State legislator wants to know who paid for charter school summit

Rep. Dwight Bullard, D-Cutler Bay, is demanding that the state Department of Education investigate the costs of the annual summit of Charter Schools USA, held in Orlando last week and attended by Gov. Rick Scott.

According to the Orlando Sentinel, Bullard “said in a letter Friday to Education Commissioner Gerard Robinson that he wants ‘to guarantee that no entity receiving Florida taxpayers’ dollars be allowed to ever spend those dollars in similar fashion.’”

Bullard’s letter states:

It is unbelievable to think that one of the largest for-profit charter school organizations in Florida may have spent taxpayers’ money to bus thousands of teachers and executives to an Orlando pep rally attended by Governor Rick Scott and former Washington D.C. schools chancellor Michelle Rhee.

I hope you are just as outraged at this potentially irresponsible use of taxpayers’ money as I am, and I hope you will lead the charge to prevent such abuses in the future.

To begin, I would ask that you order Charter Schools USA to give Florida citizens a detailed accounting of whether any taxpayer dollars were used to pay for this rally, or have the Department of Education itself offer that accounting.

The Sentinel added that “Scott dismissed criticism of the expense of the rally, saying schools can best decide how to spend their cash. But Bullard said that with school districts across the state ‘scrapping together nickels and dimes just to get by,’ the rally should not have been held.”

The Sentinel reported that the “Department of Education officials declined immediate comment but said they would respond to Bullard.”

Scott — a strong supporter of publicly funded, privately run charter schools — spoke at the event, along with Michelle Rhee, an informal education adviser to Scott, former Washington, D.C. public school chancellor, supporter of the tough-on-teachers brand of school reform and founder and CEO of Students First.

Charter Schools USA is a for-profit education management company that “currently operates 31 charter schools on 27 campuses in three states with plans to open another 20 schools in the next 3 years.”

Jonathan Hage — the current chairman, president and CEO of Charter Schools USA — was a member of Scott’s education transition team and served as director of research for Bush’s Foundation for Florida’s Future. Hage has also worked for George H.W. Bush and was a member of Charlie Crist’s education transition team.

Hage is currently listed as a education “reformer” on the Foundation for Excellence in Education website.