Blue Mass Group

Reality-based commentary on politics.

Why build charter schools

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In addition, this is a tax credit on money that their lending, so they’re also collecting interest on the loans as well as getting the thirty-nine percent tax credit. They piggy-back the tax credit on other kinds of federal tax credits like historic preservation or job creation or brownfields credits…

The result is, you can put in ten million dollars and in seven years double your money. The problem is, that the charter schools end up paying, in rents, the debt service on these loans and so now, a lot of the charter schools in Albany are straining paying their debt service- their rent has gone up from $170,000 to $500,000 in a year or- huge increases in their rents as they strain to pay off these loans, these construction loans. The rents are eating-up huge portions of their total cost.

I think you will also find similar strategies in the demolish/rebuild program for the Boston Public Schools, as well as the demolish/rebuild program for the Boston Public Libraries. Using these tax credits and loans from the feds, the city gains another lump of money to hand off to favored architects, construction companies and other contractors. The only problem is they have to stop doing their jobs and serving civic needs to do it.

Found at www.prorev.com

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    • Boston will close 8-12 schools in the circle of promise, build new school buildings, and then re-open them presumably with the same unprepared student population.

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      p>Here’s an example of how the Feds structure their programs to bring about slash and burn solutions to bad scores:

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      p>

      Count U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders among the critics of a federal education reform measure being touted by President’s Obama education secretary, Arne Duncan.

      The Vermont senator is going to bat for a Burlington principal, Joyce Irvine, who was pushed out of her job this month by a Duncan-inspired provision of the No Child Left Behind Act that requires states to identify their ten lowest performing schools. The ten Vermont schools are in line to apply for $8.5 million in federal grant money, but only if they make changes including removing any principal on the job for more than two years.

      Initially it looked like Irvine would keep her position at the Integrated Arts Academy at H.O. Wheeler, since the school in Burlington’s Old North End was reborn this year as a magnet school. She was told last week that the feds would not go for that, and she would have to vacate the position.

      Granted, Irvine is not out of work. She’s been offered a new, grant-funded position in the school district that focuses on school improvement.

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      p>http://blogs.burlingtonfreepre…

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