Pink Hula Hoop owns a Newark public school. Bob Braun asks future of education?

It's complicated. Writing about education reform is hard because it is not an easy read. It's made even harder when it is impossible to write about it without pointing out that it is the policy of our party as well and the GOP. George Bush could never have gotten this "reform" done because Democrats would have opposed it.

Now they don't.

Bob Braun was a reporter with the Star Ledger for nearly 50 years

For nearly 50 years, I didn’t just have a job, I had an adventure. Now it’s time for a new one. I am leaving The Star-Ledger and this is my last column for this newspaper.

When I was hired in 1964, I was 18. Mort Pye was editor. He took chances with young people. My first byline topped a story about a South Orange fundraiser for the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee, featuring Sammy Davis Jr. Go Google those.

Mort made me the paper’s education writer and editor in 1967. In articles and columns, I wrote about teacher strikes, the decay of urban schools, the expansion of higher education, challenges to school funding. And corruption — exposing the nominee for state schools chief who plagiarized his doctoral dissertation, the assistant commissioner who required vocational schools to buy from a company he owned. Millions in misspent federal funds. I even managed to get arrested in 1993 covering the state takeover of Newark schools.

From Bob Braun's Ledger:

The Pink Hula Hoop–Part 1: Is this the future of public schools?

Keeping public education public and out of the grasp of privatizers won’t be easy. The people behind it all make following the power and the money deliberately complicated. Consider the story of the Pink Hula Hoop, a convoluted tale of big money and insider contacts that could be the future of public education.

Pink Hula Hoop—more correctly “ Pinkhulahoop1, LLC”—is a profit-making company, one of four legal entities created to, among other things, raise money for the Team Academy Charter schools in Newark so it can buy and occupy public schools put on the auction block by the state-appointed school administration in New Jersey’s largest city. The Team Academy is considered a “region” of the better known KIPP charter schools.

....Although it is a separate limited liability company—a cross between a corporation and a partnership—the men and women who run Pink Hula Hoop are really the same people who run the charter schools. Some might call it a front organization; others would probably see it as a complex legal maneuver to help the charter schools raise cash from private and public sources.

....The property (18th Street school in Newark) was assessed by the city at nearly $10 million but, like all municipal assessments, that probably was unrealistically high. An appraisal conducted for the sale valued it at $5.3 million. Cami Anderson, the state-appointed superintendent of schools sold it to the charter school—well, to Pink Hula Hoop–for $4.3 million. She has the power to do that— by herself—under state law, as long as the state education department agrees. Which means if Christoper Cerf, the state education commissioner, agrees.

Here's some info on the Pink Hula Hoop company.

http://www.bizapedia.com/nj/PINKHULAHOOP1-LLC.html

Not much there.

I did find one document that specifically stated that it owned the school in question.

It is in Microsoft Word format

This statement is about halfway down the page:

PinkHulaHoop1, LLC owns 229 18
Th Avenue and is undertaking the renovation of such
facility.

Braun yesterday followed up with more on this topic.

Pink Hula Hoop 2: Follow the money.

The Pink Hula Hoop isn’t about education. It’s about money for privatized charter schools. Money and how connections among powerful people beget more money. It starts at the top, with Gov. Chris Christie who, while starving traditional public schools of operating and construction funds, has allocated an unprecedented amount of public money to privately-operated charter schools, including TEAM Academy. Last year alone, in 2013, he allocated $125 million in construction funds to charter schools–$40 million to TEAM. In 2011 and 2012, TEAM projects, directly or indirectly, received some $30 million in public loan funds.

Getting all that public money to TEAM has required the help, not only of the governor, but also of familiar Christie allies—Michele Brown, Christie’s former assistant and mortgagor and now head of the state Economic Development Authority (EDA); the law firm of Wolff and Samson of Bridgegate fame; Christopher Cerf, the recently departed state education commissioner who was both a TEAM trustee and former business partner of Tim Carden, the head of TEAM’s trustees and former EDA board member, and, of course, Anderson, who can now impose her controversial “One Newark” plan with the taxpayer money flowing to TEAM and other charters.

They aren’t the only players, of course. Former Newark Mayor Cory Booker , who brought Anderson to Newark, was heavily involved in funding the privatization of Newark schools. It was, as he told me in an interview years ago, his “greatest passion”—an even greater passion than keeping cops on the street. Booker was rewarded with an easy path, opened by Christie, to the United States Senate where he now represents, well, whoever put him there—but not, certainly, the people of Newark.

Braun then goes on to follow the history of Pink Hula Hoop. It is long and it is complicated.

Just 2 more paragraphs as a example of how it is hard to follow.

Following this will be difficult, but hang on. FOT—Friend of Team Academy—owns buildings in which its tenant, the TEAM Academy charter schools–operates. In 2010, the EDA issues bonds for the Newark Collegiate Academy, one of those tenant charter schools. In February, 2011, FOT buys $30 million of those bonds by borrowing money from Manufacturers and Traders Trust (M&T) and The Prudential Company and by receiving an ”investment” from KIPP. KIPP is the national parent organization of TEAM charter schools. One M&T employees serves on the FOT trustee board but Hill says he recuses himself from votes that deal with M&T.

In December, 2011, FOT’s wholly-owned subsidiary, FOTA Finance 1 LLC, buys $25 million in EDA Bonds and loaned the bonds themselves to Kingston Educational Holdings. To do that, it borrowed the money from Goldman Sachs and received another “investment” from KIPP.