If charter schools are all about accountability, those with oversight of Imagine MASTer Academy owe taxpayers some answers:
•Why are Indiana taxpayers spending $740,000 a year for rent on the Wells Street school, compared with $29,000 a year for another local charter school, Timothy L. Johnson Academy?
•Why does a for-profit real estate company now own the Imagine campus?
•Why are lease payments being reinvested out of state?
•Are taxpayer dollars supporting a lucrative real estate deal at the expense of students?
Angela Mapes Turner’s Sunday story on the complex financial dealings involving Imagine MASTer Academy should have the charter school board’s members asking questions, as should officials at Ball State University, which authorized the charter that allows the school to operate.
Other states are beginning to take notice of how Imagine Schools Inc., one of the nation’s largest for-profit charter school management companies, does business. Once a charter is approved, Schoolhouse Finance, the real estate arm for Imagine, buys a campus and charges rent. In turn, Schoolhouse Finance sells the campus to a real estate investment trust.
That’s precisely how the deal has gone down in Fort Wayne, with EPT Schoolhouse, a subsidiary of Entertainment Properties Trust, now the owner of the Wells Street campus. The “triple-net” lease arrangement requires the tenant to pay property taxes, maintenance and insurance plus rent. (Because the charter school isn’t subject to property taxes, there’s no tax revenue collected on the Wells Street property, even though the owner is a for-profit investment company.) Not a bad deal for Entertainment Properties Trust and its investors.
The Dallas Morning News examined Imagine’s real estate dealings for a report in July.
“This arrangement is very lucrative because it’s a direct conduit to public funds,” Gary Horton of the Nevada Department of Education told the newspaper. “The school property is paid off with public funds.”
A Nevada school, 100 Academy of Excellence in North Las Vegas, paid rent of $1.4 million a year to Entertainment Properties Trust – 40 percent of its state-funded budget, according to the report.
In November, the Las Vegas Sun reported the school owed the state $93,000 in fees and has a $20,000 textbook shortfall.
Gov. Mitch Daniels has been critical of public schools for spending too much on buildings and not enough in the classroom.
Charter schools might have been established to avoid the red tape to which traditional public schools are subject, but financial oversight isn’t red tape. It’s a safeguard to ensure tax dollars are being spent efficiently.
If the governor is sincerely interested in seeing that tax dollars support students and not out-of-state investors, he should be questioning the lease arrangement at Imagine MASTer Academy and calling for a closer look at Imagine’s three other Indiana schools.
