Indiana: Karen Francisco on Shady Charter Real Estate Deals
Indiana legislators have rewritten state laws to favor privatization of public assets. If a public school is considered unutilized, a charter operator can claim it for only $1. When the West Lafayette school district sued to challenge the law, a judge sided with the legislators. Give the public school away to a private operator, even though it belongs to the public who paid for it!
Karen Francisco, the brilliant editor of the Fort Wayne Journal Gazette, writes here that the state’s political leadership is conspiring against the public interest by giving away public property to entrepreneurs. More than once, the public has been fleeced by shady charter operators in search of profit.
The “real estate racket” that the legislature endorsed on behalf of charter entrepreneurs is draining millions of dollars away from taxpayers in Indiana and other states.
It would take an accountant to disentangle the tangled web of real estate deals that allow charter operators to rip off the public.
Francisco tries to explain it here:
A decade ago, The Journal Gazette reported a local charter school, Imagine MASTer Academy, was using state tax dollars to pay a for-profit landowner nearly triple in rent what it could have paid to own its building outright.
No one – not the governor, attorney general or any CONTINUE READING: Indiana: Karen Francisco on Shady Charter Real Estate Deals | Diane Ravitch's blog
