More Scrutiny as Charter Schools Look to Expand
By NICHOLAS CONFESSORE and JENNIFER MEDINA
Published: May 25, 2010
ALBANY — During its first years of operation, the Niagara Charter School in Niagara Falls spent thousands of dollars on plane tickets, restaurant meals and alcohol, and more than $100,000 on no-bid consulting contracts. Yet the school’s teachers resorted to organizing a fund-raiser to buy playground equipment.
When the Roosevelt Children’s Academy, a charter school on Long Island, fired its management company after paying it more than $1 million a year, it hired two of the school’s board members as new managers — and paid them hundreds of thousands of dollars.
And in the Bronx, the Family Life Charter School pays $400,000 annually to rent classroom space from the Latino Pastoral Action Center, a “Christ-centered holistic ministry” led by the Rev. Raymond Rivera. Mr. Rivera also happens to be the school’s founder.
Charter school advocates, including Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg, are vigorously lobbyingfor a bill that would more than double the number of charters in New York State and send at least $2 billion in taxpayer money a year into the charter system.
Supporters want the Legislature to pass the bill before the June 1 deadline by which states must apply to win a share in Race to the Top federal education grants that place a