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Tuesday, December 20, 2011

Florida’s Shady Charter Schools Through the Eyes of a Police Officer | Scathing Purple Musings

Florida’s Shady Charter Schools Through the Eyes of a Police Officer | Scathing Purple Musings:


Florida’s Shady Charter Schools Through the Eyes of a Police Officer

The identity of the messenger will elicit shrill howls. They usually are from the charter school crowd. But this is big. Robert Asencio is president of the Florida Public Employees Association. As a police officer, he investigated Florida charter schools. He writes:

In everyone of our investigative cases, the schools were set up as nonprofit organizations. Most hired management companies to oversee the day to day operation of the schools. They all had a Board of Directors, had applied for and granted a Charter to be a school from local school districts as governed by Florida State Statute 1002.33 http://www.leg.state.fl.us/statutes/. Their main source of revenue was per pupil funding – called Full Time Equivalent (FTE). Some received more funding based on student disabilities.  In every case the drive to recruit more students was the primary focus of the schools and management companies. Most schools had received additional