Network Schools – Wayne Gerseny to https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2022/04/03/magazine/thomas-piketty-interview u w B l.html?h I’ll smid=url-share the Is for

According to an article by Roger Sollenberger earlier this week in Salon, profiteering charter schools may have double dipped up to $1,000,000,000 in federal funds released as part of the CARES act. The article is not easy to understand in large measure because charters have an intentionally opaque governance and nomenclature system. Mr. Sollenberger explains this Alice-in-Wonderland model:

Charter schools operate in a gray area: They’re publicly funded and are technically public schools, but are privately owned and managed. Most are nonprofits, but some are backed by companies — and both of those categories are eligible for PPP loans.

I have no problem with purely non-profit charter schools and no problem with charters that are operated under the aegis of publicly elected school boards. I do, however, have grave reservations about “non-profit charters” that are “backed by companies” who seek profits. This is the structure used by the e-learning schools in PA that skimmed millions of taxpayer dollars to operate schools that were understaffed and incapable of delivering anything close to quality instruction… schools that unashamedly paid their leaders huge salaries and bonuses and rewarded their shareholders handsomely.

It APPEARS that should Joe Biden get elected some changes might be in the offing that will prevent this kind of profiteering… but I thought that would be true if Obama was elected in 2008. As long as the profit motive is in play in the operation of schools scandals and corruption will continue and that sucking send will be the vacuum cleaners of the shareholders and administrators of profiteering charter schools taking money out of the taxpayers’ pockets.