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Wednesday, February 5, 2020

Erika Donalds operator of the Classical Charter school invites Trump to town

Sigh, okay, deep breaths,

Donald Trump has no idea about education, at the state of the union he shilled for school choice, which is little more than getting the public to pay for religious educations and lining the pockets of charlatans and mercenaries with charters. He appointed Betsy Devos perhaps the worst cabinet member ever to be secretary of education, and Erika Donalds the operator of the classical charter school worships at the alter of Trump and in a tweet invited him to town.



https://twitter.com/ErikaDonalds/status/1225073674757246976

I guess we should be glad she took a break from shilling for discrimination, something she did all weekend.

I have concerns, grave concerns about the classical charter school, and they range from the teaching of non science, the banning of books, the exclusion of certain students and the operator thinking Donald Trump has a role to play in education. 

Jacksonville is this really what we need? 
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Tuesday, February 4, 2020

Can you buy and sell public schools? Apparently if they are charters you can.

Um, how much proof do we need that charters aren't public schools? No, what they are is publicly funded profit centers where in return for all that cash, thier students have to take the FSA. They are exempt from hiring practices, construction requirements and many unfunded mandates that public schools are required to do and for a cherry on top, now they are being bought and sold with regularity. Charters are not public schools and we should stop pretending they are. 

 From the Real Deal,
Andre Agassi, the world’s former No. 1 tennis player, had a punishing backhand that led to points against his opponents. Now, as a charter school developer, his company has found a way to get in and out of deals quickly and turn a profit.
Turner-Agassi Charter School Facilities sold the Franklin Academy at 5000 Southwest 207th Terrace in Pembroke Pines for $60.5 million to Erudite Properties, led by Scott Sznitken, Executive Director of Florida Charter Foundation, records show...
...Turner-Agassi’s strategy is to act as a “bridge developer” for charter schools, fronting the cost for site selection and construction and then leasing the property to a charter school operator. The group then sells the property to the charter operator once it reaches its enrollment goal, according to Turner-Agassi’s website.
The strategy has proven successful in the past. In 2016, Turner-Agassi sold a Boynton Beach charter school for $22.3 million. The same year it also sold Franklin Academy in Cooper City for $20 million...
...Charter schools are becoming an increasingly popular real estate investment for developers, as the supply of available locations narrows, financing becomes more readily available and demand grows for non-traditional schools in Florida.
Ugh, gross, mercenaries looking to profit off the backs of our children. Making money not whats best for kids is their bottom line.

To read more, click the links,

https://medium.com/in-the-public-interest/charter-schools-are-a-hot-real-estate-market-and-thats-bad-for-students-153fe8554bb4

https://www.forbes.com/sites/petergreene/2018/08/13/how-to-profit-from-your-non-profit-charter-school/#3e171d833547
Image result for charter schools steal public money cartoon"

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Senate Bill 62 poised to send hundreds of millions more to charter schools. (draft)

I know I may get heat for this but the GOP in Tallahassee really hates public schools and this despite the fact over 400 charters have failed, really loves them. It's not because they are better mind you, it's because of the wheel barrels full of cash they give them. Well friends SB 62 is poised to give charters hundreds of millions more.

SB 62 is as close to a train bill as you can get. That's a lot of nominally associated issues strung together in the hopes of giving somebody something to vote for, or cover if someone votes for something dreadful.

https://www.flsenate.gov/Session/Bill/2020/62?fbclid=IwAR39mjFmoJHxMSVmjwhIEtl-vph3Sp7EkfkapKj8BJqybfTa_gHkp-GOdEw 

The dreadful part here is it would require districts that had referendums designed to help public schools share any revenue with charters on a per pupil basis and to give you some scale that would cost Jacksonville alone 200 million dollars.

From the Ledger:
A bill proposed by state Sen. Kelli Stargel, R-Lakeland, would, among several things, provide additional funding to school districts. But it would also allow charter schools to dip into some of those funds.
‒ Mandating that any county surtax passed in the future for school building projects be shared proportionately with charter schools.
I guaranty you this is the only part of the bill that the GOP cares about. Sure it sprinkled in a couple nice things right before it hits districts in the head with a shovel.
I just want to remind you that up till now, localities got to decide what they did with their money and charters are often newer and exempt from many of the requirements public schools have to do. 
Then most insidiously, this is how charters make money. They lease their buildings often from sister organizations and then pay that organization their rent, often above market value, and guess what money generated from surtaxes can be used to make lease payments. Public school districts suffer and charter owners get richer and richer and richer.

Charters all over the state just saw dollar signs.  
Image result for scrooge mcduck"
  
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Monday, February 3, 2020

Marco Rubio weighs in on the Step up for Students discrimination controversy, sadly he's all for it.

This is depressing, here is the Senator's statement. 

You know instead of saying lets fix the problem so there isn't any publicly funded discrimination, he blamed the controversy on warped wokeness from the radical left. Like state board of ed member Ryan Petty and Rep, Byron Donalds, he blames the messenger and shrugs his shoulders at the discrimination.

Am I missing something? Shouldn't we be doing better? Is it to much to ask that the public doesn't pay for discrimination?

 Luckily instead of screaming about religious persecution, or justify and supporting discrimination, some people are proposing solutions.



Friends this is not complicated. Discrimination, bad, public paying for it even worse.

 We should be doing better than publicly funded discrimination and we should be doing better than Rubio.

 To read more, click the link. https://www.orlandosentinel.com/news/education/anti-lgbt-school-vouchers/os-ne-rubio-tax-credit-scholarship-20200203-upehuymvo5bndfcks2qegwon4e-story.html
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The new appointee to the state board of Education, Ryan Petty, comes out swinging in favor of discrimination.

From both the I cannot make this up and what the $#@^ files, new appointee to the state board of education, hot off the heels of revelations about his disturbing anti public ed tweets, Ryan Petty has come out singing in favor of discrimination. JC Florida what is going on?!?



Um, so the discrimination's okay?

By the way he was retweeting something a hack from the Cato institute vomited out.

Once again, so the discrimination is okay?

So unlike decent folks who care about kids, he blamed the reporters for revealing the discrimination. So unlike decent folks and saying lets fix this so publicly funded schools are inclusive, he BLAMED THE REPORTERS FOR REVEALING THE DISCRIMINATION!!

He's saying, sshh, why did you reveal the discrimination.

This $#@^er is now on the state board of education. Why do I not feel optimistic he's going to make things better.

Here is another tweet of his;

 

So you know, a little discrimination is okay. And don't worry that the OS said it was 156 schools, facts never get in the way of guys like Petty. 


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Jacksonville has troubling ties to publicly funded discrimination

The Orlando Sentinel did a story about how Florida's voucher schools are allowed to discriminate and how the public is paying for it.


Old Plank Christian Academy which took in $1,068,112, Providence School (314,593), West Meadows Baptist Academy (210,718) Harvest Community School (97,895) Trinity Christian Academy, (3,853,573) University Christian (2,226,934) Cedar Creek Christian School (1,634,696) and Eagle's View Academy (1,339,823).

I wondered what Jacksonville companies might be supporting them because I had done a piece about it a few days ago.


But when I went back they had taken down all of their annual reports


i was kind of blown away by that, how sketchy, but what they didn't take down was all their press releases, I mean for now anyways

So I looked through them and found a few companies with Jacksonville connections







I only went back 7 pages but there were a couple

Then as I mentioned in another blog, the person behind the Charter at the classical charter school, Erika Donalds and her husband Byron spent the weekend defending the discrimination on twitter and our very own council man Diamond weighed in as well., inexplicable blaming teacher unions for the controversy


Diamond may be great with dogs and veterans, but he is not a good man.

Okay, don't the people of Jacksonville deserve to know our connections to the discriminatory program? I think they do.
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Troubling details about Jax's new Classical Charter School

First let me say in my opinion the Times Union should be a little ashamed of their Classical Charter school editorial, it read like a paid advertisement and I think instead of basking in the glow of ambassador Rood we started to ask tough questions.


If you wanted to contact the classical charter school, the link takes you to the Optima Foundation


The Optima Foundation is led by Erika Donalds


Erika Donalds has rather interesting views on banning books and troubling views on LGBTQ individuals





Then her and her husband, State Rep Byron Donalds, who often votes on pro charter legislation spent all weekend on Twitter complaining about the backlash the states voucher provider has gotten after it was revealed it allows discrimination against LGBTQ children


That's a lot but there is more, Hilsdale College who provides the curriculum, recently put out a poll espousing the dangers of socialism. 

Could you imagine if a public school did a survey about the dangers of conservatism? Well that's the equivalent of what Hillsdale college, the people behind the new classical charter school have done. This is outrageous. https://www.facebook.com/hillsdalecollegemichigan/posts/2163349173765534 

Here is a little more about Hillsdale



 
Um, I have questions about what they are going to teach and who are they going to take or exclude..

Finally and it's been a minute, but a while back I got a tip about a sweetheart deal for the property which included the city cleaning it up because it was contaminated.

Shouldn't we ask the questions? Give people all the facts? Once again I would check the bank account of whoever wrote that Editorial, because none of above was mentioned and it's all relevant.
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Sunday, February 2, 2020

Representative Byron Donalds, admits discrimination occurs in Florida's voucher schools, he just doesn't care.

I will let his words do his talking for him.



For beeps sake, these guys. I don't envy the back pains they must have twisting themselves into knots.

Let me ask you a question, if 25 McDonalds' wouldn't serve African Americans would you shrug your shoulders and say, well most do so it's okay. Well that seems to be what Donald's is saying.

Of course not, it's also not just 25 schools. The Orlando Sentinel reported it was 156, but you know facts never get in the way these days. 

https://www.orlandosentinel.com/news/education/os-ne-voucher-schools-lgbtq-discriminate-20200123-s5ue4nvqybcgrbrxov5hcb46a4-htmlstory.html

It's not just LGBTQ kids either, many voucher schools don't accept children with disabilities and the system is set up so voucher schools can deny and or kick out any kid they want for any reason, and guess what the public is paying for it.

Florida, shouldn't we be doing better?
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Step up for students takes down their annual reports to hide their donors. Wait what?!?

So step up for students takes in hundreds of millions of dollars and in years past had put who the donors were in their annual reports, not the amounts mind you, well friends, their annual reports have now been scrubbed from the internet and that is shady as #@$%.

 Step up for Students, has received quite a bit of criticism for financing vouchers to schools that practice discrimination, and some of those business that had given them money have recently declared they no longer would. 

 From NBC news;

    Wyndham Destinations became the third major company in three days to announce it will stop donating millions of dollars to Florida’s private school voucher program after a newspaper investigation found that some of the program's beneficiaries discriminate against LGBTQ students.
Wyndham said that it told the organization last year that it would "halt funding if concerns about the voucher program were not addressed."
"As we have not seen any further action to address our concerns, we are today discontinuing our support and funding for Step Up For Students and hope that the organization will quickly work with the Florida Legislature to immediately end any discriminatory practices existing within the voucher program," the company told NBC News and CNBC on Thursday afternoon.
https://www.nbcnews.com/feature/nbc-out/third-company-pulls-florida-voucher-donations-over-anti-gay-school-n1126686
Now any info is completely gone.
Let me ask you a question, if SUFS was proud of what they were doing and were on the up and up why would they hide who donates to them? How is it permissible that information about hundreds of millions diverted from the state treasury is allowed to be secret?
Here is a tweet giving a link to their 17-18 annual report, 
Want to know who is supporting @StepUp4Students  and the schools that are allowed to discriminate. Urban outfitters @UrbanOutfitters  say its not true Their 17-18 report is online, pages 13 &14 stepupforstudents.org/wp-content/upl
Now it takes you to a 404 page, and if you google step up for students annual report they all take you to that or a version of that page.
Only in Florida

Image result for step up for students annual reports"
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Saturday, February 1, 2020

Representative Anna Eskamani attacked for fighting against school discrimination (draft)

This is what I don't get, even if you are a fan of school choice, unless you are a religious zealot, you should be outraged by the voucher system set up in Florida. Let me describe it to you, voucher schools can do whatever they want and there is so little oversight you might as well say there is none,  and the public is supposed to gleefully pay for it, and there you go, Florida's voucher system in a nutshell.

Online on Facebook and twitter, people like the representative and Journalist Scott Maxwell have been the target of attacks, merely for thinking publicly funded discrimination should come to an end. Friends, what is wrong with that proposal?

If some private school believes so adamantly in it, let them teach their hate without tax payer dollars. How is that asking too much? 

The representative was also attacked by a Jacksonville City Councilman, Rory Diamond who has fought against the public schools in Jacksonville and taken over a million dollars from pro charter interests. He said representative Eskamani was bought off by the teacher unions as if decent folks shouldn't be against discrimination or for transparency.



People will also insanely throw out, people that are against discrimination are against Christianity which is patently ridiculous. It's the discrimination, no matter who does it, which is what people take issue with. Though if your church teaches you to hate and discriminate and you stay, then that is on you.

Then inexplicably despite the maleficence being exposed and more and more businesses dropping out, Tallahassee has no plans to rein in the hate schools

https://www.sun-sentinel.com/news/politics/os-ne-voucher-programs-lgbtq-legislature-20200130-jbnxzjs5fjfldm4kfgsrc4gaay-story.html?

 and is even looking to role back what little accountability they have. Um, when did up become down? 

http://jaxkidsmatter.blogspot.com/2020/01/despite-revelations-of-rampant.html

Florida we can and should be doing a lot better than this.

 Image may contain: possible text that says 'ANNA ESKAMANI Democrat for Florida House 47 A "I STAND WITH KLANNED PARENTHOOD!" "NO SCHOOL CHOICE FOR GAYS!"'
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