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Carol Burris: Charters Are Looting Federal Funds Meant to Save Small Businesses

By dianeravitch
May 30, 2020 //
10

A few days ago, Carol Burris and Marla Kilfoyle of the Network for Public Education wrote an article in Valerie Strauss’s “Answer Sheet” about the charter schools that are claiming federal funds designated for small businesses, thwarting the intention of the legislators. Public schools are not eligible for the PPP relief funds, but—presto chango—the money-hungry charters decided they are not public schools after all, they are really small businesses. Next week, they will again claim to be public schools, not small businesses.

Congress created the Payroll Protection Plan to aid small businesses that were at risk of bankruptcy because of losing all their revenue. For many of these small businesses, a federal grant of $25,000-$50,000 would enable them to survive the shutdown. Think of the restaurants, toy stores, stationery shops, barber shops, hair dressers, shoe stores, florists, that will never open again. They did not get federal aid. But some greedy charter schools have taken advantage of PPP, collecting hundreds of thousands of dollars even though they have not lost a penny of revenue.

It’s not easy to identify the charter schools that took money that was supposed to go to endangered small businesses. They must know it’s wrong, because they try to hide their windfall.

For taking money that should have gone to small businesses, for pretending to be small businesses, for hypocritically claiming to be public schools while applying for funding as small businesses, I place these charter operators on the blog’s Wall of Shame.

Carol Burris continues to learn about charter schools that applied for and received federal PPP funding, despite their lack of need. She writes about them here:

Americans were outraged when big companies with more than 500 employees cashed in on PPP loans intended to help small businesses. For example, the Washington Post reported that various hotel companies all chaired by Republican donor Monty Bennett submitted more than 100 filings to seek $126 million. By creating individual filings, they were able to get around the 500 employee cap. The hotel chain got $76 million in the end.

Now it appears that the Mastery Charter chain is using the same tactic to cash in on payment protection plan loans (PPP) loans.

Each school in the chain has its own board; however all are under the direction of one CEO, Scott Gordon, who received a 2017 salary in excess of $300,000.

According to the Mastery website, the chain has over 1700 employees. What, then, does the Mastery charter chain do? It has each of its individual schools apply for a PPP loan.

See for yourself by reading their board minutes here and here. Notice each charter school in the chain, with the exception of the Camden school, is having its own board meeting at the same group meeting at the same time. And every one of the schools in the chain is applying for the SBA PPP funding.

Meanwhile, the unemployment system of the state of Pennsylvania is crashing from the flood of claims. And Mastery Charter Schools are still amply funded by federal, state and local tax dollars, as well as receiving public school funding in the CARES Act.

Mastery likes to call itself a public school district. So why is it seeking advantage with PPP loans at the expense of Philadelphia’s small businesses that have no revenue stream at all?

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Education Industry, Education Reform, Funding, Hypocrisy, Privatization, Wall of Shame

Jan Resseger: Congress Must Pass Aid for States to Avoid Economic Disaster

By dianeravitch
May 28, 2020 //
20

Every state is facing financial catastrophe because of the economic consequences of the pandemic. Jan Resseger argues that Congress must pass legislation to avert draconian cuts to education, public health, and other vital public services. The states are facing a national crisis not of their making, and a responsible Congress would promptly enact fiscal relief. Under Mitch McConnel, we do not have a responsible Congress.

Resseger begins:

There is plenty of confirmation from the experts about the 50 states’ desperate need for additional federal relief dollars for school districts to open public schools next fall. Without immediate help from Congress, state budget cuts will diminish educational opportunity especially for the school districts that serve our nation’s poorest children. We must not take for granted that public schools will be able to provide the same programs for our children as they did before what promises to be a deep recession. The pending school funding crisis—across all 50 states—has received scanty coverage in the press, which has paid more attention to whether, how, and when schools can reopen. Here are the grim fiscal realities.

On May 15, the House passed a new federal relief program—the HEROES Act (Health and Economic Recovery Omnibus Emergency Solutions Act), but the U.S. Senate went on a Memorial Day Recess prior to even taking up the bill. Education Week‘s Evie Blad reports: “The HEROES Act would create a $90 billion ‘state fiscal stabilization fund’ for the U.S. Department of Education to support K-12 and higher education. About 65 percent of that fund—or roughly $58 billion—would go through states to local school districts. The bill would also provide $1 billion to shore up state and local government budgets that have been hard hit by declining tax revenues as businesses closed to slow the spread of the virus.”

The HEROES Act passed by the House on May 15 is far from perfect. The New York Times Editorial Board explains: “The Democratic-led House passed a $3 trillion relief package on May 15. That bill was imperfect but it was something. Mr. McConnell, on the other hand, has repeatedly said he’s in no hurry for the Senate to offer its own proposal. He has put talks on an indefinite pause, saying he wants to see how the economy responds to previous relief measures. The Senate may get around to putting together a plan when it reconvenes next month. Or perhaps it will be in July.”

School districts cannot plan for essential staff like teachers, counselors, nurses, social workers, and librarians when their state budget allocations are being reduced right now before the fiscal year ends on June 30—with more state budget cuts projected moving into next fiscal year. The director of state policy research for the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, Michael Leachman explains: “As economic projections worsen, so do the likely state budget shortfalls from COVID-19’s economic fallout. We now project shortfalls of $765 billion over three years…. States must balance their budgets every year, even in recessions… The coronavirus relief bill that the House passed on May 15, the HEROES Act, includes substantial state and local fiscal relief… States will need aid of this magnitude to avoid extensive layoffs of teachers, health care workers, and first responders….”

The Economic Policy Institute’s Josh Bivens rejects Mitch McConnell’s argument that Congress should wait and see about the need for additional federal stimulus dollars: “Congress is currently debating a new relief and recovery package—the HEROES Act—that would deliver significant amounts of fiscal aid to state and local governments—more than $1 trillion over the next two years, all told. This is a very welcome proposal. The incredibly steep recession we’re currently in is guaranteed to torpedo state and local governments’ ability to collect revenue. Further, nearly all of these governments are tightly constrained—both by law as well as by genuine economic constraints—from taking on large amounts of debt to maintain spending in the face of this downward shock to their revenues… Recent justifications for denying aid to state and local governments sometimes rest on claims that this spending has been profligate in recent years. This is absolutely not so—growth in state and local spending has been historically slow for nearly two decades. Given the importance of what this spending focuses on (education, health care, public order), this decades-long disinvestment should be reversed, not accelerated due to an unforeseen economic crisis.”

Categories Budget Cuts, Funding

Burris and Kilfoyle: The Charter Schools That Are Double-Dipping Federal CARES Funds

By dianeravitch
May 28, 2020 //
9

Read the rest of this entry »

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Education Industry, Funding, Privatization

DeVos Insists That Public Schools Must Share Emergency Funds with Private Schools

By dianeravitch
May 27, 2020 //
14

Betsy DeVos has been rebuked by Congress, even by Republican Senator Lamar Alexander, but she refuses to back down from her plan to force states and school districts to share emergency funding with private schools, even elite private schools.

Erica L. Green writes in the New York Times:

WASHINGTON — Education Secretary Betsy DeVos, defiant amid criticism that she is using the coronavirus to pursue a long-sought agenda, said she would force public school districts to spend a large portion of federal rescue funding on private school students, regardless of income.

Ms. DeVos announced the measure in a letter to the Council of Chief State School Officers, which represents state education chiefs, defending her position on how education funding from the Coronavirus Aid, Relief and Economic Security Act, or CARES Act, should be spent.

“The CARES Act is a special, pandemic-related appropriation to benefit all American students, teachers and families,” she wrote in the letter on Friday. “There is nothing in the act suggesting Congress intended to discriminate between children based on public or nonpublic school attendance, as you seem to do. The virus affects everyone.”

A range of education officials say Ms. DeVos’s guidance would divert millions of dollars from disadvantaged students and force districts starved of tax revenues during an economic crisis to support even the wealthiest private schools. The association representing the nation’s schools superintendents told districts to ignore the guidance, and at least two states — Indiana and Maine — said they would.

Categories Betsy DeVos, Funding, School Choice

How Los Angeles Plans to Reopen

By dianeravitch
May 27, 2020 //
47

Los Angeles is trying to figure out how to reopen its schools, safely but with no assurance about how they will pay for the changes.

Sixteen students to a class. One-way hallways. Students lunch at their desks. Children could get one ball to play with — alone. Masks are required. A staggered school day brings on new schedules to juggle.

These campus scenarios could play out based on new Los Angeles County school reopening guidelines released Wednesday. This planning document will affect 2 million students and their families as educators undertake a challenge forced on them by the coronavirus crisis: fundamentally redesigning the traditional school day.

The safe reopening of schools in California and throughout the nation compels the reimagining — or abandoning — of long-held traditions and goals of the American school day, where play time, socialization and hands-on support have long been essential to the learning equation in everything from science labs and team sports to recess and group work.

The Los Angeles County Office of Education guidelines offer an early top-to-bottom glimpse at the massive and costly changes that will be required to reboot campuses serving students from preschool through 12th grade, critical to reopening California. The 45-page framework was developed through the work of county staffers, outside advisors and representatives from 23 county school systems, each of which must develop its own reopening plan….

When campuses closed in mid-March, school systems scrambled to develop a new style of education on the fly — one that relied on “distance learning.” Administrators quickly handed out computers and internet hot spots. Teachers trained on Zoom and other online platforms. Parents oversaw learning at home, even as they faced economic hardship.

Despite these Herculean efforts, school leaders and teachers report uneven student engagement and impediments to learning at home, underscoring the importance of an academically robust return to campus — even as the governor’s proposed budget envisions a cut for schools of about 10%.

Categories Budget Cuts, California, Funding, Health, Los Angeles

Congress to DeVos: We Did Not Intend to Fund Private Schools; DeVos to Congress: I Don’t Care

By dianeravitch
May 22, 2020 //
27

As I mentioned in the 2 pm post, even Republican Lamar Alexander chastised Betsy DeVos for diverting money from the CARES coronavirus fund to private schools. Here is the Washington Post report on the same events: DeVos is playing Reverse Robin Hood: Steal from the poor and give to the Rich.

She is thumbing her nose at Congress. She doesn’t care what their intent was.

Education Secretary Betsy DeVos faced bipartisan resistance Thursday to her decision to direct federal stimulus money away from high-poverty public schools and to private schools serving wealthy students.

It’s one of several examples of DeVos using the relief funding to advance her longtime goals, including taxpayer support for private and religious schools. On Thursday, she defended her controversial decision on how to distribute the federal money.

She also has used $180 million from the stimulus fund for a “microgrant” program for parents to pay for educational expenses, including private school tuition. Critics say they are akin to vouchers.

Earlier in the week, she said her goal was to advance her broader agenda.

In an interview with Cardinal Timothy Dolan, the archbishop of New York, on Sirius XM radio, Dolan asked DeVos if she was trying to “utilize this particular crisis to ensure that justice is finally done to our kids and the parents who choose to sent them to faith-based schools.”

DeVos responded, “Yes, absolutely”

“For more than three decades, that has been something I’ve been passionate about,” she said. “This whole pandemic has brought into clear focus that everyone has been impacted and we shouldn’t be thinking about students that are in public schools vs. private schools.”

Congress allocated roughly $13.5 billion to K-12 schools as part of the Cares Act, a stimulus package meant to mitigate the economic damage from the coronavirus crisis. Most of the funding was to be distributed to elementary and secondary schools based on a formula driven by how many poor children they serve.

The formula has long allocated some funding for poor children attending private schools. But in guidance sent to the states, DeVos said states should use a calculation that takes into account the total number of students private schools serve, not just the number of poor students attending.

The result is that millions of dollars that would otherwise assist high-poverty schools in the Title 1 program will instead be shared with private schools, regardless of the economic needs of their families.

On Thursday, Sen. Lamar Alexander (R., Tenn.), chairman of the Senate Education Committee and a DeVos ally, said her interpretation of the law is at odds with his own.

“My sense was that the money should have been distributed in the same way we distribute Title 1 money,” he said. “I think that’s what most of Congress was expecting.”

Harsher words came Thursday from leading Democrats, who asked DeVos to immediately revise her guidance to conform with the law.

The guidance “seeks to repurpose hundreds-of-millions of taxpayer dollars intended for public school students to provide services for private school students, in contravention of both the plain reading of the statute and the intent of Congress,” wrote Reps. Robert C. “Bobby” Scott (D-Va.), chairman of the House education committee, and Rosa L. DeLauro (D-Conn.), chairwoman of the House Appropriations subcommittee, as well as Sen. Patty Murray (D-Wash.), the top Democrat on the Senate Education Committee.

They cited Louisiana as an example. The state will spent $23 million on students at private schools, they said, which is $14.4 million more than would be the case under the normal Title 1 formula.

The guidance holds considerable sway, but states are not required to follow it.

Subsequent legislation passed by the House would overturn the DeVos guidance, but that legislation is part of a large aid package whose prospects are unclear.

DeVos defended her reasoning in a question-and-answer session with reporters Thursday.

“It’s our interpretation that [the funding] is meant literally for all students, and that includes students no matter where they’re learning,” she said.

She made her comments after an online discussion about remote education across the nation that featured officials with private companies, private schools and charter schools, as well as traditional public school leaders.

DeVos has long been a vocal supporter of school choice programs that allow tax dollars to follow children to private and religious schools. She argues that this gives parents more options, though critics say it drains public schools of badly needed resources.

DeVos’s pandemic response for higher education has also stirred controversy.

She has made a range of controversial choices about how to allocate funding to aid higher education, including barring aid to undocumented students, which Democrats and other critics say was not Congress’s intent. She also made funding available to some very small, private universities without demonstrated need.

Categories Betsy DeVos, Funding

Lamar Alexander Disagrees with Betsy DeVos About Giving CARES Funds to Private Schools

By dianeravitch
May 22, 2020 //
9

Senator Lamar Alexander of Tennessee, the ranking member of the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee, publicly questioned Betsy DeVos’s guidance to states to include private schools when distributing federal funding of coronavirus relief. DeVos says the money should be divided according to enrollment. Alexander says it was supposed to follow the Title I funding and go to the neediest students, who are not in private schools.

Politico Morning Education reports:

ALEXANDER, DEVOS PART WAYS ON STIMULUS GUIDANCE: DeVos is now getting pushback from Alexander for controversial guidance calling on school districts to distribute stimulus funds to private school students more expansively than they would under regular federal education aid through Title I.

— Her policy says schools should spend money on services for private school students based on the total number of all students enrolled, rather than poverty levels.

— “My sense was that the money should have been distributed in the same way we distribute Title I money,” Alexander told reporters on Thursday. “I think that’s what most of Congress was expecting.”

— DeVos defended her interpretation of the law when asked by POLITICO during a video conference to respond to Alexander’s comments. “In our implementation of Congress’ action under the CARES Act, we have indicated it’s our interpretation that it is meant literally for all students and that includes students, no matter where they’re learning,” she said.

— DeVos later said that public schools should work with their private counterparts to understand student needs and to help provide services, such as tutoring or teacher professional development for teachers.

Indiana’s superintendent Jennifer McCormick has announced that she will ignore the DeVos guidance. Tennessee, however, will divert money from needy public schools and give it to private schools with advantaged students.

As DeVos’s response shows, she doesn’t care what Congressional leaders think, not even when they are members of the Republican party. She does what she wants, without regard to Congressional intent or authorization or rebuke. She was born a billionaire, she is privileged, and she is spoiled. She is a hardened ideologue. She doesn’t care about helping poor kids as much as she cares about funding private schools. She doesn’t care about the law. She, like Trump, thinks she is above it.

Categories Accountability, Betsy DeVos, Billionaires, Funding, Poverty

Education Law Center Calls on Cuomo to Reject DeVos “Guidance”

By dianeravitch
May 22, 2020 //
8

Without Congressional authorization, Betsy DeVos has urged states to dispense CARES Act funding based on enrollment, to include private schools, not based on economic need. As usual, she is using her authority to promote privatization of public funds intended for public schools.

The Education Law Center wrote an appeal to Governor Cuomo, urging him to reject the DeVos formula, which will divert money from the poorest children and defy the intent of Congress.

Read the letter here.

Categories Accountability, Betsy DeVos, Cuomo, Andrew, Funding, Privatization

Ross Barkan: Andrew Cuomo’s War on Public Higher Education

By dianeravitch
May 21, 2020 //
14

Perhaps you know New York Governor Andrew Cuomo only through his daily coronavirus briefings, where he has been thoughtful, strong, and compassionate.

But there is another side to Cuomo. He doesn’t like public education or teachers. And as Ross Barkan writes in the Nation, he definitely doesn’t like public higher education.

Cuomo has governed New York state since 2011. State aid to CUNY, adjusted for inflation, has declined by nearly 5 percent during his tenure, though the state’s gross domestic product has increased.
At the same time, CUNY tuition has steadily risen. A New York State resident who is a full-time student at a four-year CUNY school now pays $6,930 a year, up from $5,130 in 2011. New York’s Tuition Assistance Program, which provides aid to students below a certain income threshold, no longer covers the full cost of tuition, and Cuomo forces individual colleges to make up the difference. Another tuition increase of $200 per year, along with a $120 “health and wellness” fee, is set to be voted on by the CUNY Board of Trustees in June.

While the cost to attend a CUNY college is still lower than that of many other large public institutions around the country, CUNY’s 271,000-large student body is overwhelmingly low-income: Forty-two percent of all first-time freshmen come from households with incomes of $20,000 or less, and more than 70 percent of students enrolled at senior and community colleges identify as nonwhite.

“It’s a hugely important system because of the nature of the students it serves,” said Thomas Brock, director of the Community College Research Center at Teachers College, Columbia University. “And it has a really important role in higher education more generally. Historically, it’s done a very good job helping low-income students move into the middle class.”

At the John Jay College of Criminal Justice, the vast majority of adjuncts say that they found out earlier this month that they were not rehired for the fall semester, meaning classes could be dramatically larger come September. Brooklyn College and the College of Staten Island are grappling with proposed overall department cuts as high as 30 percent, which would also most likely lead to layoffs.

Meanwhile, the PSC anticipates that actual student enrollment for this fall could increase, as it did during the last economic downturn in the 2000s. Simultaneously, course offerings could shrink, meaning students could struggle to complete their majors on time. Full-time faculty and adjuncts would strain to give any kind of individualized attention to students, especially if CUNY continues remote instruction but with far larger classes.

For adjuncts, many of whom are hired only semester to semester, the layoffs are traumatic. Though each adjunct earns only several thousand dollars per course, they are able to access comprehensive health insurance through PSC. “The biggest problem is stress,” said Elizabeth Hovey, an adjunct professor and union leader at John Jay. “People in this era shouldn’t be threatened with the loss of their health insurance….”

Until the mid-1970s, CUNY was largely tuition-free. Then, in 1975, New York City nearly went bankrupt. White flight, the decline of manufacturing, and poor fiscal management had driven the city into a fiscal crisis that would haunt it for decades to come, even after the economy recovered.

For CUNY, it was a tragic turning point. For the first time, tuition was imposed for all students and the budget was drastically cut, resulting in mass layoffs, reduced course offerings, and a noted decline in building maintenance. Advocates at the time correctly predicted that once CUNY introduced tuition, administrators would never make the schools free again.

Now, the specter of another fiscal crisis looms, this time because of Covid-19. New York City no longer faces the structural challenges it did during the 1970s—the city’s economy was humming along until March—but the evaporation of tax revenue is a disturbing echo of that era. What’s uncertain, still, is how hard the latest budget axe will fall.

Thanks to new powers granted by the state legislature when New York state’s budget was passed in April, Cuomo has the power to impose rolling cuts on local services throughout the year. The governor has said that without a fresh infusion of federal funding, aid to localities could be slashed by more than $10 billion, a number that has no precedent in modern times.

K-12 public schools across the state, the State University of New York system, and CUNY could be hit the hardest. In the coming days, Cuomo is expected to detail the severity of this first round of cuts. In addition, a CUNY representative told The Nation that New York City’s government, which partially funds the system, is seeking a $31.6 million reduction target for the next fiscal year, starting in July.

The architect of New York State’s draconian cuts is Cuomo’s budget director, Robert Mujica, now one of the most powerful people in the state. Mujica is a former Republican staffer who shares Cuomo’s willingness to shrink budgets.

Only the State Legislature can stop Cuomo’s cuts to K-12 education and public higher education.

Categories Budget Cuts, Cuomo, Andrew, Funding, Higher Education

Indiana: State Chief Jennifer McCormick Turns Down DeVos Guidance

By dianeravitch
May 20, 2020 //
6

Hooray for State Superintendent Jennifer McCormick of Indiana!

She rejected Betsy DeVos’ guidance to share CARES relief funding between public and private schools.

No wonder Republicans are planning to get rid of her and replace her with an appointed state superintendent whom they can control, on behalf of charter schools and voucher schools.

The state education department estimates that if they followed DeVos’ plan, poor kids in public schools would lose more than $15 million to private schools.

Jennifer McCormick joins the honor roll of this blog for saying no to zdeVos and the right wing bullies who lead Indiana.

Categories Accountability, Betsy DeVos, Funding, Honor Roll, Indiana
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