I've expressed my opinion a few times that the charter school movement is really a Trojan horse for those who'd turn public school into bible school, and for those cynics who understand the value to today's Republican party of a thoroughly endumbed electorate.
Turns out I might be wrong. Looks like it might be as simple as the usual corporate grift: a way of skimming public funds for personal profit.
This is pretty disgusting, and beyond disheartening:
... So that's what the charter school movement has come to in Philadelphia -- a "flip this school" real-estate scheme. Lovely. And that's not even to get into the scandal around the state's "Cyber Charter," an Internet-based school the founder of which is currently on trial for funneling millions of dollars away from the school and into his pockets, with which he allegedly bought himself a plane, and condos for his mother and girlfriend...
According to court documents unsealed Thursday by federal officials, Trombetta told one of his former associates, "I can no longer accept cash in bags in a Pizza Hut parking lot." After that, regular payments from Avanti Management Group were sent to One2One, according to the affidavit. The bags of cash, a private plane bough by Avanti but used mostly by Trombetta, a Florida vacation home and a home in Mingo Junction, Ohio, for Trombetta's former girlfriend all were described as perks enjoyed by Trombetta as part of a scheme to siphon money from taxpayers' funds sent to PA Cyber for more than four years.
They all have so very much to answer for, the people who have decided to enrich themselves by bashing public school teachers and, in doing so, putting the entire philosophy of public education, one of the lasting contributions to society of the American political commonwealth, at serious risk. No wonder they operate secretly, and in the shadows, and beyond the reach of public accountability. They are burglarizing the future for their own profit.
