NC charter school teachers can't get paid, can't get unemployment. State has no record of school.

[madfloridian]

There is a video at the news link as well as the article. The charter owner speaks as if there is no problem. State investigating what happened to the $285,170 they gave the school in July.

Charter school teachers concerned about not getting a paycheck

She says this is what he told her. "The school is shut down," Frye said. "So I don't have any money to pay you, so I don't know what to tell you."

Other teachers are now worried about getting their paycheck. Their next pay day is September 30. But school's founder tells WBTV teachers will not get paid on September 30th. Stone says he is still working to find the money.

The teachers said working there was a challenge.

"We didn't have any textbooks," Berg said. "We didn't have any teacher support. We didn't have WIFI at the school, so we couldn't stream anything in. We couldn't do any research at school. We were handicapped to do the very best that we could for our students."

No unemployment insurance.

What makes matters worse, teachers say they can't collect unemployment while they look for work.

"The state doesn't have record of Concrete Roses STEM Academy," Berg said. "So we don't have any recourse."

[WhiteAndNerdy]

1. Holy crap.

Didn't the parents notice something was wrong? No books?!

[madfloridian]

2. Makes you wonder where the money went in just a couple of months.

[grahamhgreen]

3. Jail.

[BrotherIvan]

5. You read my brain

I hope there are some kind of federal charges in there.

[Enthusiast]

4. Concrete Roses STEM Academy? That's an inspirational name for a school.

NOT!

[Art_from_Ark]

7. I was thinking, the name alone

should have sent off warning bells

[QC]

12. Yeah, but it has STEM in the name!

Lately, the chief qualification for finding a job in educational administration is the ability to say STEM a lot.

[LeftinOH]

16. The name "Steel Magnolias" has already been used. n/t

[Enthusiast]

19. Sugar Magnolia too.

[Unknown Beatle]

6. This doesn't make sense.

From the article.

The state tells WBTV it gave Concrete Roses STEM Academy $285,170 back in July.

"The state doesn't have record of Concrete Roses STEM Academy," Berg said. "So we don't have any recourse."

How can the state have no record of a school they gave money to back in July? So the state just gives away money willy-nilly without keeping a record of the expense? I don't believe that for a moment. Something fishy is going on with the owner of the school and the state of NC; someone that's in charge of allocating funds to schools.

[madfloridian]

9. I think it meant no record with state about unemployment insurance?

Not sure. Pretty bad no matter what it means.

[wildeyed]

13. Something fishy is going on with the state of NC.

I completely believe that this happened. The ideologically radical NC General Assembly lifted the charter school cap and is trying to make it possible for a guy named Baker Mitchell, part of Art Pope's (Koch-lite) inner circle, and other for-profits to rob us blind.

Mitchell is refusing to disclose the salaries of his for-profit employees. He was also the head of the private, for profit company that owns the real estate that he leases to his non-profit school management group that, conveniently, he is also the head of! So yeah, they are ripping us off completely.....

I know a director of a non-profit charter school that has been in existence for a long time. She told me that the state has made huge changes in the way it administers charter schools. Used to be she had an advisor to help with budgeting and state paperwork to make sure things like the Concrete Roses flame-out don't happen, but no longer. Many of these non-profit charter schools are not run very professionally. They need oversight from the state and a much higher bar to clear before they are allowed to exist, otherwise this will happen over and over.

Interestingly, my city, Charlotte, saw unexpected growth in the regular public student population despite all the new charters. So this is not going how the uber-conservatives had hoped. Due to all the controversy, people don't trust the new charters. And I guess they do not hate their public schools nearly as much as the ideologues seem to think they do.


http://pulse.ncpolicywatch.org/2014/10/01/baker-mitchell-fails-to-disclose-salaries-of-his-for-profit-charter-school-employees-to-the-state-risking-closure-of-his-four-eastern-nc-charter-schools/

[hughee99]

18. Here's their board of directors...

http://www.concreterosesnc.com/board-members-2/

[littlemissmartypants]

8. I blame everything on the Governor.

Because I despise him and the speaker, Thom Tillis. No real logic here. I just want them run out of the state, after we tar and feather them. Too bad that is no longer legal...or IS it???



Last in education, first in fools.

Thanks for your post.


~ Lmsp 🙌

[Octafish]

10. Piratization of Public Education

A Powerful Tool for Ignorance that just happens to be Profitable, too.

[hatrack]

11. Behold, the Invisible Handjob!

Sounds to me like they didn't privatize enough.

[Dirty Socialist]

14. There HAS to be some sort of recourse

Maybe the teachers can sue the state.

[Starry Messenger]

15. Gosh, and once again, all the charter defenders on DU are oddly missing from this thread!

Don't be shy now!

[MineralMan]

20. Why would anyone support something like this?

Nobody supports bogus charter schools. This one sounds like a scam from the start. There are also excellent charter schools. I look at things on an individual basis, not as a group. Where I live, in the Twin Cities, MN, we have many charter schools that are educating kids just fine. We've also had some schools that were scams from the start. The latter group of schools gets closed down. The former are educational institutions.

Condemning all charter schools is not the answer. It simply isn't.

[Starry Messenger]

21. Why indeed?

I expected to see the chorus of charter supporters condemning this crime with just the same vigor they use to tear down teacher's unions and public schools.

I expect some consistency. Not too much to ask from a group who swear they only have the best interests of children and education at heart.

[MineralMan]

23. Well, if they're like me, they simply avoid education threads most of the time.

As for myself, I support shutting down any charter school that isn't providing a good education. I also support those charter schools that are providing specific educational opportunities that meet specific needs. I feel the same about public schools. Good ones need our support. Bad ones need our condemnation and serious reforms.

See, what I want is for kids to get the best possible education. I want dedicated teachers, small class sizes, proper equipment and facilities, etc. I want lousy teachers and administrators fired. I want excellent teachers and administrators rewarded. I want pay that is in line with the highly-skilled services provided.

What I don't want is to simply accept that only traditional public schools are the only answer. So, I don't accept that. I live in a major metropolitan area. We have excellent schools and crappy ones. Oddly enough, the excellent ones are in areas with high incomes and educated parents. The crappy schools are in areas with low incomes and parents who went to the same crappy schools. So, my goals are to upgrade the crappy schools to make them better.

I'm not someone who equates excellence in education with anything but excellent teachers, facilities, administration and the other things that go into creating great schools. I don't care about anything else when it comes to schools. If the current public school system isn't supplying that throughout the district, I want to know why. If the best teachers get assigned to the nice schools in nice neighborhoods and the crappy teachers end up in the crappy schools, I want that fixed.

Because I feel that way, I stay out of education threads that are only about teachers' rights. That doesn't interest me. I'm interested only in the rights of children to get a decent education. That's my only priority.

So, do I support charter schools? I do, as long as they're providing good education to their students. That's the same thing I support in public schools as well. I don't see the problem with that, frankly, but I sure see a lot of problems in schools.

[Starry Messenger]

24. Students' school conditions are the same as the teachers'.

DU teachers who post about teachers are also advocates for better learning conditions for students.

A charter school embezzling thousands of dollars of tax money is becoming a common story. They have weaknesses inherent to them that is open to that kind of abuse.

It does nothing to improve education to have a system of schools that are embezzlement factories.

[ladjf]

17. Hmm, what could have possibly gone wrong here? nt

[Lex]

22. What your school privatization looks like.

No pesky rules and regulations because umm, they impede business and stuff.