Ed. MDB: I got this note from my good buddy David Safier, a former teacher who used to write for this blog, and then the Tucson Weekly, about education matters, on this wild evolving story, and we decided I should share it here on the Blog.
I’ve been living in Baltimore, Maryland, for the past five years, but I still keep an eye on the news out of Arizona, especially the worst excesses of the state’s right wing education machine. Lately I’ve been following a story that makes me yearn for the old days when I wrote for Blog for Arizona. It’s got it all: conservative education, grift and political maneuvering.
It would take multiple blog posts for me to do the story justice, so instead of trying to cover it in detail, I’m sending you an overview with links so a BfA writer or reader can to follow up if they want to.
The story is about Primavera Online Charter School (no connection whatsoever with the Primavera Foundation), that claims to espouse conservative values, which in its case means giving students a substandard education while skimming millions of taxpayer dollars off the top. The school is so bad, the very conservative Arizona Charter School Board decided to shut it down.
A few weeks ago Oklahoma joined the Primavera story, when its Superintendent of Schools said he wanted to give its students the opportunity to enroll in the substandard school because it is “anti-woke.” Then, a few days ago a porn scandal was added to the mix when some Oklahoma school board members said they saw a nude video on the TV screen in the state superintendent’s office.
I told you the story has everything.
Privamera Online Charter School was founded by Damien Creamer in 2001. Online schools, where students sit in front of their home computers and pretend to pay attention, are notorious for failing to give students a decent education. The few students who benefit are either highly motivated or have parents with the time and skill to act as home teachers.
Online schools are much cheaper to run than other schools, since there are no school buildings to pay for and maintain, and they use fewer teachers than brick-and-mortar schools — Primavera has a teacher for every 45 students instead of the Arizona average of a teacher for every 23 students. Yet they get nearly as much taxpayer money per student as the other schools. As a result, online schools can end up with lots of money left over at the end of the year, often millions of dollars, which they get to keep.
For most of its life, Primavera was a nonprofit, so Creamer couldn’t get his hands on all that extra cash. He took care of the problem by turning the school into a private, for-profit enterprise, which meant he could pocket the money. Since 2016 Damien Creamer has paid himself at least $24 million in taxpayer dollars.
But that’s only part of the story. Creamer also funneled millions more to separate businesses he owns. The money trail is so complicated, it can make your head spin. The Grand Canyon Institute sorts it out nicely in an in-depth, research-paper style analysis (Ed. MDB: I strongly recommned anyone involved in policy making around AZ charters read this analysis!). For a first rate news analysis, read this Arizona Republic article.
Ed. MDB: I think some of the key findings in that above anaylsis are important to highlight immediately, and should inform AZ lawmakers about reforming the funding formula and grading for online charters…:
- Arizona’s online charter school funding formula is too generous compared to the formula used for brick and mortar charter schools.
- Nationally, online charter schools generally show poor academic performance. Primavera appears to illustrate this national finding.
- Academic accountability is insufficient for Alternative Charter Schools in the state’s current grading system.
- Inadequate guard rails are provided for related-party transactions, enabling an owner of a charter school to find multiple ways to profit. This may violate the charitable purpose requirements of IRS code 501(c)(3).
For the past three years while money flowed downstream into Creamer’s pockets, Primavera earned a “D” grade from the state. That triggered a move by the Arizona State Charter Board to revoke Primavera Online School’s charter. It was a unanimous vote, which says something. Most of the board members were appointed by conservative Governor Doug Ducey, and Creamer is a big time Republican donor. For that board to revoke the school’s charter indicates how glaring Primavera’s faults are.
Initially Arizona School Superintendent Tom Horne supported the board’s decision, writing, “Primavera is being held accountable and losing its ability to operate because of poor academic results.” A few months later, though, Horne, who never saw a right wing enterprise he didn’t like, said maybe the board could figure out a way to keep the school open by tweaking its status a bit.
Creamer made his own effort to influence the board. He offered students $500 scholarships if they wrote essays about how wonderful the school is, then he gave the staff a day off and bused them to the board meeting to help make his case.
At this moment, the board decision stands, but Creamer has filed an appeal, so the final decision on the school’s fate will be made by an administrative law judge sometime in the future.
That should be the end of the story for now, except that Oklahoma Superintendent of Schools Ryan Walters decided he wants to make Creamer’s school available to Oklahoma students, even knowing about its “D” grades in Arizona and Creamer’s grifting of taxpayer money. Walters says he just wants to “get back to the basics here in Oklahoma. We will continue to fight back against a woke, liberal agenda in our schools.”
Walters is famous for his efforts to put the Bible into the state’s classrooms, and not just any Bible. He wants the Trump Bible that sells for $60 to $90 apiece.
Walters’ attempts to bring the Bible and a failing Arizona charter school to Oklahoma are both in limbo, but just days ago, he found himself in the middle of a porn scandal. During a school board meeting in Walters’ office on July 24, two board members say they saw a video of naked women on a television mounted on the wall. It took a few days for Walters to issue a denial of sorts. He said the allegations are nothing but “politically motivated attacks” because he is “rejecting radical agendas, and demanding excellence.” He didn’t exactly deny there were naked women on his TV screen, but he insisted that there was no wrongdoing on his part and that no “device of mine” was used to stream the content. “I have no knowledge of what was on the TV screen during the alleged incident,” he claimed.
That’s the story for now. I’m not sure where the Primavera charter school story is heading — it will take at least a few months to resolve — but don’t be surprised if Walters’ porn scandal shows up on your favorite news source. Newsweek, Rolling Stone, the Daily Beast and the New York Post have already picked it up, and more are sure to follow.
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