John Hammer on Phil Berger and Paul Norcross' "profit" and Charter Schools

"Public records for charter schools are somewhat of an issue.  If they are going to take public money then they have to put up with public records laws.  But a bigger story to me is how much money some of the private companies are making running charter schools.

Think about that for just a minute.  The charter school has to provide all the facilities.  Nobody is forced to go to a charter school, so if parents didn’t believe their children were getting a better education then they would put them in the closest public school.

All the teachers have to be paid and the charter schools are competing on the open market for those teachers with the traditional public schools.

And yet the public schools run by the school board don’t have enough money to hire enough teacher aides, to fix the leaks in the roof or to teach all the children to read and write.  The charter schools that receive the same allocation per child, except no money for capital expenditures, make a profit.  They keep the parents happy enough that they keep their children enrolled and they make a profit.

What’s wrong with this picture?"

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