Who funds our schools?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:You are obnoxious. If this dictated your decision, then you should have already investigated. If you show up and start arguing against funding that existed prior to your arrival, you are a self-centered bitch.

Agree. If you think the educational philosophy is dictated by one grant, you don't understand educational funding. And wow, you work at a non-profit...so has pretty much everyone in DC at one point, it doesn't mean you understand charter school start-ups (many of which was done by parents in their spare time).

Wow, you two are completely brainwashed. Good for you OP for wanting to see the whole picture.

Thanks!

Nobody wants to know what's really going on until some shit hits the fan and then everyone starts scrambling, pointing fingers and asking what business the NRA has funding a charter school (I doubt the NRA funds a charter school, just using the example for emphasis)

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Ok, OP here (finally got back online) and first, the school is not Creative Minds, don't know why someone said that. Second, I totally disagree with this poster and the others who say that private funders have no bearing on how schools are run. As a person who works for a foundation myself (and who knows quite well what it takes to put together grant funding) I see EVERY DAY how the money I grant to organizations changes them, and we are a very lax funder with very little political agenda--but the truth is there are power dynamics at play, and due to funding constraints, mission creep is a real thing. So to the PP who said that absolutely the Walton foundation and Gates Foundation can affect a school's environment, this is why I am asking this question. Not to "get mad" at the school, or "waltz in" like an idiot, but to better understand whether, for instance, a focus on high-stakes testing or data-driven analysis is based on what the school thinks is good practice, or more a response to donor demands to get funding. These are funders with very strong and clear agendas--their GOAL is to get schools to implement high stakes testing and support privatization--and if I were writing a grant for a charter school I would do my best to respond to their criteria by, for instance, talking about how data informs classroom decisions.

Ultimately what I am trying to understand is the "true" educational philosophy of my child's school, and whether I can have honest conversations with teachers and administrators about their choices. I probably visited 15 schools during open houses, and at least 10 of these talked about their data-driven approaches, multiple assessments for pk, etc. I work in education policy and I don't really believe in all those things, but I am also a pragmatist who is open to hearing why they might be good in some cases. So this is why I asked the question.

I think you need to understand the percentages at play here. Take a look at DC Prep's (because they were in that Times article) financials in their annual report for 2012-13, page 31 in the this document (33rd page in the pdf):

http://www.dcpcsb.org/data/files/2014%20Annual%20Reports/2012-2013_Annual_Report_DCPrep.pdf

If you add up the various local and federal funding, it makes up 88.6% of their revenue for that year. The private donations/grants make up 9.7%, and I think that is much higher than what it would be for most charters in DC.

Now, I am not denying that those donations are a force in how they make decisions, programs they run, etc. It's $2 million. It has to affect them. But it's also less than 10% of their revenue. If you have a full-time job and a 10 hour a week weekend gig for extra money, and there is some sort of conflict between the two, which has more importance? I think it's basically the same here. The oversight and guidance from the PCSB, OSSE, etc is much more important because it determines almost 90% of their funding, and, just as importantly, it determines their right to keep operating. No foundation has the authority to shut them down if they do something the foundation doesn't like. Maybe they can claw their money back. But if you really mess up with PCSB, your charter is revoked and your organization dies.

And DC Prep gets a lot of private money. I think most charters in DC are probably in the 3-5% private money range. Look at Perry Street Prep (Page 30):

http://www.dcpcsb.org/data/files/2014%20Annual%20Reports/2012-2013_Annual_ReportPerryStreetPrepPCS.pdf

That's around 1.3% of their revenue as private money.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:You are obnoxious. If this dictated your decision, then you should have already investigated. If you show up and start arguing against funding that existed prior to your arrival, you are a self-centered bitch.

Agree. If you think the educational philosophy is dictated by one grant, you don't understand educational funding. And wow, you work at a non-profit...so has pretty much everyone in DC at one point, it doesn't mean you understand charter school start-ups (many of which was done by parents in their spare time).

Wow, you two are completely brainwashed. Good for you OP for wanting to see the whole picture.

Or perhaps as founding parents and grant writers we find the OP off putting.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:You are obnoxious. If this dictated your decision, then you should have already investigated. If you show up and start arguing against funding that existed prior to your arrival, you are a self-centered bitch.

Agree. If you think the educational philosophy is dictated by one grant, you don't understand educational funding. And wow, you work at a non-profit...so has pretty much everyone in DC at one point, it doesn't mean you understand charter school start-ups (many of which was done by parents in their spare time).

Wow, you two are completely brainwashed. Good for you OP for wanting to see the whole picture.

Or perhaps as founding parents and grant writers we find the OP off putting.

Is this the same message board that had parents recommending FOIA requests to get the lottery results (that came out two days later)? No matter how much work goes into getting grants, parents still have a right to that information. I'm confused as to why it's so sensitive.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:This is not always as easy a puzzle to untangle as just reading a 990. Creative Minds gets support from Charter Board partners, which gets funding from New Ventures for New Schools, which is heavily funded by Walton. New Ventures is also funded by the Broad Foundation, which is pretty fanatically anti-union.

New Ventures funds many of the HRCS in the city.

The fact is that none of these entities is ideologically pure.

I think you mean New Schools Venture Fund. Whose summit the DCPS chancellor is at right now:

https://twitter.com/HendersonKaya

The world is a complicated place. There is no such thing as ideological purity, and one person's purity is another person's pollution. Good luck if you think you can find it, and please let us know when you do. The rest of us will struggle along in the gray, doing our best.

Sounds like a major rationalization to me. I wouldn't be surprised if the next thing you say is "Everybody does it."

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:My child is starting at a charter school in the fall, and the website does not have info regarding supporters or donors. Would it sound aggressive if I emailed the principal and asked for this info? After the Walmart article I'd really like to know who is paying for my kid's education. It should be public, right?

Not sure why this post rubs me the wrong way. I guess because OP is going to waltz right into a functional charter school with no clue how much work it takes to get it up and running, scrapping together grant funds from foundations, and hard work.

In other words, OP shouldn't ask any questions because the charter has worked hard?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:You are obnoxious. If this dictated your decision, then you should have already investigated. If you show up and start arguing against funding that existed prior to your arrival, you are a self-centered bitch.

Agree. If you think the educational philosophy is dictated by one grant, you don't understand educational funding. And wow, you work at a non-profit...so has pretty much everyone in DC at one point, it doesn't mean you understand charter school start-ups (many of which was done by parents in their spare time).

Who wrote the above comments:

a) parents who can't bear the thought that there might be something amiss with the charter school they researched so intensely and worked so hard to get their kids into

b) charter operators or funders who want to stop this threatening conversation dead in its tracks

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:You are obnoxious. If this dictated your decision, then you should have already investigated. If you show up and start arguing against funding that existed prior to your arrival, you are a self-centered bitch.

If what dictated what decision? I haven't investigated anything yet, beyond the link a PP sent out.

Also why all the hate? Who said I wanted to argue? I'm simply interested in understanding where the school's educational philosophy comes from. Who's the bitch here?

Maybe it's not hate. Maybe it's a matter of feeling very threatened.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:You are obnoxious. If this dictated your decision, then you should have already investigated. If you show up and start arguing against funding that existed prior to your arrival, you are a self-centered bitch.

Agree. If you think the educational philosophy is dictated by one grant, you don't understand educational funding. And wow, you work at a non-profit...so has pretty much everyone in DC at one point, it doesn't mean you understand charter school start-ups (many of which was done by parents in their spare time).

Wow, you two are completely brainwashed. Good for you OP for wanting to see the whole picture.

Or perhaps as founding parents and grant writers we find the OP off putting.

so when you find someone "off-putting" it's acceptable to call them a obnoxious bitch?

[Anonymous]

Obnoxious bitch, here. Just have to say, if these are the kinds of people who start charter schools, I'm very happy to have nothing to do with them.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:My child is starting at a charter school in the fall, and the website does not have info regarding supporters or donors. Would it sound aggressive if I emailed the principal and asked for this info? After the Walmart article I'd really like to know who is paying for my kid's education. It should be public, right?

Not sure why this post rubs me the wrong way. I guess because OP is going to waltz right into a functional charter school with no clue how much work it takes to get it up and running, scrapping together grant funds from foundations, and hard work.

In other words, OP shouldn't ask any questions because the charter has worked hard?

Asking questions and asserting a right to know are different. If OP's point was that disclosure was a good idea and she explained why, I think her comments would have been received better than her position that a general "right" exists to the information.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:My child is starting at a charter school in the fall, and the website does not have info regarding supporters or donors. Would it sound aggressive if I emailed the principal and asked for this info? After the Walmart article I'd really like to know who is paying for my kid's education. It should be public, right?

Here is my original post - not very aggressive at all. I only got into the 'rights' talk when the "founder moms" started attacking me. Which is usually when people invoke their rights...when they are attacked.