“Education Inc., Part III” — Imagine Schools under the microscope

by David Safier

On Imagine School's website, you can read a list of the corporation's Six Measures of Excellence. Most of them are the usual stuff — values, achievement, character development — but one, as the old Sesame Street song says, is not like the others. The final sign of excellence is the development of more and more schools.

New School Development enhances our ability to reach more children, more families, and more communities. As we increase our family of schools, more opportunities abound for Imagine Schools’ educators to grow professionally as well.

Forget their rationalizations about wanting more schools for educational reasons. Like many for profit companies, Imagine needs to grow to survive and prosper. No new schools, no new revenue. Imagine is constantly in the process of setting up, or trying to set up, new schools.

Which brings us to the final installment of Fort Wayne, Indiana, Journal Gazette's series on Imagine Schools: Part III: Local board secretly starts two school corporations in Texas.

The story is this. Imagine-Fort Wayne Charter Schools Inc., which runs a local Imagine charter in Indiana, has become the non profit in charge or two proposed Imagine charters in Texas. Apparently, Imagine was having trouble setting up the non profits for the Texas schools in Texas, so it used the highly unusual and sleazy maneuver of putting an out-of-state non profit in charge.

To compound the sleaziness, the board members in Fort Wayne didn't even know this was going on. They signed papers which they believed were related to their local Imagine charter but which actually put them in charge of the Texas schools. Clearly, this was something the for profit Imagine Schools corporation engineered. Its board in Fort Wayne was the unwitting vehicle used to make things happen.

Some members of one of the Texas boards objected to the amount of control the Fort Wayne non profit had over its proposed charter school. They were fired, and more compliant members were appointed in their place.

That's how things work with Imagine Schools. Growth, enrollment and profits are the corporation's primary considerations. Too often, that means education, which should be the reason for any school's existence, gets the short end of the straw.

This is one of a series of posts, Peeking into Charter Schools. If you have information you wish to contribute, you can post comments or email me: safier@schooltales.net.