Charter Schools Under Attack from Teacher Union Legislators
A few weeks back we wrote of the surge of incoming teacher union House members and their attacks upon the Charter School system. The unions and most of the teachers hate charter schools for several reasons. First, the success of charter schools make the public schools look bad. Second, the charter schools hire only the best teachers and expect a lot of work and outcome from them while also paying them quite well. Third, the small amount that the charter schools take from tax coffers while outdoing the public schools is embarrassing for the public schools.
The third reason is the most troubling for the teacher unions, how can a charter school take $4200 per year and crank out a better performing student at one third the cost that a public school uses? The answer is in admin costs. A bill was defeated in committee this very week that would have asked that 60% of the money be spent in classrooms but it was soundly defeated in committee. The charter schools allocate around 10% as admin costs and profit.
But think about it, taking a student and only $4200 means twice that is left behind for the public school to waste. No kid to bus to school, feed, educate, yet $8200 is left in the education budget to be used for other kids or for higher levels of greed and waste. Why are they complaining?
Because the legislators, parents, and the kids themselves see this imbalance and everyone realizes that the sooner we phase out public schools the better the outcome for the state, for the kids, and even for the teachers. But the teachers would have to perform, educate or be paid less and for the average socialist teacher, that is a scary deal. For the unions it would be a death blow, nothing left to sell for the dues.
So it was not surprising to see one of the best and fastest growing charter schools come under attack last week. Epic Charter Schools became the target of both state and federal law enforcement agencies according to the Tulsa World. Their real crime is drawing in an additional 10,000 students this year as parents abandoned public schools due to the strike and the fear that their kids education would be disrupted once again this year. That led to the OSBI being turned loose on Epic, and the OSBI isn't releasing any details. However, the Tulsa World is quite liberal and a supporter of the teacher unions so they had access to some of the complaints that appear to be that some students have enrolled in both Epic and private schools. This appears to be as simple as a student's parents using a private company like Sylvan Learning centers who act more as tutors to kids. Epic of course would have no knowledge or control nor does there appear to be a law against a parent using a private tutor to help their kids.
Epic is simply making public schools look bad and educating kids better, at less cost, while paying teachers much more. A better mouse trap always outsells the old versions and that puts the teacher unions in a pickle. And since Epic's contract doesn't require disclosures that has enraged the teacher unions and their now elected sycophants who have turned to law enforcement to gather what they wish to know. In the end Epic either educates kids and gets them to pass or they lose money. It matters not on how they accomplish that task be it paying for better teachers or cutting out the useless indoctrination in politically correctness in order to teach testable skills.
Meanwhile enough people have seen what Epic can do that it is growing past the 10,000 2019 students, it now operates in Orange County, CA, runs public schools in Latimer County, at the Thunderbird Youth Academy in Pryor, and will take up educating students online in Pulaski County Arkansas in the fall of 2019.
Epic was attacked before by Mary Fallin in 2013 over allegations of fraud. One year later, the OSBI turned over the findings to the A.G.'s office and no charges were filed and no announcement was ever made clearing them of any wrong doing. Too embarrassed I would assume. Then in the summer of 2018 Tulsa and Oklahoma City Schools were visited by investigators from the Office of the Inspector General, charged with law enforcement of the U.S. Department of Education. The Tulsa World claims that they were looking into students enrolling in Epic Charter Schools while being enrolled in private schools. You don't have to be a rocket scientist to understand that the investigators were likely lured in by the Tulsa and OKC schools dangling out allegations against Epic. Otherwise, would not the investigators not just go to Epic for the info?
Meanwhile education caucus House members like Shelia Dills of Tulsa are pushing "accountability" bills aimed at the charter schools despite their minuscule use of funds for administration, as much as four times less than the public schools are taking. Her complaint is over $18 million in public funds flowing through charter schools rather than the 40% of the $5 billion dollars that public schools spend on administration costs each year. She wants full accounting including salary info on every dime that charter school spend, something that usually isn't required of state vendors of services or products.
The last charge against Epic and the other charter schools is a small amount of money spent by management for political contributions. Keep in mind that this comes from their profits, not part of their expenses before taxes. This is alleged political influencing while meantime the teachers unions raise millions to spend to oust conservative legislators and put their people in office to vote even more money for their schools.
The bottom line is that the Charter Schools do an excellent job educating students, higher grades, less admin spending, higher teacher pay, and at a cost that is one third what public schools receive per kid.
Please contact your state rep and senator and ask them to support the Charter Schools and push back against the failing public education and the teacher unions.