THE CHARTER DEBATE-After reading Denise Fulton’s CityWatch article about Charter schools taking over the LAUSD and destroying civilization as we know it, I got to thinking.
As a third generation Californian, I grew up in the heyday of Governor Pat Brown’s Master Plan for Education, which put California’s free public education system at the top of education systems across the nation. The theory back then was twofold: teach kids to “learn to how learn” and they will be good to go for life -- no matter what jobs they ultimately take. He believed the investment in education would pay off handsomely by providing qualified employees for all the employers who would be flocking to California.
The system worked like a champ for a long time. That is, until politics and greed destroyed its underpinnings. What I see now passed off as “education” is pitiful compared to what California provided to me for free.
I’ve stayed away from weighing in on education for the same reason I’ve been reluctant to talk about pensions -- I’m too close to the issue because of my old day job. During my last seven years with the State Mediation and Conciliation Service, a majority of the employee organization contract cases I mediated were for K-12 schools, Community Colleges, the California State University System, and various campuses of the University of California. Full disclosure: around the time I retired from State service, I also wound up as a Board Member for a Charter School -- The Los Feliz Charter School for the Arts, when that Charter relocated to Glassell Park. For two years, I was their treasurer.
What I saw firsthand ultimately led me to resign in 2013 – see the link to a copy of my resignation letter to the Board below this story.
My ultimate takeaway is twofold. First, many Charter schools are essentially private schools paid for with taxpayer money and supplemented by very vigorous donations all of which still adds up to less than a real private school would cost. Second, Charter schools are a major industry for the same financial services industry folks who have monetized other facets of education such as colleges and trade/technical schools. Other than creating huge amounts of debt to be managed, I haven’t seen any actual improvement in the education of our children as a result of this trend.
As Jack Humphreville says, let’s follow the money -- unless you actually believe that the Charter Schools Association spent upwards of a couple million dollars to elect a majority on the LAUSD Board because they’re bursting with altruism. Or that Eli Broad wants to donate a few hundred million to help kids in LA because he’s just a really nice guy. If you believe these assertions, then you don’t need to read any further.
The economics of Charter vs. LAUSD schools are fundamentally different. Regular public schools have most of their money doled out in such a way that it can only be used for specific purposes, such as physical plant, wages, benefits, classified vs. certificated funding, and various other categories of educational programs. There are also very specific requirements for timetables and public hearings to set a budget each year, and lots of details for quarterly reporting. Furthermore, the State rarely pays on time, so public agencies have to resort to selling bonds to smooth out their cash flow. Regular K-12 public schools can’t buy chewing gum without a lot of paperwork and oversight -- I mean really.
Charter schools are subject to no such oversight, so the public never knows what the money goes for. There’s no requirement for public hearings in advance of adopting a budget for a Charter School -- and they are not subject to the same detailed accounting of their finances.
For example, Special Education for ADA students is expensive. An individual plan for one covered student can cost tens of thousands of dollars per year, and often involves incredible amounts of detailed provisions as well as litigation costs. Under the law there is no cap on the amount of money which must be spent on any covered child. All schools are subject to ADA regulations and must pay for special needs kids. But while public agencies by and large comply with the law, Charters usually do everything in their power not to take, or to get rid of, and to evade any and all special needs obligations by using a variety of strategies.
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Another major source of savings for Charter schools is payroll. Almost all public schools have contracts with unions; they hire only credentialed, certificated personnel and pay a lot in benefits for their employees. Charters usually do none of the above. They like to use ‘extra’ sources of revenue to pay for other things.
Charters tend to hire younger, less expensive teachers, many with provisional credentials and no specialties. They make them sign onerous (often questionable) individual employment agreements. The same is true for supervisory personnel and managers. Charters are not subject to rigorous reporting requirements as to how they spend their dollars. It’s just like in the private sector where non-union wages and benefits are on the order of 40 to 60 percent cheaper than for unionized folks.
The opportunities for outside entities to make money off of Charter schools abounds. For instance, Charter schools can’t raise revenues via bonds, so they have to go out and borrow the money to make their cash flow work. Well, guess who’s available to “help” them? And at what costs, in terms of sole source long-term contracts with high interest rates? Further, most Charter schools can’t afford seasoned professional managers, so guess what again?
Privatization to the rescue -- with subcontracting, hiring of questionably qualified people, and virtually no public disclosure of anything.
And let’s see how the lawyers make out. Since the legal requirements are different for Charter schools, an entirely new industry of anti-union Charter school law firms has popped up, with no restrictions on how much they can charge and few rules defining the boundaries of their legal advice. Just try to file a public records request with a Charter School.
The actual educational quality of Charters varies a lot. What most Charter schools do – that is, the ones that are prominently mentioned as “wonderful” -- is to run “quasi-private” schools on the public dime. They do this by reallocating the money they receive in all the ways I have detailed above, and by combining that with what I can only call “hyper-aggressive fundraising” campaigns, using peer pressure to extract money from the parents.
Parents who are middle class or better look at all this in comparison to the $15,000 to $25,000 a year it costs for a real private school (per child!. Donating something like $5000 a year to the Charter school fundraising entity seems relatively cheap. But if you’re a Title 1 parent, not so much. So guess who goes out and cherry picks from the overall LAUSD student population?
It raises a legitimate question about who will be left in the regular LAUSD school system after the Charters have skimmed off the students who come from families that can afford to support the school.
More later … after I’ve had a chance to digest the Great Public Schools Now documents in the context of reality.
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(Tony Butka is an Eastside community activist, who has served on a neighborhood council, has a background in government and is a contributor to CityWatch. Tony can be reached at [email protected]) Edited for CityWatch by Linda Abrams
-cw
CityWatch
Vol 13 Issue 80
Pub: Oct 02, 2015
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