Privatizing Taxpayer Dollars

Charter and vouchers schools are excellent at turning public dollars into private wealth. But they can also be excellent at converting public dollars into private assets.

Let's consider this example from, of course, Florida.

Renaissance Charter School Inc is a big-time charter school chain that has mastered the art of handing money off to companies that operate or support their schools, most notably Charter Schools USA, a for-profit charter management organization that works a lot in Florida and which apparently owns Renaissance Charters. 

The charter school in Leon County opened in 2012 as Governor's Charter, a for-profit charter. Then-governor Rick Scott was there to help cut the ribbon, as well as Democratic Congressional Candidate Al Lawson. But the school was already butting heads with the Leon County Public Schools. According to WFSU, the public school system had to take the charter to court to get some basic information like how many students had enrolled. The K-6 school had 560 students enrolled in that first year in the shiny new building, tucked in between a housing development and a big pond. 

Within a few years, the charter had expanded to K-8, but enrollment did not keep up, dropping to under 250. It had a grade of C from Niche, and a steady line of Cs and Ds from the state. By 2023, it was still getting complaints from the Leon County School District, which charged that the school was out of compliance with its contract on at least 9 points, including just basic sloppy stuff like no attendance taken for many students and failure to submit documents for Title I Grant reimbursements-- a bit of a problem for a Title I school.

That complaint was filed in April 2023. In July, the school announced that it would get a new name and new leadership. The Tallahassee Democrat and reporter Alaijah Brown have been all over this story for years reported that the new principal of Renaissance Academy would be Precilla Vaughn. Vaughn has a BS in secondary education from Florida State, and a Masters in educational leadership from American College of Education, an on-line for profit college based in Indianapolis. Vaughn had ten years of experience, all within the Charter Schools USA network. Reported Brown:

“We are thrilled to have Ms. Vaughn as our new leader at Renaissance Academy,” Charter Schools USA’s Florida State Superintendent Eddie Ruiz said this week in a news release. “She ushers in a new era in our school with a rebirth and renewal that gives our students new opportunities for growth."

Last spring the Renaissance Charter in Leon County announced that it would be closing because they had leased the property to Tallahassee Preparatory Academy. Too bad, 242 students, but the charter business is a business (specifically, it is very often a real estate business) not some philanthropy with a mission to take care of children, so see ya later. Teachers were told they could apply for a job in the new school or see if CSUSA had a place for them somewhere in its network.

The switch from charter to private is not an unusual one. A private school can grab taxpayer money with far less oversight and accountability than even the minimal amount that charters must deal with. Tallahassee Prep will not have to negotiate a contract with the Leon School District. 

Leon Schools superintendent Rocky Hanna expressed frustration over things going from bad to worse, thanks to universal vouchers.

"This is what I feared the most," Hanna told the Tallahassee Democrat. "These mom-and-pop private schools opening up their doors with no accountability whatsoever and cherry-picking students."

Sure enough. TPA is pitching itself as a STEM school, but it won't have resources for students with disabilities or for whom English is a second language-- those kinds of services aren't "built into the business plan." Also, students who don't score high enough on the state end of year exams in math and English Language Arts may not be able to get in or stay in. 

But the Leon County School District has not given up yet.

In July, the district started looking at legal action against Renaissance Charter. If the "public charter school" was closing, then its taxpayer-funded property was supposed to revert to the district. CSUSA declined to even provide a list of its assets.

The lawsuit didn't happen (lots of expensive trouble, decided a board majority), but then another bomb dropped. TPA was supposed to open in August. And it just... didn't. The education service provider for the school, Discovery Science Schools, told the Democrat that it was "inadequate enrollment." 

The building is 63,000 square feet. When it was brand new in 2012, its sale price was listed as $11.3 million. That price would have been paid by the taxpayers, but as one board member noted. Brown reports:

"The property is not ours. It belongs to Charter Schools USA. Even after the former occupant’s school was closed, the property did not revert back to the Leon County School District," School Board member Darryl Jones chimed in on social media.

"We do not have any jurisdiction to collaborate on anything relative to that property. Millions of dollars of technology and furniture and equipment paid for with taxpayer dollars locked in that building. Sad state of affairs."

This is just one of many such examples of this grift being run since charters first appeared. It can be even worse; in some states, the charter school may buy up an old school building, which means that taxpayers foot the bill for building the school, and then taxpayers foot the bill for the charter buying the school from the district.

In Pennsylvania, cyber charters are seriously overpaid, which has allowed Commonwealth Charter Academy (the 800 pound gorilla of cyber charters in PA) to spend nearly $100 million just on real estate. Sometimes they buy (a huge former Macy's near Pittsburgh) and sometimes they build new property (about eight miles away from where I am sitting right now). It's all done with dollars that taxpayers gave them to educate students, but instead it is going to create a real estate empire. And though that empire was paid for with taxpayer dollars, the taxpayers don't own a bit of it. CCA could decide tomorrow that it would like to get out of the school business and instead go into the lease and rental business, and that would just be tough luck for taxpayers.

All of this is part of larger picture of charter grift and self-dealing (check out this recent article about how Florida's charter queen Erika Donalds has made herself a bundle).

It's a sweet deal to be able to get the taxpayers to buy you some property, particularly when they gave the money for a different purpose. Watch for it in your community.