More charter school fraud: Charter school as secret corporate lending center

[Hannah Bell]

Rent from Robert M. Hughes Academy borrowed by Northern Educational Services

SPRINGFIELD - When it needed a quick cash transfusion, Northern Educational Services didn’t go to a bank. Instead, the Mulberry Street social service agency borrowed funds derived from a more convenient source: the taxpayer-financed Robert M. Hughes Academy, the charter school shut down by the state in June after a decade of scandal, legal battles and lax management.

In an convoluted arrangement, rental income paid by the academy to its landlord, School Street Properties Inc., was loaned to Northern Educational Services to supplement its $1.3 million, publicly-funded budget.

But details of the fund-swapping - including how much money was loaned, how often, and for what purposes - are sketchy because the transactions were never disclosed by Baker’s organization or by School Street Properties in reports to the state attorney general’s office and the U.S. Internal Revenue Service. No mention of the loans appeared in documents filed by both organizations dating back to 2002, even though income from other sources, including banks and government agencies, was reported.

http://www.masslive.com/news/index.ssf/2010/07/northern_educational_services.html

[saracat]

1. But but, how can this be? Don't you know opposing charter schools

is only a "fad" . They are such a reform in education! :sarcasm:

[yurbud]

2. pretty soon the rich will go back to sending around the brute squad to shake us down for money

like in Medieval times.

It would be more honest than doing it piecemeal by replacing public schools with corporate scams and shit like this.