Zephyr Teachout Publicizes Cuomo's Planned Giveaway Of Public Schools To His Hedge Fund Buddies

There's a news conference today:

At noon, Zephyr Teachout, former gubernatorial candidate; WFP NYS Director Bill Lipton; AQE Advocacy Director Zakiyah Ansari; public school parents, community leaders, and advocates “target hedge fund takeover of New York schools,” Tweed Courthouse, 52 Chambers St., Manhattan.

The Daily News has more:

Fordham law professor Zephyr Teachout is promising to remain a thorn in Gov. Cuomo's side -- the former gubernatorial challenger is re-joining forces with the Working Families Party Tuesday to fight Cuomo on charter schools, the Daily News has learned.

The WFP -- which picked Teachout as its candidate for governor before ditching her to endorse Cuomo in the Democratic primary last June -- is teaming up with its old ally to fight Cuomo's efforts to raise the state's cap on charter schools in a possible special session next week.

On Tuesday, they plan to release a report entitled “Corruption in Education: The Hedge Fund Takeover of New York's Schools."

Many of Cuomo's top donors are funding the charter school lobby, Teachout charges, singling out in the report Carl Icahn, Paul Tudor Jones and Dan Loeb for pouring "more than $10 million into state lobbying and election campaigns since the beginning of 2014, with electrifying results."

“I see Cuomo trying to pass policy in hasty, secretive ways,” she said in an interview. "Cuomo is trying to redefine education policy on the fly, in a one-week period after a seven-week campaign. I think it hasn't gone through the layer of public debate.”

Cuomo has already told us he wants to "break" the public school monopoly.

He has also told us he plans to see expansion of charters all across the state - that is one of the lasting legacies he thinks he can achieve.

Regents Chancellor Merryl Tisch said she wants to see "aggressive" expansion of charters in the state as well.

This comes after we learned that the Regents and the NYSED gave a charter school to a con man who lied about his education credentials, work experience and pretty much everything else on his application.

This also comes after an analysis of state audits of charters showed this:

New York State charter schools have made more than $28 million in questionable expenditures since 2002, according to a new review of previous audits of the publicly funded, privately run schools.

The Center for Popular Democracy’s analysis charter school audits found investigators uncovered probable financial mismanagement in 95% of the schools they examined.


...


The state controller’s office and state Education Department have audited 62 of New York’s 248 charter schools, according to Serrette’s report. All told, Serrette’s group estimates wasteful spending at charters could cost taxpayers more than $50 million per year.

The most effective pushback against the planned charter cap increase is to continually point out the fraudulent activity engaged in by many charter operators and the lack of oversight being conducted by the state.

If "Dr" Ted Morris, professional con man, can get a charter school in this state, than anybody can get a charter school in this state.

And once a charter is in place, it takes an awful lot to get it closed, no matter how bad the financial mismanagement or fraud.

Raising or eliminating the charter cap will just bring more opportunities for the charter school criminals to steal money and resources from the public schools to line their own pockets.

Even when charters aren't engaging in out-and-out fraud, they're stealing from public schools.

Take Success Academies, for example.

We already see Eva Moskowitz spending millions on advertising and political lobbying (and paying herself over half a million a year to boot) even as she claims poverty when it comes to paying rent for her schools.

Imagine what will happen if the cap is increased or eliminated completely.

Say no to Cuomo and the cap increase.