer controls both Primavera and StrongMind, noting he has “the ability to influence the school’s operations for the benefit of StrongMind.” Primavera paid StrongMind nearly $23 million this past fiscal year for software and curriculum services, records show.
Creamer declined to comment.
An Arizona Republic review of more than 100 charter school financial records, audits and federal Small Business Administration documents found the overwhelming majority of the Arizona charter schools that obtained PPP loans didn’t need the money.
John Todd, a longtime auditor of Arizona charter schools, said there are numerous problems with fully funded charter schools getting PPP loans intended to help struggling businesses.
“The PPP loans are taxpayer dollars intended to help the needy, not the greedy,” Todd said.
A few charters, including Legacy Traditional Schools, repaid several million dollars worth of PPP loans after The Republic reported in August that Legacy and other operators had millions of dollars in the bank when they received loans.
Most charters that got loans didn’t need them
The Republic found that most of the charter schools getting PPP funds padded their cash balances (savings accounts), and a few for-profit charter operations, like Primavera, gave money away to shareholders that matched or exceeded their PPP loan amounts.
Further, The Republic found that PPP loans didn’t significantly enhance teacher pay at schools that received them. The 132 Arizona charter school loan recipients, on average, paid their teachers several thousands dollars less than the statewide average.The 132 charter schools receiving PPP loans increased teacher pay by an average of 5% — an amount similar to all 555 charter operations and 263 school districts.
Arizona public schools saw no major job losses or layoffs this year because the state Legislature fully funded schools and gave them additional money to raise teacher pay.
Creamer is among the prominent figures who’ve made millions of dollars operating Arizona charter schools. His online alternative school boasts more than 20,000 full- and part-time students. Primavera paid Creamer $10.1 million in 2017 and 2018.
A spokesman for StrongMind declined to say how much the company paid Creamer.
Ian Kidd, superintendent of Pima Prevention Partnership, said financially strong charter schools that took PPP loans open themselves to criticism and scrutiny.
“I don’t subscribe to making money off of students. It’s not appropriate,” Kidd said.
Kidd said he obtained PPP loans for his three charter schools, but the money was used to cover social and behavioral services for low-income, at-risk kids. His three charters had a combined negative $7,031 in cash balances, even after getting PPP loans.
The SBA, under pressure from news outlets, recently released specific figures for all PPP loan recipients. Previously, it released only the names of the borrowers and loan ranges above $150,000.
The earlier SBA records had indicated about 100 Arizona charter schools had received up to $100 million in PPP loans. The new data shows about 30 more charter schools got loans.
Several watchdog groups, including Accountable.Us, have panned the loan program for enriching companies that didn’t need the money while shutting out many minority- and women-owned businesses.
Kyle Herrig, president of Accountable.Us, which compiled a database of all PPP recipients, said there has been widespread fraud and abuse of the program, including celebrities and wealthy companies getting loans.
“The Trump administration’s faulty design and mismanagement of the Paycheck Protection Program let thousands of mom-and-pop businesses slip through the cracks without adequate aid while charter schools cashed in,” Herrig said…
Arizona Schools Superintendent Kathy Hoffman, who also is a member of the Charter Board, said she was astonished by The Republic’s findings.
“It saddens me those dollars are not going to students,” she said. “It’s very excessive. These dollars should be going where they are needed most, and that’s the students and instructional needs.”
Hoffman, a Democrat, said Republican Gov. Doug Ducey and the GOP-controlled Legislature should consider reducing state funding for full-time virtual charter schools like Primavera, which receives nearly the same per-student funding as brick-and-mortar schools that have more costs.
Ducey, at a news conference Wednesday, declined to answer questions regarding Hoffman’s proposal. He also declined to answer whether charter schools that received the PPP loans should return the money or have their state funding reduced by an amount equal to the loans.
Ducey said the PPP loans were a federal issue, but added: “I want to make sure all public schools have available funding.”
Creamer has been a major political donor to Ducey, records show.
Creamer spent at least $137,650 during the past two elections to mostly help conservative Republicans retain control of the Legislature. Among his political giving was $50,000 in December 2019 to the Republican Legislative Victory Fund, state campaign finance records show.
There has been no significant effort by Republicans in the Legislature to change the funding formula for online charter schools. A few of those lawmakers have financial interests in charter schools…
Paying shareholders, boosting reserves
In addition to Primavera, at least three other charter school operators that received PPP loans paid distributions to shareholders. Most of the rest put large sums in savings.
• The year-end cash balance for the 132 Arizona charter schools that received $51.8 million in PPP loans in April and May, increased by $62.6 million. Individually, cash balances increased for 87% of the loan recipients.
• Twenty-one charter schools that received PPP loans increased their cash reserves by at least $1 million, with Primavera seeing a $3.3 million increase.
Educational Options Foundation of Peoria, which got a $278,292 loan, saw its cash balance increase by $2 million to $13.7 million. The school has enough money to operate for four years without additional money. The state Charter Board only requires schools to have one month of cash liquidity. A call to the school was not returned.
• For-profit charters Humanities and Sciences Academy in Tempe and Accelerated Learning Center in Phoenix made shareholder distributions of $388,770 and $230,000 this past fiscal year, respectively. Both amounts exceed the charters’ PPP loans.
The Montessori Schoolhouse of Tucson gave a shareholder distribution of $92,372, equal to about 72% of its PPP loan.
Calls to the three schools were not returned.
Jim Hall, a former public school administrator who runs Arizonans for Charter School Accountability, compiled financial records from charter schools that received PPP loans and said he concluded that they didn’t need the money.
Hall said those loans should have gone to small businesses that have struggled to make payroll or mortgage payments. He said several of the charter operators engaged in “unmitigated greed.”
Dr. Carol Burris is the executive director of the Network for Public Education, a nonpartisan nonprofit organization that works to strengthen and improve public schools. Nearly 400,000 people in every state support its activities. Burris was a teacher and an award-winning principal in New York State.
This summer, the Network for Public Education reported that charter schools had received between one and two billion dollars in Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) Small Business Administration loans. In most cases, these low-interest loans will not have to be paid back, resulting in a windfall for recipients.
PPP amounts were initially reported in ranges and excluded any grantees that received below $150,000. Thanks to reporters’ persistence, however, we now know the exact amount and the smaller grantees who received PPP.
We matched the amounts with our previously identified group of charter schools and charter chain recipients. In total, those charters received an astounding $1,279,455,958. You can find a complete list of the charter schools and what they got here.
In addition to schools, charter support and advocacy organizations got PPP. You can find that list here. It includes the National Alliance of Public Charter Schools, which bragged that it made sure charter schools were included in PPP. NAPCS took $672,800, while the billionaire-funded California Charter Schools Association cashed in at $1,028,200.
We also scanned the new lists of small grants for charter school entries. Because there were so many entries, we did a simple search on the words “charter school.” This resulted in the identification (see here) of an additional $7 million going to charter schools. There is no doubt that a full search would uncover at least four times that amount.
How did the charter sector do? When you add the pieces together, it adds up to nearly $1.3 billion.
Here are some highlights.
The largest amount ($8,377,100.00) given to a charter school went to Granada Hills High School, once a highly-regarded public school in an affluent area outside of Los Angeles that converted to a charter school.
The second-largest amount went to Antelope Valley High School, which is “powered by” Learn4Life. Learn4Life is a charter school chain that operates by giving at-risk students worksheets they complete and return to Learn4Life centers often located in strip malls and shopping plazas. Learn4Life is now led by Caprice Young, who previously led the California Charter Schools Association and Magnolia charter schools, connected to the Gulen school chain. The entire Learn4Life chain received over $32 million.
Finally, schools and nonprofits managed by the for-profit Academica chain received over $28.6 million in PPP.
Charter schools claim to be public schools. They received public school funding via the CARES Act. Unlike the small businesses that shut down during the pandemic, thus losing their revenue stream, charter schools moved to remote learning, and their public tax dollar income stream continued.
It appears a new round of CARES Act funding is imminent. We will be watching to see if charter schools use their “private” status to cash in again.
