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The Texas Observer reported on Wednesday that TEA Exoneration of Mike Miles’ Charter Schools Leaves Questions Unanswered, Raises New Ones excerpted below:

“But the (October 15th) TEA report did not address some issues raised in the news outlets’ investigations, including: the reasons for a financial deficit run by TFS-Texas…whether the nonprofits had complied with federal tax reporting requirements meant to ensure transparency and proper spending of public dollars; and whether TFS-Texas had complied with provisions of the Texas Business Organization Code.

“Following the report’s release, the Observer obtained exhibits—which the report cited but did not include—that revealed among other things, that TFS-Texas had also moved money out of state to its Louisiana entity, raising a new question about its stewardship of Texas education funds.

“In its October investigation report, TEA stated, “There is no merit to the allegations contained in the media reports that state funds were being inappropriately diverted from public school students…

“Many of the report’s findings hinge on the distinction between Subchapter C, Chapter 12, of the Texas Education Code, which covers the in-district TFS-Texas charters, and another subchapter (subchapter D), which contains far more requirements and governs most other charters. Charters like the TFS-Texas schools have “full autonomy over campus operations and the campus budget,” TEA said, and the state ed agency “has no authority over the authorization of the Subchapter C district campus charter schools…

“Per TEA, these in-district Subchapter C schools can send money out of state to their affiliates to manage and extract fees without a formal written contract or a disclosure to the state or district…

"Lawmakers and public education experts also noted that TEA’s investigation of TFS-Texas—which concluded that in many cases the charter had not violated requirements because no requirements existed in the Subchapter C statute or SB 1882—actually highlighted serious weaknesses in the state law that authorizes such charters. "

“The lack of financial accountability and transparency is why you’re seeing things like this happen with Mike Miles,” said Patty Quinzi. “The reason why TEA said there was no wrongdoing is because technically Mike Miles did not break the [Subchapter C or SB 1882] law. There is nothing in state law that says charter schools cannot send Texas tax dollars to their out of state affiliates.”

Read the entire article here. In addition to fighting vouchers, and pushing for better public school funding, let’s push our legislators to change the takeover statutes derived from HB 1842, SB 1882 and SB 1365.