GothamSchools — daily independent reporting on NYC public schools

what’s the status of parents having a voice on the co-location issue? I think that’s far more important than whether SUNY or the Regents is the authorizer. Neither one does a good job on this, if you ask me.

Allowing the NYS Comptroller to audit charter schools is a straw man issue, at best. The NYS Comptroller currently has the authority to audit school districts but has no authority to require districts to correct identified shortcomings and outright illegal financial shenanigans. Only NYSED has that authority. According to a recent USDOE OIG audit, NYSED allows districts to ignore negative Comptroller’s audit findings and continue their financial misconduct ad infinitum. So essentially, the Comptroller’s audits are advisory, at best. Indeed, since the NYS Comptroller finished the first round of audits of all school districts and BOCES in NYS, a program of follow up audits has been implemented to see whether corrective action plans had actually been implemented. And, unsurprisingly, the Comptroller reports a significant proportion of the most important corrective actions have gone by the wayside or were tossed into the circular file.

If and when the Comptroller is given the authority to audit charter schools, it will be same old-same old. If financial wrongs are identified … so what? NYSED doesn’t care and won’t do a thing about it. All allowing the Comptroller to audit charter schools will mean is that more paper with more findings will be issued … and ignored.

What Klein and Bloomberg may really be afraid of is that if the NYS Comptroller doesn’t get the authority to audit NYC charter schools, NYC Comptroller Liu may wind up garnering that authority. And Liu will not keep his negative findings to himself – including those which show that the NYCDOE’s supervision and monitoring of schools it has chartered is substandard, at best, negligent for the most part, and complicit in corruption, at worst.

We could use a little nuance here. Let the NYS Comptroller audit non-NYCDOE charters: let the NYC Comptroller audit NYC charters, and – please! – let the public read all the audit reports these offices produce. And then read and compare them with audits of school districts and the NYCDOE produced by the same offices. What we’ve really got at the moment is a fine case of the pot calling the kettle black.

There is nothing corrupt, sleazy, or improper which anyone has identified in a NYS charter school to date which was not already identified as going on in a NYS public school district or BOCES. And there is nothing corrupt, sleazy or improper which any entity has reported about in a NYS public school district or charter school which NYSED has not tacitly approved by failing to use its authority to stop the misconduct – except in those cases where NYSED itself did the audit … and covered up the thefts and corruption its own auditors found. Albany BOCES thefts, anyone?

As long as NYSED is the only authority with the power to actually do something when public school or charter audits – by any group of auditors – document financial misconduct, arguing about who can do them is simply a Trojan horse. The issue is “who is going to do something if audits show financial misconduct?” Since the answer right now is “no one,” the argument is, at best, academic.

I hope any final bill kills co-location. It shouldn’t just be against charter schools, but against using any one building for multiple schools.

Advisory committees suggested by Union and mayor would be a BIG mistake.. This mayor is a dictator who threw a hissy fit when told he could not have a veto proof majority on the PEP.. In th end everone caved and now they vote for anything they propose (and there have been some doozies-no more bake sales, 5 million dollar contract with NTP while we are laying off teachers)

Any charter bill MUSt have parent/community veto power to say NO to big bucks bloomy