Last year, the Arizona Republic wrote an expose of the millions made by Glenn Way, founder of a charter chain in Arizona, primarily by real estate deals and construction of the schools by “related” companies. He previously ran charters in Utah.
Way’s chain in Arizona has a red-white-and-blue patriotic theme.
A charter school operator who made millions of dollars building, selling and leasing properties to the schools he runs moved a step closer Monday toward setting up shop in North Carolina.
The N.C. Charter Schools Advisory Board voted Monday to recommend giving a full interview to Wake Preparatory Academy, a proposed K-12 charter school that wants to open in 2020 in northern Wake County. Wake Prep would be managed by a company whose owner also owns the company that would build and lease back the facility to the charter school.
Wake Prep is proposing to contract with Arizona-based Charter One to manage the school. Charter One manages American Leadership Academy, a network of Arizona charter schools. Former Utah state legislator Glenn Way founded ALA and owns Charter One and Schoolhouse Development.
The Arizona Republic reported last year how Way had made as much as $37 million by setting up no-bid deals in which he built school campuses and then sold the properties at a profit to the ALA charter schools. The newspaper’s five-part investigation into charter schools earned it the prestigious George Polk Award for Education Reporting.
Under Wake Prep’s proposed agreement, the school would contract with Schoolhouse Development to build the facility and lease it back to the school. The lease would start with the school paying $2.2 million the first year, $2.6 million the second year and $3 million in each of the next three years.
Bruce Friend, a CSAB member, said the board needs to get questions answered before recommending that the State Board of Education approve the school. Aside from questions about the lease, concerns were also raised that Wake Prep plans to pay Charter One up to 15 percent of its revenues annually…
Some charter schools are managed by for-profit companies. Last month, the advisory board recommended that the state approve three new charter schools in Wake County that would have contracts with for-profit companies.
This is the second time that Wake Prep has tried to open in North Carolina. The school applied last year to be managed by a different company before withdrawing its application.
Hilda Parler, a former CSAB member and president of Wake Prep’s board, said Monday that there’s high demand for high school charter seats among families in northern Wake.
“The population in the Wake Forest, Rolesville area is growing leaps and bounds,” Parler said. “New construction is everywhere.”
Parler was asked why she didn’t apply to just open a charter high school. She answered that a K-12 charter school would be more “lucrative” and “economically feasible” than only offering high school.
In this post on Valerie Strauss’s Answer Sheet, North Carolina educators Justin Parmenter and Rodney D. Pierce report that a “white flight academy” is turning itself into a charter school so it can collect public funding. More than two-thirds of the state’s charter schools are more than 80% black or white.
Hobgood Academy opened in 1970 as an escape route for white children whose parents wanted to avoid sending them to integrated schools. Now Hobgood wants to convert to charter status so its parents don’t have to pay tuition. The North Carolina State Board of Education has approved the conversion, so the funding for the segregationist academy will come in large part from the funding now provided to the highly segregated public schools.
Please read the full article to understand the history of segregation and racism in Halifax County. If it is behind a paywall, let me know and I will post it in full.
Last month, the North Carolina State Board of Education voted unanimously to approve the conversion of Halifax County’s private Hobgood Academy to a public charter school. Halifax County ranks 90th out of 100 North Carolina counties in terms of per capita income, and more than 28 percent of its residents live below the poverty line — nearly double the national average. Hobgood’s student population is 87 percent white, while only 4 percent of those attending Halifax County Schools are white.If you read the charter application that Hobgood submitted to state officials, you might be inclined to think that the very purpose for the school’s existence is to lift children out of poverty by offering them a better education.
The application notes the “low performing” status of the public schools in the area and the “vicious cycle of poverty” that contributes to that low performance. It lays out the applicants’ supposed view that “the potential exists to turn the tide of poverty in this community through excellence in education” and refers to Hobgood as “the perfect place to impact the most vulnerable of our children.”
The real reason Hobgood is converting to a charter school is something entirely different. In the application’s section about enrollment trends, applicants admit to a “significant decline in enrollment,” acknowledging that the private school’s $5,000 annual tuition could be a barrier for some families.
A Google Site called “Let’s Charter Hobgood,” set up to organize Hobgood parents to push for the charter conversion, shows the motivation has nothing to do with extending opportunity to people who don’t currently have it.
Rather, it is for parents of students who already attend the school to be able to keep going there without paying tuition. In addition, responses to recent questions that are posted on the parent site include the statement: “No current law forces any diversity whether it be by age, sex, race, creed.” The question isn’t posted, so you’ll have to infer what it was.
Hobgood’s conversion to a charter school means the school could see a windfall of more than $2 million from the state. Of course, that money is coming out of someone else’s pocket. Remember those impoverished students Hobgood’s charter application claimed to be so concerned about? They’ll be paying much of that tab via pass-through transfer funding from Halifax County Schools.
Halifax County’s entire education budget, including community college, is $11.2 million. In the Department of Public Instruction’s most recent facility needs survey, the district reported $13.3 million in capital needs, including more than $8 million in needed renovations to existing school buildings. Financially, Halifax County school district is most definitely not in a position to be bailing out private schools.
The history of racial segregation in Halifax County is crucial to understanding what is currently playing out….
Hobgood currently receives $69,300 a year from the state’s voucher program. Once it turns into a charter, it will receive an additional $2 million a year. The population in Halifax County is almost evenly divided between whites and blacks. Hobgood Academy is 88 percent white. The public schools are more than 90% black. The families who send their children to Hobgood will no longer have to pay tuition. The children in the Halifax County public schools will have less money for their education.
We are reminded that school choice was first advocated in response to the Brown decision of 1954 by segregationist governors and senators. Sixty-five years later, their vision is being realized.
Writing in Valerie Strauss’s “Answer Sheet” blog in the Washington Post, Fed Ingram explains why Florida has a massive teacher shortage. Ingram was Miami-Dade County’s Teacher of the Year in 2006 and he is now president of the Florida Education Association.
He writes that conditions for teachers are so bad that the state is experiencing a “silent strike” as teachers leave.
Halfway through this school year, more than 2,200 vacancies hobble Florida’s public schools. In 2018, the Florida Board of Education identified critical teacher shortages in English, mathematics, reading, general science, physical science and other subjects.
Recent graduates of schools of education ignore Florida recruiters at job fairs. Many educators who began teaching careers here are leaving our classrooms with no plans to return. We’re experiencing a “silent strike.”
Children living in districts that are not fully staffed are likely to wind up in with an overworked substitute in an overcrowded classroom or with a teacher untrained in the subject she or he has been hired to teach…
The Sunshine State ranks 45th in the nation in teacher pay with salaries $10,000 less than the national average. Meanwhile the cost of living here is 10 percent higher than in the rest of the United States.
Facing high costs and low pay, Florida’s teachers often work second jobs. Many teachers with advanced degrees wait tables or drive for Uber — and some teachers sell their own plasma to make ends meet.
It’s no secret that shortsighted policies have starved Florida schools of much-needed funds for years on end. Bogus schemes to use short-term bonuses to make up for long-term deficits in salaries for Florida teachers haven’t worked either.
Money isn’t the only problem. Too many politicians treat public schools and the people who work in them as punching bags. When the profession is attacked daily; when the contribution teachers make to students and communities goes unrecognized; when bureaucrats who’ve never spent a day in a classroom tell teachers how to do their job — then it becomes difficult to attract and retain dedicated and qualified education professionals.
The state’s leaders seem dimly aware of these problems but their priority right now is expanding voucher programs and increasing charter schools. In voucher schools–most of them religious–teachers do not need a college degree or certification. The current omnibus bill, SB7070, relies on bonuses not salary increases and seeks to lower standards for teachers to boost the supply of teachers. These are all incredibly bad ideas, but Florida is run by people who really don’t care about education or teachers or the future of the state. This, after all, is the state that Betsy DeVos considers a model for the nation because of its vouchers, its charter schools, its high stakes testing, its school report cards, and….its low salaries for teachers. Education on the cheap.
Education Week describes Trump’s proposed cuts for programs in the U.S. Department of Education. Trump proposes eliminating 29 federal education programs while maintaining level funding for Title 1 and Special Education. The key quote in this article is the one from Secretary DeVos, who says the budget is about “education freedom,” by which she means, “So long, you are on your own, don’t expect the feds to help you.” The administration proposes $5 billion for vouchers and an increase in the federal charter school program to $500 million. It is not clear why the federal government needs to spend any money to start charter schools, since this project is now well covered by the Waltons, the Koch brothers, the DeVos family foundations, Michael Bloomberg, the Broad Foundation, the Dell Foundation, the Arnold Foundation, the Fisher Family Foundation, the Gates Foundation, the NewSchools Venture, the Charter School Growth Fund, and others too numerous to mention.
President Donald Trump is seeking a 10 percent cut to the U.S. Department of Education’s budget in his fiscal 2020 budget proposal, which would cut the department’s spending by $7.1 billion down to $64 billion starting in October.
Funding for teacher development under Title II, totaling $2.1 billion, would be eliminated, as would $1.2 billion in Title IV funding for academic supports and enrichment and $1.1 billion for 21st Century Community Learning Centers that support after-school programs. In total, funding for 29 programs would be eliminated in the federal budget.
On the other side of the ledger, Trump’s budget blueprint calls for $500 million for federal charter school grants, a $60 million increase from current funding levels. The president also wants $200 million for the School Safety National Activities program, which would more than double the program’s $95 million in current funding—of that amount, $100 million would be used to fund a new School Safety State Formula Grant program. There are no requirements for the grant program related to firearms, according to the Education Department. And the office for civil rights would get $125 million, the same as current funding.
On the school choice front, the department says its main proposal has already been introduced: a federal tax-credit scholarship program from Republicans. The Treasury Department’s budget proposal includes $5 billion for the cost of such a program.
Meanwhile, the Education Innovation and Research fund would be funded at $300 million, a $170 million increase from fiscal 2019. Of that amount, $200 million would “test the impact of teacher professional development vouchers,” according to a presentation from the Education Department, while $100 million would go toward innovative STEM grants. In addition, the Trump budget would provide $50 million for a pilot program under Title I to help districts create and use weighted student-funding formulas—this pilot program was created under the Every Student Succeeds Actin order to help schools focus money directly on disadvantaged students and those with special needs. Funding for the District of Columbia Opportunity Scholarships Program, which provides vouchers to students in the nation’s capital, would increase to $30 million.
Title I funding for disadvantaged students, the single-largest federal funding program for public schools, remains flat at $15.9 billion in Trump’s budget pitch. Special education grants to states would also be level-funded at $13.2 billion. Also flat-funded are the English Language Acquisition formula grants at $737.4 million.
“This budget at its core is about education freedom—freedom for America’s students to pursue their life-long learning journeys in the ways and places that work best for them, freedom for teachers to develop their talents and pursue their passions, and freedom from the top-down ‘Washington knows best’ approach that has proven ineffective and even harmful to students,” said U.S. Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos in a statement about the budget proposal.
On a Monday conference call with reporters, Jim Blew, the assistant secretary for planning, evaluation, and policy development, acknowledged that Congress and the Trump administration have not been synced up in terms of education spending priorities.
“The administration believes that we need to reduce the amount of discretionary funding for the education,” Blew said. “That is based on the desire to have some fiscal discipline and address some higher-priority needs.”
Blew indicated that the priorities should be the disadvantaged children and students with disabilities.
Many of the readers of this blog were disappointed, as was I, to see that the new Superintendent of Public Instruction in California, Tony Thurmond, appointed a task force to review charter law in which six of the 11 members are or were connected to the charter industry. We know how hard that industry has opposed any regulation or accountability. We know how many billionaires have used their influence to support the charter industry, both financially and politically. We know that they spent millions to defeat Tony Thurmond, and they lost. Many of us were disappointed in the task force’s composition, because we had supported his candidacy, believing that he would fight charter abuses.
The task force is expected to analyze the fiscal impact of charters on public schools. I wrote several critical posts, because I didn’t like the optics of having this review conducted by a committee in which a majority of the members were associated with the charter sector.
If I had had Tony Thurmond’s phone number, I would have spoken to him first to understand how this happened. I didn’t have his number.
This morning, Tony called me. He had my number.
He assured me that the task force will present recommendations for reform of the charter law. He assured me that he is personally in charge of the task force and its work product. He asked that I (we) (all of us) judge the task force and him by results.
I told him that I thought that was a reasonable request and that I would suspend judgment until I see what the task force produces.
I reminded him, though he needed no reminder, that California has one of the worst charter laws in the nation. It is a law that the charter industry has fought to keep weak and to allow bad actors to proliferate. I pointed out that it is wrong to allow a district to authorize a charter in someone else’s district, without its consent, especially when the authorizing district is hundreds of miles away.
California has more charter schools (more than 1300) than any other state, in part because it has such a large population. It has also seen more charter closures (more than 300) than any other state, including charters that opened and closed on the same day or within a few months. Under current law, a charter begins by applying to a district. If the district says no, the charter operator appeals to the county board of education. If the county says no, the charter operator appeals to the State Board of Education. Under Governor Schwarzenegger and then Governor Brown, the State Board of Education has rubber-stamped charters, no matter how awful their record or their application.
California charter law is in desperate need of reform. Tony knows that.
The charter sector is not going away; but it should play by the same academic, ethical, professional, and financial rules as public schools, and it should not drain resources away from the public schools. Charters should be audited and monitored to the same extent as public schools. Certification requirements for charter teachers and principals and superintendents should be no less than for public schools. Only educators, not entrepreneurs, should be allowed to operate charters. Charters should open only in districts that approve them and need them, and when they close, their students and property should revert to the public schools. Charters should enroll the same demographic as the district in which they are located. If I had my druthers, charter chains would be banned, as would charters managed by foreign entities. That’s my view.
I pledged to Tony that I would withhold judgment and see what his task force produces.
I think that is fair.
He promised that there would be charter reform.
I normally do not report on private communications, but Tony encouraged me to report our conversation.
Let’s watch and wait and hope that the task force produces the reforms that are needed.
Their education philanthropy has been a disaster for public schools and teachers. Do they ever listen to critics or only to fawning sycophants?
She writes:
Bill and Melinda Gates’s 2019 letter “We Didn’t See This Coming,” is filled with their concerns and optimism about everything from commodes to climate change. Always eager to discuss their global initiatives to help the poor, and a variety of other endeavors, they say little about the aggressive ways they are remaking public education to their liking.
Almost every nonprofit created to disparage public schools or the teaching profession has the Gates Foundation as a major donor.
They don’t seem to understand that public ownership of public schools is critical to a democracy. That’s what is at stake here.
Many educators and parents, however, insist that Bill and Melinda Gates are about privatizing public schools, making the workers they want for the future economy, and replacing teachers with technology.
On Thursday the California State Board will decide about the fate of Thrive Charter School in San Diego. The district refused to renew the charter, saying that it is a failing school. The County Office of Education rejected Thrive’s appeal. Thrive now goes to the State Board with a final appeal. Thursday’s meeting will be the first in which Linda Darling-Hammond will chair the State Board.
So we will learn whether the State Board Will side with the district or with a failing charter.
Tom Ultican has written about Thrive in the past. He recently received an unsolicited letter from someone who worked as a sub at Thrive.
Basketball Star Kevin Johnson was Mayor of Sacramento. He married Michele Rhee, ex-face of the privatization movement. Before their marriage, Johnson founded St. Hope Academy charter schools in Sacramento.
What has St.Hope got to do with Tony Thurmond’s Task Force on the fiscal impact of charters?
One member of the task force, Margaret Fortune, was the superintendent of St. Hope Academy. A graduate of Berkeley, she has stellar academic credentials. Nothing on her resume, however, refers to experience as a teacher or a principal. She is now board chair of the California Charter Schools Association, the powerful lobby for charter schools.
Another member of the task force is Ed Manansala, who is Superintendent of the El Dorado County Office, which runs a SELPA, providing special education services for students in charter schools. El Dorado County’s SELPA offers low prices and competes for students with disabilities in districts hundreds of miles away. How they are able to provide services to students in distant and far-flung districts is not clear.
A reader sent this additional information.
“Ed Manansala used to work at Sac Charter HS as a Principal of one of the small schools (School of Business), when Margaret Fortune was Superintendent of St. HOPE public schools. When she resigned to take over The Fortune School (her Dad’s teacher prep program), Ed became Superintendent of St. HOPE before moving back into the public sector as El Dorado County Superintendent. “
I googled and indeed Ed Manansala was principal and superintendent of Kevin Johnson’s St. Hope Academy Charter High School in Sacramento before he became County Superintendent in El Dorado.
So, yes, indeed, a majority of the members of the task force that is supposed to scrutinize the fiscal impact of charters on public schools have direct connections to the charter industry.
The membership of the task force does not inspire confidence in its judgment or independence.
The question remains: Why did Tony Thurmond and Gavin Newsom give a majority of the seats on this task force to people directly connected to the charter industry, which enrolls only 10% of the students in the state? This is especially curious since the same charter industry spent many millions trying to defeat both Thurmond and Newsom.
Another Question: Did they think no one would notice?
Craig Harris of the Arizona Republic is part of the Polk Award-winning team that investigated charter school frauds, scams, and abuses.
This is the second part of an article in which he describes the mistreatment of students and the state’s failure to investigate complaints.
He writes:
“Charter and district schools are both publicly funded schools, but they are vastly different in how they’re governed.
“School districts have boards elected by local voters. Those boards hire superintendents who are responsible for personnel and policies. Board meetings are typically held at least monthly and are open to the public.
“Charter schools boards, meanwhile, are appointed by the charter owner, who in some cases is also on the board. Some Arizona charter schools have only two board meetings a year, each lasting 10 minutes. In some cases, a charter owner determines who is allowed to address the board.
“A Brown University study from 2014 found charter schools, in general, because of their autonomy face less scrutiny of their finances, and the lack of oversight has led to numerous cases of fraud across the country.
“Anabel Aportela, a research director for the Arizona School Boards Association who had a similar role with the Arizona Charter Schools Association, said members of district school boards are “accountable to their communities and voters in their districts,” but charter school board members are not.
“The proposed changes would not necessarily help a situation like the Georges’ because the bill does not guarantee parents access to a charter school’s board of directors. It also does not prevent a charter owner from stacking a board with friends and relatives.
“The bill has passed the Senate Education Committee and is working its way through that chamber.
“In Arizona, with minimal access to a local charter board to air complaints, typically the public’s only recourse is to appeal to the state Charter Board, an 11-member body mostly appointed by the governor.
“The Charter Board, with just 11 employees, is tasked with monitoring more than 500 Arizona charter schools. That means only a small fraction of complaints are investigated, The Republic has found.
“An analysis of 89 public complaints to the Charter Board from the past four years released to The Republicunder the state’s Public Records Law, showed only 12 percent were investigated. The rest were closed after the charter operator responded in writing, often denying the allegations.
“Among the cases that went without investigation were complaints of bullying, refusal to provide student transcripts, a 5-year-old boy leaving campus unsupervised, violations of the Open Meetings Law, failure to provide special education services, classroom temperatures being too cold, and a teacher cutting a girl’s hair without parents’ permission.
“In some instances, schools changed course following a complaint to the Charter Board. The student who was unable to get his transcripts from Arizona Call-a-Teen Center for Excellence obtained them after he filed a complaint.
“The state’s Charter Board not only investigates few cases, it also lets parents see little information about the complaints themselves. The Charter Board does not make public on its website the number of complaints against a charter school, nor does it post them online even though complaints are public record.
“Gov. Doug Ducey — following a yearlong investigation by The Republic that found widespread financial abuses, profiteering, and insider deals at charter schools — has proposed adding 10 additional regulators to the Charter Board. The additional staff could result in more complaints being investigated.
“Ducey’s office estimates the new Charter Board staff will more than quadruple the number of visits to schools to investigate fraud. Currently, just 15 percent of Arizona’s charter schools receive a site inspection each year to make sure a school is accurately reporting its finances and enrollment to the state.
The kinds of cases the Charter Board doesn’t investigate
“After a 5-year-old boy wandered away from Mesa Arts Academy on Aug. 15, 2016, while on “time out” his parents complained to the Charter Board.
“In its response to the August 2016 complaint, Mesa Arts Academy confirmed the child had left campus, and that police had been called before a staff member found the child. The school added it had since installed security cameras.
“The Charter Board elected not to investigate further.
“The Charter Board also took a pass when a 15-year-old girl at Heritage Academy Gateway said a male classmate put his hand under her shirt and groped her.
“The girl told her parents about the alleged incident in early September, and the parents notified the school. School officials, in turn, reported the incident to the Maricopa County Sheriff’s Office.
“The Republic typically does not disclose the identity of alleged victims of sexual abuse.
“The day after the incident was reported, the boy transferred from Heritage Academy to another charter school.
“The girl’s family said that allowed the boy, whose mother is a Heritage administrator and member of its board, to avoid discipline.
“According to the girl’s parents, the boy continues to visit the Heritage Academy Gateway campus every afternoon.
“Calls to Heritage for comment were not returned.
“The girl said the incident has caused her to see a therapist for anxiety.
“I don’t like seeing him on campus,” she told The Republic. “It’s kind of scary to see him in that situation.”
“Her father said the family asked Jared Taylor, Heritage Academy’s charter holder, CEO and board chairman, to keep the boy off campus.
“It’s pretty little what we have asked for,” the father said in an interview.
“Records the school provided to the Charter Board in response to the complaint indicate Heritage Academy denied their request.”
The Arizona Republic recently won a Polk Award for its outstanding coverage of charter corruption.
Craig Harris, a member of the investigative team, writes here about how charters ignore parents’ complaints.
When a student is mistreated, there is no re ourse. The boarddoesnt care. It protects the school,not the student.
Students in charter schools have no rights. The parents of the student in the incident described herewithdrew him from the school.
Harris writes:
“Evan George had finished his classes for the day and was hanging out with friends at American Leadership Academy’s Queen Creek campus, when two staff members approached and accused him of vaping.
“Evan, 16, says he was doing a trick with his mouth thatproduces a plume of moist air that resembles vapor from an electronic cigarette.
“His explanation didn’t convince the charter school’s staffers.
“Evan was ordered to the administration office, where Athletic Director Rich Edwards took him into a room and searched him, looking for a vape pen, which would have been a violation of school policy.
“He told me to take my pants down, and he put his fingers in my underwear,” said Evan, who is a junior. “I felt scared.”
“The search didn’t turn up a vaping device, according to records the school provided to the Arizona State Board for Charter Schools.
“ALA still suspended Evan from school for eight days.
“His parents, Chris and Kimberlie George, said both the Dec. 11 search and the suspension were wrong.
“The athletic director inappropriately touched their son, they said. And the school suspended Evan without proof he’d had been vaping, even though their son’s only prior disciplinary issues were for wearing torn jeans and chewing gum, they said.
“But when the Georges sought an independent review of Evan’s suspension, they found they had nowhere to turn.
“Arizona’s charter schools are primarily run by private companies. They must have a governing board, but school owners get to pick who’s on the board, so many are stocked with relatives, friends and even the charter’s owner. In some instances, boards have just one member — the charter operator.
“American Leadership Academy Queen Creek student says he was strip searched over vape trick
16-year-old Evan George says he was strip searched in December 2018 after performing a trick that made it appear vapor was coming from his mouth.
“Beyond the school, parents can only turn to the state Charter Board. And regulators there, because of limited resources and limited authority, rarely investigate such complaints against schools, an Arizona Republic investigation shows.
“The result is a lack of independent oversight that leaves students and families at some charter schools, in disagreements big and small, with no recourse to challenge school officials’ actions — even if they think those moves inhibit their students’ academic progress or personal safety.
“ALA Queen Creek officials denied the Georges’ request for an appeal hearing before ALA’s Board of Directors, which is composed of friends of ALA founder Glenn Way.
“Evan was never afforded due process,” Chris George said. “He wasn’t able to speak to his accusers, and the dismissal hearing was a farce. There was no interest in what the truth was.”
The Arizona Republic has previously written about Glenn Way, the founder of this charter chain.
On July 11, 2018, the Arizona Republic described how Way has made millions of dollars through hischarter chain.
“When Glenn Way moved to the East Valley at the end of the Great Recession, he might have been looking for a fresh start.
“The charter school operator was deep in debt to the IRS, had sought bankruptcy protection, and recently resigned from the Utah Legislature after his wife filed a protective order against him, public records show.
“Arizona offered other opportunities for someone in his line of work: A more lightly regulated charter school industry that’s well-funded.
“At his American Leadership Academy, which he launched in June 2009, he promised students would find “the best educational experience … in a moral and wholesome environment.”
“Thanks partly to Arizona’s favorable charter school laws and lucrative no-bid contracts with ALA, Way would find new wealth.
“The schools, which have made patriotism central to their brand, including red, white or blue student apparel, have been a hit in the conservative East Valley. American Leadership — which bears the same name as a charter school Way and his wife, Shelina, operated in Spanish Fork, Utah — has over nine yearsgrown to a dozen campuses with 8,354 students in Florence, Gilbert, Mesa, Queen Creek and San Tan Valley.
“Way’s own development and finance companies bought the land and then built most of the school buildings. Then, they sold or leased them to American Leadership Academy, where Way, until last year, was board chairman.
“An Arizona Republic review of property records shows that during ALA’s nine-year expansion, businesses owned by or tied to Way made about $37 million on real estate deals associated with the schools — funded largely by the Arizona tax dollars allocated to his charter schools.
“Way disputes the profit figure, saying undisclosed capital costs tied to the campuses, such as street improvements, trimmed profits to $18.4 million. He did not provide documents to show a lower profit.
“But building and selling the schools weren’t the only ways he has profited. Another one of Way’s firms is paid at least $6 million a year to operate them under a contract with American Leadership, records show.
“An Arizona charter schools watchdog said regardless of the precise size of the multimillion-dollar profit, it’s clear that Way has profited handsomely — like other charter operators — using Arizona’s loose charter school laws.
“Meanwhile, the Arizona State Board for Charter Schools is investigating allegations of financial mismanagement at ALA.
“Way said there has been no wrongdoing.
“Charter schools were not designed for people to make a profit,” said Chuck Essigs, government relations director of the Arizona School Association of Business Officials.
“Way disagrees.
“The (charter school) law is silent on the question of profit, and for good reason. Arizona families will only benefit if more operators of quality charter schools are enticed to expand their offerings in our state,” said Way, who is building a home in Queen Creek valued at nearly $1 million.”
It must be the height of patriotism to get rich from public funding intended for schools.
Diane Ravitch's blog 