Yesterday's column/blog centered on Carlton Landing Academy, the quasi-private public charter school for the super-rich of Pittsburgh County and the brainchild of public school profiteers. Today's post is a follow-up to the "strategies" used by ultra-rich city developers - to detail another strategy employed by profiteers to improve corporate profits. The bottom line for corporations is always "company profits", and not the education of our youth - as they so eloquently state.
Several months ago, news headlines across Oklahoma screamed Oklahoma School Board Approves Rural Charter School, indicating "the first rural charter school started from scratch had been approved by the Oklahoma State School Board". Two years ago, Oklahoma Senators and Representatives passed a bill which the governor signed into law, allowing corporate charter schools in our rural communities. Before this bill was passed, corporate charter schools were only allowed in Oklahoma City and Tulsa - but profiteers noticed that a large percentage of public tax dollars was being "squandered" on rural communities and rural schools. Profiteers' definition of "squandered tax dollars" is any local taxation that cannot be accessed by... you guessed it.. profiteers. So, the profiteers in this particular case bought a couple of lawmakers (corrupt politicians) to sponsor the bill, and its been all gravy ever since. As any reader can tell by now, this post is partially sarcastic truth. Public school profiteers are often identified as clandestine groups such as the American Federation for Children and its child, the Oklahoma Federation for Children - or just about any out-of-state corporate group seeking a profit at our taxpayer and public schools' expense. The "Seminole" case is no exception. The new charter law was passed on the assumption that local school boards would be the authority to decide if any rural charter school should exist in a rural community. In other words, the community or town would be able to decide if the corporate charter school is truly needed by students. The law was billed as a "local control" issue - plain and simple. But the sponsors of the Law and their corporate backers had an ace up their sleeve: If the local community decided that the out-of-state corporate charter school was not needed nor wanted, and told it to "hit the road" - the out-of-state corporate group could appeal the local order to a "higher authority", the State Board of Education, with which corporate groups have much influence (remember the "corrupt politicians" in yesterday's post). What eventually happened for the "Academy of Seminole" (sounds very educational, like Carlton Landing Academy) was that it was turned down two times by the community of Seminole, but was approved with flying colors by the State Board of Education (otherwise known as the Corporate Board). The corporate CEO made such statements as "They (Seminole citizens) are having a hard time justifying putting their kids in school system (sic) that averages a 19 and half (again,sic) on an ACT." The corporate school management firm, Responsive Ed, based in Texas will manage the "corporate charter school". Just like Carlton Landing siphoning tax dollars away from Canadian Public School students, the Seminole charter will siphon tax dollars away from Seminole Public School students. In that sense, corporate charter schools are "parasites" feeding off of the local taxpayers. But the shanghaied state funding doesn't all go to Oklahoma students but to line the pockets of corporate CEO's. It's what profiteers do: profit. One small (OK, large) coincidence concerning the Seminole charter is that one of the sponsoring legislators of the law that allowed this unprecedented shanghaiing of local tax dollars now sits on the Academy of Seminole's Board of Directors (which like I said yesterday, can be VERY lucrative). This appointment was reward for a job well done.
Many traditional and local public school supporters believe that what happened in Canadian Public Schools and Seminole Public Schools, cannot happen in our own public school. But hear me now, and believe me later, it can! When corporations believe taxpayer dollars can be legally shanghaied, almost nothing will stop them.
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