St. Louis Imagine Schools, Entertainment Properties and failing charter schools — and the Arizona connection

by David Safier

It's a long, complicated story. Here's the short version.

For-profit Imagine Schools, the biggest charter school corporation in the country, buys property and school buildings through one of its subsidiary organizations, sells them to a private property trust, usually Entertainment Properties, which rents the properties back to Imagine, which then rents them to the schools at exorbitant rates. The result is, schools pay as much as 20% to 40% of their state funding on rent, utilities and maintenance, far higher than the national average. That money comes out of funding which would otherwise go for teachers, materials and curriculum.

For the past few days, I've written about the closing of 2 Imagine Schools in St. Louis, with the other 4 in the area on probation. The reasons? Poor student achievement, lack of basic supplies, lack of curriculum plans.

Now I learn from a source, there are 8 Imagine Schools in Missouri, and 7 of the properties and buildings are owned by Entertainment Properties. This arrangement contributed to the financial woes, and consequently the educational deficiencies, of the St. Louis schools.

Entertainment Properties is in it for the money. Here's what David Brain, chief executive of Entertainment Properties, said:

"We're not speculators, we're investors, so I have to invest in property making money for me and my customers today," said Brain, whose trust oversees a $2.6 billion portfolio. "The charter public schools offer lenders/leaseholders a dependable revenue stream backed by a government payer. It's a very desirable equation."

And in other article:

“We are excited to add to our public charter school portfolio and enthusiastic about the prospects of Imagine and this investment category,” Entertainment Properties Trust CEO David Brain said in a release.

Mixing the profit motive with education leads to trouble. Double the profit motive — Imagine Schools plus Entertainment Properties — and the result is the kind of thing we're seeing in St. Louis and have seen elsewhere in the Imagine chain.

Let's bring this close to home. Arizona has 18 Imagine Charter schools. Six of the buildings are owned by Entertainment Properties.

The potential for serious problems at Arizona's Imagine charter schools are huge. The property rental scam is just one of many concerns. Yet no journalist in the state has seen fit to pull back the curtain and look at what's going on behind the schoolhouse doors. That's a serious journalistic failure which I hope some enterprising investigative journalist will correct.

Here, by the way, are the 6 Arizona Imagine Schools owned by Entertainment Properties:

• American Leadership Academy Gilbert K-8 Campus
• Bradley Academy of Excellence, Goodyear, AZ
• Champions School, Phoenix
• Imagine Charter School at Desert West, Phoenix
• Imagine Charter School at East Mesa
• Imagine Charter School Rosefield, Surprise, AZ