Florida loses millions to felonious privatized 'education' providers

[HiPointDem]

When Yolanda Axson wasn't watching, a pot of hot water spilled into a crib at her day care in Orlando, scalding a 4-month-old boy. She served probation for felony child neglect and then, barred from child care, found a less regulated line of work. She started a company to earn tax dollars tutoring poor kids in Florida's failing schools.

When state officials saw Axson's name on an application for the government tutoring program, they didn't hesitate. They stamped their approval, and her business, Busy BEE Services, went to work tutoring Florida's neediest children. The cost to taxpayers per student? At least $60 an hour.

Axson's case points to a larger problem with mandated tutoring in Florida: The program pays public money to people with criminal records, and to cheaters and profiteers who operate virtually unchecked by state regulators.

• Florida school districts paid at least $7 million last year to tutoring companies run by people with criminal records. Among those who have headed state-approved tutoring firms are a rapist, thieves and drug users.

• In more than 40 cases across the state, tutoring companies have faked student sign-up sheets or billed for tutoring that never happened. Companies that overcharged for tutoring earned $7 million last year alone...

http://www.tampabay.com/news/education/public-schools-lose-millions-to-crooks-and-cheaters/1274614

[Live and Learn]

1. So you don't think anyone who has ever been convicted of a crime should be able to get a job?

I don't think her neglect as a daycare provider should prevent her from working as a tutor. Those that have served their time deserve a fair chance at employment.

It is getting quite easy these days to become a felon and we seem to have more than any other country.

[HiPointDem]

2. Do you think rapists should be working with children in situations where they may be doing home

visits or working with a single child after-hours? Because that's what some tutors do.

Do you think people with convictions for theft and fraud should receive public funds? Because that's what Florida is doing.

[Live and Learn]

4. Why shouldn't people with convictions for theft and fraud get public funds?

The bankers sure the hell got them. This punitive society is pushing people to the limits (and over them). There is no reason they should be punished beyond serving their sentence.

I believe sex offenders are generally barred (as part of their sentencing) from working with children.

[HiPointDem]

5. "Among those who have headed state-approved tutoring firms are a rapist..."

I don't think you understand what's happening to education in Florida.

And I'm not in favor of banksters getting public funds either. I'm in favor of incarcerating them.

The woman who burnt the child was prohibited from working with kids for 10 years:

A judge withheld a formal finding of guilt and sentenced Axson to 10 years probation, during which she was banned from working with children and even from babysitting.

That would seem to apply to any work with children.


Axson's case isn't an isolated example, the Times found.

The newspaper used corporate records to identify more than 1,100 officers and directors of the 456 tutoring companies approved in Florida last school year. Comparing that list with records of criminal convictions and arrests uncovered at least 36 companies headed by people with criminal records.

In 24 cases, they pleaded guilty or no contest to charges ranging from misdemeanor domestic battery and public lewdness to grand theft and rape. In the others, charges were downgraded or dropped after the defendants made deals with prosecutors.

State laws meant to protect children would bar many of these people from working in a day care business. But those laws don't apply to government-funded tutoring companies, whose officers and directors are not screened.

Ernest R. Joe Jr. was in prison for raping a woman at gunpoint in front of her kids when he became a director of Kids World Enrichment Center Inc.

That didn't stop regulators from approving the company as a tutoring vendor in 2009.



Lack of oversight is what these findings demonstrate. And that's what's happening in the new world of privatized education, in Florida and elsewhere.

As well as massive FRAUD:

Florida has spent $192 million on private tutoring firms in the past two years.

The companies are paid at a dramatically higher rate than conventional public schools. In the 2009-10 school year, the most recent period for which numbers are available, the state spent $9,981 per student — about $11 an hour. Florida spent $58 an hour, more than five times as much, on private tutoring.

[Comatose Sphagetti]

13. "Those that have served their time deserve a fair chance..."

Well said.

I grow weary of those (mostly conservative and Christian, in my experience) who demand infinite punishment for finite transgressions.

Recently I was at a function attended by many old friends and family members. Somehow the topic got on "the criminals" and how "they" should be punished.

I let everyone rant for a while. Then I quietly said, "I know for a fact everyone in this room has broken the law at some point in their life and is therefore a criminal."

Crickets.

[duffyduff]

18. That's too bad. There are many of us who can't get jobs who didn't commit crimes.

I am appalled anybody thinks convicted criminals should be in line for any jobs working with children.

[Comatose Sphagetti]

20. "Us?," the "good people" who have never broken the law, i.e., committed a crime?

They don't exist, my friend. And millions of formally convicted and unconvicted criminals work with kids every day with no problem. Problems arise only when the "good people" want to rub the noses of the convicted in the wreckage of the past.

It is my observation the only difference between someone who has a record and someone who doesn't is the latter didn't get caught, or had the cash/connections to get out of it. Whenever I bring up the fact that EVERYONE has broken the law at some point in their lives and is therefore a criminal the reaction is always the same... Shock, SHOCK!, that someone would say this about wonderful me! Pride, ego, delusion and denial rear their ugly heads in full force.

A universal truism sang by the great British sage, Mick Jagger, reveals:

"Just as every cop is a criminal, and all the sinners Saints."

[Live and Learn]

21. You are correct. The hypocrisy of those claiming to have never

committed a crime is astounding.

[Live and Learn]

22. This is just great. They have us fighting over the trickle down crumbs

with you claiming you are more deserving than others.

[duffyduff]

17. Not a teaching job or other position working with kids. It's disqualifying.

n/t

[geomon666]

3. We have regulations in this state?

[Berlum]

6. Busy Bee? BFEE? WTF?

Is this one of their rackets?

[HiPointDem]

7. Jeb bush is a big player in florida education deform if that's what you mean.

[Berlum]

8. Ah, the Jebster (R).

A Portrait of the Man, sporting a traditional Republican Made-in-China lapel pin.

[Berlum]

9. Neil 'Silverado" Bush (R) is also big on Edu-Profiteering

WASHINGTON, Nov. 6 — The inspector general of the Department of Education has said he will examine whether federal money was inappropriately used by three states to buy educational products from a company owned by Neil Bush, the president’s brother.

Ignite Learning - The Curriculum on Wheels - is owned by Neil Bush,

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/07/washington/07neil.html?ref=neilbush&_r=0

[Berlum]

10. Another E-mail Trail: Jeb Bush’s Foundation and Ed Privatization

"Foundation e-mail communications are proving very interesting for those trying to better understand how private philanthropy interacts with public school systems.

"The NPQ Newswire commented on the e-mail exchanges between representatives of Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg and Newark Mayor Cory Booker during the planning stages of the Facebook billionaire’s $100 million donation to the Newark, N.J. school system.

"Now a group called In the Public Interest has done the same favor for the Foundation for Excellence in Education (FEE), founded by former Florida governor and potential presidential candidate Jeb Bush.

"The e-mails number in the thousands, but In the Public Interest seems to focus strongly on those pointing to privatization trends.

"The key information revealed in these e-mails involves the foundation’s work in connecting the members of a Bush-created council of current and former state education commissions with corporations interested in privatizing state education functions."

http://www.nonprofitquarterly.org/policysocial-context/21742-another-e-mail-trail-jeb-bushs-foundation-and-ed-privatization.html

[maggiesfarmer]

11. good find, looks like something that needs to be cleaned up

I looked in to volunteering as a tutor at my daughter's public school in North Carolina. the barrier to entry was a private interview with school administration and passing a back ground check that I was required to pay for. I was a little upset that they required me to fund the background check, but those two barriers gates seemed otherwise appropriate before being allowed to tutor other people's students.

[HockeyMom]

12. I had to stay with the volunteers

doing tutoring during the school day. Before I could work in the public school, I had to be fingerprinted and a background check done. Yes, I had to pay $70 for this.

During season, snowbird would volunteer to come in to the Pre-K classes (in another room) and read to the little kids. In the past, they were not required to pass a background check. There was a problem in one of the schools where a volunteer molested the kids. After that happened, the district started requiring the fingerprinting for all volunteers. Until they got this, a school staff member, who was fingerprinted, had to be with the volunteers at all times.

[WinkyDink]

14. No-one could have predicted.................

[SammyWinstonJack]

15. bu$h boyz! BFEE continues its screwing of us peons.

[Starry Messenger]

16. Gosh, another thread about theft of public school funding

AND NARY A WORD FROM the teachers are paid too much crowd. So telling.

[duffyduff]

19. Or from those who keep claiming charter schools are "public schools."

Typically they are the same bunch.