Imagine Charter Schools sells 5 schools for 44 million...will have them leased back to them.

[madfloridian]

Are you having trouble wrapping your head about the fact that schools are being sold and leased and called “a huge new category” for private real estate investment."

I am having a lot of trouble about that. Schools are now being used as a profit in the real estate field. What's more the company that bought them is called Entertainment Properties Trust. It specializes in "megaplex movie theatres and entertainment retail centers". Sounds like just what schools need, to be owned by a company that specializes in entertainment.

Imagine Schools Sell Five Schools

The company (NYSE: EPR) purchased five new charter schools from Imagine Schools Inc. of Arlington, Va., at a cost of $44 million and agreed to finance expansion of two others at a cost of $4 million. Entertainment Properties Trust, which is based in Kansas City, will lease the five new schools back to Imagine Schools, a leading operator of public charter schools.

Entertainment Properties Trust’s portfolio now includes 27 charter schools that Imagine Schools operates in nine states and the District of Columbia.

“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.

In an interview, Brain said the Imagine Schools transaction announced Friday fulfilled Entertainment Properties’ 2007 commitment to make at least $200 million worth of acquisitions from Imagine. It also increases Entertainment Properties’ footprint in what Brain called “a huge new category” for private real estate investment.

“Public charter schools are now a 4 or 5 percent slice of a couple trillion dollar public education real estate market,” Brain said.

There's a problem though. Imagine Schools claims to be a non-profit, but it is not. It has not been accepted as non-profit though it has tried for years.

Here is more about about EPT's involvement in buying schools that were once considered public.

Heretofore, new public schools have been financed almost exclusively through school-bond issues, he said. But Brain said the move to “decentralize and debureaucratize public education” is creating an increasing number of charter schools, which aren’t as cost-efficiently financed through bond issues.

The five new charter schools purchased by Entertainment Properties contain more than 357,000 square feet of educational space and have an enrollment in excess of 2,600 students. All of the Imagine schools owned by Entertainment Properties are governed by a triple-net master lease with a 25-year primary term.

NOW we see the future. Schools being closed as public schools, opening again as charters, then becoming subject to the whims and fancies of those who specialize in real estate investment.

Imagine Charters have had many problems, and yet they continue to profit that CMO led by Dennis Bakke of the famous Fellowship.

Who profits from for-profit charter schools in Florida?

"For-profit charter schools--or at least, charters run by for-profit corporations--are alive and kicking in Florida. Imagine Schools, the country's largest charter school operator headquartered in Virginia, already runs 18 charter schools in the state. On November 12, 2008, the company withdrew applications for 15 new charter schools in the face of recommendations for denial--though they plan on pursuing them later.

In the state of Florida, charter schools have more than one way of getting authorization. They first seek approval from the local school board. If their request is denied, they can appeal to the Florida Department of Education Charter School Appeal Commission, where they often have better luck. Before, if that still didn't work, they could get approval from Jeb Bush's 2006 brainchild, the Florida Schools of Excellence Commission, which had the authority (and a seemingly unquenchable desire) to authorize charter schools in most state school districts. In December of 2008, the First Florida District Court of Appeal struck down the statute authorizing the commission as unconstitutional, so for the moment, that recourse is no longer available."

...But it is not only in Florida that there have been objections to, and problems with, Imagine Schools. In Texas and Nevada, concerns have been raised about Imagine Schools' finances and complex real estate deals that have led to the charters spending up to 40% of their entire publicly funded budget on rent to for-profit companies, including Imagine's real estate arm, Schoolhouse Finance, leaving them with tight budgets for necessary materials like textbooks. In the interest of comparison, many other charter schools spend in the neighborhood of 14% of their public funding on building rent. The real estate deals, where the charter run by Imagine leases the building from Schoolhouse Finance, who then sells the property to a real estate investment trust who then leases it back to Schoolhouse at a lower rate than what the charter pays, have proven very lucrative for owners and investors in the two companies. Former Imagine School principals who inquired into the real estate expenditures were subsequently fired. But, naturally, they have also drawn sharp criticism from boards of education.

Schools for profit. It is happening quickly.

[sandnsea]

1. For the record, I don't support this

I support local charters responding to a need that a local district isn't addressing, or implementing an innovative teaching method that the district is interesting in expanding in the future.

This is wrong for a variety of reasons, but from a purely financial aspect, what's to stop this owner from boarding up the school one day. I mean honestly, what are they thinking!

[LWolf]

13. I have to point out that

when a district is interested in piloting an innovative teaching method, they don't need a charter school to do so.

Districts can form their own schools to address local needs and pilot new ideas. I've spent most of my teaching career in those district schools.

[sandnsea]

14. Far too many districts don't

Bottom line, there are too many failing schools. When parents have a failing child one week, move due to work and have a succeeding child in the new school, they know there's more to the education problems than money and parents.

The only reason there are charter schools is because the educators dragged their feet in implementing any meaningful change.

[madfloridian]

15. "educators dragged their feet"....hard to change when they are taking your money

and giving it to corporations.

But then we shall soon see just how well privatization and deregulation works for schools.

And then there will be no going back. The corporations will be getting taxpayer money and they are not going to give it back.

[sandnsea]

17. Ten years ago, twenty years ago

Come on. There weren't any corporations taking any money then. And as I said, too many parents have had seen their kids have different results in different schools and know it isn't all money in the first place.

Frankly, in my experience it's mostly the principal and whether they create high expectations for the students, academics and behavior, and implement a unified reward system to generate the desired results. The best school any of my kids ever went to is one where every student was expected to find something to excel at and the principal made absolutely sure every kid had. That always gave the pricipal something to complement as he continued pushing improvement in grades. It was the highest transient school with the highest population of esl kids in one of the lowest income communities in Oregon. The principal refused to accept failure. Way back in the 80s. If more schools had done something then, they wouldn't be in this mess now.

[LWolf]

16. I don't think that's true.

Some districts may "drag their feet." In reality, though, it's the authoritarian control and forced standardization that keeps districts from implementing meaningful change, and that comes from the top: the state and federal level. That's what makes a charter school attractive; they are exempt from some of that.

Change the authoritarian paradigm, and districts around the nation will blossom without privatization.

[sandnsea]

18. Again. Ten years ago, twenty years ago

They did nothing. Schools set stagnant for decades. Don't blame it on the state and federal when every state has any number of exemplary schools, and not always the richest either.

Besides, if the problem is the regulation that the charter schools are exempt from, then I would think the answer would be to use them as an example to get rid of the regulation.

[madfloridian]

19. Most on DU have contempt for public education now.

I guess I was surprised that you did.

But it is most certainly your right to feel that way.

Oh boy, those charters sure better work....cause they will be about all we have soon.

[sandnsea]

20. Nobody has "contempt" for public education

The recognition that it isn't working everywhere with such destructive consequences is not "contempt". It's a desire for every child to get a little closer to an equal opportunity. My kids went to some of the best public schools in the country, and a couple of really bad ones. That's why I know there is more to a quality education than money and parents. That isn't contempt either.

It's also funny to me that this board proves something else so many parents know, teachers say they want parental involvement but what they really mean is they want the parents to just shut up and take all the blame.

[madfloridian]

21. Parents ARE involved all the time. Where are you getting that they are not?

Parents have the kids for years before we get them. Let's not take them off the hook so easily.

I had several parents a day working and tutoring in my classroom...most teachers do.

[LWolf]

23. The regulations

are a privatization tool. If you can set up schools that look better than regular public schools by over-standardization of those regular schools, with allowed flexibility for the "special" schools, it makes the system look bad, and moves the privatization agenda forward.

I'm not against innovation. I'm against promoting innovation only outside the regular system as a weapon to destroy that regular system.

There are plenty of ways to set up the regular, regulated public system to be flexible, to be creative and innovative, and to empower them and thus empower students.

That's not the goal of current ed policy.

[Hannah Bell]

2. Education real estate, new profit center, as predicted. Your neighborhood school might be sold

out under you & your kids moved into portables in a different neighborhood if property values make it a "good business decision".

[JDPriestly]

3. The too-rich are too-stupid and too lacking-in-creativity to

invest in new ideas that would create jobs and a future for America.

Wait until the taxpayers refuse to pay the rent on these places. That will happen, you know.

[madfloridian]

5. I assume taxpayer money will still go to these Imagine Schools

which are owned by Entertainment Properties now. So I am trying to figure if it is Imagine Schools which will get the public money? I guess so.

Taxpayers will be paying for their profit.

[JDPriestly]

25. This has to stop.

Taxpayers should not be paying contractors' profits. It is a big scam. The contractors are, too often, cronies of the politicians and bureaucrats who award the contracts.

The requests for proposals for the contract awards can be expressly written so that a friend of someone in the government will qualify for the contract and can outbid others. It is quite easy to do this. A little lobbying and, voila, like magic, a request for proposals goes out that just fits a friend's company.

[Monk06]

4. The next chapter in the US bubble economy. Eighty percent of school budgets go to private investor

in rent. Education real estate prices escalate
then crash leaving American school kids without
schools, parents organizing bankruptcy drives to
save schools they neither own nor control.

Meanwhile Hong Kong investors determine the quality
of US public education through real estate values and
ROV, NAV and other for profit values that have no
educational input.

[proud2BlibKansan]

6. Based in KC, eh?

I looked them up:
http://www.eprkc.com/Leadership/Board-of-Trustees2

Don't know all of these folks but the names I recognize are long time GOP donors. I'm sure you are shocked and surprised to learn that! :sarcasm:

[Fearless]

7. Children's education... now for sale in aisle 3...

:wow:

[madfloridian]

8. Exactly right. Education for profit.

[annabanana]

9. sliced & bundled hey?

Just like those mortgages?

Great.

[Joe Fields]

10. can't be any worse now than what passes for education in this country.

[madfloridian]

11. Thank you for your contempt.

It really warms my heart. :(

[Jakes Progress]

30. Stop it. You're going to kill gomer norquist.

Posts like yours just give him multiple orgasms. He and his friends have done such a good job of creating this feeling. They couldn't imagine that DU'ers would actually fall for the bill bennet crap. They just hoped to get the wacko right-wingers on board.

[Quantess]

12. This will turn out badly.

[madfloridian]

22. Remember they are even turning A schools into charters.

Blog shows parents fighting to save an "A" public school from charters.

Saturday, December 12, 2009

It is unclear what is more disturbing: The Department of Education’s surreptitious school space utilization and formulas, their incompetence in interpreting these very formulas, their damning disregard for what is best for children not to mention parent and community voices, their corrupted charter school movement, their deliberate defiling of public education and community public schools, or their lubricated lies that slide off their tongues dripping and oozing with Orwellian language that loudly proclaims, “we have an agenda, and we fully intend to execute it.” The DOE has done it again; they prove with Friday’s announcement to continue to house a charter school, PAVE Academy, beyond the two year agreement promised to the Red Hook, Brooklyn Community and its AAA school, PS 15, that their interest lies with not the children and the citizens of this city, but with the corporations, hedge fund managers, billionaires and sons of billionaires, who propagate, organize, and oversee the charter school movement plaguing our public school system.

[omega minimo]

24. I'm having trouble wrapping my head around the implications of the SCOTUS Inc. decision

on the privatization of public schools.

Thank you for all you work educating and elevating this issue.

[Tx4obama]

26. Education, HealthCare, and Prisons should all be NON-Profit. n/t

[Greyhound]

27. Simply a process to transfer public assets to private scavengers.

IOW, just another corporate welfare program.

Damn, we're so stupid.

[sulphurdunn]

28. What could a charter school possibly do

that a public school couldn't do better? Everywhere, from the Pentagon to municipal parking meters, the outsourcing of public responsibility for private profit quickly becomes a costly disaster. Every attempt at privatizing the public domain should be resisted as though our lives, our liberty and our happiness depend upon it, because they do.

[Gman2]

29. Nothin but the regular, selling our birthright for a mess of porridge.