Dave Bangert, writing for the Lafayette Journal and Courier has an excellent column entitled A hedge fund buck to be made on school reform. I call it “excellent,” not because it notes some cautionary concerns about rushing to school privatization — though those are certainly concerns I have; but more because it connects some dots of which I was unaware.
He mentions:
#Retiring Lafayette School Corp. Superintendent, Ed Eiler’s warnings:
I’ve heard Lafayette School Corp. Superintendent Ed Eiler drop the following line twice now in the past few months. It’s part of his presentation, an hour-plus, critical of state and national attacks that he’s sure are intended more to tilt things in favor of commercial interests and the privatization of public schools than they are to improve the education of today’s third-grader.
“It’s like having a cut on your finger and you’re in the ocean, and the sharks are circling,” Eiler said Wednesday night. “If they’re circling your business, they’re not there to help you.”
#A Bloomberg Businessweek article entitled “Property Investors Bet on Rising Demand for U.S. Charter Schools.”
Entertainment Properties Trust and Inland Public Properties Development Inc. also are among companies that are investing in buildings for charter schools as demand for campuses grows. More than 500 of the schools opened last year, bringing the U.S. total to about 5,600, according to the National Alliance for Public Charter Schools, a Washington-based advocacy group. The investors buy or develop properties and get income from renting to companies that operate the schools.
#Karen Francisco’s column for the Fort Wayne Journal Gazette about David Brain – CEO of the aforementioned Entertainment Properties Trust – and his interest in Fort Wayne charter schools. They’re apparently making out like bandits on the charter school rent. (Bangert’s column notes that it is a little hard for Lafayette area people to relate immediately because our prime example of a local charter school is “he ground-up, parent-built New Community School.”)
#A provision that requires public schools to sell their unused property for the use of charter schools for a buck. (I note that SB 413 blocks sale of unused property at fair market value to another entity if a Charter School is interested and penalizes superintendents who fail to place unused property on the Dept. of Education’s listing of properties available to charter schools.
Bangert concludes:
Public schools are in deep when they try to fend off groups that are not only for choice — advocates laugh: Who in their right mind is against that? — but also are pouring millions of their own dollars into a game Eiler calls “venture philanthropy,” enterprises willing to put their riches and good intentions into best teaching methods as long as there’s some sort of return.
But take note, there really are sharks in the pool. And you, with the cut finger, are paying to feed them, whether you want to or not.
Well worth a read.
Thanks for posting this. Real estate is just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to the money being made by the school reform industry. There are also educational consulting firms and school reform 501 c 3 organizations that while not making a profit for a board of directors are bringing in not so insignificant salaries for their directors and professional staff. Many of the consultants and consultants formerly worked in public education or academia where they made far less and had to deal with taxpayers, university oversight or open door law.
The law already is that a school district that has an unusued school building has to submit that school building for a listing by the DOE of unusued school buildings. Then charters have up until 4 years to claim that building, either a lease or an outright purchase, for a $1. I should know because I represent the charter school association in a lawsuit where the Fort Wayne School district (allegedly) tried to skirt the law by transferring the property to an airport authority. The idea is that charter schools