Arizona requires its public schools, but not its charter schools, to take bids for valuable contracts. So guess what happens in the charter schools, according to a recent report by the Grand Canyon Institute:
The report found that 77 percent of all Arizona charter schools engage in some form of “related-party transactions” that enrich charter-school owners, board members or their families, and that the system lacks the checks and balances necessary to ensure charter-school funds are primarily used for educating students.
The report, based on a three-year forensic audit of Arizona’s charter-school finances, focused primarily on related-party transactions. That’s when charter schools, which are nearly all nonprofit entities funded almost entirely with tax dollars, spend tax dollars on non-competitive bids with for-profit companies that are owned by the charter operators, board members or their immediate relatives.
Oftentimes, those related-party transactions are real estate deals where the charter leases property from a company owned by the charter holder, board members or their families. Other times they purchase curriculum from the charter-school holder’s for-profit company, hire teachers from an employment-services company owned by the charter holder’s relative or contract for management services from a company owned by a member of the charter’s corporate board, according to the report.
Corrupt, but not illegal … for charter schools. Because privatizers get the benefit of every conceivable double standard. And this is the type of system Donald Trump’s education secretary, Betsy DeVos, has spent years—and buckets of her family’s money—pushing.