The Democrats are Coming For Your Charter School

This is a transcript from my radio program. Listen live weekdays from noon to 3 PM here.

One of the things that I try to do every day when I get up and prepare for my radio show and write my morning Substack piece is find stories that no one else is talking about that everyone should pay attention to. When the herd is going in a particular direction, oftentimes that's where the opposition realizes we can sneak something through that no one's going to pay attention to. In fact, the Democrats are trying to do something while you're all clamoring about the Texas representatives and critical race theory.

I’ve got to give credit to Katie Lobosco at CNN. At 5:33 p.m. yesterday, she published a story. It has not gotten the eyeballs that it deserves because everyone's talking about other stories, and this really is the biggest story, I think, of the week. It is one we need to spend some time with and I need your undivided attention to explain. And, by the way, this isn't hyperbole. This isn't me trying to make a big deal out of something that's not. I'm actually being very serious here and I need all of your attention because I'm about to read to you the beginning of this story and it's probably going to enrage you and it should. No one's paying attention to it in large part because they're paying attention to everything else. This is one of the few ways that Washington Democrats want to harm you as a family.

From CNN:

A small provision tucked into a massive federal budget proposal put forth by the House Appropriations Committee would cut money for charter schools by $40 million and limit many charter schools from receiving federal funds altogether. The National Alliance for Public Charter Schools is calling the cut particularly egregious and said the money would impact the majority of three point three million charter school students who are overwhelmingly children of color and from low income families. Charter schools, which are publicly funded but usually run independently from local school districts, had the support of the Bush, Obama and Trump administrations. But some Democrats have targeted charter schools in recent years, arguing that they take away money from other public school students. On the campaign trail last year, now President Joe Biden, Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders, and Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren opposed federal funds going to for profit charter schools. The vast majority of charter schools are nonprofit organizations, though some states allow for profit companies to manage charter schools, making up 10% nationwide.

The Democrat budget proposal shows how these campaign pledges may lead to legislation that would funnel money away from some of the for profit charters. The bill would prohibit any funds going to a charter school that contracts with a for profit entity to operate, oversee or manage the activities of the school. But Nina Rees, the president and CEO of the National Alliance for Public Charter Schools, told CNN that the sweeping language could impact schools that contract out for cafeteria services, special education services, or back office staff, some of the same things local district schools also hire private companies for. Without contracting out, schools may not be able to offer the services to special needs students that they are legally required to provide.

They're coming for your charter school. Let me explain how some of this works. A lot of nonprofit charter schools, because of the economies of scale, will contract with a company that provides janitorial services or cafeteria services, or even the back office support for payroll and the like. For example, my company contracts with ADP, as a lot of companies in this country do to handle payroll. I can go to an ADP website instead of a website for my company and see my pay stub and get my W2 and see all of that information. Under the language of this bill, a nonprofit charter school would be prohibited from doing that, which would then drive up the costs of the nonprofit and make the nonprofit be unable to provide basic educational support because they can't handle the payroll and general overhead.

If a nonprofit charter school contracted with a local restaurant to provide the cafeteria services for their kids, the charter school would not receive federal funding under this legislation. If the charter school worked with a private hospital group or a public hospital group that was for-profit to handle the needs of special education kids in the charter school, the charter school would not get federal funding. That's what this legislation does. That is the implication. It is designed to shut down public charter schools.

Democrats, in particular, because of the teachers' unions, are opposed to private schools and charter schools. They believe that charter schools take money from the standard school system and have worked over time to shut them down. Now, the majority of kids who go to charter schools are non-white and poor. It provides them a way out of the standard public school system. The Democrats for some time have been opposed to that and this is a back door way to kill this option. They say they're going after for-profit charter schools but the overwhelming number of charter schools in this country are nonprofit. Only 10% are actually for-profit and even those aren't really for profit. What they are is they are nonprofit charter schools but they allow a for-profit company to oversee the entire operation of the charter school, from the hiring of the teachers to the cafeteria to the special education services.

This is designed much broader than that. If any aspect of any charter school is managed by a for-profit company, whether it's the cafeteria services or the special education services, or even the payroll, they'll be denied federal funding under this language. They have slipped this in on behalf of the public sector teachers union lobby. The teachers’ unions, the very same ones that didn't want schools open last year, are the ones who have wanted public charter schools shut down. They don't like the competition and they don't like the competition because it raises questions. Why are so many charter schools able to get results for the same demographics of children that the public schools are not? They claim it is the white, wealthy parents sending their kids to charter schools. The data doesn't bear that out. They keep coming up with excuses to explain why charter schools outperform regular public schools and none of their excuses hold water under the slightest bit of examination.

I have a public charter school down the road from me. It's called ACE. ACE IS run in Bibb County, Georgia by the local public school board, which opposed it and fought its creation. So ACE had to rely on a state entity to allow it to operate because the local public school board fought it. It was a competitor. So ACE relied on the state of Georgia to allow it to operate outside of the purview of the local board of education and it became a huge success. It does not have a school bus program, so parents do have to drive their kids to the school. The local school system attacks this charter school claiming only the wealthy can do this. Yet, there's a volunteer parent organization that goes into the poor areas of town and gets their poor kids whose parents can't get them to school in the morning and gets them to school. It's a parent-led effort for the school and it works.

The school has been extremely successful. It's right on the county line between Monroe County and Bibb County in middle Georgia. It is expanding over into Monroe County and that school system is livid as well because of the competition. Again, it’s a public school. None of the parents have to pay for their kids to go there. The local school systems are livid that not only is the school system able to pull kids out of the local school systems but is getting better results with the same pool of kids. And, by the way, the school system is not just catered to the wealthy white people who can afford to get their kids out. It's a racially diverse community and the local public school systems hate it and the local school systems would like to kill it.

This is the story around the state of Georgia and every other state out there. Local school systems want to kill public charter schools. While we are all distracted by other things, the Democrats in Congress have slipped a provision into the federal budget that, should it pass (it's not because the Senate Republicans maintain the filibuster) it would gut charter schools by depriving them of funding. You need to remember this when you vote. The Democrats are so intent on believing that the suburbs have now moved their way completely, that they're exposing who they are and they are exactly who they've always been. They are against parents, against school choice, against initiatives that could improve public schools, against you, and against your values. This is what they're doing. You need to pay attention to this.

I realize everybody's talking about other stories today. I can't listen to the other talk shows that are going on right now, but I have a sneaking suspicion that they’re talking about other stories when this is your big story of the day. It has gotten very little traction. No one's paying attention to it. And yet, it will happen if it were to pass and one reporter at CNN noted it and was able to write about it.

Let me put this in perspective for you in one more way to explain to you when they talk about for-profit institutions. The syndication side of my radio show is small. We have a handful of employees so I don’t have the ability yet to pay benefits. When I do, it becomes extremely burdensome to be able to do that. I've got to boost the syndicated radio ads and things like that to be able to raise the revenue to do it and then be able to think about a 401(k) and benefits.

I was talking to a buddy of mine who manages the books for the syndication side of the show the other day and he said, "You know what you could do? ADP and other finance companies out there have a business now where essentially they hire your employees and they lease them back to you for a management fee and through the economies of scale, they're able to provide 401(k)'s that you ultimately pay for but then also insurance benefits, and the insurance benefits are way more reasonable because they have hundreds of thousands of people who are technically employees through this program.”

It makes it easier for small businesses to provide insurance benefits and 401(k) plans to their employees because really, you're leasing the employees from ADP and you're reimbursing ADP's cost, and through the economies of scale, they get everything cheaper than you as a small business with a handful of employees could do. That's what a lot of charter schools are doing, and because those outside companies managing the employees are for-profit companies, those charter schools will be prohibited from getting any federal money. They're punishing your kids because the teachers’ unions that don’t even want schools to be open have told them they must, and the Democrats would rather listen to the teachers’ unions than the poor black families whose kids will be forced to give up charter schools if this passes.