Not only are they growing their numbers in Ft. Wayne, they just got 11 million dollars from Arne Duncan's Department of Education. It seems there are no consequences as long as states grow charter schools.
Imagine Charter Schools Accused Of Not Following State Laws and RulesIn a series of articles and editorials this week, the Fort Wayne Journal Gazette newspaper has accused the operator of charter schools in Indianapolis and Fort Wayne of not adhering to state laws governing charter schools. In the articles, the Journal Gazette reports that instead of the boards of the four Imagine Charter Schools in Indiana making decisions, as required by law, those decisions are instead made by a Virginia based for-profit entity Imagine Schools.
...Questions have been repeatedly raised about the governance of Indiana’s charter schools. Including the accessibility of meetings of the boards of charter schools, which by law must be public. And whether the decisions of those boards are carried out in public meetings, which is also required by law.
Here is one of the Journal Gazette's articles about Imagine Schools.
Private company skirts public boards in running tax-funded charter schoolsDespite spending millions of tax dollars a year, the board of this public school votes on almost nothing.
Not the $87,510 a year to operate school buses. Not $114,871 to run a lunch program. Not which teachers are hired or whether to hold summer school, or even whether to borrow more than $1 million for operations.
All those decisions and many more were made by a private company from Virginia, though Internal Revenue Service regulations say tax-exempt organizations such as this one must have independent, local control.
Welcome to Imagine charter schools.
Any responses are purposely vague.
“We’ve not heard any comment from the IRS in any way that I’m aware of,” said Don Willis, a local businessman who founded the Imagine charter schools in Fort Wayne and is chairman of the Imagine-Fort Wayne Charter School board.
Other board members refused to answer questions or said they did not know the answers.
An investigation is going on now by Ball State on the 4 Imagine Schools.
Accusations about local board lead to investigation of charters.Imagine schools across Indiana are under investigation by Ball State University, the college that issued their charters, because of misconduct allegations during recent board operations. A series earlier this month in The Journal Gazette accused the MASTer Academy board - Imagine's school on Wells Street - of not operating within the constraints of an open meeting, and most recently, having someone vote on a motion when he was not a part of the MASTer Academy board, but instead the Broadway board.
“We're investigating it right now,” said John Jacobson, Ball State teachers' college dean who oversees the Office of Charter Schools. “As an authorizer, we are just overseeing (that they are in) compliance.”
All four Indiana schools listed on Imagine's Web site - two in Fort Wayne at 2000 N. Wells St. and 2320 Broadway and two in Indianapolis - are being investigated.
He added that depending on the investigation's outcome, Imagine's charters could be nullified, meaning the schools would have to close. But, Jacobson said even if the investigation reveals misconduct, it may not mean the loss of a charter. He explained that it may just mean coming into compliance with the proper way that a board should operate, which could be taught through training. Imagine already has training planned for January.
Yet they got 11 million this year from Arne.
And yet they are partnering with local public schools in spite of the fact that their actions are questioned.
From the Schools Matter blog:
Oops, looks like someone in Fort Wayne didn't get the memo about Imagine SchoolsOops, looks like someone in Fort Wayne didn't get the memo about Imagine Schools. A new "visionary partnership" between the charter chain and Master Ralph T. White, a TaeKwonDo instructor and CEO of White's School of the Arts Community Development Programs, Inc, will allow Imagine to provide more of their (lucrative) services in Fort Wayne - presumably with the usual Imagine strings attached. "One might think it would take a huge multimilliondollar school corporation to fill the ," the article notes, sans any kind of irony.
From the folks at Frost Illustrated, painfully unaware of Imagine's dubious history and rampant corruption:
White's School, Imagine Schools to partner
FORT WAYNE—The building that sits at 2700 E. Maplegrove Drive is huge. Having once housed Village Woods Middle School, the building is packed with classrooms, a cafeteria, gymnasium and office space. In fact, one might think it would take a huge multimilliondollar school corporation to fill the place. But, Master Ralph T. White is a man with big ideas, big dreams and a big heart to match. While the going has been tough at times, especially when it comes to economics and battles with nay-sayers from a number of quarters, Master White and his supporters and coworkers are ready to take those ideas and dreams to another level, thanks to a visionary partnership with Imagine Schools, perhaps the area’s premier charter school system.
And what is more, there are questionable relationships between the Imagine Charter Schools and the real arm of their company. This is disturbing use of public taxpayer money.
Making a real estate profit from public charter schoolsBruce 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 principals fired for questioning this relationship.
And not only that but Dennis Bakke, the Imagine CEO, sent out an email about how to exert more pressure on school boards to benefit their schools.
ST. 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.
Did I say these schools just profited this year from the DOE to the tune of 11 million dollars?
Public schools are hurting in this economy, especially in states like Florida that refuse to increase the tax base. Yet charter schools like Imagine are benefitting from corporation's huge donations....Gates, Walmart, and Broad.
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