Charters: Shouldn't Angelic Kasich look homeward?

When Gov. Kasich finally settles down in  Ohio from his adopted residence in New Hampshire  - political decency will require it, folks - he will be forced to face an unspeakable charter school scandal with Team Kasich's fingerprints all over it.

The latest ugly chapter was well recorded  by reporter Doug Livingston in today's Beacon Journal. It was prompted by a  $71 million U.S. Department of Education grant to the failed Ohio charter school system. But it now appears the reviews of such national grants were submitted by the very same  school choice hucksters who have a reputation of eliminating poor  scores from the charter test grades to raise the average of their performances.

We're speaking, of course, of David Hansen, the charter-friendly operative at the Ohio Board of Education who resigned after being outed as the guy who wielded the eraser.
Not only that.  Hansen's wife is Beth Hansen, Kasich's former chief of staff who is now his presidential campaign manager.

As Livingston reported,  both Hansens met with Kasich and others  to advance their plans to  entirely convert the Youngstown public schools into a charter system,  a delicate subject in a hot political season.  Beth Hansen told the Plain Dealer that she would rather not discuss it. Nor might  Kasich, a reverential supporter of charters.

For a long time, it hasn't been a secret that the entire charter system is well protected  by the state's two top managers, David Brennan's White Hat Management and Bill Lager's Altair Learning based in Columbus.

Together,  they have been enriched with $1 billion in taxpayer money.  That arrives via their control over their "investments" in Republican  politicians  who form the pro-charter chorus in the legislature without much prodding.    Brennan, well known for his Koch-like financial contributions to sustaining his GOP causes,  once even wrote to lawmakers to remind them of his purse.

Other recipients include Columbus Republican Congressman Pat Tiberi, and Ohio Sen. Rob Portman , both of whom also endorsed the federal  grant to the Ohio system.  As usual,  Portman toyed with semantics.  His spokesperson told the Beacon Journal that the senator didn't really endorse the grant  application but  merely asked that it be "considered".  Go figure.

So Hooray for Congressman Tim, Ryan, the Youngstown  Democrat, for raising hell about the grant system's careless approval of porous applications, saying he was suspicious of what came down at the federal level.  .

But Kasich campaign spokesman Rob Nichols circled the wagons  around the Hansens, contending he could explain everything about the Youngstown meeting.  "They [Hansens]  try to leave work at the office," he said.  "So it would be unlikely that it came up."

For that nugget  of wisdom,  I cannot resist recognizing Nichols for the coveted  Grumpy Abe Linguistic Lunacy Award.  (GALL).

Charters: A White Hat brass ring from Supreme Court

You had to figure that a man of David Brennan's mighty political influence would come out on top  in the latest  Ohio Supreme Court decision that permits him to  keep all of the stuff in closed charter schools.  Yes, the court said in a split decision, even if you and I paid for it.

The Akron businessman, d.b.a. White Hat Management,  runs a charter school empire that has received nearly a billion dollars in Ohio tax dollars for his comfort and safekeeping. With his reputation as the  biggest Ohio Republican political donor - for many years! - it has drained the oxygen from Gov. Kasich, the legislature and now the  GOP-controlled Ohio Supreme Court  to resist his advances.

Did I just mention Kasich, who told us that  charter schools need more transparency  while supporting  more state money for them?  He's been so enamored of these schools  that he once suggested that the charters are so successful(!)  that we ought to convert to charter universities.   On that score, don't get me started.

At the heart of the Supreme Court action is  a suit by 10 disaffected Hope Academies and Life Skills Centers that objected to White Hat's claim on all publicly funded school assets when these schools left White Hat's embrace.

No deal, White Hat said.  Our contract shows we can keep everything even if we didn't pay for  it, which leads me to ask:  Who in hell  kept watch for taxpayers over the contract when it was written?  The court, led by Chief Justice Maureen O'Connor, a Republican fixture to the core from Akron who is among Brennan's recipients, decided  that Brennan can keep everything.

Plunderbund reported that GOP Justices Sharon Kennedy and Judith French,  asserted that "the school boards literally turned all money and responsibilities over to White Hat as an independent contractor with no expectation of transparency in how the business would be conducted."  Not even an inventory that  could have turned up a teacher's  iPhone absently left behind.

Justice William O'Neill, the lone Democrat on the bench,  dissented, saying that we were witnessing a "fraudulent conversion of public funds into personal profit". Right.  But good luck on making that idea stick against the White Hat behemoth.

Another object lesson on how soaring dollar-signed political business is carried out in Ohio these days?

Former White Hat takes important reins at UA

As if matters weren't edgy enough on the University of Akron campus under a new president on the block, there's even more faculty concerns for a campus in some sort of transition.  It's the appointment of a new vice provost and executive dean of the College of Applied Science and Technology to oversee President Scott Scarborough's. "repositioning'" the school from a traditional academic mission that allows for the humanities  as well as technology. As the question arose on whether  the school would change its name - which Scarborough  finally dismissed as nothing more than rumors - some faculty members figured he would at least see to it that UA would have "Technical Institute" attached to its legal name.

But the new science and technology guy who will doubtless work  in close quarters with the president is  Todd Rickel, who brings a resume that notes he was once the "Chief Learning Officer"  of White Hat Management.

You haven't been around these parts   very long to not recognize White Hat as David Brennan's charter school behemoth.  Which leads us to wonder  how his self-appended expertise as an "education futurist" will play on a  campus where departments are either being eliminated or downsized in what Scarborough refers to as "disinvestment.".

That  futurist stuff  is also how Brennan has seen himself .  Years ago he invited me to a private breakfast to hear a fellow, whose name I've long forgotten, who predicted the imminent demise of universities.

As Steve Dyer of Innovation Ohio, a progressive issues group,  wrote:  "While I'm not opposed to changing things, I deeply question how [Scarborough] could put so much faith in Todd Rickel'' while telling us that Rickel also has served as the Executive  Vice president  of the White Hat's  Distance Education Group - ''overseeing Ohio's worst online school..."

While Rickel was at White Hat,  Dyer wrote, " the company was receiving $110  million a year, on average, from Ohio taxpayers.  Meanwhile the school's performance - for which Rickel was directly resposible - was dreadful."

For those of us who see UA as a significant partner in the city's future,  we can only hope  that things don't turn out the same way on the downtown campus.

What's that? She's too busy to answer a question?

The closing days of the election madness concluded with a stark reminder that  those who play for your votes may be too busy to answer a few important questons.  The Republican state ticket, from Gov. Kasich down,  waved off any effort to  bring them into the consciousness of the voter  (excluding the Betty Crocker type TV ads fashioned to sweeten your palate).

A survey by NewsOutlet/Beacon Journal, a collaborative operation,  on whether charter school assets belong to the  private owners or to the public that paid for them, enjoyed only partial success. .

Rep. Marilyn Slaby, a Summit County Republican challenged by Democrat Tim Crawford, was among the majority of Republicans who didn't respond.  She  said she was too busy to answer the question. She said what?

The reluctance of some politicians to step up on a question about charter schools can be traced to the fact that they are well maintained in the White Hat  Management charter kingdom of its founder, David Brennan.  As we all know, he's a major GOP political financier who leaves no legislative vote that would affect his  enterprises unguarded.

And it works!   The state has channeled more than $900 million into charter schools, nearly $775 million to the Brennan domain.  The Plain Dealer reported  that Brennan has "poured more than $4 million into  the coffers of Republican candidates in Ohio during the last decade."

You won't need a calculator to see that $775 million for a $4 million investment is a damn good return.

 Not that these schools have served as  a White Hat  cure for  the ills of the public school system.  There are loads of dropouts from the charters -  more than the number of students who showed up on a average day. Indeed, there is nothing in any of the studies that would confirm charter success.

And, of course, the state's generous charter funding has to come from somewhere.  Yep.  Stretched-out  public education,  which could stand a few more dollars in its budgets.

But for now, the prophetic  words of Simon Cameron, Abe Lincoln's Secretary of War, are very much current today:

"An honest politician is one who , when he is bought, will stay bought.".

Brennan and Gonidakis: Akron hometowners well rewarded in budget!

What a terrible coincidence!

 Two of the biggest winners in the state budget signed Sunday by Gov. Kasich are from  Akron:  businessman David Brennan, and  Ohio Right to Life president Michael Gonidakis. 

 Brennan, a longtime major patron  of the Republican Party,  is the pater familias/owner of White Hat Management, Ohio 's largest charter school system.  The budget handsomely favored his schools ($1,400 more for each school choice student in addition to the bountiful amounts - many more millions upon millions from the state at the expense of public schools. Just another day at Brennan's office, I'd say. )

Gonidakis, an aggressive legislative  anti-abortion activist, earlier appointed by Kasich  as a non-medical member of the Ohio Medical Board, parlayed a daily double: defunding of Planned Parenthood and opening the door to one of the nation's strictest  anti-abortion  measures, including the use of ultrasound in birth control exams.  It also prevents Planned Parenthood from sending critical abortion cases  to public hospitals  for emergency  care. "Stupidity," as Albert Camus once wrote in The Plague, "has a knack of getting its way."   The governor obviously decided that well-informed women will cast a meaningless vote in his re-election bid.

Frankly, the Akron area is far more progressive than what these two richly rewarded hometown guys  represent.

* * * * *

And while we're at it.  How odd as the Kasich Sound Track rolled out his boastful  budget signature Sunday: State Republican Chairman Matt Borges arrived on-line with exuberant praise of the governor's action well before it was even reported by the Ohio media. Is he scoop-conscious or what?   As for Kasich, he quickly announced his moment of grace for Ohioans  and departed without answering any questions. Call it the tunnel at the end of Borges' light.

The big White Hat bulging with taxpayers' money

For the past 15 years Akron mega-businessman David Brennan  has been been passing the hat - the  familiar white one big enough to bleed the state education treasury of enormous sums.   It began in 1998 when Brennan, as savvy an entrepreneur as you'll find on Planet Romney - founded White Hat management to establish a series of charter schools in Ohio and elsewhere.

According to Plunderbund, the flow from the state treasury to White Hat's account has reached nearly $1 billion and is continuing with a friend like alleged budget hawk Gov. Kasich and a Republican legislature.  Such success was not based on results and the offhand chance that his presence as a big GOP contributor would be ignored.  And if the pols didn't already know, he told them so. It didn't fail.

The cozy enterprise ran into problems three years ago when the governing boards of 10 charter schools sued White Hat to learn what happened to 96 pct. of the money that the for-profit company received.  And as you might suspect, White Hat stonewalled that since it is a private company its ledgers are not open to public scrutiny.  The suits have passed through court after court, finally landing in the 10th District Court of Appeals in Columbus, which supported the charter boards' claims.  Kasich just went through the same challenge - and lost - to Jobs/Ohio.

But as the Beacon Journal editorially noted, the charter schools' case could  now head to the Ohio Supreme Court, with a 6-1 Republican majority. That, said the BJ, means White Hat "could evade transparency for a long while yet."  Did I tell you that Brennan was a savvy entrepreneur?

For now, may I ask about the costs of the long legal battle which, I'm sure, are  coming from White Hat's taxpayers' gifts?

Did I tell you that Brennan was a savvy entrepreneur? 

The sale of Ohio's Republican House of Representatives

IF YOU'VE EVER wondered what it would take to buy the Ohio Republican House of Representatives, there's a pretty strong clue in Sunday's Beacon Journal. In a thorough outing of David Brennan, the GOP's landlord in the Buckeye State, the paper reported that over the past two decades he has given more than $4 million to Republican candidates and PACs hereabouts, a sizable share going to where it would do him the most good as contributor-in-chief . That could only meant Brennan's lucrative charter school company, White Hat Management .

A Columbus Dispatch report included in the BJ"s coverage noted that Brennan's agents (who were greeted with open arms by GOP lawmakers) slipped in to the proposed state budget a couple of amendments that would enormously accommodate Brennan's sweeping plans to further enrich his charter company despite the fact that he has already found a loyal and willing enabler in Gov. Kasich. Keep in mind, too, that Brennan's operation has already received more than $230 million in taxpayer money for his charter schools in Ohio.

The budget is now in the state senate, which will settle on its version this week. It will be interesting to see how Akron's freshman Republican senator Frank LaRose responds to the outrages of Brennan's maneuvers in the House. After the awkward way he went about supporting Senate Bill 5, the union- busting dagger, LaRose can't really afford much more hot water.

When Brennan calls, the Ohio GOP listens

LET ME BEGIN by saying that William G. Batchelder has lied to us.

If I'm wrong, let him deny it.

As the Columbus Dispatch has reported, the Republican speaker of the Ohio House of Representatives has now admitted that he has known all along who wedged in a couple of amendments to the House-passed state budget that are more than friendly to charter school titan David Brennan of Akron. Until that worse-kept secret was confirmed by Batchelder himself, the veteran Medina politician and blueblood conservative had insisted that he had no idea whose fingerprints were on the amendments. And whose fingerprints were they? No less than Batchelder himself admitted they were inserted by the Republicans at Brennan's request. As if we didn't already know!

Batchelder has never impressed me over the years as an operative who left anything to chance. That was truer than ever as he assumed the leadership of the House Republican caucus in Columbus. So if he didn't know, he wasn't doing his job. If he did know, he must have assumed the questions would vanish. Connect the dots: He was lying, and for a pol of his decades of experience, he wasn't very good at it .

The Brennan amendments, clearly bought and paid for, are preposterous: a for-profit charter schools outfit like Brennan's White Hat Management has received $230 million in taxpayer money from the state. Yet his agents insist that because public money was now in the hands of a private company, White Hat didn't have to account for how the money was spent. Make me laugh.

There's more: White Hat would keep the desks and other school equipment that you and I have paid for if the charter school fails. (Can any Republican lawmaker with an iota of honesty defend such reprehensible baseness with a straight face?) Inasmuch as the Republican House passed the entire bill and sent it to the Senate, you need not guess about the dismal ethics of the happy-go-lucky GOP lawmakers who are blithely on the dole. Keep in mind that Brennan is known as the second largest contributor (millions) to the Republicans over the years of his ascendancy as Daddy Warbucks.

Meantime, White Hat is being sued by the boards of some charter schools to air out where the public money has been secreted. However, that trial was oddly put on hold for 60 days by a Columbus judge who asked that the two sides try to work out a new contract.

Among those shocked by the court's delay was Sen. Tom Sawyer, the Akron Democrat on the Republican-dominated Ohio Senate Finance Committee. He said he was "amazed" the court would force a delay while the legislation is being considered and suggested that Brennan has turned his attention to the Senate to sustain his interests. Sawyer predicted a"recrafted substitute" would be drawn in the Senate. Still, the Republicans control that body, too, and there are fewer mouths to feed.

We are witnessing a shameless gouging of the public interest in the halls of the General Assmbly and if it ends up that way it is a sign that the GOP class down there has sold whatever soul it still has left.

The free enterprise system stretches across a wide spectrum. At the high end are a couple of kids with a lemonade stand in their front yard. At the lowest end is how Batchelder and friends are doing business these days and the public be damned.

The White Hat in the legislative ring

IT DIDN'T TAKE that long for the Kasich Administration and its cupbearers in the Republican House to demonstrate their servitude to people with the deepest pockets. In a shameless reward to the party's financiers the GOP-ruled House of Representatives passed a budget bill that includes a few charter school amendments that were doubtless written by the pale light of the moon. None of this would displease Ohio's charter king, David Brennan, whose for-profit White Hat Management colossus has managed a $230 million return of state dollars for his investment. At this point, it should be further noted that White Hat's record of providing charter-school education has ranked near the bottom in its schoolhouse performance.

About those amendments to the budget bill: They would permit White Hat to operate as sort-of absentee landlords of their charter system without any accountability of how they spend the state money. Brennan's lawyer, Rocky Saxbe, explained that odd arrangement by saying that once public money goes into the private pot, it becomes private money that is beyond accountability.

Nice try - and I'm not a lawyer.

So in the simplest terms, what we are seeing is a one-way street in state expenditures: Give White Hat the money and don't ask what it does with it. The issue is so nettlesome that some local charter school operators have now taken White Hat to court to question what the company is doing with the princely sums from the taxpayers. The Brennans - David and wife Ann - also have their personal PACs and are the sole contributors to them, which serve as additional conduits to provide room and board for their favorite pols.

It's no secret where some of the profits have gone: Brennan has contributed $4 million to his Republican political allies over the past 10 years. Among the recipients of the maximum of $10,000 from each of the Brennans are Lt. Gov. Mary Taylor, former gubernatorial candidate Ken Blackwell (in case he would win, which is known as planning ahead ) and House

speaker Bill Batchelder of Medina. And, of course, Kasich wasn't overlooked.

Batchelder, who is a seasoned pol on the glide path with his eccentric right-wing leadership in the General Assembly, has raspishly denied to the media that there is one iota of a connection between his gift from Brennan and the upward course of charter schools in the new year. Still, we would feel more comfortable if someone, including Batchelder , could flat us tell us how the anonymous amendments were wedged into the budget bill that moves to the senate. He says he doesn't know, but we can guess.

All the while, Kasich has been been standing by, if needed, to keep the charter money flowing. He's already told the world what a great thing charters are in the lifeblood of education. And he's made sure they will grow exponentially without Big Brother watching over them.

The guv promised that he would make Ohio No. 1, and with the current proposed legislation, he and his buddies will have succeeded in making the state unique in its lack of accountability for these schools. For the average Ohioan who isn't in the loop, it will be no more than an awful spectator sport for business as usual down in Columbus.

It's time for DeWine to show us the money

AKRON'S DAVID BRENNAN, the for-profit charter schools baron, once invited me (many years ago) to a private breakfast to hear his special guest who had cutting-edge ideas on remedying the ills of formal education. "I think you'll find it very interesting," he confidently told me.

Brennan is a fellow who has never had an idea that wouldn't impress a listener. Or so he believed. The speaker at his breakfast offered the small group a single thesis: Within a few years - five, I seem to remember - universities would be out of business. No kidding. Indeed, nobody believed that more than our man in the audacious white cowboy hat. It was all part of his overarching plan to privatize education as a profitable business.

Part blustery showman and part political insider, Brennan has commanded attention for his schemes to save society from itself. Of late, his handiwork is surfacing again in the papers. An earlier charge of money-laundering through All Children Matter, a school choice operation in Washington, has tracked Brennan money back to the Ohio chapter of the national group's PAC. From here it went in large quantities to Ohio's Republican politicians who could grease the skids for the growth of charter schools.

So convinced of foul play, the Ohio Elections Commission in 2008 fined All Children Matter $5.2 million for the illegal conduit. So far, the fine has never been paid, and chances are that it never will be. All of the guardians of the public trust in this matter have received generous political contributions from Brennan. Among them are Gov Kasich, whose proposed budget includes an item doubling the state's school choice voucher support and lifting the lid on charter schools in Ohio; Attorney General Mike DeWine and Secretary of State Jon Husted.

It would be DeWine's task to pursue those millions that have been in limbo since the fine was levied. It was DeWine, after all, who righteously campaigned last year on clean government under the aggressive protection of the AG's office. The only word so far on this quick-change operation is from DeWine's spokeswoman, Lisa Hackley. She would only tell the Associated Press that the office was, um... working on it.

The odds are against any quick resolution of the problem. There was saying back in my old neighborhood in the Pennsylvania hills that went,

"Them that has is them that get."

I haven't seen any evidence that it's not still true today.