Heres a post I wrote a while back, but thought might be good information for you East Nasties: What’s the corporate agenda behind charter schools? 1. Under the New Market Tax Program, investors like hedge funders and big banks can double their investments in just seven years through a 39% tax credit through investing in charter schools. 2. Charter schools can get an exemption from state law requiring competitive bidding of goods and services. Then the schools can purchase services and products from their own school officials. (Great Hearts schools purchased nearly a million dollars worth of books from a company operated by one of its own officers and marketed materials from the same company to parents.) 3. Charter management companies that operate charter schools can charge fees for their services. Thus, the biggest promoters of charter schools often also have some sort of tie to a charter management company. (This is the case in Nashville.) 4. Charter schools often pay their teachers and principals less, allowing more money to be diverted to the top. Sometimes they use computers for instruction (supervised by minimum-wage monitors) for part of the day, which further reduces costs. Unfortunately, charter school spending is not transparent. 5. An investor can buy land, build a charter school on it or rent it out to a charter school. Charters, as public schools, enjoy tax exempt status, and they are funded by a guaranteed stream of tax dollars. At the end of the day, the property belongs to the investor, not the taxpayers who funded it. Here’s what the head of a major investment trust said about charter schools: “[I]t’s our highest growth and most appealing sector right now of the portfolio. It’s the most high in demand, it’s the most recession-resistant. And a great opportunity set with 500 schools starting every year. It’s a two and a half billion dollar opportunity set annually.”
Posted on: Mon, 15 Sep 2014 11:23:05 +0000
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