Charter schools cannot have it both ways. They should either stop their false claim that they are public schools or stop their false claim that as private entities they are beyond judicial reach. They should step up to the plate and stop dodging state Comptroller Thomas DiNapoli’s financial audit of charters.
Charter schools depend on public money as the primary source for their funding, but they luxuriate in their imagined immunity from the oversight that governs and sheds light on the operations of true public schools. Most readers are hardworking, tax-paying people who have every right to be aware of and the duty to question the astronomical “management fee” profits of charter schools that are being underwritten by their blood and sweat. Profit is not a dirty word, but when charter schools end the year with millions of dollars of largess, an inquiry is in order.
The comptroller is no patsy. He is a watchdog for us New Yorkers. His job is to prevent the extravagant waste of your readers’ money. His lawsuit, which a charter school is bitterly disputing, is a fight against “public funding without any real accountability to the public.”
Not all fans of charter schools are zealots with an infinite capacity for excuse-making and evasion of responsibility for the toll of their mischief. Let unvarnished truth about charter schools emerge from an unhindered and impartial court action.
Ron Isaac
Bayside
