Did PURE’s UNO charter school complaint help trigger SEC probe? Parents United for Responsible Education

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Did PURE’s UNO charter school complaint help trigger SEC probe?

It was announced yesterday that the federal Securities and Exchange Commission has opened an investigation into the UNO Charter School Network’s finances.
A look at the SEC document request suggests there are two major areas of inquiry. One is the possible conflict of interest in the D’Escoto and other charter school construction contracts, about which the Sun-Times has written extensively.
And the other is UNO’s tax-exempt bonds, which PURE highlighted in our January 2013 complaint to the Illinois Executive Inspector General.
Here’s what we wrote then:

UNO Board Chairman Juan Rangel and Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel are longtime allies. Rangel recently served as finance chairman of Emanuel’s mayoral campaign, and he and other appointed-not elected-UNO leaders have strung together multiple taxpayer-subsidized and tax-exempt financial transactions to pay off private bank loans and private bondholders. UNO is using this largesse to engineer a rapid buildup of not only its student enrollment, but of substantial real estate holdings as well.
A breakdown of three years of UNO tax-exempt bonds is attached. It shows that, with each successive transaction, the financial burden has resulted in higher debt-per-student costs as UNO has nearly no other source of revenue other than public transfers via direct subsidies, publicly issued bonds and government contracts. If UNO fails to secure more buildings and more students, the growing financial burden will likely have an adverse impact on its students as per-pupil classroom spending will suffer due to an increasing portion of the network’s income being diverted to cover debt payments.

We held a press conference on January 17 at the Office of the Executive Inspector General (EIG) where we filed our complaint. It wasn’t until a week later that any major media outlet chose to

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