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NO DUCK STAMP: Fearsome Gavel Looms Over Convicted Dr.Ingersoll

Charter Bonds More Troubling: How Wall Street Dips In Your Pocket

March 11, 2015       1 Comments
By: Dave Rogers

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Miss Fortune published this caricature of the charter school operator on her glisteningquiveringunderbelly blog.
 

Apparently it's a good bet Dr. Steve Ingersoll will go to federal prison for what appeared to be financial manipulation of his charter school funds.

Like 1920s Chicago gangster Al Capone, it was the income tax issue that got him.

I learned, what Dr. Ingersoll has just found out, the incredibly awesome power of the federal government on my first trip to the mahogany paneled kingdom that is Bay City's Federal Court.

Regular reporter Margaret Allison was off that day in 1960, so I climbed the steps to the third story court in the Post Office. Stone-faced Judge Frank Picard was on the bench. At that time I didn't know of his exploits of the 1956 shotgun attack, him swooping down with robes flying to tackle the errant shooter and help place him under arrest.

The deranged shotgun wielder couldn't have known that Picard had been the quarterback on the University of Michigan football team in 1909-1911 and had served as a captain in the Army in France in World War I. He was a man of action as well as a defender of the laws of the United States.

And the old instincts hadn't left his body even after 67 years.

Even after the shotgun blast that could have killed him and the pellets ripped into the wall near the U.S. seal as he dove under the bench.

That was the stuff of legend: That day it was mundane sentencing of common, stupid criminals. First was a ragged sportsman whose hunting clothes had seen better days. "Altering a federal duck stamp, five years in prison," the stern-faced judge proclaimed.

My heart dropped to my shoes -- five years for clumsily changing the date on a duck stamp, dumb, dumb, dumb -- but five years! 1825 days in the slammer.

The only person he had to show the duck stamp to was a game warden, duh, and the date change would be obvious to any half-awake constable with half a brain.

Next up was a woman who had pilfered a Social Security check from her absent neighbor's mail box. "Fifteen years," said Judge Picard. "Fifteen years!" I gasped to myself, for a $30 check (at least that's what I remember, a small amount nonetheless).

So that enormous, gavel thumping federal power has stuck with me lo these many years since my Journalism career began.

No one can speculate accurately on what sentence Judge Thomas Ludington will mete out to Dr. Ingersoll on his conviction on three counts of attempting to evade or defeat income tax and fraud.

But I, for one, am not optimistic that he will get off lightly.

In a way, the Michigan Legislature, the Department of Education, and state officials, are to blame for the easy money environment that encouraged Dr. Steve Ingersoll and his cohorts. And other for-profit charter school barons as yet unprosecuted.

Ingersoll and other charter school operators are issued the proverbial "license to steal." Let's see, set up your own school district, get $7,500 per student or more, keep your own books, borrow from the school in anticipation of management fees you may decide to charge -- lah, de, dah... off to the bank laughing all the way.

Of course that is the worst scenario, but it was one painted in several weeks of trial of Dr. Ingersoll and friends right here in River City.

Of course most charter schools are run under normal accounting standards and supervision and produce students comparable in achievement to the public schools.

The double standard rises from the depths when considering that public school districts are forced to beg taxpayers for approval to issue bonds just to fix up facilities while charters like Grand Traverse Academy (GTA), the Detroit Academy of Arts and Sciences and the YMCA Service Learning Academy and others can access state tax exempt municipal revenue bonds without a vote of the people.

We have reported in this space how GTA was built over 15 years with about $25 million in municipal bonds; that allowed Ingersoll to grow his school facilities to attract about 1,300 students at its height.

So the things like a track, tennis courts, ball fields, classroom additions and foreign language instruction that public school parents have scrimped, saved, taxed themselves, sold raffle tickets and popcorn for decades to get -- Steve Ingersoll was able to get for the Grand Traverse Academy with the stroke of a pen on a municipal bond.

Bonds pledging the credit of the State of Michigan for a charter school run perhaps by a minion of Wall Street, a greedy corporation concerned basically with the bottom line and only peripherally interested in the welfare of students as numbers in a money game.

A blogger under the nom de plume of "Hoi Polloi" commented on a national website The Daily Kos: "Steve Ingersoll embodies the most glaring problem with charter schools in Michigan; too much taxpayer money being siphoned into management companies with very little oversight and for very poor returns."

Hoi Polloi nailed it, as the saying goes."

"Parents and politicians need to reconsider whether charter schools really offer an alternative for better education. What is mostly being revealed about the people who start and manage charter schools is it's a quick way to make money at taxpayer expense.

"Public Schools have always been the better investment for educating Michigan's children, and it's time to put our money back into the institution dedicated to education rather than profits."

The big question is why is the state making it easy for charter school operators? Some say union busting. More honorable causes like higher student achievement started the charter trend some 20 years ago.

Now we finally see the flaws. Supervision by the authorizers, mostly universities with small staffs for the purpose (they get only 3 percent of charter income), is minimal at best. The for-profit element is a different motive than the traditional public school with dedicated teachers serving parents and kids.

But the fact that the state now empowers charter financing unfairly over what public schools are allowed to do and sanctions the profiteering of corporate Wall Streeters is a whole new ball game for education. The whole process was laid bare by the Detroit Free Press in an explosive series published last summer.

According to Dan Quisenberry, president of the Michigan Association of Public School Academies (MAPSA), one important aspect of The Michigan Public Education Financing Authority (MPEFA)'s work is that, by creating a "healthy infrastructure" for charter schools to seek bond funding, it has fueled the development of a bond-financing market in Michigan for charter schools. This has come about in part, Quisenberry says, because the conduit issuer's oversight on bond deals has given investors more comfort in buying charter school bonds.

Yep, the bonds can be repaid directly out of charter schools' per student funding. Wall Street can dip right into the pockets of Michigan taxpayers through the school aid fund without so much as a by your leave, let alone a vote, in those cases.

Hoi Polloi is right -- we need to rethink, and rewrite, this scenario to put the public, not Wall Street, first.

We will forever recall Steve Ingersoll as the scapegoat for misguided state education policies, and, as one up north blog proclaimed, "the poster child for school choice." ###

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"The BUZZ" - Read Feedback From Readers!

philgidley Says:       On March 11, 2015 at 02:18 PM
Dave: As always, you have written another well researched article while including a little Bay County history. I was especially interested in what you had to say since I am a firm believer in public education. However, I don't know how the nuns from St. Mary's would feel about that. We always look forward to your articles. Hi to Dolores from us.

Kim and Phil
Agree? or Disagree?


Dave Rogers

Dave Rogers is a former editorial writer for the Bay City Times and a widely read,
respected journalist/writer in and around Bay City.
(Contact Dave Via Email at carraroe@aol.com)

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