Charter schools paying millions in taxpayer money to middlemen while students suffer
Brooklyn Dreams pays $2.3 million to for-profit firm National Heritage Academies to lease space from the Catholic Church — at a price much higher than what the city would normally pay. Dozens of for-profit vendors such as NHA are collecting millions from charter schools, but can't always account for how it's spent. Parents say for all the funding, charter school students are still being shortchanged.
On a quiet Ditmas Park side street, taxpayers shell out $2.3 million a year to lease space from the Catholic Church for a charter school called Brooklyn Dreams.
What’s shrouded in a cloak of secrecy is whether the arrangement is a good deal for the taxpayer.
That’s because a for-profit firm called National Heritage Academies acts as a middleman, renting space from the church at rates it calls “private.” Then NHA sublets the space to Brooklyn Dreams.
The firm charges the school $46.99 per square foot — much more than the $14.25 to $25.50 per square foot the city typically pays to lease school space from the church.
In effect, the for-profit company is charging the taxpayers at a far higher rate— in some cases more than double — than what the city would normally pay to rent space for public schools.
The operation of charter schools should not be immune to a healthy dose of sunshine.
If Brooklyn Dreams paid the church directly at the city’s top rate, the city would still save another $1 million a year — money that could go to aid students. Neither NHA nor the church would say how much NHA was paying the diocese.
“We are not releasing terms of these private contracts,” said Matt Maguire, an NHA spokesman, also declining to discuss a nearly identical sublet deal they have with another charter school, Brooklyn Scholars. NHA charges that school $37.15 per square foot.
Maguire justified the “private” deal by saying the buildings were “empty and fallow” and NHA “invested millions of dollars to make them a suitable environment for teaching and learning.”
What troubles fiscal watchdogs is that while NHA dubs this arrangement “private,” every penny involved is taxpayer money.
JOE MARINO/NEW YORK DAILY NEWSBrooklyn Dreams is paying National Heritage Academies $46.99 per square foot — much more than the $14.25 to $25.50 per square foot the city typically pays to the church.In fact, the public foots the bill for 70 charter schools leasing space at non-DOE entities across the city, and the rent varies widely. Last week the City Council’s education committee held a hearing raising questions about how charter schools spend tax dollars. Daniel Dromm, the committee chairman, made clear he wants more transparency.
“The operation of charter schools should not be immune to a healthy dose of
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