BANDIT ALERT! Wall Street Comes to Buena Vista, Buys High School for $5 Mil
February 5, 2015
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Why would the presumptive Republican nominee for President oppose America's public schools?
That is one facet of the mystery of what is happening to the schools.
Some say Jeb Bush is in league with Wall Street raiders who are pillaging and looting the financial base of public schools all across the country, and especially in Michigan.
Wall Street tycoons have been targeting the public schools for about two decades, creating cash cow after cash cow through lobbying for cyber and charter academies.
Former governor John Engler is among the leaders of K-12, Inc., a firm tapping the school aid fund cash register in Lansing.
The New York Times has called for-profit education companies "a lobbying juggernaut in state capitals."
Now Ron Packard, former head of K-12 Inc., a charter and online provider, is headed into the mid-Michigan area since he has purchased Buena Vista High School in Saginaw County for $5 million.
When it was no longer able to pay its bills, the Buena Vista district was dissolved by the state in 2013. Some of the district's students and buildings were transferred to the Saginaw school district, including the high school. And students were shunted to area districts.
That raises another mystery: why did the Saginaw School District at the last minute reverse its decision to tear down the BV school and receive far more than the old high school building is worth?
At the same meeting, the board voted 7-0 to refuse to sell the BV Phoenix Science and Technology Center to the Francis Reh Academy for $3.25 million and 4-3 to tear down the student-ready building.
For one thing, the $5 million will wipe out the district's deficit and perhaps stave off a decision to close either Saginaw High or Arthur Hill.
For another, the demolition of Phoenix will guarantee Packard won't have built in competition in the BV district, at least if the Saginaw board has anything to say about it.
However, the Saginaw Board will consider a Francis Reh counter-offer of $4.5 million at a meeting next week.
Can you say conflict of interest? I see lawsuits coming and the Saginaw board so far doesn't look good on this one. No doubt taxpayers will have to ante up more cash to settle the suits. Just when they got clear of the debts.
So the district board members are going to score a coup and save their shirts, so to speak. But what about Packard? How can he use the empty school to make a profit?
Students from China, some theorize. But that hasn't worked so far for Larry Balli, the East Lansing entrepreneur who invested a ton into the Bay Valley Resort and was able to recruit only one college student from China in two years. "All the Chinese want to go to Harvard, not come to the Saginaw Valley," said one insider. "They never heard of Delta or SVSU."
Bush has said that promoting digital learning, Packard's bread and butter, is at the top of his education reform list because of its capacity "to disrupt the public education system."
Packard is a member of Digital Learning Council, a project of Jeb Bush's Foundation for Excellence in Education, funded by leading pro-school privatization interests like the Broad, Gates and Walton Foundations.
Is "disrupting the public education system," as Bush puts it, going to be a platform plank of the GOP in the next election cycle?
Some interesting viewpoints are in an article "The Bush Family: A Continuing Criminal Enterprise," by Dr. Gary Potter, of Eastern Kentucky University, for the American Society of Criminology. http://www.critcrim.org/critpapers/potter.htm
Looks like we're headed for some interesting times in mid-Michigan, and nationally.
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