Did He Say “Education!?” I Think He Meant “Corporation.”
ProgressNow New Mexico has brought forward a complaint to the IRS claiming the corporate-backed education reform group Foundation for Excellence in Education (FEE) is violating the agency’s policies. The group, led by former Florida governor and possible 2016 presidential candidate Jeb Bush, is being accused of failing to disclose payments and expenditures concerning travel for public officials. In their letter, Progress Now New Mexico says:
…FEE “has failed to disclose payments — or as the Foundation calls them, scholarships — for public official travel on its Form 990s as required by the IRS.” ProgressNow executive director Patrick Davis argued that “it is possible these unreported payments to the government officials may be deemed to provide a private inurement in violation of IRS regulations.”
In what it calls an “apparent violation of IRS regulations,” ProgressNow noted that records show FEE paid for a trip by New Mexico public education secretary-designate Hanna Skandera, who previously served under Bush as Florida’s deputy education commissioner, to testify in the U.S. Congress in support of devoting federal funds to virtual education. (ProgressNow also notes over $30,000 spent by FEE on first-class travel for Bush.)
This is not Jeb Bush’s first controversy surrounding education reform efforts. Earlier this year a set of