Florida Charter Schools, big money little oversight

From the Miami Herald

BY SCOTT HIAASEN AND KATHLEEN McGRORY
shiaasen@MiamiHerald.com

Preparing for her daughter’s graduation in the spring, Tuli Chediak received a blunt message from her daughter’s charter high school: Pay us $600 or your daughter won’t graduate.

She also received a harsh lesson about charter schools: Sometimes they play by their own rules.

During the past 15 years, Florida has embarked on a dramatic shift in public education, steering billions in taxpayer dollars from traditional school districts to independently run charter schools. What started as an educational movement has turned into one of the region’s fastest-growing industries, backed by real-estate developers and promoted by politicians.

But while charter schools have grown into a $400-million-a-year business in South Florida, receiving about $6,000 in taxpayer dollars for every student enrolled, they continue to operate with little public oversight. Even when charter schools have been caught violating state laws, school districts have few tools to demand compliance.

Charter schools have become a parallel school system unto themselves, a system controlled largely by for-profit management companies and private landlords — one and the same, in many cases — and rife with insider deals and potential conflicts of interest.

In many instances, the educational mission of the school clashes with the profit-making mission of the management company, a Miami Herald examination of South Florida’s charter school industry has found. Consider:

• Some schools have ceded almost total control of their staff and finances to for-profit management companies that decide how the schools’ money is spent. The Life Skills Center of Miami-Dade County, for example, pays 97 percent of its income to a management company as a “continuing fee.” And when the governing board of two affiliated schools in Hollywood tried to eject its managers, the company refused to turn over school money it held — and threatened to press criminal charges against any school officials who attempted to access the money.

• Many management companies also control the land and buildings used by the schools — sometimes collecting more than 25 percent of a school’s revenue in lease payments, in addition to management fees. The owners of Academica, the state’s largest charter school operator, collect almost $19 million a year in lease payments on school properties they control in Miami-Dade and Broward counties, audit and property records show.

• Charter schools often rely on loans from management companies or other insiders to stay afloat, making charter school governing boards beholden to the managers they oversee. Loans to two Pompano Beach schools were disguised as gifts in financial documents to avoid scrutiny from the school district and make struggling schools appear solvent, the schools’ former managers said in court papers.

• At some financially weak schools, tight budgets have forced administrators to cut corners. The cash-strapped Balere Language Academy in South Miami Heights taught its seventh-grade students in a toolshed, records show. The Academy of Arts & Minds in Coconut Grove went weeks without textbooks. Schools have also been accused of using illegal tactics to bring in more money — charging students illegal fees for standard classes, or faking attendance records to earn more tax dollars, court records show.

• Charter schools in Miami-Dade take a disproportionately lower share of black, poor and disabled children, records show. One in three students in Miami-Dade traditional public schools are black, while one in five charter school students are black. School district officials also suspect some charter schools have deliberately sought out high-performing students — contrary to the schools’ contracts.

This year, several South Florida charter schools made headlines for violating local rules or state laws, including Arts & Minds, which was accused of charging illegal fees to students, and Balere, which the school district said turned into an after-hours nightclub on weekends. The district withheld funding from both schools — before concluding that it does not have the legal authority to do so.

That’s because Florida’s charter school laws — considered among the nation’s most charter school friendly — are aimed more at promoting the schools than policing them, leaving school districts with few ways to enforce the rules.

When school districts have taken a hard line with charter schools, they have found their decisions second-guessed by state education officials in Tallahassee. And as the number of charter schools has climbed — almost 200 now operate in Miami-Dade and Broward counties alone — state lawmakers have chipped away at local school districts’ ability to monitor them.

“It’s frustrating for school district officials,” said John Schuster, spokesman for the Miami-Dade school district. “The only cases where we can really intervene are safety-to-life, severe financial distress or poor academic performance.”

Read more: http://www.miamiherald.com/2011/09/19/v-fullstory/2541051/florida-charter-schools-big-money.html#ixzz1gJyNLpEc