Arizona State Sen. Steven Yarbrough
Steven Yarbrough is a state senator in Arizona and founder and CEO of Arizona Christian School Tuition Organization, a tax-credit scholarship granting organization. Last week an investigative journalist at CBS 5 accused Yarbrough of profiting from a program he helped found. Two of the charges levied by the news organization turned out to be false. Sen. Yarbrough was elected to office four years after he founded the scholarship organization, and SB 1047, which Yarbrough did co-author, did not increase scholarship organization management fees as the investigator claimed.
However, Yarbrough does admit to earning money by renting real estate to his own scholarship organization and through a third-party data processing company he co-owns. This extra income is in addition to his $96,000-a-year salary from the scholarship organization. Yarbrough is up front with these expenditures, declaring them in both his 990 and in an email with the journalist. But being up front with such expenditures, sadly, isn’t enough.
While the Arizona Senate Ethics Committee has cleared Yarbrough of wrongdoing, school choice proponents must hold themselves to a higher standard. School choice is still in a tenuous position and critics will latch onto any fear (real or imagined) to prevent, or even eliminate, choice programs. Even the perception of someone making money from choice programs (even if they take a financial loss, or offer professional services cheaper than competitors) does harm to the movement.
Grade: Needs Improvement
New York Post
The New York Post’s expose into PS 106, one of New York City’s worst public schools, shocked the city’s education department into taking some semblance of action for the first time in years. The reporter found parents, community members and employees who were willing to talk (but not give their names for fear of retaliation from the principal) and what she uncovered was a school with “no clue.”
The school has an operating budget of more than $2.9 million a year, and receives additional Title 1 funds because of the large population of low-income students. But it has no reading, writing or math textbooks for the new Common Core initiative; no art class; and no substitute teachers when full-time teachers are out sick. The nurse’s office doesn’t have a sink, refrigerator or cot. The library is a “junk room.” Students watch movies during P.E. Some classrooms smell like urine. Importantly, the long-time principal, Marcella Sills, never shows up to work on time, when she shows up to work at all. At least until reporter Susan Edelman’s expose.
The day after the story, the NYC department of education sent administrators to investigate. Principal Sills – dressed as if she was headed to a nightclub instead of an elementary school – showed up to work early for the first time in six or seven years, according to Edelman’s source. The principal did manage to pull off a Potemkin-village-style art class for her visitors, and she succeeded in getting textbooks for students (just a few months late). But she’s still so bad, the Post reports, that parents booed her when she showed up to work on time (for the second day in a row) on Tuesday.
Good for the Post for exposing such a bad school. Hopefully further investigation will lead to real, meaningful change.
Grade: Satisfactory
I was wondering what your grades are for the 17 charter schools that failed in Columbus in one year, the couple who operated a failed voucher school in Milwaukee but then moved to Florida to set up another shop and the Salon article that outlined some pretty horrific charter abuses?