Why aren’t conservatives angry at COVID public money grab by private schools? Hypocrisy | Opinion
In a school district where new teachers will start making this fall a salary of $47,500 a year — still barely a living wage in Miami — the federal money grab by expensive private and charter schools is particularly egregious.
The worst offender: Ransom Everglades School, where tuition costs $41,700 a year.
Its leader, Head of School Penny Townsend, earned a salary of $410,662 and another $67,447 from other compensation in 2018, according to publicly available tax forms obtained by the Miami Herald.
To put Townsend’s salary in context, she makes a lot more than Miami-Dade County Public Schools Superintendent Alberto Carvalho, who oversees the fourth-largest school district in the nation.
That’s 392 schools and 345,000 students.
Carvalho made $363,461 last school year.
How well off is Ransom, even in the time of coronavirus?
The waterfront school in Coconut Grove has a healthy $40 million endowment — on top of all that tuition money and accomplished alumni.
What need could the school have to dip into the Paycheck Protection Program approved by Congress to help small businesses keep people employed during the pandemic?
“The PPP funds we received have enabled us to retain all faculty, staff, administrators and coaches — the most important resources at Ransom Everglades School,” a spokeswoman wrote in an email to the Herald. “We have never previously applied for federal funding and are very grateful it was available in this unprecedented time.”
But if parents can afford to pay more than $40k a year for a sixth-grade education, isn’t it likely that COVID-19 hasn’t had the kind of dire financial impact on their lives that requires federal assistance?
They don’t need federal funds to buy their child a laptop or to subsidize internet service.
Yet, Ransom Everglades received a PPP loan of $2 million to $5 million, reports the Herald’s education reporter, Colleen Wright. And no, Ransom wouldn’t reveal the exact amount of money the school got from the PPP loan.
Private schools can get away with secrecy.
Another outrageous example of PPP collection excess: Billionaire real estate developer and former Democratic gubernatorial candidate Jeff Greene, who received a PPP loan of $350,000 to $1 million for his The Greene School in West Palm Beach.
Really, a billionaire needs PPP help?
It’s outrageous.
Adding another level of indignation is the silence of conservatives who have been vocal about their opposition to stimulus programs desperately needed by poor and middle class people — and by mom-and-pop businesses in our community that are truly hurting.
An example of the adversity to helping the less fortunate:
“Stimulus, bailouts explained: The government borrows/prints $20k in your name, you get $1.5k now and the rest goes to any number of entities and instruments. You and your children spend years paying it back,” tweeted Florida House Speaker Jose Oliva, who has championed charter and private schools, when Congress approved the first stimulus package.
I reached out to Oliva Tuesday via his spokesman, Fred Piccolo, to ask him about the doling out of millions of dollars in PPP loans to well-off private schools and charter schools. But, apparently, neither he nor his spokesman wanted to talk about the issue.
Commissioner Esteban “Steve” Bovo, who is running for Miami-Dade mayor, is campaigning on being the only conservative on the ballot. He says he only wants tax dollars used for basic services like police and fire, not to fund special needs.
Last Sunday, Bovo used the same talking point about our children and grandchildren paying the bill for coronavirus relief on the “This Week in South Florida” news show.
I asked him Tuesday what he thought about wealthy private schools and big charters school companies, which are already taxpayer funded, getting stimulus money, and he declined to comment on that specifically.
He sent me this statement: “The federal help in the CARES Act has been instrumental in helping Miami-Dade address the multiple challenges to mitigate the impact of the pandemic and preventing businesses from permanently terminating employees. However, we must be aware that when the federal money runs out, and it will, we have an obligation to meet the needs of our community without raising taxes and without impacting the core services the county is expected to perform.”
It’s not surprising that conservatives don’t want to talk about spending public dollars on private education.
Why aren’t they angry at COVID public money grab by private and charter schools?
Hypocrisy.
Public funds, private schools
Conservatives in Florida have championed for decades the public funding of private education, and with each move during the legislative session, they weaken a public school system that they believe delivers a liberal education.
For them, it’s about winning an ideological war.
Surely, in the age of COVID, PPP can be a lifeline for smaller private schools that charge reasonable tuition. If they didn’t already have the necessary technology, they did take a hit buying equipment for online distance learning, the Herald’s Wright tells me. And the smaller schools may even see a decline in enrollment.
But major schools like Ransom are another story.
These private schools and charters aren’t only taking forgivable federal loan money that should go to more meritorious institutions, but they’re also not giving a public accounting of how the money is being used.
A public school in Florida can’t get away with that kind of lack of accountability, one of the persistent issues when it comes to private and charter schools. They simply aren’t held to the same standards as are public schools.
They should know better than to dip in a limited pool of money.
The PPP loan they take is money a business that needed it more won’t get.
Return the money, Ransom. Give it back, Mr. Greene. Subsidize your own schools.
It’s the right thing to do.
This story was originally published July 22, 2020 at 7:50 AM.
