A Florida League of Women Voters attack on a Jacksonville charter school last week would have been more persuasive if it had not so brazenly played a Muslim card and not so blatantly ignored the school’s documented academic success.
The guest column, published Friday in the South Florida Sun-Sentinel and the Fort Myers News-Press, provided a granular critique of the real estate practices at River City Science Academy in Jacksonville. League president Pamela Goodwin drew extensively on previously reported connections to Turkey.
Some will remember accusations targeting Turkish exile Fethullah Gulen for backing a failed government overthrow in his home country a year ago. Many quickly became concerned that a network of approximately 170 American charter schools operated by his followers, a dozen right here in Florida, could be involved.
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Due to HB 7069 and other laws, Florida is unable to protect itself against a Ponzi scheme operating in our school system. Gulen schools are required to rent or buy property from other Gulenist interests and hire associated construction firms. To see how this works, consider the case of River City Science Academy in Jacksonville.
Some mainstream news media, including The New York Times, have covered the Gulen involvement in U.S. education, and it’s gotten traction among charter school critics. But the Turkish government is working to perpetuate this storyline. In 2015, it hired a British law firm to dig up dirt on dissidents in the Turkish American diaspora, some of whom operated charter schools in the U.S.
An odd nexus has formed between the administration of President Tayyip Erdoğan, its agents in the United States and American charter school critics. They’ve produced a hard-hitting documentary film, published articles in left-wing publications, started anonymous investigative blogs and ginned up the occasional local controversy.
It’s hard to say which attacks truly trace to the Turkish government, and which ones stem from more ordinary opposition research by the usual suspects in education politics. There is certainly no reason to think the League would allow itself to be caught up in such international intrigue. After all, Ms. Goodman’s basic contention is pretty straightforward. She says the charter school’s buildings are owned by private investors who might make money, and that real estate developers who worked on the school facility have ties to the people who run the school.
That kind of real estate arrangement is relatively common for Florida charter schools. There are several reasons for that. One is the funding disadvantage for Florida charters, compared to district-run public schools.
Until a new law passed earlier this year, charter schools in Florida received a little more than 70 cents on the dollar compared to district-run public schools. The biggest gap came from facilities funding. School districts raise local property taxes for construction. In Duval County, where the school in question is located, those taxes raised about $87 million for the local district last year.
Charter schools in Duval, and most of the rest of the state, did not receive any of that money until the Legislature passed HB 7069 this past spring. Now, charter schools that have clean financial audits and no F grades can receive facilities funding that matches what district-run schools receive. But they still have to wait at least two years before they can qualify.
As a result, getting a building can be difficult for upstart charter schools without deep-pocketed backers. They often rely on private investors for startup financing. In some cases, once it gets established and qualifies for state funding, the nonprofit that controls a charter school will then buy the privately financed facility. The League’s guest column tries to paint this as nefarious.
Anyone with questions about how these public schools spend their money can check out the audit reports on a state website. At River City Science Academy, they’ll find an institution that’s gotten strong results with fewer resources. The now-former Duval County schools superintendent described the school as “well-run” and said it had a solid reputation in the community. Its budding network includes two A-rated schools and two B-rated schools. About half the students are economically disadvantaged.
Now that charter schools are getting closer to equitable funding for facilities, it’s reasonable to debate whether there should be more safeguards on how they use that money. But the League’s criticism looks backward at a time when no such capital money was available. More pointedly, in all its accusations about untoward connections, it fails even to mention academic performance. That’s an odd omission.
