Our reader Laura Chapman lives in Ohio. She contacted NPE Execurive Director Carol Burris to find out which Ohio charter schools asked for and received money from the Paycheck Protection Program, even though they already received funding allotted to public schools; even though they lost no income, unlike the hundreds of thousands of small businesses that were closed by the pandemic and had NO income; even though public schools were not alllowed to apply for PPP funds. Under the CARES Act, the average public school received an average of $134,500. Charter schools for their share of that money, plus qualified to double dip into the PPP funds,, thanks to their skilled lobbyists.
Chapman writes:
Diane, You beat me to it. I found the headline this morning: “Charter’s PPP loan called into question. School gave shareholder company a $10M bonus.” That report from Craig Harris of the Arizona Republic (Dec 19, 2020) referred to Primavera, an online charter school based in Chandler. “The school received “a PPP loan of nearly $2.2 million, the largest forgivable loan among the 132 Arizona charter schools that obtained them. https://cdn.newseum.org/dfp/pdf19/AZ_AR.pdf
This scam is about to be repeated if more PPP money is allocated for so-called public charter schools now reinvented as small businesses.
I have been looking at the first round of Paycheck CONTINUE READING: Laura Chapman: Charters in Ohio Shaking the PPP Money Tree | Diane Ravitch's blog