Report: Millions of Dollars in Fraud, Waste Found in Charter School Sector
The Washington Post - April 28, 2015, by Valerie Strauss - A new report released on Tuesday details fraud and waste...
The Washington Post - April 28, 2015, by Valerie Strauss - A new report released on Tuesday details fraud and waste totaling more than $200 million of uncovered fraud and waste of taxpayer funds in the charter school sector, but says the total is impossible to know because there is not sufficient oversight over these schools. It calls on Congress to include safeguards in legislation being considered to succeed the federal No Child Left Behind law.
The report, titled “The Tip of the Iceberg: Charter School Vulnerabilities To Waste, Fraud, And Abuse,” was released jointly by the nonprofit organizations Alliance to Reclaim Our Schools and the Center for Popular Democracy. It follows a similar report released a year ago by the same groups that detailed $136 million in fraud and waste and mismanagement in 15 of the 42 states that operate charter schools. The 2015 report cites $203 million, including the 2014 total plus $23 million in new cases, and $44 million in earlier cases not included in last year’s report.
It notes that these figures only represent fraud and waste in the charter sector uncovered so far, and that the total that federal, state and local governments “stand to lose” in 2015 is probably more than $1.4 billion. It says, “The vast majority of the fraud perpetrated by charter officials will go undetected because the federal government, the states, and local charter authorizers lack the oversight necessary to detect the fraud.”
The report makes these policy recommendations:
■ Mandate audits that are specifically designed to detect and prevent fraud, and increase the transparency and accountability of charter school operators and managers. ■ Clear planning-based public investments to ensure that any expansions of charter school investments ensure equity, transparency, and accountability. ■ Increase transparency and accountability to ensure that charter schools provide the information necessary for state agencies to detect and prevent fraud.
It also says:
State and federal lawmakers should act now to put systems in place to prevent fraud, waste, abuse and mismanagement. While the majority of state legislative sessions are coming to an end, there is an opportunity to address the charter school fraud problem on a federal level by including strong oversight requirements in the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA), which is currently being debated in Congress. Unfortunately, some ESEA proposals do very little reduce the vulnerabilities that exist in the current law. If the Act is passed without the inclusion of the reforms outlined in this report, taxpayers stand to lose millions more dollars to charter school fraud, waste, abuse, and mismanagement.
The charter school sector has expanded significantly in the last decade and now educates about 5 percent of the students enrolled in public schools. The Obama administration has supported the spread of charter schools; President Obama’s proposed budget for fiscal year 2016 includes $375 million specifically for charters, a 48 percent increase over last year’s actual budget.
Proponents say charters offer choices for parents and competition for traditional public schools. Critics say that most charters don’t perform any better — and some of them worse — than traditional public schools, take resources away from school districts, and are part of an effort to privatize public education.
The report says that any “effective, comprehensive fraud prevention system” should include:
■ Taking proactive steps to educate all staff and board members about fraud; ■ Ensuring that one executive-level manager coordinates and oversees the fraud risk assessment and reports to the board of directors, oversight bodies, and school community; ■ Implementing reporting procedures that include conflict disclosure, whistleblower protections, and a clear investigation process; ■ Undergoing and posting a fraud risk assessment conducted by a consultant expert in applicable standards, key risk indicators, anti-fraud methodology, control activities, and detection procedures; and ■ Developing and implementing quality assurance, continuous monitoring, and, where necessary, correction action plans, with clear benchmarks and reporting
The report details cases across the country, among them:
The District of Columbia In February 2015, the DC Public Charter School Board unanimously voted to revoke the charter of the Dorothy I. Height Community Academy Public Charter School. The DC Attorney General is suing the founder, Kent Amos, for diverting public education funding to a private company for his personal profit. That private management company paid Amos more than $2.5 million over the last 2 years. Over the past 10 years, the school has paid the private entity more than $14 million and, while costs to the private company declined over that time, management fees rose. The charter board’s oversight report showed “no pattern of fiscal mismanagement.” Members of the DC Public Charter School Board have described their limited ability to oversee for-profit management companies, which face no requirement to disclose salaries or other pertinent information.
Michigan In April 2014, Steven Ingersoll, founder of Grand Traverse Academy, was convicted on federal fraud and tax evasion. He did not report $2 million of taxable income in 2009 and 2010. The school’s audit revealed a $2.3 million prepayment to Ingersoll’s school management company. The school’s later decision to write down $1.6 million of the loan put the school in a deficit position for the first time. Ingersoll then used half of a $.8 million loan for school construction to pay down some of his debt to the school.13 After the founder’s ouster, his daughter-in-law continued to handle the finances of the school.
Ohio In January 2015, the state auditor released a report of the results of unannounced visits by inspectors to 30 charter schools. In nearly half of the schools, the school-provided headcount was significantly higher than the auditors’ headcount. Schools are funded based on headcount, so these inflated figures amount to taxpayer dollars siphoned away from students. Among the seven schools with the most extreme variances between reported head count and the auditors’ headcount, almost 900 students were missing, at a cost of roughly $5.7 million.16 Auditors identified eight other schools with troubling, but less significant variances. In June 2014, a grand jury indicted the superintendent and 2 board members of Arise! Academy in Dayton of soliciting and accepting bribes in exchange for awarding a “lucrative” consulting contract to a North Carolina-based company. The contract was worth $420,919 and the charter personnel received kickbacks in the form of cash, travel, and payments to a separate business.
California In July 2014, the Los Angeles Unified School District performed a forensic audit of Magnolia Public Schools. They found that the charter-school chain used education dollars to pay for six nonemployees’ immigration costs and could not justify $3 million in expenses over four years to outsource curriculum development, professional training, and human resources services that the school itself reported doing.
Calling all mayors: This is what police reform should look like
The coverage of police brutality over the last year, both in the mass media and through civilian video footage, has...
The coverage of police brutality over the last year, both in the mass media and through civilian video footage, has been a wake-up call for many Americans, shining a spotlight on what many communities of color already knew—our policing and criminal justice systems are infused with systemic racial bias.
Thanks to the relentless work of community advocates, the aggressive police tactics that routinely threaten the lives and safety of people of color have garnered unprecedented national attention.
This attention, however, is no guarantee of real change. In fact, one year after Michael Brown’s killing, police shootings and protests continue in Ferguson, Missouri.
Despite the growing body of evidence on the nature and extent of the problem, the path towards meaningful reform has not been clear, leaving many local leaders at a loss as to how to move forward.
But the actions of local government—mayors in particular—couldn’t be more important. Channeling the current momentum into transformative change will require leadership across local, regional, and federal levels, but mayors are in a unique position to be the vanguard, taking trailblazing steps towards transforming how police departments interact with their communities.
While some have bemoaned a lack of consensus around a roadmap to police reform, those on the ground—community members, organizers, elected officials, police officers and chiefs—raise the concepts of accountability, oversight, community respect, and limiting the scope of policing again and again. Our organizations spent close to a year collecting success stories and insight from communities across the country, from Los Angeles to Cleveland to Baltimore, to create a toolkit for advocates working to end police violence. We identified several common principles that all mayors can—and should—put in place to establish sustainable, community-centered and controlled policing.
Several of these principles have received national attention, such as demilitarizing police departments, providing police recruits with training in racial bias, de-escalation, and conflict mediation, and making police more accountable to communities through civilian oversight bodies and independent investigations of alleged police misconduct. Thanks to the commitment of a proactive mayor, this kind of community accountability is already being put in place in Newark, which just approved a progressive Civilian Complaint Review Board that provides landmark community oversight in a city with a long history of police brutality.
Mayors should also institute policies that scale back over-policing, especially for minor ‘broken-windows’ offenses that criminalize too many communities and burden already-impoverished households with exorbitant fees and fines. Ferguson’s court system became an infamous example, but routine targeting of and profiteering off of low-income communities of color is pervasive throughout the country. Local governments must not only fix broken municipal court systems but should also scale back the tide of criminalization through decriminalizing offenses that have nothing to do with public safety. With the strong support of the mayor, the Minneapolis City Council recently decriminalized two non-violent offenses—spitting and lurking—which had been used to racially profile.
The last piece of the puzzle may be politically controversial, but is absolutely fundamental to transforming our broken systems of policing and criminal justice and supporting safer and stronger communities. Local governments cannot continue to pour ever-increasing sums into city police budgets, while ignoring the most basic needs of residents living in over-policed areas: better schools, job opportunities, access to healthy food, affordable housing, and public transportation. Neighborhoods most afflicted by aggressive policing and high incarceration rates also have high levels of poverty, unemployment, and racial segregation. In many urban neighborhoods where millions of dollars are spent to lock up residents, the education infrastructure and larger social net are completely crippled. Investments to build up vulnerable communities need to be viewed as part of a comprehensive public safety strategy.
Baltimore mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake called for a Department of Justice investigation of the city’s police department only after tragedy struck and the community rose up in protest. It is time for the mayors of this country to instead take a proactive Mayoral Pledge to End Police Violenceto heal the wounds of broken policing and criminal justice policies before another devastating police killing.
Blackwell is the founder and CEO of PolicyLink. Friedman is the co-executive director of the Center for Popular Democracy.
Source: The Hill
Five Long Island nonprofits to share $70,000 in grants
Five Long Island nonprofits to share $70,000 in grants
Five Long Island nonprofits concerned with progressive social change were awarded funding by the Long Island Unitarian...
Five Long Island nonprofits concerned with progressive social change were awarded funding by the Long Island Unitarian Universalist Fund, which doled out $70,000 in its first round of grants for 2017. Three organizations received $15,000 apiece. These are the Center for Popular Democracy, which will use its award to organize elected officials on Long Island around progressive public policy solutions. The Child Care Council of Suffolk’s award has been earmarked for a graduate coalition for parents who have completed parent leadership initiative training, while the Pulse Center for Patient Safety and Advocacy will use its $15,000 award to train and empower African-Americans to advocate for better medical care.
Read full story here.
NATIONAL GROUPS CALL FOR DNC TO CAN SUPERDELEGATE SYSTEM
Fourteen national organizations boasting more than 10 million members are calling on the Democratic National Committee...
Fourteen national organizations boasting more than 10 million members are calling on the Democratic National Committee to end the use of superdelegates to elect the presidential nominee.
The move to end the use of superdelegates was pushed vigorously during the campaign by Sen. Bernie Sanders but many of those supporting the effort include backers of Hillary Clinton, the presumptive Democratic nominee.
DNC Rules Committee member and Rhode Island State Representative Aaron Regunberg has pledged to introduce language to end superdelegates, and several other Rules Committee members have agreed to support the effort at the Democratic National Convention at the end of July.
The organizations said in a joint letter that the superdelegates, who are typically party officials, are not elected by voters and can skew the nominating process. They say the superdelegates carry as much as the combined weight as pledged delegates from 24 states, the District of Columbia and four territories.
Organizations signing on to the letter include: Courage Campaign, Credo, Daily Kos, Demand Progress/Rootstrikers, Democracy for America, Center for Popular Democracy, MoveOn, National Nurses United, NDN, The Other 98%, Presente.org, Progressive Change Campaign Committee, Progressive Democrats of America, and Social Security Works.
Simon Rosenberg, the president of NDN and a former DNC staffer, who supported Hillary Clinton during the primary, said the use of superdelegates is “discordant with broader and vital efforts by Democrats to modernize and improve our democracy. If we want the voice of everyday people to be louder and more consequential in our nation’s politics, it must also be so in our Party.”
Another Clinton supporter, Joe Trippi, who ran Howard Dean’s unsuccessful presidential campaign in 2004, said a key party goal is to “empower voices from the bottom up. The top down idea of superdelegates is obsolete and is a good place to start.”
Sanders’ supporter Rep. Tulsi Gabbard, a superdelegate and former DNC official, also condemned the practice.
“The nominee of our party should be decided by who earns the most votes —not party insiders, unelected officials, or the federal lobbyists that have been given a vote in our nominating process. The current system stands against grassroots activists and the will of the voters,” she said. “We’ve seen a historic number of new voters and activists join our political process in the past year, many of whom are rightly upset at how rigged the political system can seem at times. If we want to strengthen our democracy and our party, we must end the superdelegate process.”
By MARK JOHNSON
Source
Photo Flash: Scarlett Johansson's OUR TOWN Reading Raises $500K for Puerto Rico Relief
Photo Flash: Scarlett Johansson's OUR TOWN Reading Raises $500K for Puerto Rico Relief
"We are deeply grateful to Scarlett Johansson, Kenny Leon and everyone involved in the production of this play for...
"We are deeply grateful to Scarlett Johansson, Kenny Leon and everyone involved in the production of this play for stepping up and contributing their talent to help towards the equitable and just rebuilding of Puerto Rico. This event demonstrates the importance of collective solidarity and responsibility and how powerful it is when we come together to help our communities," said Xiomara Caro, Director of New Organizing Projects for the Center of Popular Democracy and coordinator of Maria Fund.
Read the full article here.
Facebook Founder Gives $20mm Donation On Hillary To Defeat Trump's "Fear And Hostility" Campaign
Facebook Founder Gives $20mm Donation On Hillary To Defeat Trump's "Fear And Hostility" Campaign
A few weeks back we noted how Bullard had questioned the intentions of ex-Facebook founder Dustin Moskovitz in funding...
A few weeks back we noted how Bullard had questioned the intentions of ex-Facebook founder Dustin Moskovitz in funding the Center for Popular Democracy's Fed Up campaign (see "Why Is Facebook Funding "Anti-Fed" Activists"). The "Fed Up" group has mounted an aggressive effort to convince the Fed to keep rates ultra low noting they favor central banking policies that "are aimed at making sure lower income households and minorities share in the recovery to the same degree as the well off."
Ironically, Moskovitz, and his inflated FaceBook shares, are among the key beneficiaries of "ultra low rates" and not so much the poor and struggling people of this country. A fact that was not lost on St. Louis Fed president James Bullard. Per our previous post:
When it comes to Fed Up, "it's Facebook money," Bullard said. "I think it's kind of a funny thing for them to fund because they want low interest rates in an era where we are awash in low interest rates, so it's kind of crazy, isn't it?"
"I think that Dustin Moskovitz should be here, maybe he can helicopter in from Sun Valley or something instead of sending all these people, if he wants low interest rates. He could just come and argue about it," Mr. Bullard said.
Just a few short weeks later we now learn that the billionaire techie, and former college roommate of Mark Zuckerberg, is set to become one of the largest donors to the Democratic Party. According to CNN, Moskovitz will donate a total of $20 million to various Democratic organizations making him the 3rd most generous donor of this election cycle. But Moskovitz, at least if taken at his word, isn't really donating to elect Hillary as much as to defeat Trump saying that he wants to teach Republicans a lesson that by "supporting this kind of candidate, they compel people to act in response."
"This decision was not easy, particularly because we have reservations about anyone using large amounts of money to influence elections," Moskovitz and his wife, Cari Tuna, wrote in a post on Medium. "We hope these efforts make it a little more likely that Secretary Clinton is able to pursue the agenda she's outlined, and serve as a signal to the Republican Party that by running this kind of campaign - one built on fear and hostility?—?and supporting this kind of candidate, they compel people to act in response."
"Cari and I have dedicated our lives to figuring out how to do the most good we can with the resources we've been given. Until now, those efforts have not included making endorsements or contributions in presidential elections," Moskovitz wrote. "The Republican Party, and Donald Trump in particular, is running on a zero-sum vision, stressing a false contest between their constituency and the rest of the world."
But perhaps Moskovitz is less concerned about Trump spreading "fear and hostility" and more concerned about his recent comments suggesting that the only thing the Fed has created with "ultra low rates" is a "strong artificial stock market." Per CNN,
"They're keeping rates down because they don't want everything else to go down," the Republican presidential nominee told Reuters on Monday.
Trump said the "only thing that is strong is the artificial stock market."
"We have a very false economy," Trump told Reuters. "At some point the rates are going to have to change."
Sounds like someone is a little worried about bubbly tech markets?
By Tyler Durden
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Thanks to York School Board for Rejecting Charter Takeover
York Daily Record - November 4, 2014, by Rev. Aaron Willford, Sandra Thompson and Clovis Gallon - Over the past few...
York Daily Record - November 4, 2014, by Rev. Aaron Willford, Sandra Thompson and Clovis Gallon - Over the past few months, something remarkable happened in York. Parents, teachers, students, neighbors and faith leaders united to send a clear message that the education of York's children is more important than the profit margin of an out-of-state charter operator.
On behalf of that community, we would like to thank the York City School Board for standing up for our students, making sure their education comes first, and rejecting a charter takeover of our schools.
When the school board met on Oct. 15, Chief Recovery Officer David Meckley pressured board members to vote on an incomplete, poorly researched charter plan that was rolled out less than a week before. With so little time to review the plan and so many unanswered questions about it, the community urged the board to cast a no vote.
Rejecting the charter plan was not an easy decision for the school board, but it was the right decision — and we applaud their courage. If the plan had been enacted, money that should support students in the classroom would have flowed to a for-profit management company instead. City school children would have been treated like guinea pigs in a radical experiment, and their parents would have lost any say in how their neighborhood schools are run.
Perhaps the school board was looking into a crystal ball when it cast that vote. Just a week later, a federal judge appointed a receiver for Mosaica Education Inc., one of the two charter companies initially in the running to take over York city's schools. The heavily indebted Mosaica was sued by its primary lender in September after defaulting on its debt.
AdvertisementImagine where York's students would be if a charter operator took over their schools and, right out of the gate, found itself under enormous financial pressure for "a series of bad business decisions," as lender Tatonka Capital Corp. claims in its lawsuit against Mosaica.
The case against Mosaica followed a string of troubling studies questioning charter school oversight and accountability in Pennsylvania. A spring report from Auditor General Eugene DePasquale found that a lack of state oversight of charters was creating problems — with some observers comparing the current charter environment to the "wild, wild west."
A blistering report from the Center for Popular Democracy this fall revealed more than $30 million in proven or alleged fraud, waste, or abuse in Pennsylvania's charter school system over the past 17 years.
Giving Meckley a blank check on charterization in York would have been a big mistake.
Fortunately, the school board recognized how fraught with risk this plan was and chose to maintain local control of all the city's schools.
Now, it is critical for the school board to work in partnership with York's educators to improve the city's schools and give every child a shot at success.
Educators and administrators are already implementing a road map to fiscal recovery that will strengthen educational programs. We are glad that the school board is giving this "internal option," as it is known, an opportunity to work before taking any action that will negatively impact our schools, our students, or our community.
York city schools, like many other districts across the commonwealth, face a funding crisis created by deep cuts in state funding for public schools. All Pennsylvania school children deserve better from Harrisburg. It is high time our elected leaders reverse those cuts and put our schools back on track.
Until that happens, York's children should not be treated any differently than other Pennsylvania students. They shouldn't be guinea pigs in a charter experiment. And they shouldn't be deprived of the opportunity to attend their neighborhood schools.
Our school board agrees, and now it is up to all of us to take responsibility for the future of our city's public schools and the students who learn there.
We have no doubt that the York community is strongly committed to making our schools the best they can be. Working together, we can achieve truly remarkable things.
Rev. Aaron Willford is a member of York Concerned Clergy. Sandra Thompson is president of the York NAACP. Clovis Gallon is a teacher and York Education Association member.
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Activists Protest Universities Over Investments In Puerto Rico Bondholders
Activists Protest Universities Over Investments In Puerto Rico Bondholders
A coalition of social and economic justice groups has launched a one-week campaign to end what they view as problematic...
A coalition of social and economic justice groups has launched a one-week campaign to end what they view as problematic university investments. The New York-based Center for Popular Democracy (CPD) and partner organizations including three Make the Road branches will hold six protests along the East Coast, calling on Columbia, Harvard and Yale to pull their investments out of hedge funds that hold Puerto Rican debt and have advocated austerity measures in the U.S. territory, leading to mass school closings and higher tuition costs.
Read the full article here.
CORRUPT CONGRESSMEN DEMAND DIVERSITY FROM FEDERAL RESERVE
CORRUPT CONGRESSMEN DEMAND DIVERSITY FROM FEDERAL RESERVE
Do you know what our divided and divisive political system needs? More tribalism. And who would know that better than...
Do you know what our divided and divisive political system needs? More tribalism.
And who would know that better than Cherokee Senator Elizabeth Warren who has a letter out complaining that there are too many white men on the board of the Federal Reserve. The letter is co-signed by the usual clown show of the Congressional Black Caucus and the Progressive Caucus.
The first signature belongs to John Conyers whose wife pleaded guilty to a conspiracy to commit bribery. Also present are the likes of Maxine Waters and Frederica Wilson, Gwen Moore, former Nation of Islam supporter Keith Ellison, Bernie Sanders, Al Franken, Bernice Johnson and Alcee Hastings, who was impeached for bribery.
Bernice Johnson had her own ethical issues.
Longtime Dallas congresswoman Eddie Bernice Johnson has awarded thousands of dollars in college scholarships to four relatives and a top aide's two children since 2005, using foundation funds set aside for black lawmakers' causes. Eddie Bernice Johnson
The recipients were ineligible under anti-nepotism rules of the Congressional Black Caucus Foundation, which provided the money. And all of the awards violated a foundation requirement that scholarship winners live or study in a caucus member's district.
What's This?
And Maxine Waters? She's got a record.
The influential congresswoman has helped family members make more than $1 million through business ventures with companies and causes that she has helped, according to her hometown newspaper.
A few years ago Waters was investigated by the House Ethics Committee for steering $12 million in federal bailout funds to a failing Massachusetts bank (that subsequently got shut down by the government) in which she and her board member husband held shares.
Waters has also come under fire for skirting federal elections rules with a shady fundraising gimmick that allows her to receive unlimited amounts of donations from certain contributors. For years the veteran Los Angeles lawmaker has raked in hundreds of thousands of dollars in short periods of time by selling her endorsement to other politicians and political causes for as much as $45,000 a pop instead of raising most of her campaign funds from individuals and political action committees.
Then there's Alan Grayson who has his own hedge fund.
Rep. Alan Grayson manages hedge funds that use his name in their title, a practice prohibited by congressional ethics rules designed to prevent members from using their elected post for financial gain.
The specific ethics provisions tied to the funds Grayson manages, two of which are based in the Cayman Islands, sit in a sort of gray area and have never been examined by the House Ethics Committee.
Sure. Let's let these people dictate diversity at the Fed.
By Daniel Greenfield
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Gary Cohn publicly criticizes Trump's Charlottesville response and reportedly came close to resigning over it
Gary Cohn publicly criticizes Trump's Charlottesville response and reportedly came close to resigning over it
Top White House economic advisor Gary Cohn publicly criticized President Trump’s response to the violence in...
Top White House economic advisor Gary Cohn publicly criticized President Trump’s response to the violence in Charlottesville, Va., and reportedly came close to resigning over it.
In his first public comments on the matter, Cohn told the Financial Times in an interview published Friday that the Trump administration “can and must do better in consistently and unequivocally condemning” white supremacists, neo-Nazis and the Ku Klux Klan.
Read the full article here.
17 hours ago
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