City Paper - Deep Dive into TenSquare, charter 'turnaround' consultant

[Anonymous]

Having been on a charter board, I can bear witness that the pressure to use all of these consultants and pay their outrageous fees is insidious and intense. Without paying for FOCUS, your application is unlikely to get approved. If you try to secure a building without Building Hope, Building Hope may actually try to interfere with your lease, so that you have to go through them - and pay their high fees. As a new school, the PCSB pressures you to use FOCUS/TenSquare as consultants - and pay their outrageous fees, even though you are not a failing school, just a new school. All of these fees do not result in better outcomes for students, bleed schools dry, and ultimately line the pockets of Tom Porter et al - whose children are all in private schools, not within DC public schools.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Having been on a charter board, I can bear witness that the pressure to use all of these consultants and pay their outrageous fees is insidious and intense. Without paying for FOCUS, your application is unlikely to get approved. If you try to secure a building without Building Hope, Building Hope may actually try to interfere with your lease, so that you have to go through them - and pay their high fees. As a new school, the PCSB pressures you to use FOCUS/TenSquare as consultants - and pay their outrageous fees, even though you are not a failing school, just a new school. All of these fees do not result in better outcomes for students, bleed schools dry, and ultimately line the pockets of Tom Porter et al - whose children are all in private schools, not within DC public schools.

wow. I didn't know this.

[NathanBacaABC7]

Anonymous wrote:Having been on a charter board, I can bear witness that the pressure to use all of these consultants and pay their outrageous fees is insidious and intense. Without paying for FOCUS, your application is unlikely to get approved. If you try to secure a building without Building Hope, Building Hope may actually try to interfere with your lease, so that you have to go through them - and pay their high fees. As a new school, the PCSB pressures you to use FOCUS/TenSquare as consultants - and pay their outrageous fees, even though you are not a failing school, just a new school. All of these fees do not result in better outcomes for students, bleed schools dry, and ultimately line the pockets of Tom Porter et al - whose children are all in private schools, not within DC public schools.

Let's meet for coffee and talk. You can reach me at 703-328-1276. You can remain anonymous if you prefer. I'm very interested in airing more stories on how charter schools operate.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Having been on a charter board, I can bear witness that the pressure to use all of these consultants and pay their outrageous fees is insidious and intense. Without paying for FOCUS, your application is unlikely to get approved. If you try to secure a building without Building Hope, Building Hope may actually try to interfere with your lease, so that you have to go through them - and pay their high fees. As a new school, the PCSB pressures you to use FOCUS/TenSquare as consultants - and pay their outrageous fees, even though you are not a failing school, just a new school. All of these fees do not result in better outcomes for students, bleed schools dry, and ultimately line the pockets of Tom Porter et al - whose children are all in private schools, not within DC public schools.

wow. I didn't know this.

The bolded is not true- from personal experience. Can not speak to the FOCUS statement.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Having been on a charter board, I can bear witness that the pressure to use all of these consultants and pay their outrageous fees is insidious and intense. Without paying for FOCUS, your application is unlikely to get approved. If you try to secure a building without Building Hope, Building Hope may actually try to interfere with your lease, so that you have to go through them - and pay their high fees. As a new school, the PCSB pressures you to use FOCUS/TenSquare as consultants - and pay their outrageous fees, even though you are not a failing school, just a new school. All of these fees do not result in better outcomes for students, bleed schools dry, and ultimately line the pockets of Tom Porter et al - whose children are all in private schools, not within DC public schools.

wow. I didn't know this.

The bolded is not true- from personal experience. Can not speak to the FOCUS statement.

Or at least not true for all schools.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Having been on a charter board, I can bear witness that the pressure to use all of these consultants and pay their outrageous fees is insidious and intense. Without paying for FOCUS, your application is unlikely to get approved. If you try to secure a building without Building Hope, Building Hope may actually try to interfere with your lease, so that you have to go through them - and pay their high fees. As a new school, the PCSB pressures you to use FOCUS/TenSquare as consultants - and pay their outrageous fees, even though you are not a failing school, just a new school. All of these fees do not result in better outcomes for students, bleed schools dry, and ultimately line the pockets of Tom Porter et al - whose children are all in private schools, not within DC public schools.

Interesting. Doesn’t Building Hope have their hands in the Kingsbury-LAMB deal? I wonder if it’s the fees that are making it difficult to get through.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:This school had a CMO before. We’re they firprofit or nonprofit.

To me the bigger issue is that it failed. Shut it down.

Democracy Prep is a national nonprofit. Imagine Schools, the CMO that managed the school before Democracy Prep, was for-profit at the time. They became a nonprofit a couple of years ago.

[Anonymous]

NathanBacaABC7 wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Having been on a charter board, I can bear witness that the pressure to use all of these consultants and pay their outrageous fees is insidious and intense. Without paying for FOCUS, your application is unlikely to get approved. If you try to secure a building without Building Hope, Building Hope may actually try to interfere with your lease, so that you have to go through them - and pay their high fees. As a new school, the PCSB pressures you to use FOCUS/TenSquare as consultants - and pay their outrageous fees, even though you are not a failing school, just a new school. All of these fees do not result in better outcomes for students, bleed schools dry, and ultimately line the pockets of Tom Porter et al - whose children are all in private schools, not within DC public schools.

Let's meet for coffee and talk. You can reach me at 703-328-1276. You can remain anonymous if you prefer. I'm very interested in airing more stories on how charter schools operate.

Building Hope helped my school. As a new school we didn't have the financial history to take on a lease or buy a building by ourselves. Plus we were growing a grade at a time and didn't have full enrollment to pay for a full lease. That was a few years ago so I don't know what their deals are like now. Of course, my school's interaction with Building Hope doesn't make a good news story.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

NathanBacaABC7 wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Having been on a charter board, I can bear witness that the pressure to use all of these consultants and pay their outrageous fees is insidious and intense. Without paying for FOCUS, your application is unlikely to get approved. If you try to secure a building without Building Hope, Building Hope may actually try to interfere with your lease, so that you have to go through them - and pay their high fees. As a new school, the PCSB pressures you to use FOCUS/TenSquare as consultants - and pay their outrageous fees, even though you are not a failing school, just a new school. All of these fees do not result in better outcomes for students, bleed schools dry, and ultimately line the pockets of Tom Porter et al - whose children are all in private schools, not within DC public schools.

Let's meet for coffee and talk. You can reach me at 703-328-1276. You can remain anonymous if you prefer. I'm very interested in airing more stories on how charter schools operate.

Building Hope helped my school. As a new school we didn't have the financial history to take on a lease or buy a building by ourselves. Plus we were growing a grade at a time and didn't have full enrollment to pay for a full lease. That was a few years ago so I don't know what their deals are like now. Of course, my school's interaction with Building Hope doesn't make a good news story.

Similar experience. Never saw them "interfering with your lease", whatever that means.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:"As a result, unlike virtually every other charter management organization operating in D.C., the PCSB still does not have the legal authority to go into TenSquare’s books to see how it’s spending public dollars." This is appalling and makes the Ellington residency "scandal" peanuts in comparison.

Very true, but the real Ellington scandal was the theft of two hundred million dollars of public, taxpayer money to fund a quasi-private school. Not peanuts at all

[NathanBacaABC7]

Anonymous wrote:

NathanBacaABC7 wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Having been on a charter board, I can bear witness that the pressure to use all of these consultants and pay their outrageous fees is insidious and intense. Without paying for FOCUS, your application is unlikely to get approved. If you try to secure a building without Building Hope, Building Hope may actually try to interfere with your lease, so that you have to go through them - and pay their high fees. As a new school, the PCSB pressures you to use FOCUS/TenSquare as consultants - and pay their outrageous fees, even though you are not a failing school, just a new school. All of these fees do not result in better outcomes for students, bleed schools dry, and ultimately line the pockets of Tom Porter et al - whose children are all in private schools, not within DC public schools.

Let's meet for coffee and talk. You can reach me at 703-328-1276. You can remain anonymous if you prefer. I'm very interested in airing more stories on how charter schools operate.

Building Hope helped my school. As a new school we didn't have the financial history to take on a lease or buy a building by ourselves. Plus we were growing a grade at a time and didn't have full enrollment to pay for a full lease. That was a few years ago so I don't know what their deals are like now. Of course, my school's interaction with Building Hope doesn't make a good news story.

Let's do coffee too -- same number.

[Anonymous]

Building Hope wants you to pay for the privilege of using their incubator space. If you do not want to use their space, and they think that the space that you have secured fits one of their consulting clients, they will call the landlord and try and get them to reneg on your lease and/or badmouth you as a new school. They are very connected to all of the landlords in DC. They want to control all of the charter schools in DC from where they locate, to project managing their build-outs, to how they finance, etc. At least two schools that I have worked with have had negative interference by Building Hope when their services were spurned. Remember, they are charging extensive fees on each service that they provide.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Building Hope wants you to pay for the privilege of using their incubator space. If you do not want to use their space, and they think that the space that you have secured fits one of their consulting clients, they will call the landlord and try and get them to reneg on your lease and/or badmouth you as a new school. They are very connected to all of the landlords in DC. They want to control all of the charter schools in DC from where they locate, to project managing their build-outs, to how they finance, etc. At least two schools that I have worked with have had negative interference by Building Hope when their services were spurned. Remember, they are charging extensive fees on each service that they provide.

They also have people on the board of at least one charter schools they support, which seems odd.

I don't blame schools for using them because what choice do they have on their own in the DC real estate market. But I'd love to see the money investigated. Perhaps it is not nefarious at all and will be a feel-good story?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Building Hope wants you to pay for the privilege of using their incubator space. If you do not want to use their space, and they think that the space that you have secured fits one of their consulting clients, they will call the landlord and try and get them to reneg on your lease and/or badmouth you as a new school. They are very connected to all of the landlords in DC. They want to control all of the charter schools in DC from where they locate, to project managing their build-outs, to how they finance, etc. At least two schools that I have worked with have had negative interference by Building Hope when their services were spurned. Remember, they are charging extensive fees on each service that they provide.

Thank you for following up with specificity about your claim. If this happened as described, the school would have a good case for tortious interference.