Credit ratings agency: Charter school growth has “volatile” impact on public school district funding
This is In the Public Interest’s pick of recent news about the effort to privatize public education in California. Not a subscriber? Sign up here.
This week’s highlights
- Credit ratings agencies see charter school growth as having a “volatile” impact on public school district funding.
- Why privatized energy production is a barrier to the public control necessary for implementing sound climate change policies.
- Private prison corporation GEO Group has published its first-ever Human Rights and Environmental, Social & Governance (ESG) report.
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Education
1) National: In the Public Interest’s Jeremy Mohler debunks the myth that charter schools are innovative while traditional neighborhood public schools are behind the times. “A simple Google search turns up countless examples of public school districts, leaders, and teachers, doing remarkable and innovative things just this week. (…) Meanwhile, many a charter school is simply duplicating what’s going on in traditional public schools. Large chains sometimes even dictate materials and curricula from their corporate headquarters. At Rocketship, if a teacher or even principal believes a given software product isn’t appropriate for a set of students, they aren’t allowed to change the program.”
2) National: NPE Action invites us to join Carol Burris and her guests Jessica Levin of Public Funds Public Schools and Katherine Dunn of SPLC as they talk about DeVos, vouchers, and school privatization. This Wednesday at 10 am eastern on WBAI.
3) California: The Los Angeles Unified School District has cracked down on charter schools that took district classrooms and then didn’t use them. “A state law known as Prop. 39 requires California school districts to offer classrooms at a relatively modest cost to any charter school that asks for them — and in L.A., many charters do ask. Roughly one out of every five charter schools in the city is “co-located” on an LAUSD campus. But recently — and abruptly — LAUSD officials have decided to crack down on co-located charter schools that over-estimated the amount of space they’d need. On Tuesday, LAUSD leaders said they’re demanding payment of hefty ‘over-allocation fees’ from 41 co-located charter schools that, in the end, didn’t enroll enough students to justify the number of classrooms the district gave them. The charters’ Prop. 39 demands likely forced their ‘host’ schools to give up classrooms dedicated for art, music, science or computer classes. ‘Those classrooms were left empty, not used by anybody,’ said L.A. Unified School Board member Jackie Goldberg.”
4) California: In rating San Diego Unified School District bonds, Fitch has spelled out how charter schools can have an impact. “Competition from charter schools exacerbate[s] the volatility of state funding to the district,” Fitch says. “The district expects near-term enrollment to stabilize due to the closure of a charter school with about 1,000 students as well as improved facilities resulting from recent capital investments. The district reports that about 450 students from the closed charter returned to the district for the 2019–2020 school year. There are currently no applications pending for new charter schools; however, given the significant presence of charter schools and the resulting highly competitive environment as well as demographic changes contributing to fewer school age children in the district, Fitch expects enrollment trends to continue to result in just stagnant revenue growth. The district has no meaningful independent revenue raising ability due to the strict property tax limitations of California’s Proposition 13.”
5) California: The founder and CEO of Inspire Charter Schools, Nick Nichols, was placed on a temporary leave of absence. “This comes a week after a major player in the state’s charter school industry said it was rescinding Inspire’s membership and recommending an independent audit of the school’s management. (…) Inspire is a home-based charter school enrolling students in California. It has two schools in San Diego County overseen by the Dehesa School District.”
6) California: The Bond Buyer reports “the Los Angeles area’s transportation agency is preparing for the coming wave of baby boomer retirements by partnering to create a charter school to train some of their replacements. (…) It also announced that the SEED Foundation, a 22-year-old nonprofit that has created successful urban, college-preparatory public boarding schools targeting disadvantaged youth in Baltimore, Washington, D.C., and Miami, had been selected through a request-for-proposal to operate the school.” [Sub required]
7) Florida: Nine county school board are going to the state Supreme Court to challenge “the constitutionality of a controversial 2017 law that sought to bolster charter schools. The school boards filed a notice Friday that is an initial step in asking the Supreme Court to take up the case. The move came after the 1st District Court of Appeal last month upheld the constitutionality of the law. The appeals court backed a decision by a Leon County circuit judge, who rejected arguments that the mammoth education law improperly infringed on the rights of school boards to operate their districts.” In addition to Polk, the school boards are from Alachua, Bay, Broward, Hamilton, Lee, Orange, St. Lucie and Volusia counties.
8) Florida: An administrative law judge has upheld “the Manatee County School Board’s July 23 decision to terminate the charter of Lincoln Memorial Academy, a charter school in Palmetto that began with great hope but quickly spiraled into corruption and controversy.”
9) Illinois: Charter school teachers at Passages Elementary School, “a one-site charter that serves primarily immigrant and refugee students, have voted unanimously to authorize a strike, setting the stage for the fourth charter teacher walkout in Chicago in less than a year.” The Chicago Teachers Union has voted in overwhelming numbers to authorize a strike, and is expected to set a strike date on Wednesday. Check @CTULocal1 for updates.
10) Louisiana: Writing in The Nation, Casey Parks, who was a staff writer at The Hechinger Report and is now a Spencer fellow in education reporting at Columbia University, takes a deep look at “The Unmet Promises of a New Orleans Charter School.” She writes, “in recent years, charter high schools with SCI’s college-for-all mission have celebrated as 100 percent of their graduating classes enrolled in college. Few have publicized how their alumni fared after enrolling, but in 2011, the Knowledge Is Power Program, or KIPP, the nation’s largest nonprofit charter school network, released a report criticizing its own outcomes. Yes, KIPP officials wrote, their first students in Houston and the Bronx went on to college at more than double the average rate of their peers. But KIPP found that only a third of its alumni earned a bachelor’s degree — above average for low-income students but a long way from KIPP’s goal of 75 percent. (…) Rinata Williams still wants a degree, though pursuing one has left her worse off financially. She is deeply in debt, and her credit score dropped after she defaulted on the $22,000 she owes in student loans. For now, she works the night shift in a post office mail room, but she said she wants to help people.”
11) Minnesota: Teacher and education advocate Steven Singer takes a look at two of the key supporters of Minnesota school privatization, Ted Kolderie and Joe Nathan. “Over the last three decades, Nathan has made a career of sabotaging authentic public schools while pushing for school privatization. He is director of the Center for School Change, a Minneapolis charter school cheerleading organization, that’s received at least $1,317,813 in grants to undermine neighborhood schools and replace them with fly-by-night privatized monstrosities.”
12) Minnesota: A charter school in Waldorf has closed 10 days after it opened because of low enrollment. “Wilkening said he got a late start in marketing his school this year and school leaders will ramp up their recruitment efforts before next fall.”
13) Tennessee: The Metro school board in Nashville has denied two Rocketship charter school applications. “Several board member said there was not enough funding and there was a disagreement on how the schools operate.”
14) Virginia: Check out this short video by Kellen Squire, emergency room RN nurse, former elementary school nurse, and Democratic primary candidate for Lieutenant Governor of Virginia talking about how privatizing public schools is a bad idea.
15) Upcoming meeting: On Wednesday, Oct 9, from 12–2, the Shanker Institute will host a discussion on “Zombie Education Reform: Without A Meaningful Base in Research Evidence, Can Support for Online Charters and Education Vouchers be Sustained?”
Infrastructure
16) National: As climate crisis protests sweep the globe, Jonah Hyatt says privatized energy production is a barrier to the public control necessary for implementing sound policies. “Privatization of natural resources and energy production has only proven to be a direct obstacle to climate change reform and is fundamentally anti-consumer through the near monopolization of the marketplace. Without immediate action on taking down the private energy behemoths, our country may make little to no effort on climate change reform, which will have deadly consequences.”
17) National: Journalist, economist, and radio host Doug Henwood fires back at the idea that the Green New Deal should be financed with private capital. “In public-private partnerships, the public is the junior partner. This is a very bad idea. The GND should be a public sector project, not an opportunity for private equity to shake us down.”
18) Missouri: St. Louis 7th Ward Committeewoman Marie Ceselski says “looks like THE Week Rex Inc Airport Privatization Scam moves forward w/ RFQ.” See also Nick Desideri of SEIU Local 1’s thread on the privatization process of St. Louis Lambert International Airport drawing from the work of St. Louis Post-Dispatch columnist Tony Messenger.
Criminal Justice and Immigration
19) National: In the midst of widespread criticism of its practices, GEO Group has published its first-ever Human Rights and Environmental, Social & Governance (ESG) report. The report, found here, says, “this report builds on that important milestone by providing disclosures related to how we inform our employees of our company’s commitment to respecting human rights; the criteria we use to assess human rights performance; and our contract compliance program, remedies to shortcomings in human rights performance, and independent verification of our performance by third party organizations.”
20) National: Newsweek Senior Reporter Chantal Da Silva reports that “under the Donald Trump administration, the U.S. has more than doubled its spending on services from one of the biggest private prison companies in the world, with the majority of that spending going towards the detention of immigrants across the country. (…) The surge in funding for The GEO Group, which has faced international scrutiny over its treatment of inmates — and in particular, of immigrant detainees — comes as the incarceration rate in the U.S. continues to fall.”
21) National: In an important victory in the campaign against predatory prison telecommunications corporations, Pennsylvania’s State Employees Retirement System has refused to invest $100 million in a new private equity fund because of its ownership of Securus Technologies Inc., a prison phone operator. But the Pennsylvania Public School Employees’ Retirement System continues to invest in Platinum’s new fund, claiming it is out to reform Securus. The Wall Street Journal reports that “representatives of the nonprofit prison reform group Worth Rises also addressed PSERS’ board at the August meeting, arguing that Platinum’s backing of Securus harms inmates and their families.” [Sub required] Worth Rises’ “Liberate Our Pensions” campaign has exposed Platinum Equity’s ownership of Securus.
22) National: Emails revealed through a Freedom of Information Act request by the National Immigrant Justice Center show how private companies are cashing in on ICE detention centers. “In recent months, congressional attention has largely fallen on Customs and Border Protection facilities at the border,” Roll Call reports. “But those make up only one part of a vast and complex immigrant detention apparatus that involves several federal agencies, local governments and private contractors. This week brings renewed attention to ICE detention facilities, with hearings Thursday on the topic by the House Judiciary and Homeland Security committees.” (The hearing has been rescheduled.)
23) Alabama: The Southern Poverty Law Center says, “Alabama has a prison problem because it has a problem with prisoners: ‘This malignant neglect is a symptom of a much larger American narrative surrounding crime & punishment… It’s the result of decades of fear, privatization & a general lack of empathy.’”
24) Arkansas: The Arkansas Board of Corrections has voted to introduce a private, for-profit jail in two southeast Arkansas counties. “The ‘on again, off again’ discussions to build the lockup have spanned several years, said board Chairman Benny Magness. The two counties involved, Drew and Bradley, have expressed a desire to work with LaSalle Corrections, a private company based in Louisiana. The jail would house state inmates and county prisoners. No representatives for either county or LaSalle attended the Board of Corrections meeting in Pine Bluff to discuss the project. Before the board acted, Corrections Secretary Wendy Kelley told members that the county attorneys had not yet had a chance to review the contract.”
25) California/National: In Claremont, Pitzer College’s “free wall” was painted over the weekend of Sept. 21 with “a message accusing Pitzer trustee Robert Fairbairn of profiting from ‘concentration camps,’ sparking a conversation among students about whether Pitzer’s financing adheres to its core values. (…) The message included arrows connecting Fairbairn’s name to BlackRock, an asset management firm, and BlackRock to GEO Group, the largest operator of private prisons in the U.S. An arrow connected GEO Group to the words ‘concentration camps.’”
26) Michigan/National: The GEO Group could begin housing non-U.S. citizens convicted of federal crimes as early as this week in its North Lake Correction Facility in Baldwin under a 10-year contract with the U.S. Bureau of Prisons. Village of Baldwin President Jim Truxton said “A filled bed is a filled bed; it’s profit for GEO and they’re hiring people. How is it any different than GM building a new plant in the Detroit area?”
27) Mississippi/National: Adams County officials met last week with CoreCivic and ICE to sign off on a five year contract to jail 2,200 people in the Adams County Correctional Facility. “The new agreement would potentially bring $400,000 more in revenue [and] create 50 additional jobs in the county while retaining 390 jobs that the county risked losing if the prison closed without a contract to house inmates, officials said.”
28) Missouri: The St. Louis Post-Dispatch’s Tony Messenger has a new column on why even some conservatives think the cash bail system (“cash register justice”), which locks up poor people because they don’t have enough money, violates people’s rights. “On the day Levin was speaking, about 1,000 miles to the west his organization was filing an amicus brief in a St. Louis case that seeks to end the insidious practice of setting bail without taking the time to determine a defendant’s ability to pay.” The cash bail system fuels mass incarceration and fattens the profits of private companies.
29) Texas: A Texas judge has ordered a new inspection of GEO Group’s Liberty County Jail, where an inmate has died and two prisoners have escaped in recent months. “The commission in August subsequently threatened to cut the jail’s capacity from 285 to 144 beds if GEO didn’t come into compliance. The move would have forced GEO to find beds outside of Liberty County to house inmates. But on Tuesday, a county judge ordered another inspection before the commission reconvenes in November, the Houston Chronicle reported.”
Public Services
30) National: A new report by Kaiser Family Foundation finds that private employer health insurance is increasingly unaffordable. “The new data on employer coverage come as the Democratic presidential candidates debate sweeping reforms to diminish the role of private insurance in the American health system, including expanding the federal Medicare program to everyone or giving people the option to enroll in a government-run plan. Many of the arguments for both systems center on expanding health insurance to more of the estimated 27 million people who lack it. But millions of people who already have coverage are deeply dissatisfied with the current system as well.”
31) National: The American Federation of Government Employees (AFGE) says the Trump’s administration’s new “Dirty Pork Rule” will compromise food safety. Private, for-profit meat companies “will now largely be in charge of their own food safety inspections instead of federally trained inspectors. USDA is almost totally relinquishing its role in ensuring food safety for the American people. While government inspectors are highly specialized, the final rule doesn’t include any training requirements for the meat company employees who will take over the inspection responsibilities. This rule, dubbed the Modernization of Swine Slaughter Inspection, will take us back a century to a time when there was little government oversight over the meatpacking industry.”
32) National: In order to bypass federal acquisitions regulations, local governments are being pulled in as middlemen between contractors and the military. “When JBSA needs work done on the types of projects covered by the agreement, it will send a task order to AACOG, which will contact local governments to see if their contractors can take on the job. The government entities that are able to fulfill the request benefit from new revenue and the local economy benefits by getting federal government contract work. (…) ‘In general, our processes aren’t as fast as we wish they were,’ Lenderman. ‘We’re subject to a governmental process that takes time, and this is one way we can move around that timeline and take advantage of the city that has less constraints perhaps in terms of contracts and those sorts of things.’”
33) National: CuriosityStream has a useful video on how privatization boosterism obscures the fact that public services cannot be “run like a business.” Talks about government contractors, the myths of competition and efficiency, charter schools and much else. [About 25 minutes]
34) National: @frontlinepbs says “‘The Pension Gamble’ investigates what drove public pensions into a hole and examines the broader consequences for teachers, police, firefighters, and other public employees. Watch our Emmy-nominated doc:https://to.pbs.org/2V8wwlB.”
35) Michigan: Republican lawmakers have inserted a provision in the budget bill to increase privatization of mental health services. “‘The citizens of Michigan should be outraged and need to ask their legislators why they are assuring insurance companies profit over the least among us?’ Tom Watkins, former CEO of the Detroit Wayne Mental Health Authority, told MLive. ‘This action is putting the lives of over 300,000 persons who depend on a system of care that has evolved over a half century at risk by profitizing the public mental health system.’ He and others are calling on Gov. Gretchen Whitmer to use a line-item veto to eliminate the provision.”
36) International: Canadian workers, members of the Ontario Public Service Employees Union, are protesting the selling of alcohol in hundreds of grocery stores across the province. “‘We want to let the public know that the LCBO is publicly owned,’ union representative Teresa Graham said at the Division Street LCBO. ‘Our money goes to protect public assets such as health care, roads and schools. These new LCBO convenience stores, agency stores and the grocery stores that have the stuff now, they’re making profits and it’s going in their pockets now, it’s not going to the public.’”
37) International: Australian investigative journalist Tom Ravlic has weighed in against the Morrison government’s accepting campaign cash from private consultants. “Accounting firms, law firms and other specialist organisations have become the de-facto public service in an era where outsourcing is king and government departments have been forced to meeting efficiency dividend targets often to meet what is for some in politics an unattainable state of perfection: a budget surplus. Numerous stories have been written about the millions of dollars paid to various consulting firms for the provision of services to government. Look up anything by Michael West on this site, Edmund Tadrios and Tom McIllroy at the Australian Financial Review and Adele Ferguson at The Age and Sydney Morning Herald. We’re talking squillions.”
38) International: The World Bank has published a blog on municipal “public-private partnerships”and they have now extended dedicated resources on their PPP Legal Resource Center website on municipal PPPs. For more see Eurodad’s report on how the World Bank has supported “public-private partnerships,” which drain the public purse and fail to deliver in the public interest.
Odds and Ends
39) National: Jobs With Justice alerts us that “the House of Representatives is working on a bill that would attempt to end misclassification of working people, which remains a go-to tactic for companies who don’t want to pay a decent wage, overtime, or tangible benefits.” AFGE Local 1110 points out this includes government contractors. “Time to rebuild the federal jobs ladder to include our hard working support staff? Janitors, security, federal daycare workers — privatization has had punitive results” [HR 6189, the Payroll Fraud Prevention Act]
40) National: Instead of continuing to reimburse the public — which stepped in to rescue them when they imploded during the financial crisis — Fannie & Freddie have stopped their payments to the Treasury Department in a first step toward privatization. These profits will now go to Wall Street instead of schools, healthcare, and many other worthy public services. [Sub required]
41) National: Scientists are pushing back at the Environmental Protection Agency, which they say is in the process of gutting particle pollution regulations to service private corporate interests. “An advisory panel of air pollution scientists disbanded by the Trump administration plans to continue their work with or without the US government. The researchers — from a group that reviewed the latest studies about how tiny particles of air pollution from fossil fuels make people sick — will assemble next month, a year from the day they were fired. They’ll gather in the same hotel in Washington DC and even have the same former staffer running the public meeting.” EPA administrator Andrew Wheeler is a former coal lobbyist. Particulates are expelled from coal-burning power plants.
Governing for the Common Good
42) Montana: The state’s Probation and Parole Division has teamed up with Missoula employers to train and hire ex-offenders. “‘Be open-minded,’ Buckley said to employers and invited them to call her any time with questions. ‘Everybody is scared of felons. But talk about what you’re scared of. We can talk about that.’ Buckley said Probation and Parole guides those transitioning back to society about how to be respectful to employers while employing strict rules for the ex-offenders. The pre-release center and the job service both offer extensive job-training and life-skills lessons for ex-offenders to readjust and prepare for the work force.”
Democratic presidential candidate have weighed in on the issue. Elizabeth Warren says we must “invest in programs that facilitate rehabilitation.” And Bernie Sanders shares a video on how economic success after prisoner release can change lives through hard work and community support. Joe Biden says “making sure formerly incarcerated individuals have the opportunity to be productive members of our society is not only the right thing to do, it will also grow our economy.”
43) Ohio: The Coalition on Housing and Homelessness in Ohio reports that “people in Ashland County can keep living in their own homes thanks to funding from the Ohio Housing Trust Fund and federal programs. The state just expanded the OHTF, now we [need] Congress to increase CDBG & HOME in the next budget!”
