The ugly truth behind school choice in Florida

By Diane Schrier from the Ocala Star banner

Choice in education. It’s been raised lately as a holy grail by some, but the truth is far deeper and uglier. There is no real choice anymore in education. Instead, small groups of charter and private schools are being lavishly gifted with a large proportion of the money.

The victims are clear. They are the students and the adults in the community who have to pay more because funds are being handed out to corporations, hedge funds, real estate agencies and other interest groups, ignoring the fact that the education bucket is not limitless, or just not caring about the consequences. But what is choice? If it were simple, there would be no discussion. Most feel that parents have the right to choose what school their children go to. However, the real issues involve money, influence, money, accountability, money, safe schools, money and transparency.

What it does not involve are people yelling out one word, as though it was a religious cause, without 

understanding the complex issues that underlie it. This is a multi-billion dollar issue.

Education serves children. They are not data numbers, but living, breathing humans who deal with all the pressures of the adult world, but without the ability to control more than a few aspects of their lives. The educational system is meant to help them grow to adulthood with the ability to have healthy, strong futures. The Florida Constitution states plainly that a free, strong, high-quality public education is a Florida value.

Charter schools are a great money-making arena. Originally designed as places for alternative education for those who needed special help or a different type of school, the idea was excellent and far-reaching. These schools, mostly run by the school districts, have transparency and accountability and are necessary factors in education today. Money is earmarked for them, but they are district schools and serve a need.

There is a second type of charter school. These are for-profit and they tell a different story. They are for-profit ventures to make money for their investors.

A few are excellent and fill a niche. However, twice as many charter schools fail as do public schools. They also have very interesting schemes to increase the bottom line. One large Florida group, owned by a real estate firm, has the schools rent their land from the firm. The real estate firm also formed its own charter management organization to run the schools. Leases run approximately 20-25 percent of educational revenue, while the management firm receives $450 per student to manage the student. These are noneducational expenses.

This one firm also has its own bank to lend its schools money, which must be repaid with interest. To ensure its protection, the brother-in-law of the owner is in the Legislature and has a say on educational policy. While other charter school organizations are not quite so blatant, they are just as hungry for public taxpayer money.

Last February, I attended a State Board of Education meeting. Lawyers from the Seminole and Orange school boards asked the members to deny the applications for charter schools from the Charter School Organization. The applications had been denied the previous fall by the school boards. The charter schools appealed to the Charter School Organization, which approved the charters, overriding the desires of the local school districts.

Marion County has been lucky so far, as we’ve managed to be able to keep out most of these organizations through implementation of special programs when needed. However, that will change this year. A new application form has been approved by the Legislature streamlining the process for charter schools. This opens up Marion County, since the power to say no will be further diminished. State superintendents have been protesting this.

Thus, for-profit charter schools get Race to the Top money for starting new schools, management money, lease money, interest money, student money and PECO funds. PECO funds are designated for maintenance and operations of public schools. During the last four years, however, all of this money has gone to charter schools. This year, more PECO money is going to private schools than public schools — again.

Private-school vouchers are being funded by money donated to one single organization called Step Up for Children. To increase private-school revenue, corporations that donated money to the fund are being given tax credits equal to their donation. Since Florida does not have an income tax, these taxes are a large part of the basis of education, public safety and all other programs. This law will raise close to $1 billion per year over the next few years — money that will be taken from public school funding. While some private schools, especially in Marion County, are excellent, others are in strip malls, offer minimal education, untrained teachers, no trained personnel for special needs, and no accountability or transparency.

There is school choice and there is the destruction of public education choice. The Florida Legislature is choosing to move down the path of destruction. However, most children attend public schools. Voters will need to make a decision.

Diane Schrier is a teacher at Fort King Middle School, a candidate for the School Board and state public policy chairwoman for The American Association of University Women.

http://www.ocala.com/article/20140504/OPINION/140509905/-1/news?p=3&tc=pg

Foundation for Florida's Future attack dog bares her teeth.

When looking at Kate Wallace’s resume two things really stood out, first she worked for Wal-Mart which is known for its cheap products and barely paying its employees and then she interned for Dick Cheney who is known for, well all of you know what he is known for but what I couldn’t find was any education experience, which means all she is, is part of the cadre of Jeb Bush sycophants who have no idea what they are talking about.  

http://www.foundationforfloridasfuture.org/pages/About_Us/Staff.aspx

Wallace attacked local education activist Julie Delagal and public education in a recent post in Context Florida and said some pretty outrageous things while doing so.   Let me start with this, she wrote: I’ll never comprehend why opponents of vouchers, charter schools, or public school choice think it’s morally or ethically acceptable to pigeonhole poor children into one traditional public school. And often it’s a school to which they never would send their own children.

Um, Katie education reformers aren’t sending their kids to charter schools or the type of private schools that get vouchers either. Jonathan Hage the CEO of Charter schools USA sends his kid to an exclusive private school and your svengali Jeb Bush was willing to pay nearly 4 times the amount a voucher was worth to make sure his children didn’t go to the same type of private school that voucher proponents are sentencing the poor kids you claim to care about to go to.

She screams that Delagal and the public school supporters are for the status quo, well I want to tell you she is all for funneling children into substandard options which is what charter schools and private schools as a group that take vouchers are. She says accountability for public schools has been a godsend, while her side says ignore the man behind the curtain when it comes to charters and vouchers fighting tooth and nail against the most meager of accountability measures.  

Then for her to say Jeb Bush’s reforms have led to Florida’s improvement and even I admit there has been some, though long time teachers and many parents don’t think Florida was the wasteland that she describes, is beyond the pale.  Other states have not failed third graders, demonized teachers and tied peoples and schools futures to standardized tests and seen improvement too.

At the end of the day she doesn’t care about Florida’s children and she damn sure doesn’t care about its teachers as she says all they are interested in doing is keeping their jobs because if she did she would be fighting to improve the system instead of dismantling it and make no mistake the complete privatization of our public school system is her and her employers end game.

So Ms. Wallace take your thirty pieces of silver and try and sleep at night because we all know what your rants are really about.

To read her piece click the link: http://contextflorida.com/kate-wallace-school-choice-threatens-certain-adults-not-children-and-their-academic-achievement/

No peace no justice in Florida over vouchers!

From Scathing Purple Musings by Bob Sykes

At some point, the Republican-dominated Florida senate was going to be able to impose their will on expanding Florida’s voucher system. Few legislators have fought against what’s now become a clear effort by Republican lawmakers to eliminate public schools as has Sen. Dwight Bullard (D-Miami). During debate Friday, Bullard made an astonishing objection. This from Orlando Sentinel reporter Jason Garcia:

Sen. Dwight Bullard, D-Miami, was upset at the unexpected introduction of a sweeping education bill that, among other provisions, would expand the state’s corporate-tax credit scholarship program, which finances private-school vouchers. Democratic senators, who are control only 14 of the Senate’s 40 seats, thought they had successfully defeated the issue yesterday, when they blocked it on a procedural vote, but GOP supporters resurrected it as an amendment to different legislation (SB 850) today, the final day of the legislative session.

In his debate, Bullard claimed that an organization that supports the voucher expansion has been offering lawmakers jobs if they vote for the bill. He did not name the group, but his remarks signaled he was referring to “Step Up for Students,” the Tampa-based non-profit that administers the program.

“We’ve had individuals from that organization going around these halls offering jobs to other people in the process as incentive for voting for this bill, and that’s not the way we should be doing business,” he said. “But it’s happened and by voting on this bill and voting yes on this bill, we’re basically saying, ‘Guess what?’”

“Sen. Bullard, you’ve made a very, very critical statement, and I’m going to ask you, in the presence of the rules chair, to repeat what you said before the Senate moves forward. You made a statement of people being offered jobs in exchange for votes…Would you repeat the statement and then, sir, would you prove it?”

Bullard quickly apologized, saying he was being vague because the claim “was shared with me ….by members of the other chamber that job offers were placed on the table by the agency that administer these scholarships.” He would not identify that House member.

Gaetz responded, “Senator, you’re an officer of the state of Florida, you took an oath to preserve and protect the laws of this state. If you have knowledge of a crime that has been committed or an attempt to commit a crime, sir, you need to report that to the state attorney today.”

Even in the event that Step up for Students (SUFS) was offering jobs for votes, it would be nothing new in the sordid education for profit cabal that has infected Florida. But worst of all, even a state’s attorney cannot be considered an honest broker. They all answer to Attorney General Pam Bondi who has been accepting  campaign contributions from SUFS CEO John Kirtley and his wife, Kimberly since Bondi’s 2010 run. For the past decade, the Kirtley’s  have put almost $500 million into Florida political campaigns.

Miami Herald reporter Kathleen McGrory’s  revealed that SUFS admits paying for influence. 

….the non-profit that runs the voucher program came under fire Tuesday for a 2011 video that was posted to YouTube.

In the video, Step Up for Students President Doug Tuthill outlined the organization’s political strategy. He talked about the role of an affiliated political committee.

“One of the primary reasons we’ve been so successful we spend about $1 million every other cycle in local political races, which in Florida is a lot of money,” Tuthill told a group at the University of California, Berkeley. “In House races and Senate races, we’re probably the biggest spender in local races.”

It’s unclear if Tuthill includes the Kirtley’s contributions in his total. Even if it does, it doesn’t come close to the entire amount. So how does Tuthill account for the rest? Is it in the form of lucrative consulting or lobbying?

Don Gaetz doth protest too much, methinks. So does Sen. John Thrasher (R- Orange Park) who admonished Bullard, too.  Both are aware of  SUFS’ shenanigans as both signed off on the controls that Sen. Bill Galvano (R-Bradenton) put into the bill. Gaetz and Thrasher aren’t ignorant of the Kirtley’s campaign cash nor about SUFS’s political activities.

A real investigation of SUFS cannot be expected from any entity controlled by Florida republican politicians. Kirtley even invests in the up-and-coming like Bondi,  Jeff Atwater and Alan Putnam. Floridians can’t expect federal relief either as U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan swept Michelle Rhee’s Washington DC cheating scandal under the rug. The education reform movement protects it’s rock stars.

https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=1107550755163115303#editor/target=pos

To read more about this farce, click this link: http://www.tampabay.com/news/politics/legislature/romano-voucher-expansion-doubles-down-on-separate-but-unequal-schools/2178185

The failed promise of charter schools!

The league of women voters recently released a study about how charter schools are not living up to their promise. I would like to examine just one of those charter schools to see if you agree.

The charter for the Charter School at Mandarin was given to the Renaissance Charter School group the non-profit arm of Charter Schools USA (CUSA), who then contracted with CUSA to run the school and their construction arm Red Apple to build it. Some people might say one stop shopping; others might say their set up would make Columbian drug dealers envious. Red Apple by the way started construction before it was approved. They may have know it was a certainty what with the school boards friendliness to charters, which in my opinion means they are abdicating their authority to educate our children, though that did not stop CUSA from hedging its bets and donating thousands to Mandarin’s school board representative, Jason Fischer.  

Nobody on the Charter School at Mandarin’s board is from Jacksonville and its sister school the Charter School at Regency would have been an F school this past year if it wasn’t protected by states rule that schools can drop only one letter grade. A rule co-created by Gary Chartrand the local businessman who brought the KIPP charter school to town who likewise has benefited from the rule. I mention these two things because similar things happened in Orange and Hillsborough counties and they are fighting in the courts against the expansion of CUSA in their school districts. They have to fight in the courts because despite their objections Gary Chartrand and the state board of education, none of who are true educators, but consists of a citrus grower, grocer and cable TV executive instead, rubber-stamped the approval of the charter schools. 

So much for local control right?

Jonathan Hage the CEO of CUSA, even though he lives in Florida and does the vast bulk of his business here has registered the company in Delaware where CUSA operates zero schools. Then even though he only operates 58 schools with a little over 50,000 students, he lives in a 1.8 million dollar house, owns a 350 thousand dollar yacht named Fishing for Schools and sends his children to an exclusive private school. His salary was unavailable but I have heard estimates of up to 3.6 million dollars.

By comparison Duval’s superintendent Vitti who runs 176 schools with 119 thousand students, makes 275 thousand dollars, lives in a 180 thousand dollar condo (I checked his financial disclosure forms) sends his children to public school and doesn’t own a yacht. 

Lets talk about innovation because remember charter schools are supposed to be laboratories of innovation. The contract with Duval County states that they will, um err, hmm, nothing, it uses a lot of flowery jargon but ultimately it provides the same services that a student would get at any of the neighboring schools near it which are all rated A by the way. 

Finally CUSA is a big player in the lobby game sending thousands of dollars to mostly republican legislators. My main problem with this is they undoubtedly use public money because remember they get their money from the public, to lobby for more public money.

Is this what you envision when you hear the words charter schools? A lucrative profit center for a man who won’t even send his own kids to one of his schools and a school with dubious innovation that uses pubic money to get more public money? Is that what you think?

Friends even if you like charter schools and the Stanford CREDO the definitive charter school study says children as a group in Florida that attend them lag behind their public school peers, even if you like charter schools despite the fact if your child was attending one they were 5 times more likely to be attending an F school than if they went to a public school, this school can’t represent the promise you might think they will bring. 

There are problems in public schools, the lion’s share caused by legislators who ignore  poverty  and who support charter schools but the answer is to fix the problems, not to outsource our kid’s education to the monstrosity described above. 

Joe Negron, R-Stuart, Florida’s latest worst legislator ever

I have to tell you guys like him make me feel sick.

From the Tampa Times: Senate Appropriations Committee Chairman Joe Negron made the argument for more choices for parents.

"Public schools should not have a monopoly," said Negron, R-Stuart. "We have choices in everything else. We have choices in health care. The default setting should not be every student must go to the public school that is zoned in their district, and if you want to do anything else off the beaten path, it’s unusual." 

http://www.tampabay.com/blogs/gradebook/controversial-school-choice-provisions-pass-out-of-senate/2178047

First public schools have never had a monopoly; there have always been home schooling, private schools and the option to get involved in your child’s schools to make it the type of school you would like. ‘

Second we should have individual choices about somethings but others serve all of society and all of society is harmed when resources are diverted away. Could you imagine the anarchy if we picked our own police force, fire department, or army we wanted? None would be as effective but for some reason Negorn and his ilk think killing public education by a thousand cuts is the way to go.

Finally I would like to address his hypocrisy, he is sending public money to basically unregulated schools that have zero accountability while at the same time he has voted time and time again to put burdensome and scientifically unsound requirements on public schools.

How the beep does that make sense, how is that fair. The answer is it isn’t but Negron wants to beat the pro-choice drum and hope you don’t notice.

Negron is a prime example for all that is wrong in the system. 

Florida legislature pulls last minute shenanigans to pass Voucher bill

On the last day of the legislative session a 141-page voucher amendment was added to an unrelated bill that had already won approval allowed the expansion of vouchers to pass.

If the democrats had been in power and done something similar with gun control, or welfare then there would be outrage in the streets.

From the Tampa Times: Sen. Dwight Bullard raised concerns about the way the policy had been brought to the Senate floor. "The idea of a last-day amendment that brings up the content of a [seperate] bill is problematic," said Bullard, D-Miami. Bullard opposed the new language, saying students who participate in the tax credit scholarship program often return to their neighborhood public schools below grade level.

http://www.tampabay.com/blogs/gradebook/controversial-school-choice-provisions-pass-out-of-senate/2178047

That’s what it took and that’s the way the republicans in Tallahassee do things. 

Anti-union hack blames unions for the FCAT

When Lorne Dewitt blamed the teachers unions for the problems in education it reminded me of a story I heard on NPR earlier about how officials in China were banning BBQs because they said they contributed to smog. I don’t know however which is crazier.

The republicans have been completely in charge of both the executive and legislative branches in Florida during the entire rein of the FCAT. This whole era of so called accountability (accept for schools that take vouchers) has happened under their watch and shouldn’t that be the bottom line even if a union member here or a union leader there supported Common Core, liked the idea of charter schools or was enthusiastic about the FCAT?

Mr. Dewitt went on to give unions powers they don’t have. Over the past few years teachers have been stripped of work protections, had three percent of their pay taken to balance Florida’s books (thank a teacher for the states surplus) and continue to be some of the lowest paid professionals around. This is the group he says, that even without the power to strike has run rough shod over the powers-that-be in Tallahassee. Dewitt would have you believe Unions are the ones calling the shots.  

I would like to clear up one assertion that Dewitt makes and that is about charter schools. The concept of charter schools is credited to Albert Shanker a union/teacher leader from New York, he thought charters should be teacher parent driven laboratories free of things like high stakes testing that can be so stifling. His wife recently said he would roll over in his grave if he could see what they had become.

Lorne Dewitt obviously has what I would call a pathological dislike of teacher unions but for those of you a little more nuanced I would like to point out that unions do not create curriculum, establish budgets, set policy nor do they hire or fire teachers. All they do and all they can do here in Florida is make sure the mutually agreed upon contract language is enforced and through their membership lobby for things they feel are important. Sometimes they win like with the parent trigger but more often they lose like with senate bill 736 that ties pay to how students do on standardized tests, something testing experts say is ridiculous.

Dewitt and other may choose to rewrite history and place blame on those he irrationally dislikes but at the end of the day the fact Republicans being in charge of education over the last 15 years is irrefutable. If you like where we are at keep voting for them, if you think we need a change or can do better a sentiment echoed by most teachers whether they are in the union or not then you know what you need to do.   

To read Dewitt’s editorial click the link: http://hernandotoday.com/he/list/hernando-columns/unions-are-the-problem-not-fcat-20140501/

How to fix Duval's discipline problem, hint, it's not rocket science.

Duval County creates many of its own discipline problems!

If my face is getting blue I hope you will forgive me because I have covered this topic ad nausem.

Kids need consequences for bad behavior, and remember if it is not meaningful it is now a consequence, and if they don’t get consequences their behavior will likely worse and then like a virus their bad behavior will spread to other children who see they did not receive a consequence. Duval County does not like to give consequences for bad behavior and that’s why we have a discipline problem and it really is as simple as that.

I am not saying we have to drop the hammer but what we are doing definitely isn’t working.

There are two things we can do that would greatly improve discipline in our schools. First take the nearly million dollars we are prepared to spend on suspension centers or some of that QEA money we are spending on TFA and hire more social workers. We need to start address in the whole child if we want to have success with many. And yes I know there are social workers at the suspension centers but I also know 12 social workers would be better than 4.

Then we make ISSP mean something instead of the joke it is and always has been in many schools. Miss a day you stay in ISSP. Don’t finish your work or act up, you stay in ISSP. You don’t eat when the rest of the kids do and you get two bath room breaks one in the morning and one in the afternoon where all the kids go together and it doesn’t happen while other kids are in the halls. Then ramp up the days, instead of 1 day give them 5 instead of two give them 10. For a consequence to work it must be a consequence not just an opportunity to goof off with ones friends.

Come on Duval, this isn’t rocket science.

Duval County creates criminals by ignoring discipline

Whenever the Times Union runs a piece about discipline I like to rerun this piece because it is still as appropriate as ever.

My friend leaned forward to better hear what the administrator was saying. At first he wasn’t sure because he couldn’t imagine a school administrator saying anything close to what he thought he had just heard.

If you want to make merit pay, the first thing we look at is referrals, if you have written a lot of referrals you will not get merit pay. Also If you think you are on the bubble of being retained or being surplused the first thing we look at is referrals, if you have written a lot you may have room for concern. Not even with a wink and a nod here was this leader of teachers telling her staff not to write referrals and that to do so could cost them both money and or their jobs.

Sometimes a lot of referrals can be indicative of poor classroom management other times however it can be indicative of poor classes. If a kid doesn’t respond to my teacher voice or look, doesn’t care if I call home, can get on the computer or where they sit, if a kid doesn’t care about school then there is no other option but to send them out on a referral that way I can teach and other kids can learn. But what do I do now that money and my job are on the line. Well some teachers scared for their futures will endure toxic leaning environments in their classrooms and that leads to a whole host of other problems.

Duval County doesn’t get it. When we fail to discipline, the problems don’t miraculously go away. On the contrary they get worse and they create other problems as well.

This year the Duval County school system will create doctors and lawyers, teachers and business men, they will create engineers, scientists, and accountants too but sadly they will also create more than their fair share of criminals and bad citizens as well. And they will do it at the same schools that your sons and daughters, your nieces or nephews or your neighbor’s kids go to.

If you want evidence think about my friend who was pistol whipped last January during a robbery or my neighbor who was recently gang raped in broad day light on the street or the residents of 45th street and Moncrief who were terrorized for over a year by a gang of street punks. Of the thirteen young men arrested for crimes ranging from homicide to drug possession four are still teenagers. Over the summer a half dozen young men all under the age of 18 were convicted of murder, one case involved a pizza, another three dollars

If you want further evidence just walk through the halls between classes at most neighborhood schools and you will see there is little fear of or respect for authority.

I can point them out to you, the second year freshmen with six F’s and one D on their latest report card. The junior who doesn’t bring any materials to class and tells me he can’t write with a pen only a pencil when I offer him a pen. The multitude of students who have massed dozens of tardies in my class with no penalty, or seem both outraged and confused when I announce to them that we have work to do, something we do even on Fridays. You can also see the girl that hijacks my forth period class every day, yelling at me telling me no, even when I ask the most reasonable of requests, like please take your seat and quietly do your work. I could go on and on.

For the most part day after day I let it go. You see I have to pick my battles. If I fight everything then I am considered the problem and my classroom management skills are questioned, or if I write up to many black students it’s whispered that I might be a racist. These are things that as a teacher you don’t want to be thought of as.

In my class students get several opportunities to be disrespectful to me or to refuse my reasonable requests, instead of just the one they should, before I send them out. When I do some students question my logic, they tell me nothing’s going to happen to them and that I will be the one that gets in trouble, though when they say it, expletive deletes usually accompany their words.

Sometimes they are back in a few minutes with cat eating grins on their faces because they were just asked not to do it again, though administrators call it counseling. Other times they receive the most minor of inconveniences, I say inconveniences because for something to be a consequence it has to be meaningful. That’s if even that happens.

A colleague of mine recently stumbled across boxes of unprocessed referrals from last year. I suspect they weren’t processed because referrals affect a schools grade, the only alternative I could think of is the administration is either lazy and doesn’t care or they were directed to ignore the referrals by higher ups. Who cares if children are taught its okay to be defiant, disruptive and disrespectful, which is what happens if they receive no consequences for their actions as long as the school grade improves.

Above isn’t exclusive to my class or school by any means, it happens all across the county and at every grade too. First graders threatening teachers, fifth graders caught having sex, middle schoolers assaulting school board employees and worse are all nearly daily occurrences here in Duval County. A few here and there are removed but most are sent back to their classes with no real consequences where quite often their behavior worsens. A student attacking a teacher and scratching their cornea gets a one dy suspension in at least one county school. Looking up a teachers address on google maps so they can come visit them later gets a period of in school suspension at another.

When we ignore bad behavior or don’t deliver real consequence for it, it invariably worsens and why wouldn’t it. I am not a bring swats back to school kind of guy, but what about having children work all day Saturday or after school. Why can’t schools mandate community service hours like the legal system can, and then have the police pick them up to make sure they do it. What do you think happens to children who receive no consequences, well I will tell you, they grow up to be adults who think they can do whatever they want and are easily angered when they can’t. They join gangs, they commit crimes and they are not the person you want sitting next to you at work.

Involved parents of good children don’t think this doesn’t apply to you or your family. What does your child think we he sees no consequences given to the disruptive student, do they think they are cool; do they mimic their behavior or fall into that crowd? Do we want to even take the chance that they might. Furthermore even if they don’t, if a teacher spends just ten percent of his or her time dealing with the unruly student, then your student is missing 18 days worth of instruction. I know teachers who say they spend up to fifty percent of their time working with the students who are discipline problems or don't care. If your child is in one of those classes, do you know how much instruction they are missing? Also what about the child thaat just needs that consequence one time to straighten out, to see the light. Whats going to happen to them if they never get it.

I know what you are thinking and you are right, of course it’s the parents of disruptive children’s responsibility, and yes it is their job to keep these children in line, to raise them right. The thing is, if we know some parents are abdicating their responsibilities, and it is painfully obvious that more than a few are, then isn’t it up to us, society, and the school system to step up and do something because if not us then who. Isn’t it time we stopped just hoping they did the right thing and did the right thing ourselves, regardless of effort or cost.

And the cost being prohibitive is another tired argument, because make no mistake we are already paying for it. Its’ not pay now or pay later, it’s we are already paying now and we are going to have to pay a lot more later. Think about it, we are already paying for it through higher insurance rates, crime and more police on the streets; we are footing the bill with violence and blood. How much is it worth for your daughter not to be raped or your son not to be murdered, or are you just content hoping it doesn’t happen to them, you or somebody else you know or love.

How many of those kids in the 45th street gang did schools make by ignoring their behavior or by giving them no real consequence for it. How many mothers are saying he was such a good boy until he got mixed up in the wrong crowd? How many could we have saved had we done something, my bet is more than a few.

Please don’t get me wrong, there are a lot of good kids here in Duval County the vast majority in fact want nothing more but to come to school and learn but there are kids that the schools need to look out for, because if they don’t then society will have too.

The Charter industry not above being deceptive when trolling for more money.

Imagine that.

The latest example is a study saying that charter schools receive something like 2,000 dollars less per student. First oy vey, face-palm, um nowhere in the study does it talk about how charter schools are forced to open or how the amount of money they get per pupil is hidden from their operators.  The conversation should be over right there but for some reason it has not.

The reason, greed, as charter school operators want more and more money, despite the fact they receive less money hasn’t stopped the owners and operators of charter schools getting very rich off of them.

Then in Florida charter schools also have received hundreds of millions in just the last few years in PECO (maintenance and upkeep) funds. In 2012-13 there were 203,000 charter school students and 90 million allocated, the end figures are a little off because only about two thirds of the charters were eligible, the same percentage of charters that actually receive grades but distributed industry wide there is an extra 443 bucks right there.

My point is twofold, first we shouldn’t be given for profit charter schools an extra dime as they seem to be doing quite fine and then them and their agents trolling for more money is self serving, not kid serving mind you but designed to serve their needs of their bank accounts only.

To read more click the links: http://stateimpact.npr.org/florida/2014/04/30/study-florida-charter-students-receive-2130-less-than-district-school-peers/#more-21925

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/04/30/charter-school-funding-_n_5242159.html