Crony capitalism and the inequities of NYC charter funding: Julian Robertson and the case of the billionaire scion's preschool

The portion of the NYC budget going into the pockets of charter school operators is growing fast, according to the Independent Budget Office, and will top $1 billion next school year.  See graph below.

(Source: GothamSchools from IBO data)

In addition, there are many hidden funding sources not reflected in this graph, reflecting significant  inequities between the way charters and district public schools are funded in NYC.

First of all, for the two thirds of the charters that are given space and services free in public school buildings - which we believe is illegal -- amount to many millions of dollars in additional subsidies per year, and result in these students receiving more than the average per student funding that districts public schools receive, according to the an analysis from the Independent Budget Office.

Charter school students are also twice as likely to get free busing paid for by the city -- another expense not reflected in the above graph.  Some 20% of charter students ride school buses, compared to just 9% of regular public school kids.

(Source:  Bruce Baker, Rutgers Univ.)

Because charters are not subject to the city's "fair student funding" system, but get an average per pupil funding amount set by the state no matter what the need level of their students, they also receive substantially more than their fair share than public schools.  In contrast, NYC public schools enroll  greater numbers of these at-risk students, and their funding is in part set by the needs level of their students.  (See the graph above, comparing the needs levels of some prominent NYC charter chains to district schools in the same borough, as analyzed by school finance expert,  Bruce Baker of Rutgers University; more on this here.)

In addition, charter start-ups  receive special subsidies  amounting to more than $2 million per year from the city's Department of Youth and Community Development (DYCD); and are not being required to adhere to the same costly mandates, such as the new teacher evaluation system imposed by the state.  

Many NYC charters also raise millions of dollars privately from their supporters in the hedge-fund industry, Wall street executives, and other assorted billionaires.  Eva Moskowitz' Success Academy charters recently raised $7 million in one night; despite the fact that her schools had surpluses of over $28 million.  NYC charters also receive myriad other special favors from an administration that is widely recognized as biased towards these privately-managed schools.  

One way that public schools do tend to have an advantage is that they can provide publicly-financed preK,

Spencer Robertson, preK and charter school operator

while charters cannot legally be provided with these funds, according to state law.  Yet even in this case, some charter schools have gotten around this provision in the law.

Note the example of the PAVE charter school, run by Spencer Robertson, the son of billionaire Julian Robertson, a close associate of Mayor Bloomberg's.
In order to evade this prohibition, Robertson the son set up a dummy corporation for a pre-school for PAVE called the "Henry Cooper Westendarp" school, named after PAVE's  director of  finance. This pre-school  is being funded through a separate contract with the DOE to the tune of nearly half a million dollars, and it will help ensure a steady stream of students for Spencer's charter school. 

Julian Robertson, billionaire and non-city taxpayer

Along with Chancellor Walcott, Spencer is also on the board of the NYC Charter Center, which is headed by Phoebe Boyer, who runs both of Julian's foundations, the Tiger and Robertson Foundations, which help finance the Charter Center and other pet projects of the Mayor.  

Yet Julian, whose net worth is  $2.8 billion according to Forbes, refuses to pay city taxes, and has his secretary calculate exactly how many days he must travel out of the city and schedules him accordingly, to avoid doing so. 

See below commentary by parent Jim Devor, outgoing president of Community Education Council in District 15 on the need for an investigation into how the city is providing funds to pay for PAVE's preschool. 

THIRTEEN THOUGHTS ON WHY THERE NEEDS TO BE AN INQUIRY INTO  THE "PRE-PAVE" CONTRACT AWARD BY THE DEPARTMENT OF INVESTIGATION

1)  As is widely known, there is a desperate need for pre-K space THROUGHOUT  District 15 (especially in Sunset Park and the South Slope/Greenwood Heights) EXCEPT for Red Hook.  In fact, according to the "Blue Book", local Red Hook elementary schools are "underutilized" with at least 750 "unused" and available seats.

2)  To increase pre-K capacity, the DoE funds a number of full and part time Universal Pre-K ("UPK") programs (usually - but not always - operated by community based organizations) throughout the City (including D15).

3)  The ONLY full time D15 UPK funded by the DoE (as approved by the Panel for Educational Policy this Spring) is "pre-PAVE" which will receive slightly less than a half million dollars for 54 four year olds in full time pre-K.  Coincidentally, I'm sure, this is the highest per pupil allocation of any such UPK in the entire City as approved by the PEP.

4)  Notwithstanding the DoE claims that PAVE and pre-PAVE are separate entities, pre-PAVE is going to be run by Cooper Westendarp - PAVE's Chief Financial Officer (who earns over 90K per year in that capacity).

5)  Furthermore, the PAVE  Charter School has sought (and apparently received) approval to conduct its Kindergarten lottery seventeen months in advance. 

6)  As per Sonia Park, the Director of the DoE's Charter School Accountability & Support Division, those lucky winners will be "invited" (but not "required") to attend pre-PAVE this Fall.  Thus, at the very least, those lottery winners will have priority over all other applicants to pre-PAVE.  And if all lottery winners accept the "invitation", no other children will have access to that pre-K program. 

7)  In any event, according to the PAVE website, ALL pre-PAVE graduates will automatically be granted admission to PAVE.  Nevertheless, at the PEP, the Chancellor incredibly denied that applying to PAVE was a pre-condition for acceptance to pre-PAVE.

8)  The bottom line is that by creating a pre-K along with a seventeen month "advance" lottery, PAVE has effectively established a Charter School that starts in Pre-K.  That is a direct violation of the Charter School Act which prohibits pre-K grades in Charter Schools.

9)  Before the PAVE pre-K proposal was even calendared for approval by the Panel for Educational Panel, the DoE Executive Director of the Office of Early Childhood Education, Sophia Pappas, directly intervened on behalf of "PAVE pre-K" with NYC Housing Authority to personally lobby it to locate the proposed program on NYCHA property needed by Red Hood Senior Citizens. 

10)  While that maneuver was eventually foiled, one has to question why a high-level Educrat would be allowed to misuse her position to advance the pecuniary interests of a private party to the clearly unnecessary detriment of local NYCHA senior citizens. 

11)  Meanwhile, as thousands of children are being deprived access to pre-K throughout the City (30% of all applicants), the ONLY D15 public school with ANY pre-K slots available is PS 676 (Red Neighborhood School) literally located about three blocks away from PAVE. 

12)  This peculiar misallocation of NYC DoE resources can perhaps be explained, at least in part, by the ENORMOUS influence of the Robertson family.  For example, the Chancellor serves on the Board of the NYC Charter Schools Center along with PAVE founder and Director Spencer Robertson. 

13)  In addition, the Chair of said Board is Phoebe Boyer, the "Executive Director of the Tiger Foundation and Interim Executive Director of the Robertson Foundation" - both of which happen to be predominantly funded by Julian Robertson (one of the wealthiest men in the world who, of course, is Spencer's dad).

Have we connected the dots yet?

Jim Devor on how the innovative admission plan of D13 & D15 school was engineered

Recently, the Daily News Editorial Page had the unique occasion to sing the praises of a progressive targeted admissions program that the Community Education Councils for Districts 13 ("CEC-13") and 15 ("CEC-15") wrested from the DoE as part of the new [re]construction of PS 133 in Brooklyn's Prospect Heights. In particular, the Daily News voiced strong approval of the plan to set aside 30% of future Kindergarten admissions for immigrant and poor children in a "gentrifying" school. 

By all accounts, this was the very first time under the Bloomberg administration that the DoE had agreed to implement a diversity program.  How that came to be is a story of cooperation between CECs and the political savvy to take advantage of the unusual circumstances presented to them.  As such, the following is the unofficial Reader's Digest version of the saga:

Once upon a time, the School Construction Authority ("SCA") claimed there was no available space in D15 (which includes Cobble Hill, Carroll Gardens, Red Hook, Gowanus, most of Park Slope, Windsor Terrace and Sunset Park) to construct a school even though there was an extraordinary need for several - especially in Sunset Park, which has very overcrowded schools - AND the Capital Plan had allocated funds for such construction in our District.  Meanwhile, even though the adjoining D13 (which includes Brooklyn Heights, the northern end of Park Slope, Fort Greene, Prospect Heights, Clinton Hill part of Bedford-Stuyvesant) had no capital funds allocated for them, the School Construction Authority had found available space to replace and expand the existing PS 133 school building in D13.  From this, a kind of marriage was made wherein D15 would be allocated the additional capacity created in the new building while D13 would keep its existing capacity and overall administrative control of the school. 

At the same time, everyone acknowledged that PS 133's current physical zone was inadequate to fill its D13 allocation.  As such, whether or not the D13 portion remained zoned, there would be considerable additional admissions availability for other D13 children. 

As you might imagine, things did not go nearly as smoothly as the end product might suggest.  Out of the discussions (and arguments) consensus was reached between the members of BOTH CEC-13 and CEC-15 - with the invaluable assistance of local NYC Council Members Steve Levin and Brad Lander -  for the Targeted Admissions solution (as pretty accurately described in last week's Daily News story  and detailed at greater length below).

That agreement was cemented when the DoE, on its own, opted out of directly using the new PS 133 capacity in the rezoning of the popular, but severely overcrowded, PS 321 in Park Slope.  It was at that point - after all of the members of the Councils agreed - that I made clear to the DoE's Director of Planning that CEC-15 would not approve the proposed rezoning of PS 321 (no matter how meritorious) absent a satisfactory resolution of the PS 133 Targeted Admissions demand (and other D15 issues that may or may not be addressed in the Spring).  

 In fashioning a response, Tweed knew five things.  First, both CEC-13 and CEC-15 were united in their demands for a Targeted Admissions plan.  Second CEC-15 approval was a mandatory requirement under the Education Law for any D15 rezoning to happen.  Third, I could absolutely deliver on my threat. Fourth, even though the highly regarded Principal of PS 321 had come to support the rezoning (originally, she hadn't), it would be politically safe for us to reject the DoE proposal.  Last but not least, a majority of CEC-15 COULD be brought around to approve an appropriate rezoning. 

Realizing we had them by the short and curlies, the DoE was obliged to bargain in good faith. We did too and a pretty good outcome was reached (that in fact, was better than either side's original proposal).  

The resulting "algorithm" will be applied in separate lotteries for EACH District and will work as follows:

First there is a (at least) thirty percent set aside for English Language Learners and students who receive free and reduced price lunch.  Within that set aside ELL students will have ABSOLUTE priority.  Any remaining children within that pool WILL be placed in the general pool where each applicant would have an equal chance at admission.   If the set aside is not filled, then those remaining seats will be put into the general pool.  

Now let's apply that "algorithm" to the plausible scenario where the number of "advantaged" applicants outnumber the "disadvantaged" by two to one in a pool of 90 seats with 180 applicants (and using a one-third set aside). In that case, the "disadvantaged" would get the 30 set aside seats and the remaining 30 "disadvantaged" would be placed in the "general" pool along with the 120 "advantaged" applicants for the 60 remaining seats.  Assuming a random selection, each of the 150 children would have a forty percent chance of "winning the lottery."  Thus, an additional 12 "disadvantaged" children would be admitted and 48 "advantaged" would be added. 

As described above, the odds for each "disadvantaged" applicant rises to seventy percent (while that for each "advantaged" applicant drops to forty percent). Yet, in that circumstance, the "advantaged" admissions would still outnumber the disadvantaged by 48 to 42 (instead of the 60-30 breakdown that would result WITHOUT targeted admissions). That would be precisely the kind of outcome that we have fully intended. 

While the DoE swears that this is not a precedent, of course it is.  Indeed, it serves as a prime example of the kinds of good outcomes that can be reached when the DoE is forced to treat Community Education Councils as partners rather than just annoyances. 

This was never intended by anyone, however, as a one size fits all solution.  Further, in reaching the accord, it didn't hurt that the CECs had access to attorneys - both to refute specious DoE objections AND to avoid legal pitfalls.  For example, by law, "magnet schools" are forbidden from creating non-geographic selection criteria - no matter how noble.  Likewise, it would also take a change in State law, before something like our plan could be applied to "specialized high schools." 

Hope this helps clarify how and what has happened here in Brooklyn.  – Jim Devor, President of CEC15

Brooklyn parents, teachers & community members speak out: we don't want your charter school!

Thanks to Darren Marelli, here are highlights from the hearing that occurred on Tuesday about the controversial proposal to co-locate another branch of the Success Academy charter chain in Cobble Hill, District 15, in Brooklyn. 

Passionate and articulate parents, teachers, elected officials, students and community members spoke out against this damaging, deceptive and most probably illegal proposal, and pointed out how the co-location will likely wreck the schools that now inhabit the building, one of which is in transformation, by overcrowding them, forcing them to increase class size and lose valuable programs.  Does the DOE care?  You be the judge.