Florida’s big charter school problem (which Jeb Bush manages not to talk about)
In 2011, the Miami Herald ran a special report called “Cashing In On Kids — Florida’s Charter Schools: big money, little oversight” that reviewed the state’s 15-year charter expansion and found that after spending billions in public funds to support these schools, the educational reform had “turned into one of the region’s fastest-growing industries, backed by real-estate developers and promoted by politicians” with little oversight. It said in part:
Charter schools have become a parallel school system unto themselves, a system controlled largely by for-profit management companies and private landlords — one and the same, in many cases — and rife with insider deals and potential conflicts of interest.In many instances, the educational mission of the school clashes with the profit-making mission of the management company, a Miami Herald examination of South Florida’s charter school industry has found. Consider:• Some schools have ceded almost total control of their staff and finances to for-profit management companies that decide how the schools’ money is spent …
• Many management companies also control the land and buildings used by the schools — sometimes collecting more than 25 percent of a school’s revenue in lease payments, in addition to management fees …
• Charter schools often rely on loans from management companies or other insiders to stay afloat, making charter school governing boards beholden to the managers they oversee …
The story made the point of noting that Florida’s charter school laws “are aimed more at promoting the schools than policing them, leaving school districts with few ways to enforce the rules.”
Fast forward to 2015. Has anything changed? Not much, according to a new exposé on Florida charter schools, this one done by the Sun-Sentinel, with the headline: “Forida’s Charter Schools UNSUPERVISED — Taxpayers, students lose when school operators exploit weak laws.”
It says that in the past five years, 56 charter schools in South Florida have closed because of mismanagement and/or other issues, and that “a handful” of them “owe a total of at least $1 million in public education money to local school districts” but because districts have a hard time documenting Florida’s big charter school problem (which Jeb Bush manages not to talk about) - The Washington Post: