Want
to get rich quick? Hurry on down to Florida and open a charter school. You
don’t need any experience in education, it doesn’t matter if you failed in the
past, just come up with a good idea!
The
Sun-Sentinel in Florida published a powerful
indictment of the unsupervised charter industry.
In
the past five years, 56 South Florida charter schools have closed, expelling
thousands of students. Five charter schools in Broward and Palm Beach counties
didn’t survive three months.
Jeb
Bush boasts at every opportunity about his “reform” policies of privatization
in Florida.
Read
this article and see what you think about Jeb’s “miracle.”
A
recent spate of charter-school closings illustrates weaknesses in state law:
virtually anyone can open or run a charter school and spend public education
money with near impunity, a Sun Sentinel investigation found.
Florida
requires local school districts to oversee charter schools but gives them
limited power to intervene when cash is mismanaged or students are deprived of
basic supplies — even classrooms.
Once
schools close, the newspaper found, districts struggle to retrieve public money
not spent on students.
Among
the cases the newspaper reviewed:
•
An Oakland Park man received $450,000 in tax dollars to open two new charter
schools just months after his first collapsed. The schools shuttled students
among more than four locations in Broward County, including a park, an event
hall and two churches. The schools closed in seven weeks.
•
A Boca Raton woman convicted of taking kickbacks when she ran a federal meal
program was hired to manage a start-up charter school in Lauderdale Lakes.
•
A Coral Springs man with a history of foreclosures, court-ordered payments, and
bankruptcy received $100,000 to start a charter school in Margate. It closed in
two months.
•
A Hollywood company that founded three short-lived charters in Palm Beach and
Collier counties will open a new school this fall. The two Palm Beach County
schools did not return nearly $200,000 they owe the district.
South
Florida is home to more than 260 charter schools, many of them high-performing.
Some cater to students with interests in the performing arts, science and
technology, or those with special needs.
Like
traditional public schools, charter schools are funded with tax money. But
these independent public schools can be opened and operated by individuals,
companies or cities, and they are controlled by volunteer governing boards, not
local elected school boards.
It
gets worse every year, since the state’s weak law allows almost anyone to open
a charter school, without regard to their qualifications.
State
law requires local school districts to approve or deny new charters based
solely on applications that outline their plans in areas including instruction,
mission and budget. The statutes don’t address background checks on charter
applicants. Because of the lack of guidelines, school officials in South
Florida say, they do not conduct criminal screenings or examine candidates’
financial or educational pasts.
That
means individuals with a history of failed schools, shaky personal finances or
no experience running schools can open or operate charters.
“The
law doesn’t limit who can open a charter school. If they can write a good
application … it’s supposed to stand alone,” said Jim Pegg, director of the
charter schools department for the Palm Beach County school district. “You’re
approving an idea.”
Of
course, letting anyone open a charter creates a certain level of instability
and lots of closures. But that seems to be the way Florida’s leaders like it:
Fifteen
charter schools in Broward have closed in the last two years. That number
doubled the county’s total closures since charter schools first opened in
Florida 18 years ago. Seven charter schools have closed in Palm Beach County in
the last two years. That’s more than a quarter of the district’s historic
total.
Eight
of those failed schools lasted about a year or less. Five didn’t survive three
months.
“These
are our tax dollars,” said state Sen. Jeff Clemens, D-Lake Worth. “And to let
them be used for a school that is only going to survive for one or two years is
a huge waste of resources.”
Another
29 charter schools are expected to open in South Florida this fall…..
Charter
schools, which receive public money in monthly installments based on student
enrollment, can be overpaid if they overestimate their expected attendance or
shut down abruptly.
State
law requires that furniture, computers and unspent money be returned to the
districts, but when officials attempt to collect, charter operators sometimes
cannot be found.
“We
do know there have been a few [charter schools] … where hundreds of thousands
of dollars were never spent on kids, and we don’t know where that money went,”
said Pegg, who oversees charters in Palm Beach County. “As soon as we close the
door on those schools, those people scatter … We can’t find them.”
When
a Broward school district auditor and school detective went searching for
Mitchell at the Ivy Academies in September 2013, he left through a back door,
records show. District officials said they have yet to find him, or to collect
the $240,000 in public money the schools received for students they never had.
The
Broward State Attorney’s Office is also investigating Mitchell and his
involvement with the Ivy Academies.
The
Palm Beach County school district never got back the $113,000 it overpaid La
Mensa Academy in Palm Beach Gardens, which closed after a year. La Mensa
projected it would have far more students than the five who showed up on the
first day of school in 2011.
My
Choice Academy has not returned $56,000 to the Palm Beach County school
district but is seeking to reopen in the fall. It closed in January 2013 after
four months in Riviera Beach because of problems with its lease. The school’s
founder, Altermease Kendrick, said the start-up challenges were overwhelming.
Charter
fraud is rampant. Ah, the perils of privatization. Maybe one of the news
anchors will see this story and ask Jeb a question or two after he boasts about
what he has done to education in Florida.