Charter schools are a hot real estate market — and that’s bad for students
Where there’s smoke there’s fire — and there’s tons of smoke when it comes to the charter school industry pocketing public money meant for school buildings.
It seems like almost every week another charter school operator is exposed for taking taxpayer money that was supposed to be spent on renting, building, or buying classroom space.
One recent example: a charter school in California, Imagine Schools at Imperial Valley (ISIV), closed its doors in September after years of poor academic performance — but not before its owners made out with a fortune.
ISIV was spending a substantial portion of its annual revenue — all public money — on rent paid to a company connected to its owners. In a labyrinthine scheme, the school subleased a converted department store from a related for-profit corporation that leased from another corporation. As of February this year, ISIV had paid $7.9 million in rent even though the store was originally purchased for $3.1 million.
Such “related-party transactions” are so common that a professor at the University of Connecticut wrote a report last year comparing the charter industry to the energy-trading firm Enron, which collapsed in 2001 under the weight of massive fraud. “Without strict regulation, some bad actors have been able to take advantage of charter schools as an opportunity for private investment,” he wrote.
You might be thinking, aren’t charter schools nonprofit? Yes, most are. But in Continue reading: Charter schools are a hot real estate market — and that’s bad for students
