Washington State Charter School Fix is a Framework for Fraud

Charter School Fix is a Framework for Fraud:

Charter School Fix is a Framework for Fraud

In December 2015, three fake Education Reform front groups (each of which receives millions of dollars in funding from Bill Gates) announced that they had formed a PAC to give legislators a half million dollars in bribes (also known as campaign contributions) in trade for "fixing" the problem created when the Washington State Supreme Court ruled that that the Charter School Initiative 1240, also funded with millions of dollars by Bill Gates, did not comply with the Washington State Constitution. Naturally, with this much money up for grabs, on January 4 2016, Senate Bill 6163, also known as the "Charter School Fix" bill was filed in the Washington State state legislature. According to Public Disclosure Commission filings, the prime sponsor of the Charter School Fix bill was one of two dozen legislators who received a down payment from the Bill Gates funded WA Charter School PAC. Their bill would allow up to ten percent of all Washington schools to be "converted" into unregulated and unaccountable fraud factories that could rob taxpayers and public schools of more than one billion dollars per year. 

It is important to note that this bill has nothing to do with school choice or school innovation or even helping the kids who were enrolled in illegal charter schools. School districts are already allowed to create any type of alternative school that complies with our state laws and state constitution. Former charter school kids can attend public schools like any other kids. Parents are allowed to petition school boards to allow their student to attend any school in the school district or move to a different school district or run for the school board and create their own innovative schools. Instead, this Charter School Fix bill is purely about robbing up to one billion dollars per year from public schools and turning these tax payer dollars over to private for profit corporations. One only has to look at how charter schools have turned into fraud factories from California to Florida to New York and Ohio and many other charter school states to understand what the real purpose of charter schools is - it's robbery of tax payer funds pure and simple. 

Here is the math. Washington State has about one million public school students. Each student receives about $10,000 in school funding (about $8,000 from the state plus about $2,000 from local levies and federal funding). This is about $3,000 per pupil less than national average of $13,000 per student - which is why Washington state has among the lowest school funding and highest class sizes in the nation. This extremely low level of funding is also why the Washington State Supreme Court has held the state legislature in "Contempt of Court" for failing to comply with their Constitutional "Paramount Duty" to fully fund our public schools. 

The total funding for all one million Washington state students is about $10 billion per year. This is $3 billion per year less than the national average - with the difference being diverted into billions of dollars in tax breaks for wealthy corporations like Microsoft and Boeing. If the charter school fix bill were to pass, yet another billion dollars could be siphoned off from public school funding and diverted into charter school fraud factories. Here is the language from the bill: ""A school district board may not approve more than.. ten percent of the total number of public schools in the district as district charter schools." (SB 6163, Page 18) Ten percent of $10 billion is one billion dollars. 

The actual amount of the robbery could be much higher because the above figure does not include school construction funds which would also be siphoned off by charter schools. Here is the language from the bill that gives away up to ten percent of school construction funds: "School districts providing facilities that serve district charter school students are eligible for state matching funds for common school Charter School Fix is a Framework for Fraud: