Charter Schools & "Choice": A Closer Look

As reported by numerous media outlets, including a detailed report from WBBM-TV/CBS 2 Chicago, activities at Horizon Science Academy - McKinley Park are the subject of a federal lawsuit alleging mistreatment of 8-year-old student Zacharion Townsend. On September 30, his father, Anthony Townsend, filed Townsend v. Concept Schools NFP et al naming defendants at Horizon Science Academy, including teacher Sarah Krippinger and gym instructor Kale Graham.

In addition to the lawsuit, Anthony Townsend has published a Change.org petition — Abuse of Zacharion Townsend by Teacher Sarah Krippinger — presenting his lengthy narrative of events related to the lawsuit.

Horizon Science Academy issued a statement noting their internal investigative process every time a claim of bullying arises, reports said. Named defendant Concept Schools NFP is the parent organization of Horizon Science Academy"...

For full post, please visit:

https://mckinleypark.news/news/518-horizon-science-academy-subject-of-federal-lawsuit

This story is part of our “Grading Charter Schools” series examining the impact of privatized education in California.

 
"School suspensions are out, restorative justice is in. At least that’s the case at the Los Angeles Unified School District and wherever schools are struggling to shift from the harsh, zero-tolerance discipline of the past to a less punitive, problem-solving approach. Restorative justice de-emphasizes punishment and instead aims to repair the damage that is done when, for example, a child disrespects a teacher, or a student starts a fight. The goal is to have misbehaving students think about their negative behavior and hear directly from the person that they hurt—often in what’s known as a harm circle — about how they were affected and what can be done to fix the situation and the relationship.

22 L.A. charters — nearly all of them in high- poverty neighborhoods –accounted for 42% of the charter schools’ nearly 3,700 suspensions last year.

 
The shift comes 20 years after the fatal shootings at Columbine High School in Colorado, after which many schools turned to “no excuses” discipline policies to stem violence. While such policies haven’t stopped school shootings, they have been profoundly damaging to some students – particularly African-Americans and those with disabilities. According to researchers at the University of California and elsewhere, students from these two groups have been suspended at far higher rates, with consequences that can last a lifetime – making school discipline a civil rights issue.

Kids who are suspended are more likely to lag behind in schoolwork and to drop out of school. Even more consequentially, some are swept along the “school to prison pipeline,” whereby kids who are suspended from school are more likely to get in trouble with law enforcement.

Under pressure from education activists and federal civil rights officials, LAUSD, the nation’s second-largest school district, has slashed suspensions in its traditional schools.

Crete Academy in South Los Angeles, an elementary school serving homeless students, suspended about one in 10 of its students last year.

 
Most Los Angeles charter schools have also curbed suspensions, but they have been slower to let go of the practice entirely, and a handful still send students home at sky-high rates.

Charter schools, which enrolled more than 110,000 LAUSD pupils in 2017-18, suspended them at about twice the rate of traditional schools in the district. Twenty-two L.A. charters — nearly all of them in high-poverty neighborhoods –accounted for 42 percent of the charter schools’ nearly 3,700 suspensions last year. Specifically, charters suspended students with disabilities at nearly four times the rate of traditional schools, while African-American students were suspended at almost three times the rate they were on non-charter campuses.

Indeed, Crete Academy in South Los Angeles, an elementary school serving homeless students, suspended about one in 10 of its students last year, making it the highest-suspending primary school in the district and number seven on last year’s list of the highest-suspending charters."...

For full post, please visit:

https://capitalandmain.com/charter-schools-remain-slow-to-reform-punishment-bias-0522 

Staff Reports

By Marjorie Cortez

"SALT LAKE CITY — Utah State Auditor John Dougall was appointed interim director of the now-shuttered American International School of Utah Tuesday.

The Utah State Charter School Board, after meeting in closed session for more than two hours, voted unanimously to remove AISU Executive Director Tasi Young and appoint the Utah State Auditor's Office to see through the closure of the public charter school.

Utah State Charter School Board Executive Director Jennifer Lambert said the decision to appoint the state auditor is a first for the board.

"We felt that was the best tack to take to be able to get the information to uncover things. If there's potential problems that arise, he has maybe a little more clout to be able to handle some of the issues that they're dealing with at the moment. AISU is dealing with a number of very difficult issues, so we felt maybe he was better poised to handle those issues," Lambert said.

Young, who oversaw the school in its final year of operation, declined to comment on the decision.

Earlier in the day, Young told charter school board members that he felt the school did the best it could do and strived to make sure the interests of the school community and educators were served and the "dignity of public charter schools (was) preserved."

"I fully understand this may have disappointed people, that other people may have been able to do this better. But I believe we have settled all claims in a way that satisfies all claims in a better position than any court could have allowed if we had to go through a legal process," he said.

AISU's board of directors voted in May to close the school amid growing concerns about the school's financial viability, the likelihood of further state scrutiny of its operations and the possibility of additional liabilities.

Just eight months ago "it seemed like AISU was … making strong progress and then relatively quickly we became aware of other things, other findings, and it became devastating to us. There were financial obligations that caused the school to eventually close"...

For full post, please see: 

https://www.deseretnews.com/article/900079863/american-international-school-of-utah-aisu-charter-assets-state-auditor-interim-director.html

Houston Chronicle

"Federal agents arrested the founding superintendent of a shuttered Third Ward charter school Wednesday morning on charges that accuse him of embezzling school money for his personal use.

Richard S. Rose, who served as superintendent, CEO and chief financial officer of Zoe Learning Academy, is expected to make his initial appearance in a federal courtoom at 2 p.m., where he will answer to charges of conspiracy, mail fraud, theft of government funds, money laundering and false bankruptcy declarations.

U.S. Attorney Ryan Patrick announced the arrest, adding that a federal grand jury returned an indictment against Rose under seal on Dec. 11. The indictment was unsealed after his arrest.
Federal prosecutors said Rose used the charter school's money for personal expenses including legal fees, a lawsuit settlement and to buy a timeshare.

The charter elementary opened in 2001. In September 2017, the school abruptly closed. At the time, Rose said the school didn't have enough students to generate sufficient revenue to operate."...

For original post, please visit:

https://www.chron.com/news/houston-texas/houston/article/Leader-of-shuttered-charter-school-arrested-on-14916244.php

By Maggie Angst
"After nearly a decade serving San Jose students, administrators of Summit Public Schools have announced that they will close Summit Rainier — one of their two charter schools in the city — due an inability to get private facilities for both schools.

“Unfortunately, the combination of a strong economy and tightened city restrictions has prevented us from securing a private facility for each school in San Jose. After ten years of searching, we must conclude that a private facility is not a pathway forward for both Rainier and Tahoma,” Summit Superintendent Anson Jackson said in a statement.

According to a tentative plan, Summit Rainier — a charter school serving about 315 students in East San Jose — will cease operations at the end of the school year. KIPP Navigate College Prep — another charter school that currently shares a campus with Rainier’s partner school Summit Tahoma in South San Jose — will move to the Summit Rainier campus.

Students from Summit Rainier will be given the option to attend Summit Tahoma, which is located on the campus of Oak Grove High School about ten miles south from Rainier’s current school grounds, or another school of their choosing. Although the school’s faculty can apply for a position at another Summit school, including Tahoma, they have no certainty of securing a job.

The East Side Union High School District, which is mandated to share facilities will all three schools under Proposition 39, said Summit and KIPP came to the district to discuss negotiating a new facility plan late last school year — nearly two years before the agreements between the two Summit schools and the district were set to expire.

The district is currently home to 12 charter schools, including Rainier, and 11 of its own district schools. As more charter schools have been added to the district in recent years, the district has been forced to parse more and more of its campuses.

Summit Tahoma and Summit Rainier opened in 2011 as two separate schools on the National Hispanic University campus. But when the university decided to use the space for other uses, the two schools moved into separate portable sites owned by the East Side Union High School District — the campuses of Oak Grove High School and Mt. Pleasant High School.

When KIPP Navigate College Prep opened two years ago, the district placed the school on the same campus as Summit Tahoma. As a consequence, Tahoma lost classrooms “below a sufficient number to operate its basic programs”, according to the Summit statement.

“While the Rainier campus at Mt. Pleasant and the Tahoma campus at Oak Grove have been functional, neither one of them on their own can provide for the basic operation of a Summit school,” Jackson said. “This permanent home will allow us to serve Summit’s families and the San Jose community well for years to come.”

Kipp Navigate began with a freshman class during the 2018-19 school year, added sophomores this school year and will continue to add a junior and senior class in the subsequent two years. While KIPP Navigate is expected to more than double its enrollment once it adds the additional grade levels, enrollment at Summit Rainier has gradually declined.

KIPP Public Charter Schools operates nearly 250 schools across the nation, including four in San Jose. In a statement, KIPP said it was looking forward to having a “long-term home for the school” and “continuing to provide a safe, nurturing environment for our scholars.”

East Side Union School District Superintendent Chris Funk said that due to the KIPP’s growing enrollment, it “wasn’t feasible” to have both KIPP and Summit Tahoma at the Oak Grove campus.

“I think it’s a win-win for everyone,” Funk said. “It means that KIPP, which was eventually going to have to move anyway, will have room to grow and there will less competition for gym times and athletic fields for Summit because there will only be one school at the Oak Grove campus.”

But Summer Rainier teachers, who recently voted to establish a union, are questioning whether the closure had any relation to their efforts to try and secure a more fair contract.

“My stomach is constantly in knots,” said Isela Mosqueira, a Spanish teacher who has worked at the school for the past three years. “It’s really hard to talk to my students and answer their questions. They want to know what is happening next year and where I’m going to go but I don’t have much to tell them.”

In January, 75% of teachers from the eight Summit Public Schools across northern California submitted paperwork to the state’s Public Employment Relations Board to form a union. But the teachers have been unable to negotiate a contract with Summit because the administration is waiting on the California Public Employment Relations Board to approve the merits of the union petition.

“At our campus, we’re pretty historically outspoken about advocating for services and programs that can improve things for our kids,” Mosqueira said. “And so it’s hard not to see a lot of these actions as retaliation for unionizing.”

Redwood City-based Summit Public Schools operates 11 tuition-free charter schools in northern California and Washington. The charter system revolves around a personalized learning approach, small class sizes and specialized one-on-one mentoring from teachers.

Abraham Rios, a junior at Summit Rainier, said he thought it was a joke when he initially heard the news traveling around his peers last week.

“It’s like a slap in the face,” Rios said. “They always talked about how we were a family, so it makes no sense why they’re now deciding to break that up. It’s really disappointing that I won’t have that (mentor-mentee) connection next year — my senior year.”...

For full post, please visit:
https://www.mercurynews.com/2019/11/22/san-jose-charter-school-to-close-teachers-question-if-its-a-retaliation-for-unionizing/

By Tal Kopan

WASHINGTON — Charter schools in the Bay Area received tens of millions of dollars from a federal coronavirus relief program intended for small businesses, money they say is necessary to stay afloat amid the pandemic.

The schools are alternatives to traditional public schools and are exempt from many state regulations related to class size, curriculum and teacher tenure, yet still receive state funding. Some of the Bay Area charters that got federal bailout money are also backed by Silicon Valley billionaires, and the board chairman of one school conceded that taking the aid could be an “optics issue.”

It’s the latest instance of the federal Paycheck Protection Program coming under scrutiny for giving money to businesses that fit the letter of the law, but which don’t fit the traditional notion of a small business. Among aid recipients were Shake Shack, the owner of Ruth’s Chris Steak House and the Los Angeles Lakers basketball team, all of which gave back the money after it was reported that they were beneficiaries.

But some Bay Area charters say they are well within the spirit of the program. Many teach students from low-income or lesser-served communities, and they say they will accept any resource that keeps their teachers paid and schools open amid uncertainty about state education budgets.

The federal aid is in the form of low-interest loans that recipients don’t have to repay if they meet certain requirements, including keeping all their employees on the payroll. During the initial window for loan applications in May, Bay Area charter schools received funds from the program in amounts ranging from a few hundred thousand to several million dollars.

How we reported this story

Fourteen charter schools or chains in Oakland combined to receive roughly $20 million from the program. They included Education for Change, which runs six schools in the city and received $5.25 million, and Lighthouse Community Public Schools, which has two campuses and got $2.3 million.

Eight charter schools or chains in Santa Clara County combined to receive roughly $20 million. All but one received at least $1.5 million. Summit Public Schools, which has three schools in the county and a total of eight in the Bay Area, received $6.8 million.

At least two schools in San Francisco received loans. San Francisco Creative Arts Charter School got nearly $600,000. Envision Education’s City Arts and Tech High School also received a loan, but says the money will go to its consulting business — not the school that is supported by public funds. It did not divulge the amount it received.

And the St. Hope charter schools in Sacramento, whose board is chaired by school choice advocate Michelle Rhee and which was founded by her husband, former Sacramento Mayor Kevin Johnson, received more than $1.5 million.

Some of the loans were first publicized by Parents United for Public Schools and In the Public Interest, which oppose charter schools and the privatization of education. The Chronicle independently verified their research and conducted its own.

Traditional public schools are not eligible for the Paycheck Protection Program, and state-funded charter schools’ access to the loans raises questions among their critics about fairness.

“Because charter schools are currently receiving full funding as public schools intended to maintain employees, while at the same time receiving funding as private entities that are also intended to maintain employees, taxpayers are left covering what appears to be the same bill twice,” the groups said in a report questioning whether Oakland schools were “double dipping” on funds.

Some of the charter schools say they need the money to maintain their programs. While none has had state funding cut yet, they argue the uncertainty over falling tax revenue and increased demands on schools amid the pandemic creates a murky enough fiscal future that they need the low-interest loans.

St. Hope’s chief of schools, Kari Wehrly, said the schools are expecting a coronavirus-related budget crunch. She also said the schools serve mainly low-income children and students of color.

“We felt it was critically important to access available funding to help us keep teachers employed and avoid layoffs due to upcoming budget cuts,” Wehrly said in a statement. “It would be irresponsible for us to leave any resources on the table as we work to close the achievement gap and provide the best learning environment possible.”

That sentiment was echoed by Education for Change CEO Hae-Sin Thomas, who said the schools serve a “very vulnerable community” where many families have lost their jobs.

“They cannot afford instability in the form of fewer services and unstable cash flow,” Thomas said. “This community deserves so much more, not less. I don’t feel I can walk away from any resources that I can secure for my community.”

Charter schools have long been controversial. Supporters say they can help spur innovation in education, keep traditional schools competitive, and offer parents choices about how to teach their children. Critics argue they siphon resources from public schools that serve neighborhoods better, and say Republicans have pushed school choice as a way to undermine public financing of education in lower-income areas.

Rhee has been a central figure in the debate for years. Supporters have heralded her as a vanguard reformer of teaching. Others, including teachers unions, say she vilifies public schools and senior educators. Rhee is a Democrat, but met with President Trump when he was first elected and was briefly considered as a candidate for education secretary, before taking herself out of the running.

Charter schools in California are funded through the same formula as traditional public schools. The state budget deal approved by the Legislature on Friday holds funding for traditional public schools steady, though it defers nearly $13 billion to future years, meaning districts could borrow against it or dip into reserves and await state repayment.

Some charters, however, also have wealthy benefactors and fundraising not available to traditional schools.

A 2018 tax document for Summit Public Schools, for example, showed it received $48.5 million in non-government funds, and had nearly $35 million in net assets at the end of the year. Its Summit Learning teaching platform has the backing of the Chan-Zuckerberg Initiative, led by Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg and his wife, Priscilla Chan. Its year-end summary from last year showed donors also included the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, Bloomberg Philanthropies and the Silicon Valley Schools Fund.

Board meetings of the charters posted online reveal an internal debate even within some of the schools over whether to take the federal bailout money. During a May 6 meeting of Summit Public Schools, CEO Diane Tavenner presented the decision as fraught.

“I know it’s not a completely ... a no-brainer, but I do think it’s the right decision,” Tavenner said. “I think the benefits far outweigh the risks at this point, and I’m confident that we will use this money in the way that it’s intended, and that our use will stand up to any future program or public scrutiny.”

But board member Blake Warner, an investment banker and merger and acquisition specialist, noted the risk “is boiling up to be one really big PR battle.”

“I can’t really opine on the charter school versus not charter school war being waged in California ... but I do think that since PR is 90% of the issue, that is a pretty significant consideration,” Warner said. “It’s the court of public opinion that seems to continue to prevail in this environment, and so we need to be extraordinarily cautious.”

Ultimately, the board voted to take the loan, with Tavenner saying that under the “worst-case scenario,” it would be paid back. The school declined to comment further.

In a May 13 meeting of Education for Change’s board, Mike Barr, a financial consultant, noted that “we are all facing massive economic uncertainty going into next year.”

Barr and board Chairman Nick Driver advocated taking the federal money as a “cheap form of cash-flow financing,” as Driver put it. Driver conceded, however, that “the optics issue” was deterring some charter schools from applying for the money.

“I freaking welcome that conversation,” Barr said, adding that charter schools have not gotten as much as school districts over the decades and usually face higher interest rates when borrowing money.

The amounts received by many charter schools were accessible to The Chronicle because of a 2019 California law requiring that minutes of their board meetings be open to the public. But there is not yet a public national database of businesses that have received Paycheck Protection Program funds — something congressional Democrats led by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi of San Francisco have urged the Treasury Department to publish.

Sen. Kamala Harris, D-Calif., introduced legislation Thursday that would require a public database. The Treasury Department recently pledged to create one, but has no estimate of when it will be available.

Pelosi previously called on large companies, including major San Francisco landlord Veritas, to return their federal small-business loans, but she declined to comment on the funding for charter schools. Harris also declined to comment.

Gov. Gavin Newsom’s office declined to comment, beyond noting that it was up to the federal government to decide who gets the money and that keeping Californians employed was important.

Scott Roark, spokesman for the California Department of Education, said the agency was “reviewing the eligible expenditures of the loan funds and how they interact with what the schools are receiving in state aid,” but referred all further questions to the federal government.

The Alameda County superintendent of schools said her office was reviewing the situation as well.

“We requested information on the PPP funds that have been dispersed to authorized charters,” Superintendent L. Karen Monroe said in a statement. “That information will be incorporated into upcoming financial reviews.”

UC Berkeley sociologist Bruce Fuller, who has studied charter schools for decades, said the issue speaks to a “long-term irony” of the system.

Charter schools “declare themselves as beacons of innovation, as showing how market competition can improve public schools, but then the instances arise where they basically benefit from being politically connected or politically powerful,” Fuller said. “It just is startling that charters that are supposed to be these beacons of market players actually benefit from federal largess in ways that regular public schools cannot.”

https://www.sfchronicle.com/politics/article/Bay-Area-charter-schools-tap-tens-of-millions-in-15371429.php

By Will Huntsberry
"California lawmakers created a system that places just one process at the forefront of detecting fraud and mismanagement in the state’s schools: a yearly audit, conducted by a “state-approved,” “independent” auditor, according to the Department of Education.

But these auditors are not independent, in so much as they are hired and fired at will by the schools they are auditing. The term state-approved is also something of a misnomer. To qualify as an approved firm, the State Controller’s Office must only verify that the potential auditors are accountants in good standing with the California Board of Accountancy.

No special training or vetting required.

The audits themselves are also not designed to dig deeply into a school’s finances, according to transcripts from a grand jury proceeding into an alleged $80 million charter scam obtained by Voice of San Diego.

A3 Education operated 19 online charter schools around the state. The schools enrolled thousands of students, some real and some fake, prosecutors say. Two men at the top of the alleged scheme funneled $80 million out of the public education system and into companies they controlled, prosecutors say.

Even though few other people ever existed on the companies’ payrolls besides the owners, auditors following standard procedures missed that part of the alleged scam, as well as others, according to the grand jury transcripts.

“They’re not designed to catch fraud at all,” Michael Fine, who runs a state fiscal watchdog agency called the Fiscal Crisis Management and Assistance Team, told Voice of San Diego. “To have a certain confidence level in the numbers, they do some testing of transactions. But that testing is fairly limited.”

Fine said there’s another critical element that could limit the auditors’ effectiveness: They rely on what school management teams show them, rather than getting much behind the numbers.

During the grand jury proceedings in May, Jeffrey Hill, an auditor hired by A3, admitted as much.

Deputy District Attorney Leon Schorr, who handles public corruption cases, asked Hill how much an audit can be relied on to detect fraud.

The company’s “responsibility is to provide all the documents that are related to financial activity,” Hill said. “If management decides not to provide some information, and that information results in misappropriation of assets, stealing, basically, then we, as auditors, there are no procedures to uncover that.”

He added: “I’ve had experiences where, you know, clients have stolen money from the organization through an elaborate scheme that we could not uncover because the client didn’t give all the documents necessary.”

In the case of A3, payroll records might have been enough to tip off auditors that something was amiss.

Between 2016 and 2019, 12 different A3 schools (all operating under different names) paid out $25.9 million to A3 Education, according to financial records entered as evidence during the grand jury hearing. This money, in theory, was going toward back-office services and bookkeeping. But A3’s payroll records, which were also entered into evidence, show that for much of the company’s existence, only two people were being paid to work there.

Those two people were Jason Schrock and Sean McManus, who were charged as the ringleaders of the scheme.

During some pay periods, the company listed three or four employees. During one it listed five, according to the payroll records.

The A3 schools also paid out another $57.3 million to three other companies also controlled by McManus and Schrock, according to the records. A3 Education was established as a nonprofit company, but at least one other company controlled by McManus and Schrock operated as a for-profit, according to business filings."...

For full post, please visit:

https://www.voiceofsandiego.org/topics/education/a3-charter-scandal-reveals-major-flaws-in-states-auditing-process/ 

By Rosa K. Hirji - 

(Selected quote) 
"...The structures that allow charter schools to exist are marked by the absence of protections that are traditionally guaranteed by public education, protections that only become apparent and necessary when families and students begin to face a denial of what they were initially promised to be their right. The decisions of Scott B. and Lindsey may encourage charter schools to push certain students out and make it easier to deny them the benefits of a publicly supported education.  The perception that charter schools are open to all students is being called into question by increasing evidence that children who are disadvantaged by a disability, poverty, or being a member of a minority group, or who have been accused of an offense, may not have the same access to charter schools as those who are not."... 

For full post, please click on title above or link below:

https://www.americanbar.org/groups/litigation/committees/childrens-rights/articles/2014/are-charter-schools-upholding-student-rights/ 

"The recent closure of the American International School of Utah— a public-private hybrid charter — has displaced more than 1,300 students and left potentially millions of dollars in unpaid debts, including hundreds of thousands of allegedly misspent special education dollars owed to, but unlikely to be repaid to, the state of Utah.

A new board has been established to oversee the nitty-gritty of shutting down the AISU organization. But it says there’s little hope of recovering taxpayer dollars, and it’s unclear who, if anyone, will face consequences from the situation, as virtually no one with direct involvement in the public school was an elected official.

On this week’s “Trib Talk," Tribune education reporter Courtney Tanner and Royce Van Tassell, executive director of the Utah Association of Public Charter Schools, join reporter Benjamin Wood to discuss the conditions that led to AISU’s closure and the fallout from its financial mismanagement."...

For full post, please visit: 

https://www.sltrib.com/news/2019/07/31/trib-talk-recently-closed/

https://www.sandiegouniontribune.com/news/education/story/2019-06-11/judge-orders-shutdown-of-some-learn4life-charter-schools 

By Andrew Marra

"Renaissance Charter Schools grew into Palm Beach County’s largest charter school chain with seven years of promises about cutting-edge classrooms and innovative teaching.

But as the schools market themselves to parents with personalized lessons and extended school days, their classrooms are staffed with an extraordinary number of temporary and uncertified teachers, a Palm Beach Post investigation found.

Renaissance’s six Palm Beach County schools reported last year that more than a quarter of their full-time instructors were low-paid substitute teachers – more than 30 times the state average for traditional public schools and charter schools.

At least 20 percent of the schools’ teachers were not certified by the state to teach, The Post found, even though state law generally calls for public school teachers to be certified.

At one Renaissance school west of Lantana, more than a third of the teachers had no state certification last year, while at another campus west of West Palm Beach nearly a quarter had none.

The reliance on long-term substitutes can save money at Renaissance’s six county schools — which educate 4,600 students from West Palm Beach to Wellington — since their substitutes earn less than permanent, certified teachers.

It can also boost profits for the management company that operates the schools, Charter Schools USA, which hires the teachers and charges a management fee that can increase as the schools’ finances improve.

But the use of uncertified teachers — most with little to no formal training or teaching background — denies students access to lessons by trained and experienced educators, something experts say can harm students’ ability to learn.

It also violates Renaissance’s vows to the county school board that it would not employ teachers who lacked certification. Though generally prohibited by state law, using uncertified teachers long term is permissible under a loophole for substitutes."...

For full post, please visit:

https://www.palmbeachpost.com/news/20190530/underpaid-undertrained-unlicensed-in-pbcs-largest-charter-school-chain-1-in-5-teachers-werent-certified-to-teach/1