This is the charter school system that has received 11 million dollars this year from Arne Duncan's Race to the Top stimulus money. More on the email sent by Dennis Bakke, the CEO below, but first a look at all the money they are getting.
From Schools Matter:
Imagine Charter Schools Receive $11,000,000 from Duncan's Stimulus FundSylvia Smith, the Journal Gazette's Washington editor, has been doing a little digging of her own. Dennis Bakke, who has the lead role in the investigative piece reported below by Soderland and Stockman is getting fabulously wealthy from Federal education dollars, with no oversight, no accountability, no scientific evidence, no local control, and with the blessings of the President and his Sec. of Ed. Amazing and all true.
"WASHINGTON – Imagine charter schools in seven states and the District of Columbia have received more than $11 million from the federal stimulus program this year.
Including $971,950 sent to Imagine schools in Fort Wayne and $493,689 given to Imagine schools in Indianapolis, facilities throughout the country received a share of the stimulus money that was funneled through state education departments.
In all, Imagine schools in Indiana, Ohio, Arizona, Missouri, Nevada, Michigan, Pennsylvania and the District of Columbia received $11.3 million, according to reporting filed on the government’s Web site that tracks stimulus money. Several states where Imagine charter schools are in operation – Colorado, Georgia, Florida, New York and Maryland – did not report that they provided grants to the charter schools."
These are the charter schools that fired two principals for
questioning taxpayer money spent on school's real estate arm.Bruce Greening, a former principal at Imagine MASTer Academy in Fort Wayne, Ind., said Imagine required him to pay $650,000 a year to rent a 28-acre campus valued at $3.4 million. But the school used only two buildings on the sprawling property, he said.
"Obviously, I thought the rent was kind of steep," he said. "But I had no choice, because it was part of the company's procedures. We couldn't go anywhere else."
Hugh Wallace knew accepting the principal's job at 100 Academy of Excellence in North Las Vegas presented a challenge. Eight months into the job, he said, he realized that nearly 40 percent of his state funding went to pay rent to Schoolhouse Finance. And the rent jumps a few percent each year, according to the charter school's lease agreement.
A nearby charter school unrelated to Imagine receives about the same state funding as 100 Academy of Excellence. But last year, it paid about 14 percent of its state funding for building rent, according to Nevada's education department. So Wallace said he asked his boss if the school's lease on the 50,000-square-foot building could be reduced.
Both were fired.
The CEO of this charter group is Dennis Bakke. He and his wife Eileen are making great profits apparently. Turns out Bakke sent an email to tell how to keep the schools boards in line.
The Blog for Arizona was on top of this email a month before the St. Louis Post-Dispatch and the AP covered it this past week.
Imagine CEO's "We own the schools" email makes national papersA little over a month ago, I made public an email sent by Dennis Bakke, the national CEO of Imagine Schools, to the principals, directors and developers of his schools around the country, 18 of them here in Arizona. Bakke's basic message: We own the schools. The school boards either should do what we say or resign.
Now there's a big story about the email in the Sunday edition of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch along with an unedited version of the email. The story was also picked up by the AP. So far, it's appeared in New York and Washington, D.C. As of yet, Arizona papers have remained quiet about our Imagine charter schools or their parent company, though local stories have been carried in 10 other states.
..."The IRS comes up frequently in these questions about whether a non profit school or educational organization is crossing the line. We're hearing it in the tuition tax credit concerns, and the subject comes up with charters as well, especially those being dubbed "corporate schools," across the nation.
Privatization is moving into public education at an ever increasing rate, for better and/or for worse. The IRS needs to exercise due diligence and oversight. It must investigate some of the more egregious situations and create firm guidelines concerning non profit and for profit education organizations being paid for with tax dollars.
Here is the article from the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. I think the attitude of Dennis Bakke about the entitlement of their charter schools opened some eyes. Most media is not covering this though.
Memo from schools CEO adds fuel to Imagine fireST. LOUIS — The largest operator of charter schools in St. Louis has faced long-standing concerns that it crafts school boards to be puppets for its own corporation. For years, it has hand-picked those who should be charged with the company's oversight. And in multiple states, regulators objected as the company sought to place employees on its school boards.
Now, the Post-Dispatch has obtained a memo in which the chief of Virginia-based Imagine Schools lays out a nationwide blueprint for controlling school boards and limiting their authority. In the year-old e-mail, CEO Dennis Bakke tells his employees they should control who stays on the board, select those who will "go along with Imagine," and ask board members to submit undated letters of resignation "that can be acted on by us at any time."
Such philosophies break a primary tenet of the charter school movement — that schools should be independently governed by local leaders — and conflict with both nonprofit law and state charter school statutes.
Some regulators said they would be looking at applications from Imagine Charter Schools more closely now.
"That is so far afield from best practices," said Dean Titterington, vice chairman of the Colorado Charter School Institute, the agency that authorizes charter schools in Colorado and that turned down an Imagine-run school application last year. "If we're going to have genuine oversight of tax dollars, we have to have functioning boards. And they can't be shills for the management company."
Imagine is a profitable venture.
Imagine Schools, of Arlington, Va., is one of the largest and fastest-growing charter school management companies in the country. In 2004, it ran 25 schools with 14,000 students, according to its most recent annual report. That has since almost tripled, to 37,000 students on 73 campuses in a dozen states, including five campuses serving 3,200 students in St. Louis.
Fueled by that growth, Imagine reported that revenue has risen from $83 million in 2005 to $230 million this year. The company considers itself more than a manager — rather, a national school district.
In exchange for six- or seven-figure yearly fees, it will do everything for a school, from hiring teachers to recruiting students to leasing desks, file cabinets and trash cans. But Imagine has lost some contracts, often when board members get assertive about their independence.
The email was sent in response to schools that balked at having their independence threatened by Imagine. "By Sept. 4, 2008, the day Bakke sent the e-mail, Imagine was struggling with governance issues in Nevada, Colorado, Florida and Missouri."
More on some of these governance issues from Susan Ohanian's blog:
Typically, after an Imagine-managed charter school gets approval to open, Schoolhouse Finance, Imagine's real estate arm, purchases a campus and charges the school rent. After the school begins to pay that rent, Schoolhouse sells the campus to a real estate investment trust, which then leases it back to Schoolhouse. The charter school eventually sends rent payments – in one case upward of 40 percent of the school's entire publicly funded budget – to two for-profit companies.
"The arrangement is very lucrative because it's a direct conduit to public funds. The school property is paid off with public funds," said Gary Horton, who oversees charter school funding for the Nevada Department of Education. Nevada's charter schools include Imagine's 100 Academy of Excellence in North Las Vegas.
Charter school company with plans for McKinney is criticizedMore details on the Ft. Wayne problems from the Journal Gazette.
A Fort Wayne charter school is using state tax dollars to pay a for-profit landowner nearly triple in rent what it might have paid to own its campus outright. Imagine MASTer Academy, on the former Wells Street YWCA campus, spends nearly one of every five dollars of its taxpayer-funded budget on rent to a real estate management company.Charter school-oversight officials in Indiana say the lease payments are on the high end of what’s recommended but appear acceptable. Ball State University, which monitors the Fort Wayne charter schools, said it’s closely watching – as it does all charter school budgets – to make sure the leases don’t creep much higher.
Similar real estate deals have come under fire in other states where the national charter school company, Imagine Schools, operates. But a local Imagine executive said such deals are necessary for the charter school company to invest in new properties.
Charter school defends selling campus, renting it back They are getting 11 million from this Democratic Department of Education and its secretary, Arne Duncan. Quite frankly they do not sound very responsible to me.
Dennis and Eileen Bakke are influential in Democratic circles, members of the Fellowship, and anti-union in belief. Our Department of Education would do well to monitor the Education Management Organizations..EMOs....that are getting our public taxpayer money.
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