(C) Tennessee Lookout
This story was originally published by Tennessee Lookout and is unaltered.
. . . . . . . . . .
Tennessee's private school voucher effort has a sidecar scam • Tennessee Lookout [1]
['Mark Harmon', 'More From Author', 'February']
Date: 2024-02-29
While we wait for whichever awful version of Tennessee private school vouchers becomes the final bill, we shouldn’t lose track of a sidecar scam also making its way through the legislature: House Bill 1191 and Senate Bill 135, respectively sponsored by Rep. Ryan Williams, R-Cookeville, and Sen. John Stevens, R-Huntingdon.
Our legislators delight in running items as “caption bills” — typically a placeholder for ideas that may not be fully formed — in this case one about font size on some forms (you can’t make this stuff up). The bill’s true intent became clear when the actual detail was completed.
The bill summary explains that it gives charter schools “the right of first refusal to purchase vacant property or to lease underutilized or vacant property at or below fair market value. Requires an LEA [Local Education Agency – better known as your public school system] selling a building that a public charter school is using to give the public charter school the right of first refusal to purchase the property at or below fair market value.”
The bill also gives charter school operators the option to demand public school districts produce an audit of underutilized or vacant properties. That portion likely led to a fiscal impact estimate of increased local expenditures, $37,500 in the first year and $45,000 in subsequent years. The General Assembly’s Fiscal Review Committee gave up on guessing about other likely impacts. It wrote, “The leasing or selling of vacant or underutilized properties below market value will result in an unknown decrease in local revenue and an unknown decrease in public charter school expenditures in FY24-25 and subsequent years.”
State Reps. Sam McKenzie and Gloria Johnson, both Knoxville Democrats, showed up at a recent legislative forum in Knoxville and raised alarms about the bill. Just after the event’s three attending Republicans — Sens. Richard Briggs and Becky Duncan Massey, and Rep.Dave Wright — left after an hour for a prior commitment, McKenzie and Johnson spoke to the little-known provisions.
“This bill is giving charter operators the ability to buy any decommissioned public school building. They get first shot. It won’t go to a local non-profit that works with the schools,” said Johnson. “Then, also in the bill, if they do purchase this building with problems, the LEA is on the hook for fixing that building up to standard, but the building is still owned by the charter operator.”
“We know that a lot of charter schools are gone after three years. Guess who owns that building. The county that restored it and kept it up? No, absolutely not, the charter operator.”
McKenzie gave the local example of Fair Garden Early Learning Center. “Fair Garden, the school where I went to elementary school,” he noted, “is a K-3, K-4 school right now, which means they don’t use the second floor. Great school, doing great. The second floor is not used because they have babies [child care] there, but it’s utilized. That [public] school would be considered underutilized by their definition; and they [charter operators] could say ‘We want Fair Garden.’ Still unclear if Knox County could say it’s being used.”
He further worried that charter operator Knox Prep, owned by a hedge fund venture capitalist, could have first choice to grab it. Both he and Johnson worry that statewide this whole charade is a property-grabbing scheme for real estate. Even if Fair Garden survives the question of floors and annexes, a no longer used school in your community could end up being repaired at your taxpayer expense, acquired and operated by a hedge fund front for three years, and then sold at a large profit to the charter school operator.
[END]
---
[1] Url:
https://tennesseelookout.com/2024/02/29/tennessees-private-school-voucher-effort-has-a-sidecar-scam/
Published and (C) by Tennessee Lookout
Content appears here under this condition or license: Creative Commons BY-ND 4.0.
via Magical.Fish Gopher News Feeds:
gopher://magical.fish/1/feeds/news/tennesseelookout/
