Lifestyles Of The Rich and Reformy
Back in 2013, I told the story of Joe Bruno, a former accounting and health care executive who is now heads a non-profit that is one of the biggest sources of capital for charter school construction.
This picture was taken at the 2013 National Charter School Conference; apparently, charter school advocates thought that the misogynist rapper Pitbull was a fine choice for a keynote speaker that year.
To Pitbull's right is Fernando "Ferny" Zulueta; the two are partners in the SLAM Charter School in Miami. According to a series of reports by the Miami Herald, Zulueta runs the "richest charter school management firm" in Florida, Academica, a for-profit company with annual revenues of $158 million at the time of the reports. Zulueta also controls, along with his brother, Ignacio, more than $115 million of South Florida real estate that is exempt from property taxes as "public" schools.
Bruno's firm, Building Hope, is a major source of capital for Zulueta and other charter school profiteers. Bruno works essentially as a mortgage broker: he gathers up both governmental and private, non-profit funds -- both of which are subsidized by taxpayers -- and disburses those funds to firms like Zulueta's to be used for charter school construction.
Considering taxpayers both provide the capital (either directly through the government or indirectly through the tax code) and pay for students to attend these charter schools, this is a sweet deal for all involved. As I said back in 2013:
Also: while we can debate the relative merits of charter schools, one thing is quite certain: any notion that the charter industry is "all about the kids" needs to be dismissed, because there are adults who are clearly making a lot of money off of charter expansion. And it's not just people like the Zuluetas: Bruno himself, according to Building Hope's 2011 tax return, earned $388,709 in compensation and another $56,865 in benefits for a year's work. In contrast, the average Florida teacher salary is $45,723.Tax forms for 2013 from Guidestar show Bruno made $386,576 in salary $57,668 in benefits that year. To be fair, Bruno likely made much more when he was a partner at - See more at: http://jerseyjazzman.blogspot.com/2015/05/lifestyles-of-rich-and-reformy.html
