The sun continues to shine on Florida's charter school hustlers

Barbara Smaller, New Yorker

Attention charter operators and ed profiteers. Florida is the place if you like warm weather and easy money in real estate. I got to see how the charter game is played in the Sunshine State during my days at USF when Jeb Bush was the guv. Now, under Rick Scott and his ed adviser Michelle Rhee (not to mention disgraced former ed commissioner Tony Bennett), the state has opened up even wider for charter expansion.

Fresen (R) chairs the Education Committee

Florida Rep. Erik Fresen,  a Tea Party Republican, chairs House Education Appropriations hearings on charter expansion. But his sister Maggie, and brother-in-law, Fernando Zulueta  run Academica Charter Schools, one of the country’s largest and wealthiest for-profit charter school management firms, with more than 90 schools in Florida alone. Fresen also has worked as a land-use consultant for Civica, an architectural firm that has designed several Academica schools. Really?

Fresen is pushing a bill HB 7083 that would require school districts to make public school buildings available to charters and turn over closed public school to charters. It would also make it easier for out of state charter operators to compete for schools and school real estate.

Does this sound like N.Y.? It should. Only FL has no pols like N.Y. Mayor de Blasio ready or able to really take on the powerful charter hustlers like their state's versions of Eva Moskowitz. Florida charters are among the worst in the country. Gee, I wonder why.

The most recent windfall for Fresen (who also represents the state's gaming interests) and family came when Palmetto Bay council members on Monday unanimously approved plans for a 1,400-student charter school within a residential and commercial complex development. The charter school will be part of the Somerset Academy Inc. franchise managed by Academica. Fresen’s district includes a part of Palmetto Bay and in 2011, he sponsored changes in state law to limit municipal power over charter schools.

The Miami Herald reports:

According to Palmetto Bay Mayor Shelley Stanczyk, the property’s zoning designation and laws governing charter schools all converged in “a perfect storm” to force the council’s hand to approve, with no guarantees that the school would adequately address the traffic and congestion issues sure to arise with an added influx of 1,400 students every work day...

...“If you want a place with as little control as possible, put it in an Enterprise Zone. And then if you’ve got a school with legislated protection, so that [municipal] control over approving and not approving is very limited, you’ve got a double whammy of not being able to control any of the effects,” Stanczyk said.

BASEBALL CHARTERS...Bloomberg News reports that the politically connected Zulueta is working on a deal with Major League Baseball and celebrity (why?) Pitbull to have his charter school company partner with the Washington Nationals on a D.C.-based charter operation. The Rhee connection with D.C. pols and Sec. Duncan, should play a big role here. Academica opened Somerset Preparatory Academy in Washington last September as a toe-hold in the region. Pitbull opened up last year's National Charter Schools Conference and was introduced by Zulueta.

Names that pop up in the deal include Nina Rees, president of the National Alliance for Public Charter Schools, who insists "it’s not a gimmick. Since most charters don’t have a building when they receive authorization, she said, they need a cash infusion up front..." AND Greg Richmond, president of the National Association of Charter School Authorizers, who "agrees that celebrity-brand schools are not to be dismissed."

I think Richmond, Zulueta, Rees, Fresen, Duncan, Scott, Pitbull... and their whole gang need to be dismissed.

Charter authorizers group slips quietly out ALEC's back door

No sooner had I posted about the National Association of Charter School Authorizers (NACSA) relationship with ALEC, then I received this NACSA press announcement via Business Wire.

Our work with ALEC has been focused entirely on promoting excellent charter schools. As part of our annual review processes, however, we determined that alternative strategies would be more effective in achieving these policy objectives. Thus we will not be renewing our membership in ALEC when it expires next month.”

If there ever was a more cowardly statement or a more unethical stand taken by an education group, I haven't seen it. When first questioned by Huffington writer Ziad Jilani, about NACSA's current participation in ALEC, using public school money to pay their ALEC bills, director Greg Richmond refused to comment. The implication being that the charter school group's affiliation ended long before the recent exposure of ALEC as a far-right, racist, and anti-union consortium of corporate interests.

Instead of leaving ALEC in protest, and not wanting to offend the corporate patrons who pay his salary, Richmond opts for the tepid statement above and letting his now-admitted membership in ALEC run out in June.

If any more evidence was needed to show that the current network of  private charter school operators and their lobbyists are little more than conduit for corporate interests, as opposed to serving the interests of public education, here it is.

ALEC finds a friend in the charter world

The American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) is an  extreme right-wing, anti-union, corporate front group that has worked successfully to pass pro-corporate laws in state legislatures across the country. They have been especially active in pushing legislation that supports school vouchers, privately-managed charter schools, and the outlawing of collective-bargaining rights for teachers.

Following the outcry over the group's pushing of  "Stand Your Ground" laws and racist voter-suppression acts, at least 15 major corporations, foundations, and other organizations have decided to end their funding commitments to ALEC.

Richmond

But ALEC has another way of financing itself that doesn't involve private corporations at all, writes Huffington's Zaid Jilani.  He reports that The National Association of Charter School Authorizers (NACSA) is one of ALEC's members at least through 2009 and may well still be a member and is using public school money to support NACSA's work. NACSA's president and CEO Greg Richmond joined ALEC's Education Task Force around 2009.

Richmond's response:

 NACSA has worked with Democrats for Education Reform, the Progressive Policy Institute, the Black Alliance for Educational Options, the Aspen Institute, ALEC, and the National Governors Association, among many others, to impact charter school policy and practice.

Jilani writes:

"I followed up to ask if NACSA was currently an ALEC member. NACSA gave me no response."

Richmond is no stranger to Chicago where he worked under Paul Vallas. Vallas then brought him and NACSA to New Orleans to help establish a privately-run charter system there in the wake of Hurrican Katrina. I wrote about him and NACSA last December when they ran this great charter school hustle in Illinois.