The results of an investigation by Entenza in February revealed numerous conflicts of interest between charter school boards and school vendors, overpayment to management firms and sweetheart lease deals. The Senate version of Entenza's bill, introduced by Sen. Satveer Chaudhary, DFL-Fridley, is in committee. The recent spectacular blowups of several charter schools due to fiscal mismanagement should signal that while curricula and teaching innovation are good. The proposed state board for charter schools initiative, which would provide technical and training support, now merrily moves through the Legislature and may well be approved. It offers few if any fiscal solutions to the misuse of public funds.
Little heed is paid to the kids left without a school to attend after an abrupt closing.
No sympathy is extended to the astronomical debts left with vendors, or the cloud extended to all charter schools, though created by the sins of a few. Instead, the reader receives a broad overview of the way six charter schools came into the world, including an excellent chapter on the Minnesota New Country School in Henderson. If you get the book, read the case studies before the ponderous political context chapter. I have one criticism. The charter movement sidesteps these structural forms of inequality, Fuller says.