Taxpayers paid for charter school property, but they don’t own it
Taxpayers paid for the furniture, computers and other equipment that students used at 10 Ohio charter schools. But the public doesn’t own the things it paid for, according to the state supreme court.
The high court ruled in a split decision Tuesday that the assets are instead the property of White Hat Management, the for-profit company that once managed the 10 schools. If the schools want their chairs and desks back, they’ll have to buy them back, paying for them a second time with taxpayer dollars.
That might seem incredible, but that’s what the schools agreed to in their contracts with White Hat, and the contracts have to be honored, ruled Justice Judith Ann Lanzinger, writing for the majority.
“The schools were represented by their own legal counsel, and they agreed to provisions in the contracts,” Lanzinger wrote. Unless there is fraud involved, she wrote, “courts are powerless to save a competent person from the effects of his own voluntary agreement.”
Charter schools contract with for-profit management companies in many states, and the Ohio case illuminates a broader dispute over whether public money is still considered public — and therefore subject to public oversight — once it is transferred to a private entity.
In the District of Columbia, for example, the attorney general has filed two lawsuits in recent years that allege that D.C. charter school leaders used for-profit companies to divert millions of taxpayer dollars into their own pockets. The D.C. Public Charter School Board, which oversees all city charter schools,has no legal right to examine the books and records of those private Taxpayers paid for charter school property, but they don’t own it - The Washington Post:
Big Education Ape: Ohio Supreme Court Rules Private Charter School Management Firm Owns Public Assets | janresseger http://bit.ly/1Knbotq
Big Education Ape: The New American Privateers http://bit.ly/1Mcg2OK
