State Teachers’ Union Urges More Oversight of Charters
By SHARON OTTERMAN
Published: April 22, 2010
RelatedA Buffalo charter school, run by a for-profit company, received $7.2 million in taxpayer money last year to educate about 500 elementary and middle school students. But at the end of the year, the audit it submitted to the state listed its expenses only in broad brushstrokes, including $1.3 million in rent for a building the company owned, $976,000 for executive administration and $361,000 in professional fees.
Times Topic: Charter Schools
Officials from the New York State teachers’ union, testifying at a crowded State Senate hearing on Thursday, raised the case of the school, Buffalo United, as an example of what it said was wrong with the oversight of charter schools throughout the state. The union said the case supported its view that no new charter schools should be authorized unless oversight is strengthened.
“How much is profit?” asked Andrew Pallotta, the executive vice president of New York State United Teachers. “There is truly too much we don’t know and can’t know.”
The union’s concerns fell on mostly friendly ears at the all-day hearing, which had been called by Senator Bill Perkins of Harlem, an outspoken critic of the charter school movement. Teachers’ unions have generally opposed charter schools, which tend not to be unionized. On Thursday, the state union listed allegations against charter schools that included conflict of interest and outright theft. Brooklyn Charter School in Bedford-Stuyvesant, it said, had acquired, as a subsidiary, a bridal shop linked to the president of the school’s board. A state comptroller’s audit of a second Buffalo charter school, Western