Private Equity Asset-Stripping Strategy Meets Charter Schools to Produce Even Better Looting
Eileen Appelbaum, co-author of the important book Private Equity at Work,flagged an important article in Philly.com on how a secretive
consulting firm that was previously investigated for corruption and a
local law firm are engaged in complex, high cost bond deals to implement
an asset stripping strategy that Appelbaum and her co-author Rosemary
Batt have called out as a private equity enrichment scheme that impairs
operating businesses. It's bad enough to see this sort of thing take
place in the dog-eat-dog world of Corporate America. It's even worse to
see it take place in charter schools, where the losers are students, by
virtue of unjustifiably large portions of charter fees go to
unproductive rental payments and financing fees, as opposed to
education, and to taxpayers, who over time face inflated costs to fund
profiteering masquerading as education.
If you live in the Philadelphia area, I hope you'll read articles Charter schools building boom: Charters borrow nearly $500 million on taxpayers' dime and
raise holy hell about the String Theory charter schools, whose
expansion plans need to be stopped in their tracks, as well as the roles
of its highly paid fixers, the consulting firm Santilli & Thomson
and the law firm Sand & Saidel.
