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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsUNO Charter Schools charged by SEC with defrauding investors. Here's some background.
Stuff happens when charter schools are allowed to operate without regulation or oversight. It is not just happening in Chicago, it is happening in Florida and many other states.
SEC charges UNO with defrauding investors
The Securities and Exchange Commission on Monday announced it had charged charter school operator UNO with defrauding investors in a $37.5 million bond offering for school construction work by failing to disclose conflicts of interest.
The SEC alleged that UNO Charter School Network had failed to disclose a multimillion dollar contract with a windows company linked to one of its top executives, Miguel d'Escoto.
D'Escoto, resigned in February last year, days after the Sun-Times reported that UNO gave $8.5 million of business to companies owned by two of dEscotos brothers with money from $98 million in state school-construction grant funding.
Ben Joravsky at the Chicago Reader (only the R is backwards) tells how UNO came to have such a huge presence in Chicago schools.
Charter school operator won't say how it spent your tax dollars
This is what's going on. Former CEO Juan Rangel built UNO's charter machine by cultivating mutually beneficial alliances with some of the state's most powerful politicians, including Mayors Daley and Emanuel.
In 2009, Governor Pat Quinn gave UNO a $98 million grant to build more schools. And Rangel was riding high, giddily taunting anyonealdermen, union activists, even lowly Reader writerswho dared to criticize him.
And then in February, Mihalopoulos broke the news that UNO had funneled millions of dollars in contracts to construction companies owned by the brothers of Miguel d'Escoto, then its chief operating officer.
.... In the ensuing furor, d'Escoto stepped down and Rangel apologized repeatedly before he too finally resigned earlier this month. UNO also hired ASGK Public StrategiesDavid Axelrod's former firmto handle the spin. And it brought in retired federal judge Wayne Andersen to investigate how it was that the brothers of the COO got the contracts.
Short answer: UNO gave it to them!
But the story of UNO doesn't end there. They fired a teacher when he reported that a student had been assaulted in the locker room. UNO accused him of not preventing the assault in the first place.
This fired teacher was then paid $150,000 and the case was settled quietly.
UNO charter schools paid fired teacher $150K to settle case, records show
Gym teacher David Corral made news when he filed a federal lawsuit in 2010 against the taxpayer-funded charter-school network run by the clout-heavy United Neighborhood Organization, claiming he was wrongly fired for reporting the assault of a student at UNOs Major Hector P. Garcia M.D. High School on the Southwest Side.
UNOs then-leader Juan Rangel said Corral deserved to be fired for failing to prevent the November 2009 locker-room incident in the first place.
But a federal judge denied UNOs bid to dismiss the lawsuit last year. And months later, Corral got $150,000 under a sealed settlement that avoided a trial, according to documents obtained by the Chicago Sun-Times.
....Court documents in the fired teachers case offer a glimpse of how UNO operated under Rangel, who was Mayor Rahm Emanuels 2011 campaign co-chairman and built the community group into a political power and charter-school force.
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UNO Charter Schools charged by SEC with defrauding investors. Here's some background. (Original Post)
madfloridian
Jun 2014
OP
madfloridian
(88,117 posts)1. As far as I know...
no right wing sources were used, at least deliberately. I don't read Chicago papers as a rule, so I don't know which ones are considered right wing. As for Ben Joravsky, he is a blogger I frequently read. An honest one.
wavesofeuphoria
(525 posts)2. Thanks for the info, mad
Why educating our children ever became a profit-making/taking enterprise, I will never understand nor support.
I STILL cannot wrap my head around all this happening under a Democratic administration.
madfloridian
(88,117 posts)3. The profit part will come before the needs of the students.
That's inevitable.
Starry Messenger
(32,342 posts)4. k&r
madfloridian
(88,117 posts)5. Friends of UNO now in the spotlight.
http://politics.suntimes.com/article/chicago/uno-troubles-put-spotlight-its-powerful-friends/fri-06062014-644pm
A whos-who of Chicagos political elite had just enjoyed a mariachi version of The Star Spangled Banner when Juan Rangel stepped forward to introduce a good friend of mine to give the keynote speech at a banquet held by the group he then led, the United Neighborhood Organization.
I want to applaud UNO, Mayor Rahm Emanuel said at the event in November 2011, months after Emanuel had won the mayors office with Rangel as his campaign co-chairman.
Emanuel praised the Hispanic groups charter schools. He called UNO a great organization with a great future.
Now, with UNO and its former leader Rangel under fire from the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission as a result of a contracting scandal, Emanuel and other powerful politicians who helped the group become a potent force in politics and education arent talking.