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Charter School Bond Holders Refuse to Allow Use of Funds for Payroll

posted by martyb on Friday July 28 2017, @04:17PM   
from the all-work-and-no-pay dept.

n1 writes:

Furious teachers at a recently shuttered Detroit charter school were notified Wednesday that they won't be paid thousands of dollars they earned during the last school year.

"Last Friday, Matchbook Learning became aware that the holders of MTA's outstanding bond debt are refusing to allow use of funds for any summer payroll and instead, are requiring that any available funds be used toward payment of the bond debt," Matchbook's CEO Sajan George told teachers in the email. "We are disappointed and deeply saddened by this development because this means funds will not be there for July or August payroll."

Source Chalkbeat

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Original Submission

• Re:The elephant in the room here Re:The elephant in the room here (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday July 29 2017, @01:48AM (2 children)

  by Anonymous Coward on Saturday July 29 2017, @01:48AM (#546098)

  Charter schools serve approximately 4 purposes:
  1. Provide yet another way for favored private individuals to feed at the trough of government, this time through the public education system.
  2. Segregate students even more by race and class.
  3. Bust the public school teachers' unions.
  4. Allow favored religious doctrines to be taught at public expense.

  1. Bullshit. Charter schools don't make money magically appear, and charter schools don't get more money from the government than non-charter schools. In some regimes they actually get less. At most, you can say that they're a way for government to subcontract at the regular rate of taxation/fee structure. If there are opportunities for embezzlement (Why? if you're looking for hot government money, go where the pros go: nonprofit grant filing machines.) they are small and subject to audit.
  2. Except for all the jurisdictions where charter schools are explicitly banned from doing so, on pain of revoking their charters. The rules aren't uniform.
  3. Given that they're some of the biggest problems interfering with retention of new teachers, I'm not seeing a problem here.
  4. To a limited extent, and based on jurisdiction. Certainly not universally true.

  1. Pre-natal care covered by the government, so that fewer problems develop in utero.

  Oh, great. Another single payer nut. Here's a heads-up: A lot of people utterly disagree with you about the desirability of government getting involved in health care, and more significantly, health care decisions. Given *ahem* recent news items on how wonderful single payer does in other countries where it's prevalent, I'd have thought you'd think twice before bringing up that turkey again. Oh well.

  2. Paid family leave for new parents, so the baby gets all the attention that helps with mental development.

  Because we need more reasons not to hire people in a country where competitiveness is an actual problem. Good one.

  3. Government-provided day care/pre-school starting more-or-less after the paid family leave is up.

  Ho-ly-crap. That will be a titanic money-pit, and a source of more lawsuits than the EPA. We're having problems getting and retaining teachers, and on top of that we're creating a regime where every teacher is becoming a presumed child molester to be constantly screened, monitored and harrassed, and you think extending that to infancy, nationwide, is smart? Wow. I mean, just ... wow.

  4. Pay teachers at all levels like the important professionals with a master's level education that they are. Teacher pay should be on par with engineers, physician assistants, and other highly educated professionals. And don't give me supply-demand arguments, when there are departments around the country complaining about shortages.

  Bad luck. You're going to get supply-demand arguments. Because of ... wait for it ... the unions. The unions play a huge role on screwing up supply of teachers, screwing up their pay structure, incentives and other benefits. Besides that, the school administrators will kick and scream every moment of the day that their precious moneystream is being diverted to pay teachers - or were you thinking that we should just dump even more per capita dollars towards education, when we already lead the world in per capita education expenses, and have such crap to show for it?

  5. Let teachers do their friggin' jobs. They're professionals, after all.

  Sure, there we can agree. Can we also agree on letting parents do their jobs, up to and including pulling children out of bullshit schools and putting them in better ones? Or home schooling?

  6. Have access to higher education determined by how qualified a student is, not how rich their parents are.

  On a point of order, the honourable member appears to have forgotten about the lenders falling over each other to shoehorn anyone available into college (and study debt), and the essentially unlimited number of university places rendered available by current educational priorities.

  7. Have good vocational programs for students who aren't likely to be qualified for higher education. That way, those who graduate high school are ready to be welders, electricians, mechanics, plumbers, child care professionals, beauticians, chefs, etc.

  Good idea. Of course, those sorts of systems are coming under heavy fire as being preordained directing of kids, arguably against their best interests. But hey. Should be an easy sell to the voting public. Just ... hang on a bit before you make that pitch, I wanna nuke this bag of popcorn ...

  Parent

• Re:The elephant in the room here Re:The elephant in the room here (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday July 29 2017, @02:42AM (1 child)

  by Anonymous Coward on Saturday July 29 2017, @02:42AM (#546119)

  1. Bullshit. Charter schools don't make money magically appear,

  Riiiiight! They steal it from the public school system, siphoning tax dollars into pockets of "educational entreprenuers" and paying teachers little, or as in this case, nothing.

  Unions protect teachers from Republicans and other people who resent learning. Take it from someone who is a teacher. Yep, "bullshit schools".

  Cue, Monty Python's Flying Circus, The Meaning of Life

  MARIA: Yes. I used to work in the Académie Française, but it didn't do me any good at all,
  A-- and I once worked in the library in the Prado in Madrid, but it didn't teach me nothing, I recall,

  And the Library of Congress you'd have thought would hold some key,
  But it didn't, and neither did the Bodleian Library.

  In the British Museum I hoped to find some clue.
  I worked there from nine till six, read every volume through,

  But it didn't teach me nothing about life's mystery.
  I just kept getting older, and it got more difficult to see,

  Till, eventually, me eyes went and me arthritis got bad,
  And so now I'm cleaning up in here, but I can't be really sad,

  'Cause, you see, I feel that life's a game. You sometimes win or lose,
  And though I may be down right now, at least I don't work for Jews.

  Ah, yes, racism! Brown v. Board of Education! That is what charter schools are all about.

  Parent

  • Re:The elephant in the room here (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday July 29 2017, @05:38PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday July 29 2017, @05:38PM (#546342)

    Charter schools don't steal money. Well, maybe some do, who knows for sure, but the principle isn't theft. It's simply that the government is outsourcing that role, and some of their budget goes with it.

    If that's theft, maybe you and Mikey Moore can go arrest the executives of a few american machinery companies ...

    Parent