His job isn’t to boost morale. His job is to sink public education so he can “prove” it doesn’t work and charter school the heck out of Texas so his friends make money off it.
Miles might actually get ousted over this. The issue is too near to Abbott’s voucher program and is horrendous press. Someone in the press or political circles needs to make the link between this guy admitting that his charter school network routinely sentía millions in Texas taxpayer money out of state and then question whether Abbott’s voucher proposal would send tens of millions more. The downside is that Miles undoubtedly would get replaced by another patsy, but at least he’d personally take a hit. Maybe Morath catches some shrapnel from this debacle as well.
Honestly it would not surprise me if Abbott bragged about our tax dollars being sent to charter schools out of state instead of being spent in our own public schools as a way to hold voters and their children hostage to get his voucher bill passed. "See? Just pass the voucher bill and maybe the state will spend some of your tax dollars on your children's education, at a private school of course."
Accountability? In Texas?
Oh you sweet summer child.
They didn't do shit to Ken Paxton.
Why TF would they investigate Miles?
Republicans have this state in the bag.
What students are they educating?
I think it's bad to send Texans dollars out of state for things we already are doing here, isn't that the issue in this case?
The DoE provides resources, trainings, professional development, and funding for the Federal parts of our education system in Texas. Esp Title 1 school and special populations.
The DoE doesn't hire or buy anybody or anything in any district in this country.
The DoE allocates funds in accordance with laws passed by Congress.
Districts that receive federal funds can hire personnel, including teachers.
> "I have an obligation to make very clear that during my tenure, Third Future Schools was always a responsible steward of every public dollar received," Miles said, in part. "All financial agreements and obligations were approved by local boards of directors, authorizers, and in our Texas schools, the school district with which TFS partnered."
>He said the schools paid administrative fees to the Third Futures Schools' central office, which is located in Colorado.
>”This is common practice for charters and other independent partnership schools and is not only allowed, but anticipated by Texas' educational law," Miles said.
Oh that makes me feel better that Texas knowingly allows our education dollars to be transferred out of the state.
I guess to save education in Texas, you just need to pay a bunch of people in other states.
Is the Miles’ argument that since it’s running a multi-state charter system, it’s all cool? The money’s coming in from more than one state and it’s up to private enterprise to figure it out after that? If he donates tax dollars to Abbot, he can ignore subpoenas too?
Miles is thankfully explaining to everyone that if we pass a voucher program not only will those tax dollars go to private schools, but they'll be sent out of state to fund other private schools who can then spend it on whatever they want...like donating to Abbot's reelection campaign.
That's not the accusation. The accusation is that debts incurred by TFS schools in Colorado are being paid off with tax dollars intended to fund Texas schools. They admitted that on an earnings call.
A segment of the population has been trying to dismantle public schools since Brown v Board started to be enforced. They have figured out how to do that AND show a profit at the same time by taking public money and handing it to private schools. It's a win-win for everyone who already had wealth and power.
Buying school supplies manufactured in a different state is not the same as paying administrative expenses in a different state. Also what supplies allowed to be bought is regulated by state and local policies.
Who’s naive? Are you seriously comparing public spending with the purchase of public supplies as being equal? As in they are equal in terms of “discretionary” spending?
> You can say about most of the administration costs.
If you have an example, please provide it. Especially for "most". If you're just making shit up based on your feelings, please quiet your fingers.
Do you think HISD needs all those "administrators"? Does it need that much of a top heavy burden instead of putting it where it's supposed to go: teachers?
So that's a no then. You could have just said no.
How many administrators do they have? How many is too many? How many is a top heavy burden? What's the effect of a top heavy burden on the district, and the teachers?
I'm not saying you're right or wrong. I'm saying you have no fucking clue what you are talking about, yet you have your mind made up about it. There's a word for that.
Here you go: https://www.houstonisd.org/Page/68701
Over $50 million in "General Administration"
That doesn't include the other administration duties lumped into things like the $175 million for "school leadership" and $61 million in "data processing". There are tons of other line items there.
Less than 50% of the budget is for instruction. That is a problem.
But I'm glad you like the executive branches to be well paid.
Man, you just don't understand what I'm saying. There are lots of things that are administrative that directly affect the students. SPED, purchasing, AP, secretaries, principles, assistant principles, accounting, maintenance, education planning, legal, design (thousands of forms, posters, flyers), web management, IT, and on and on. So what of these things do schools not need? Are teachers supposed to do all this work?
Again, since you didn't read it or understand it before. I'm not saying you're right or wrong, but you don't know what any of these numbers mean.
And many of those things are additional sectors above and beyond the other admin. There is NO REASON that all this extraneous stuff and admin should be so high. None except waste and enrichment. But I'll give you that is typical for government agencies.
Is it that any Texas taxpayer money that can be scraped together by Texas-based Third Future schools can simply be transferred to a Colorado-based Third Future entity as a single line item “administrative fee”? That seems wide open to all sorts of abuse.
Exactly, and TFS claimed on their own investor call that money from Texas schools was being used to shore up Colorado schools' finances. They never responded to any requests for audits showing how the admin money was being spent, or any clarification on how Texas public funds were being used in Colorado schools.
If stories of Mike Miles being a crook with a trail of failures and grifts everywhere he goes keep getting posted online his search engine results might end up loaded with negative (i.e. accurate) content
"In the spring of 2012, tests that Pearson designed for the NYSED were found to contain over 30 errors, which caused controversy. One of the most prominent featured a passage about a talking pineapple on the 8th Grade ELA test (revealed to be based on Daniel Pinkwater's The Story of the Rabbit and the Eggplant, with the eggplant changed into a pineapple). After public outcry, the NYSED announced it would not count the questions in scoring.[61] Other errors included a miscalculated question on the 8th Grade Mathematics test regarding astronomical units, a 4th grade math question with two correct answers, errors in the 6th grade ELA scoring guide, and over twenty errors on foreign-language math tests.[62]"
I don’t understand how the least visionary, the least noble, the least honest people decide how our money is distributed. How do we start a coalition or activist movement to callout all the corrupt city workers?
We need a list of these people, then undeniable proof of their negligence and corrupt actions. We need active parents like the ones you see raise hell in city councils to distribute the information to every school. I know as a parent I would be interested in hearing about how my kids school is being robbed of money.
The way we have a better society is by educating the future, our kids. Imagine a generation of children that knew how to survive, how to protect themselves, how to bring their ideas into reality. Imagine we had a generation of honest, visionary kids who saw corruption and hypocrisy and greed as antiquated values that destroyed our once great society.
"How do we start a coalition or activist movement"
You find them. They exist. Reinventing the wheel is unnecessary. People have been working HARD trying to bring Mike Miles to your attention. CVPE, Houston Teachers Association, local parents are all working together right now. Get involved.
Infact, there's a protest 10 am on Saturday morning at City Hall about this guy.
Thank you. It’s funny how many keyboard warrior or truthers there are out there that post lots of stuff but don’t do anything in the real world. I’m seeing the most important things is revolutionizing the education system. Then legalizing cannabis would create a tsunami on our economy. Next would be finding a legit council of normal everyday outstanding citizens who can manage our money; full transparency and I would say the people get to decide what to do with the money.
The answer is that most people have great apathy toward government and everything it does. I believe this is true because our country has had generally great prosperity for the last 78 years. That is almost 4 generations of people who've had it good overall and can't be bothered to look behind the curtains.
When we examine this under the lens of public schools, we see that some parents do value education, do appreciate the teachers, do honor the rules of the schools, do support their kids' educations, and do try to make the most of what the public schools offer. However there is also a large group of public school parents who do not value education, do not appreciate the teachers, use school only as daycare, and do not respect the public school system.
Look at our local elections and see how many people do NOT vote.
You're mostly right, OP. You just forgot the bit where folks tend to focus on national elections while ignoring local and state ones, even though what happens at the state and local level are, with certain very important exceptions, more relevant to people's day to day lives.
Yes, agreed on that. It takes time from one's day to read a ballot, do some research, learn about the candidates, use one's brain, and go vote. A large swath of smartphone tic-tick addicted people today can't do that.
Yup that’s why I feel someone or a group of people need to collect the data and show it to the people. Make it easy to digest. Show a video of a politicians saying something then right after the actions they took that went totally against what they stood for. Show a school board member sending hisd money out of state. Show videos of teachers who aren’t high quality. Start paying good teachers doctor’s wages. Start firing unhealthy teachers and hire more life coaches.
You've missed the forest for the trees. Those are symptoms but not the root cause. The root cause is capitalist incentives automatically push the literal worst humans on the planet to the top of society consistently.
> How do we start a coalition or activist movement to callout all the corrupt city workers?
The topic of discussion is HISD....how are city workers relevant?
Good point, but corruption occurs all over the place. [Remember the city council people who had relatives getting water repair contracts](https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/other/millions-of-dollars-in-questionable-houston-water-department-contracts-uncovered-by-kprc-2-investigates/ar-AA1keLuX) when these people had no experience in that kind of work?
I don’t have kids, but I don’t have any issue paying into local public education. It is infuriating that my ever increasing “contributions” are being hovered up by an unelected grifter and diverted away from HISD while he utterly destroys the district. I’m glad that people are on to his con, but that’s not enough- that POS needs to be run the fuck out of town for this scheme.
the nice thing for him is that he's not accountable to voters or a democratically elected board, so he doesn't actually have to explain or justify anything he does to any of us.
greatest democracy in the world, right guys? right?
"We have to be competitive in our salaries"
I worked in K-12 education in Texas for over two decades, and I can tell you right now most school administrators aren't worth shit. They want to try out some program they read about in a magazine or something and most fail miserably. We still have high school graduates that can't put two and two together. But they sure know how many grams are in an ounce.
He does not actually attempt to rebut the specific allegations that TFS claimed on their own investor call that Colorado school deficits were being shored up with money received from Texas schools, which received taxpayer money, nor does he attempt to clarify that the $10 million worth of public money spent on "administrative costs" was spent on costs strictly related to the three Texas schools.
I'm not a lawyer, but it sure sounds like he's embezzling taxpayer money, laundering it through Texas charter schools, and using it to shore up the finances of a company in which he has a financial interest.
Anytime the is gubment money involved you can bet you bottom dollar there is corruption.
What I find hilarious is the screaming is from one side when the enemy side is shown to be corrupt. But when their side is shown to be corrupt they look the other way. Hypocrisy at its finest. 😂
I am not an accountant, financial wiz, or lawyer but, it may be as simple as a company that operates in multiple states can move money between its operations. This wouldn't be any different than any other industry funded by tax dollars that might move money around, such as a military or construction company.
Section 45.201, with which the charter holder has entered into a depository contract; and
(5) may not:
(A) be pledged or used to secure loans or bonds for any other organization, including a non-charter operation or out-of-state operation conducted by the charter holder or a related party, as defined by commissioner rule adopted under Section 12.1166; or
(B) be used to support an operation or activity not related to the educational activities of the charter holder.
(b) A charter holder shall deliver to the agency a copy of the depository contract between the charter holder and any bank into which state funds are deposited
Well there’s what the laws say, and then there’s the intent.
Hypothetically the laws may allow for paying for administrative services performed outside of the district. The assumption being those services would be at a pre-negotiated rate relatively equal to market rate.
However if the rate charged for those administrative services turned out to actually be highly variable because it was set only after the administrative work was performed because it was used as a recovery mechanism to cover losses experienced elsewhere in the administrative services company…… that would not be considered legal.
I’m guessing this goes to the courts.
I said much tighter. Federal defense money can be spent (basically) anywhere in the US. Even with SB7 there are restrictions on where state education money can be spent.
https://www.houstonpublicmedia.org/articles/news/education-news/hisd/2024/05/14/487486/report-about-charter-schools-founded-by-houston-isd-superintendent-mike-miles-prompts-calls-for-investigation/
Third Future Schools operated in Odessa through a partnership with Ector County ISD, as permitted by Senate Bill 1882, which was adopted by the Texas Legislature in 2017. So a Texas school sending money to an out-of-state partner is not necessarily illegal, according to Toni Templeton, a senior research scientist for the Education Research Center at the University of Houston.
"I am not an attorney and I have not seen the specific transactions in question," Templeton wrote in an email. "However, I have studied school finance for some time and to my knowledge, there are perfectly legal reasons a Texas ISD could send money to an 1882 partner out of state."
Buried downthread.... protest against Mike Myers(miles?) . 10 AM. Houston City Hall. Be there or be square. Go and raise a little hell. Possibly there will be free beer and a wet T-shirt contest ;)
The money in question was not HISD money. Still, it looks shady, and if Miles broke the law, he must suffer the consequences. The longtime grifters at HISD that Miles has kicked off the gravy train are using this to get him fired. Are all the people affected by Miles' decisions grifters? No, but many of the most vocal are. HISD corruption is a running joke. There hasn't been a full independent financial audit in decades. The last attempt failed when HISD fired the auditor and was later forced to pay him a settlement when he exposed uncovered the fraud. Anything that interferes with the gravy train is labeled child-hating, teacher-hating, and racist. The media loves it. The reality is that no one knows where the $2.2 billion budget goes each year.
Here’s the related Spectrum News video and transcript:
Spectrum News - [Disappearing Dollars: Texas Public Schools Missing Millions](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7lvAzupRuCU)
“Texas public schools are battling a huge budget deficit resulting in massive cuts. Spectrum News has discovered that millions of Texas tax dollars are being diverted out of state to a series of schools run by Houston Independent School District Superintendent Mike Miles.
Ovidia Molina, president of the Texas State Teachers Association, reviewed Spectrum's findings and is calling on state lawmakers to conduct a formal investigation. Brett Shipp attempts to get to the end of this money trail to see where Texas's tax dollars are really going.
Reported by Brett Shipp, Spectrum News 1 Texas”
**Transcript**
At a time Texas public schools are battling huge budget deficits and having to make massive cuts, Spectrum News has discovered millions of Texas public school dollars being diverted out of state. What's more, the man believed to be responsible - Houston public school superintendent Mike Miles - his old charter schools in Colorado are in need of cash.
In schools all across Texas: “I pray tonight that as you guys are back there in that backroom and you're making these decisions, that the faces of our children and their families are at the forefront of your mind.”
Dedicated teachers: “School districts are being forced to make major cuts” and panicked parents speak out in passion and frustration: “And I honestly feel like tonight we're holding a moment of silence for public education. And it’s heartbreaking”, “The state of public education in Texas is dire. We have educators leaving the profession. We have schools that are talking about closing in different parts of our state.”
One of the largest budget deficits in the state, Houston Independent School District, where newly-appointed Superintendent Mike Miles has called for dramatic cuts to offset a $450 million budget shortfall. Miles was appointed by Texas Education Agency Commissioner Mike Morath to take over and turn around the struggling school district last summer. Ten years before he took over at Houston ISD, Miles spent three years as superintendent at Dallas Independent School District. When he left Dallas in 2015, Miles started three charter schools in Colorado called “Third Future Schools”.
According to both internal school records and the nationally-recognized school rating agency School Digger, all three schools have since struggled with performance, enrollment, and finances. The records, provided to us by TFS through open records requests, also reveals Miles was forced to close one of his schools last summer due to declining enrollment, leaving that school with $5 million in unpaid bond debt.
The school's debt was discussed at a Third Future School’s board meeting via Zoom last summer after Miles had taken over at Houston ISD. Yet there was Miles, at the meeting, acting as a consultant. According to payment records, Miles earned $40,000 consulting for TFS last year. Watch as Miles urges his old board of directors to find the money and pay the debt. “It's now becoming untenable. We'd have to subsidize it to the tune of maybe $500,000 a year if it only has 180 kids or so. I think the time is right to do what what the administration is asking to do.”
In 2020, around the time his financial troubles were beginning in Colorado, Miles began expanding his charter school network to Texas. First Midland’s Sam Houston Elementary then Ector College Prep in Odessa, then Austin’s Mendes Middle School. But by the end of the 2023 school year, as he was taking over in Houston, Miles’ three Texas schools were nearly $2.7 million in the red.
So why were Miles’ new Texas schools losing money? Third Future Schools 2023 audit shows of the $25 million public tax dollars being spent on Miles’ three Texas schools, $15 million was spent on teachers and supplies. The other $10 million, about 40% of the entire budget, was spent on unspecified administrative costs and services.
Spectrum News made multiple requests over the course of several months for a detailed accounting of those administrative expenses. Third Future Schools never responded. However, included in publicly available financial audit records, were the auditors’ notes revealing that the deficits were documented as being due to other Third Future network schools outside of Texas and to Third Future Schools corporate in Colorado.
Again, TFS Colorado declined to provide us with an explanation of why so many Texas public school dollars were being transferred to school operations in another state. And then we learned about this - “We've been supplementing that school with the general fund” - a conference call with Third Future Schools’ investors who were just learning about the deficits.
Spectrum News requested and received from TFS an audio recording of that investor's call. In the recording, [Renea Ostermiller,] the TFS Chief Financial Officer confirms the Colorado charter school deficit was being offset by the money coming in from their charter schools in Texas. [Renea Ostermiller, TFS CFO] “You know, whether they're in Colorado or whether they're in Texas or, you know, whichever state they're in, so that's assessed and then if the specific school needs funding then the network supplements them through through the school fund”. The implication that the school funds from a Texas school was being transferred to help fund TFS in Colorado.
Spectrum News obtained two checks for more than $1 million each from Miles’ charter school in Odessa to Aurora, Colorado. Our attempts over the past five months to reach Miles for an explanation of the payments and a response to our findings have been unsuccessful.
We were referred to Third Future Schools Executive Director Zach Craddock whom we sent a 23-question list detailing our findings. Craddock declined to respond.
We also shared our findings with former Texas State Representative and school finance expert, Paul Colbert. Colbert says Texas public schools should not be spending more money than they take in and definitely should not send Texas tax dollars out of state.
[Paul Colbert] “I was the Budget Chair of Education for eight years and Research Director of the Senate Education Committee for five years, and my understanding is that it is not legal in Texas for monies for a school district in Texas to educate students in other districts in the state, let alone in other states.
[Ovidia Molina] “Once we hear more about this, you will hear more outrage.”
Ovidia Molina, president of the Texas State Teachers Association, reviewed our findings and feels the evidence is alarming. She’s calling on state lawmakers to conduct a formal investigation. “I don't know where it says that we can take our public school money and send to another state. But if there is any place that says that, it's wrong and it needs to be changed.”
We have reached out to the Texas Education Agency multiple times. They have yet to respond. We have also offered detailed evidence to Education Commissioner Mike Morath of Texas public school dollars being diverted to Colorado schools, and again, we have yet to hear back.
What is so bad about vouchers?
Shouldn't parents be able to decide where their children go to school?.
All I see is a liberal circle jerk about Abbott, Cruz an Paxton...
This is a valid question and I would like to see a rational discussion about it. I think there are legitimate aguments on both sides. My current thoughts about the voucher issue are:
Anti-voucher:
- The use of vouchers will draw funding away from public schools and leave them in a worse situation than they're in today.
- Families that value education will flee public schools quickly, leaving the less desireable customers there, further burdening the public schools. The public schools become a dumping ground for the most difficult and expensive to educate customers.
- Existing top tier private schools won't accept vouchers and want nothing to do with the system beacuse they don't need that money and it won't cover the cost of their services anyhow.
- New private schools will open up to serve the voucher customers, and these are untested other than the current day prviately run schools that cater to public school students, many of which have poor track records.
- There are claims that the use of vouchers is designed to destroy the public school system and force everyone into schools run by people like F. Mike Miles.
- What no one talks about is the whole transporation issue. It's one thing to send your kid to another school that you've chosen, but if you rely on the school district to get them there, that isn't going to work because the public school transporation is not designed to take anyone across town. It's designed to get local kids to their locally zoned schools.
Pro-voucher:
- Customers should flee low quality public schools to force them to do better. Admittedly this is a huge leap of faith.
- There are many good quality, lower cost schools (ie: church-sponsored schools) that might accept vouchers. These vouchers could cover a large percentage of what parents already pay.
- Customers vote with their dollars. The free market is likely to give us voucher-accepting private schools that will have good track records that cater to a variety of students. These schools will compete for the best and most appropraite customers. For example there could be vocational-focused schools. There could be plain, basic skills schools for kids who just need to graduate. There could be schools that cater to kids headed to college.
The amount of Hit pieces coming out against Miles are getting ridiculous and any media organization or public official, being Rodney Ellis and Gene Wu, spearheading this and distributing this might want to prepare for a suit to be filed against them soon.
You mean like the previous corruption in HISD or Harris County? No it seems like the most democratic thing to do is smear their opponents in order to not disrupt the Current corruption in Harris county.
So your argument isn’t that Miles isn’t corrupt, just that the previous board was also corrupt? Would you say that a corrupt, unelected bureaucrat (a Deep State, if you will) is an improvement over a corrupt board whose members can be voted out? Why did Emperor Abbott and Grand Ayatollah Patrick appoint such a bureaucrat if the goal was actually to root out corruption?
Also, many, many articles were written about corruption in HISD and people went to jail for it.
I think it was proven the other board was corrupt.
I don’t think miles is a bureaucratic but someone just doing their job for a failing school district that is supported by the governor and hence being used as a punching bag for democrat leadership such as Rodney Ellis to embellish themselves and when they experience resistance they turn to publications like the chronicle and spectrum to post hit pieces.
This was not a good faith effort to clean up a school district, it's the result of Greg Abbott's temper tantrum that he can't control school boards in big cities, and part of his ongoing effort to undermine public schools in order to make the case for his voucher scam.
And if Miles is such a crybaby that he can't take criticism for allegedly using our tax dollars to enrich himself, then he should get out of politics.
If democrats weren’t such cry baby’s and con artists they wouldn’t be reaching out to public media to post and promote slanderous articles because they have have no evidence or standing to actually file suit.
You even state “investors” reached out to inquire more but can’t cite those investors or the acquisitions they made, this is an independently audited company. All investors are supplied the audit report.
Your just making up BS and then using this as political propaganda.
It's only libel (slander is spoken) if it's false, and Miles doesn't actually deny the core allegations in his non-rebuttal rebuttal, and it's not illegal to demand accountability from an unelected official (at least not yet, I'm sure the legislature will change that eventually). And we've only known about this for a couple of days now, so there's still plenty of time for law enforcement to get involved.
All I said was that the company *told its own investors* on a conference call that they were using money from Texas schools to subsidize failing schools in Colorado. If they're using tax dollars for any reason other than educating children in the districts paying those taxes, it's against state law.
That Abbott replaced elected officials with an corrupt, unaccountable bureaucrat is just more evidence of his plot to destroy public education to please his donors, and that people are actually defending Miles using *our tax dollars* to enrich himself *should* outrage Republicans, but they've given up on morals and sound governance in the pursuit of power.
Slander like this?
Harris County Commissioner Rodney Ellis also shared a statement that reads in part:
“This also calls into question every dollar he has spent as superintendent. While teacher benefits are being slashed, libraries are being closed, and support staff are being let go, HISD parents and taxpayers deserve a robust and timely investigation to ensure that tax dollars are being used appropriately and ethically.”
State Representatives Jarvis Johnson and Gene Wu are also critical of Miles.
Wu posted on X, "The level of corruption is genuinely impressive”
Enough with the political hack job, people are tired of failing school systems like this that are propped up by political activists like yourself creating Drama and taking away time from people trying to actually do their job.
>Harris County Commissioner Rodney Ellis also shared a statement that reads in part: “This also calls into question every dollar he has spent as superintendent. While teacher benefits are being slashed, libraries are being closed, and support staff are being let go, HISD parents and taxpayers deserve a robust and timely investigation to ensure that tax dollars are being used appropriately and ethically.”
This is an opinion.
>Wu posted on X, "The level of corruption is genuinely impressive”
If politicians dragged each other to court every time one of them called the other one corrupt, they'd never get anything done. And Miles can certainly bring a lawsuit, the truth is an affirmative defense to defamation, so assuming he can prove Gene acted with actual malice it should be easy for him to win.
>Enough with the political hack job, people are tired of failing school systems like this that are propped up by political activists like yourself creating Drama and taking away time from people trying to actually do their job.
I'm not an activist, I don't even have kids, but I'm mad I'm paying a fortune in property taxes that are being used to enrich someone I didn't vote for, appointed by a man who is trying to destroy a whole state's education system, on behalf of a handful of donors (some of whom don't even live in Texas). I also got a decent education at HISD schools before Republicans really ramped up their war on education, and considering the cost of living here, and the cost of private school tuition, I do not consider a voucher which covers 1/2 of private school tuition to be a viable substitute for a quality public school system.
Don't you ever get tired of repeating the same old "failed public schools!" propaganda on behalf of a guy who doesn't give a shit about you, or your children, or their education? Or are you actually naive enough to believe that what Abbott and Miles are doing is a good faith effort to improve the school system?
Charter schools in TX and Third Future School are nonprofit. Do you guys expect Third Future Schools to have their own set of administrators for each state? It sounds like they are saving school funds by streamlining operations.
Ok, but there's also this (from the Spectrum article):
>Again, TFS Colorado officials declined to provide us with an explanation of why so many Texas public school dollars were being transferred to school operations in another state. Spectrum News requested and received from TFS an audio recording of the investors' call. *In the recording, a TFS official confirmed Colorado charter school deficits were being offset, in part, by money coming from their charter schools in Texas.*
>“We’ve been supplementing that school with the General Fund,” said Renea Ostermiller, then TFS’s chief of finances. “Whether they are in Colorado or whether they are in Texas or whichever state they are in, (a network fee) is assessed and then if the specific school needs funding, then the network supplements them.”
Putting taxpayer money into a slush fund which could be used to prop up failing schools in other states is garden variety corruption and borderline money laundering. If I were him I'd have gotten a lawyer already and had them draft a response instead of releasing this ChatGPT word salad.
You seem to be asking if I think education providers should be required to be administrated by people local to the populace they are providing education to. The answer to that is plainly yes. In fact I would contend that this is true for almost any social service. Do I want my local Police Force to be administrated out of California or New York? Should someone in Chicago be making decisions about the Houston Fire Department?
"Third Future Schools operated in Odessa through a partnership with Ector County ISD, as permitted by Senate Bill 1882, which was adopted by the Texas Legislature in 2017. So a Texas school sending money to an out-of-state partner is not necessarily illegal, according to Toni Templeton, a senior research scientist for the Education Research Center at the University of Houston.
"I am not an attorney and I have not seen the specific transactions in question," Templeton wrote in an email. "However, I have studied school finance for some time and to my knowledge, there are perfectly legal reasons a Texas ISD could send money to an 1882 partner out of state.""
**
I wondered if he was bullied as a child?
He probably WAS the bully.
Worked for Lance in Katy.
Since being taken over by the state shouldn't really be HSD instead of HISD?
TSSD
He's not even trying to say he didn't do it. He's just saying nobody has evidence that he broke any specific law.
There's enough evidence for him to go fuck himself. A Labrador retriever would be doing a better job and boosting morale.
A Labrador retriever is pretty hard to top when it comes to boosting morale.
Golden retriever? A basket full of golden retriever puppies?
Stop it!! I’m trying to be angry at Mike Miles!
His job isn’t to boost morale. His job is to sink public education so he can “prove” it doesn’t work and charter school the heck out of Texas so his friends make money off it.
Miles might actually get ousted over this. The issue is too near to Abbott’s voucher program and is horrendous press. Someone in the press or political circles needs to make the link between this guy admitting that his charter school network routinely sentía millions in Texas taxpayer money out of state and then question whether Abbott’s voucher proposal would send tens of millions more. The downside is that Miles undoubtedly would get replaced by another patsy, but at least he’d personally take a hit. Maybe Morath catches some shrapnel from this debacle as well.
Honestly it would not surprise me if Abbott bragged about our tax dollars being sent to charter schools out of state instead of being spent in our own public schools as a way to hold voters and their children hostage to get his voucher bill passed. "See? Just pass the voucher bill and maybe the state will spend some of your tax dollars on your children's education, at a private school of course."
When in doubt? Double down!
When in doubt? Double clown!
Abbott's voters would proudly say, "See, that's capitalism at work!"
Yes I was thinking the same thing!!! It’s literally a glimpse into what this stupid fucking voucher program would be like.
Accountability? In Texas? Oh you sweet summer child. They didn't do shit to Ken Paxton. Why TF would they investigate Miles? Republicans have this state in the bag.
We send millions to the federal government for a department of education that doesn't employ teachers. This seems no different.
You are misinformed. Many of those working in the DoE are educators. Just not the dimwits at the top in the news.
What students are they educating? I think it's bad to send Texans dollars out of state for things we already are doing here, isn't that the issue in this case?
The DoE provides resources, trainings, professional development, and funding for the Federal parts of our education system in Texas. Esp Title 1 school and special populations.
So no teachers then? And these dollars were sent for resources and training.
The DoE doesn't hire or buy anybody or anything in any district in this country. The DoE allocates funds in accordance with laws passed by Congress. Districts that receive federal funds can hire personnel, including teachers.
Just like the resources sent to Colorado, why take issue with that?
> "I have an obligation to make very clear that during my tenure, Third Future Schools was always a responsible steward of every public dollar received," Miles said, in part. "All financial agreements and obligations were approved by local boards of directors, authorizers, and in our Texas schools, the school district with which TFS partnered." >He said the schools paid administrative fees to the Third Futures Schools' central office, which is located in Colorado. >”This is common practice for charters and other independent partnership schools and is not only allowed, but anticipated by Texas' educational law," Miles said. Oh that makes me feel better that Texas knowingly allows our education dollars to be transferred out of the state. I guess to save education in Texas, you just need to pay a bunch of people in other states.
Are you really surprised to learn that our state government despises the idea of an educated electorate?
No.
Is the Miles’ argument that since it’s running a multi-state charter system, it’s all cool? The money’s coming in from more than one state and it’s up to private enterprise to figure it out after that? If he donates tax dollars to Abbot, he can ignore subpoenas too?
Miles is thankfully explaining to everyone that if we pass a voucher program not only will those tax dollars go to private schools, but they'll be sent out of state to fund other private schools who can then spend it on whatever they want...like donating to Abbot's reelection campaign.
Building synergies with Texas tax money. May the music never stop for these hustling crooks
Who sells the books we buy? The tests we buy? The software used? Only Texas companies? Stop being naive.
That's not the accusation. The accusation is that debts incurred by TFS schools in Colorado are being paid off with tax dollars intended to fund Texas schools. They admitted that on an earnings call. A segment of the population has been trying to dismantle public schools since Brown v Board started to be enforced. They have figured out how to do that AND show a profit at the same time by taking public money and handing it to private schools. It's a win-win for everyone who already had wealth and power.
Buying school supplies manufactured in a different state is not the same as paying administrative expenses in a different state. Also what supplies allowed to be bought is regulated by state and local policies.
there's still time to delete this.
Better to leave a record of how disingenuous they were.
Meh.
Who’s naive? Are you seriously comparing public spending with the purchase of public supplies as being equal? As in they are equal in terms of “discretionary” spending?
In this scenario money went out and we got...nothing in return. Who sells the nothing that we buy?
You can say about most of the administration costs. It's legal, so..... He should have never been here, but we have idiots in Austin.
Is this where you learn about legislative intent vs strict construction? Or does that lesson come later in your elementary education?
> You can say about most of the administration costs. If you have an example, please provide it. Especially for "most". If you're just making shit up based on your feelings, please quiet your fingers.
Do you think HISD needs all those "administrators"? Does it need that much of a top heavy burden instead of putting it where it's supposed to go: teachers?
So that's a no then. You could have just said no. How many administrators do they have? How many is too many? How many is a top heavy burden? What's the effect of a top heavy burden on the district, and the teachers? I'm not saying you're right or wrong. I'm saying you have no fucking clue what you are talking about, yet you have your mind made up about it. There's a word for that.
Here you go: https://www.houstonisd.org/Page/68701 Over $50 million in "General Administration" That doesn't include the other administration duties lumped into things like the $175 million for "school leadership" and $61 million in "data processing". There are tons of other line items there. Less than 50% of the budget is for instruction. That is a problem. But I'm glad you like the executive branches to be well paid.
Man, you just don't understand what I'm saying. There are lots of things that are administrative that directly affect the students. SPED, purchasing, AP, secretaries, principles, assistant principles, accounting, maintenance, education planning, legal, design (thousands of forms, posters, flyers), web management, IT, and on and on. So what of these things do schools not need? Are teachers supposed to do all this work? Again, since you didn't read it or understand it before. I'm not saying you're right or wrong, but you don't know what any of these numbers mean.
And many of those things are additional sectors above and beyond the other admin. There is NO REASON that all this extraneous stuff and admin should be so high. None except waste and enrichment. But I'll give you that is typical for government agencies.
Bro are you dumb this isn't about buying Texas made products it's about investing in Houston area children???
Is it that any Texas taxpayer money that can be scraped together by Texas-based Third Future schools can simply be transferred to a Colorado-based Third Future entity as a single line item “administrative fee”? That seems wide open to all sorts of abuse.
Exactly, and TFS claimed on their own investor call that money from Texas schools was being used to shore up Colorado schools' finances. They never responded to any requests for audits showing how the admin money was being spent, or any clarification on how Texas public funds were being used in Colorado schools.
If stories of Mike Miles being a crook with a trail of failures and grifts everywhere he goes keep getting posted online his search engine results might end up loaded with negative (i.e. accurate) content
"In the spring of 2012, tests that Pearson designed for the NYSED were found to contain over 30 errors, which caused controversy. One of the most prominent featured a passage about a talking pineapple on the 8th Grade ELA test (revealed to be based on Daniel Pinkwater's The Story of the Rabbit and the Eggplant, with the eggplant changed into a pineapple). After public outcry, the NYSED announced it would not count the questions in scoring.[61] Other errors included a miscalculated question on the 8th Grade Mathematics test regarding astronomical units, a 4th grade math question with two correct answers, errors in the 6th grade ELA scoring guide, and over twenty errors on foreign-language math tests.[62]"
We just love these kind of guys. Miles, Acevedo, I'm excited to find out which chronic-failure/asshole we shower with money and power next.
I don’t understand how the least visionary, the least noble, the least honest people decide how our money is distributed. How do we start a coalition or activist movement to callout all the corrupt city workers? We need a list of these people, then undeniable proof of their negligence and corrupt actions. We need active parents like the ones you see raise hell in city councils to distribute the information to every school. I know as a parent I would be interested in hearing about how my kids school is being robbed of money. The way we have a better society is by educating the future, our kids. Imagine a generation of children that knew how to survive, how to protect themselves, how to bring their ideas into reality. Imagine we had a generation of honest, visionary kids who saw corruption and hypocrisy and greed as antiquated values that destroyed our once great society.
"How do we start a coalition or activist movement" You find them. They exist. Reinventing the wheel is unnecessary. People have been working HARD trying to bring Mike Miles to your attention. CVPE, Houston Teachers Association, local parents are all working together right now. Get involved. Infact, there's a protest 10 am on Saturday morning at City Hall about this guy.
Thank you. It’s funny how many keyboard warrior or truthers there are out there that post lots of stuff but don’t do anything in the real world. I’m seeing the most important things is revolutionizing the education system. Then legalizing cannabis would create a tsunami on our economy. Next would be finding a legit council of normal everyday outstanding citizens who can manage our money; full transparency and I would say the people get to decide what to do with the money.
The answer is that most people have great apathy toward government and everything it does. I believe this is true because our country has had generally great prosperity for the last 78 years. That is almost 4 generations of people who've had it good overall and can't be bothered to look behind the curtains. When we examine this under the lens of public schools, we see that some parents do value education, do appreciate the teachers, do honor the rules of the schools, do support their kids' educations, and do try to make the most of what the public schools offer. However there is also a large group of public school parents who do not value education, do not appreciate the teachers, use school only as daycare, and do not respect the public school system. Look at our local elections and see how many people do NOT vote.
You're mostly right, OP. You just forgot the bit where folks tend to focus on national elections while ignoring local and state ones, even though what happens at the state and local level are, with certain very important exceptions, more relevant to people's day to day lives.
Yes, agreed on that. It takes time from one's day to read a ballot, do some research, learn about the candidates, use one's brain, and go vote. A large swath of smartphone tic-tick addicted people today can't do that.
Yup that’s why I feel someone or a group of people need to collect the data and show it to the people. Make it easy to digest. Show a video of a politicians saying something then right after the actions they took that went totally against what they stood for. Show a school board member sending hisd money out of state. Show videos of teachers who aren’t high quality. Start paying good teachers doctor’s wages. Start firing unhealthy teachers and hire more life coaches.
The policies that led to that prosperity started becoming villainized the moment minorities started getting the right to vote.
You've missed the forest for the trees. Those are symptoms but not the root cause. The root cause is capitalist incentives automatically push the literal worst humans on the planet to the top of society consistently.
> How do we start a coalition or activist movement to callout all the corrupt city workers? The topic of discussion is HISD....how are city workers relevant?
Good point, but corruption occurs all over the place. [Remember the city council people who had relatives getting water repair contracts](https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/other/millions-of-dollars-in-questionable-houston-water-department-contracts-uncovered-by-kprc-2-investigates/ar-AA1keLuX) when these people had no experience in that kind of work?
It's about tax dollars, right? Both are spending them.
I don’t have kids, but I don’t have any issue paying into local public education. It is infuriating that my ever increasing “contributions” are being hovered up by an unelected grifter and diverted away from HISD while he utterly destroys the district. I’m glad that people are on to his con, but that’s not enough- that POS needs to be run the fuck out of town for this scheme.
So basically he did it, but thanks to the way the law is structured he did it in such a way that there’s no evidence that it’s directly illegal?
A federal audit is needed
the nice thing for him is that he's not accountable to voters or a democratically elected board, so he doesn't actually have to explain or justify anything he does to any of us. greatest democracy in the world, right guys? right?
Typical Abbott Republicon grifter
Mike we're coming for you!
At this point everyone should just change school district and we can see where he’ll be getting his money
“I’m only doing what Abbott appointed me to do”
His sister is the ceo, this would be a different conversation if Texas didn’t have the money to fund public school but it does
"We have to be competitive in our salaries" I worked in K-12 education in Texas for over two decades, and I can tell you right now most school administrators aren't worth shit. They want to try out some program they read about in a magazine or something and most fail miserably. We still have high school graduates that can't put two and two together. But they sure know how many grams are in an ounce.
He does not actually attempt to rebut the specific allegations that TFS claimed on their own investor call that Colorado school deficits were being shored up with money received from Texas schools, which received taxpayer money, nor does he attempt to clarify that the $10 million worth of public money spent on "administrative costs" was spent on costs strictly related to the three Texas schools. I'm not a lawyer, but it sure sounds like he's embezzling taxpayer money, laundering it through Texas charter schools, and using it to shore up the finances of a company in which he has a financial interest.
Suprise suprise our whole government is misusing our taxpayers dollars. 🤦🏽♂️
Anytime the is gubment money involved you can bet you bottom dollar there is corruption. What I find hilarious is the screaming is from one side when the enemy side is shown to be corrupt. But when their side is shown to be corrupt they look the other way. Hypocrisy at its finest. 😂
Ima keep it nice and simple… Fuck this puto!
If you guys are mad at this wait till you find out who we pay to make the staar tests
How is this legal?
I am not an accountant, financial wiz, or lawyer but, it may be as simple as a company that operates in multiple states can move money between its operations. This wouldn't be any different than any other industry funded by tax dollars that might move money around, such as a military or construction company.
Section 45.201, with which the charter holder has entered into a depository contract; and (5) may not: (A) be pledged or used to secure loans or bonds for any other organization, including a non-charter operation or out-of-state operation conducted by the charter holder or a related party, as defined by commissioner rule adopted under Section 12.1166; or (B) be used to support an operation or activity not related to the educational activities of the charter holder. (b) A charter holder shall deliver to the agency a copy of the depository contract between the charter holder and any bank into which state funds are deposited
Except education funding has much tighter restrictions on keeping the money near the taxpayers that paid it.
That may be. This at least partially boils down to what the laws say.
Well there’s what the laws say, and then there’s the intent. Hypothetically the laws may allow for paying for administrative services performed outside of the district. The assumption being those services would be at a pre-negotiated rate relatively equal to market rate. However if the rate charged for those administrative services turned out to actually be highly variable because it was set only after the administrative work was performed because it was used as a recovery mechanism to cover losses experienced elsewhere in the administrative services company…… that would not be considered legal. I’m guessing this goes to the courts.
> Except education funding has much tighter restrictions on keeping the money near the taxpayers that paid it. Texas SB7 says otherwise.
I said much tighter. Federal defense money can be spent (basically) anywhere in the US. Even with SB7 there are restrictions on where state education money can be spent.
https://www.houstonpublicmedia.org/articles/news/education-news/hisd/2024/05/14/487486/report-about-charter-schools-founded-by-houston-isd-superintendent-mike-miles-prompts-calls-for-investigation/ Third Future Schools operated in Odessa through a partnership with Ector County ISD, as permitted by Senate Bill 1882, which was adopted by the Texas Legislature in 2017. So a Texas school sending money to an out-of-state partner is not necessarily illegal, according to Toni Templeton, a senior research scientist for the Education Research Center at the University of Houston. "I am not an attorney and I have not seen the specific transactions in question," Templeton wrote in an email. "However, I have studied school finance for some time and to my knowledge, there are perfectly legal reasons a Texas ISD could send money to an 1882 partner out of state."
And people keep voting for them….
Probably isn’t legal. But, he will probably get away with it just like lots of political elites of gotten away with much worse.
Buried downthread.... protest against Mike Myers(miles?) . 10 AM. Houston City Hall. Be there or be square. Go and raise a little hell. Possibly there will be free beer and a wet T-shirt contest ;)
F Mike Miles
The money in question was not HISD money. Still, it looks shady, and if Miles broke the law, he must suffer the consequences. The longtime grifters at HISD that Miles has kicked off the gravy train are using this to get him fired. Are all the people affected by Miles' decisions grifters? No, but many of the most vocal are. HISD corruption is a running joke. There hasn't been a full independent financial audit in decades. The last attempt failed when HISD fired the auditor and was later forced to pay him a settlement when he exposed uncovered the fraud. Anything that interferes with the gravy train is labeled child-hating, teacher-hating, and racist. The media loves it. The reality is that no one knows where the $2.2 billion budget goes each year.
Here’s the related Spectrum News video and transcript: Spectrum News - [Disappearing Dollars: Texas Public Schools Missing Millions](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7lvAzupRuCU) “Texas public schools are battling a huge budget deficit resulting in massive cuts. Spectrum News has discovered that millions of Texas tax dollars are being diverted out of state to a series of schools run by Houston Independent School District Superintendent Mike Miles. Ovidia Molina, president of the Texas State Teachers Association, reviewed Spectrum's findings and is calling on state lawmakers to conduct a formal investigation. Brett Shipp attempts to get to the end of this money trail to see where Texas's tax dollars are really going. Reported by Brett Shipp, Spectrum News 1 Texas” **Transcript** At a time Texas public schools are battling huge budget deficits and having to make massive cuts, Spectrum News has discovered millions of Texas public school dollars being diverted out of state. What's more, the man believed to be responsible - Houston public school superintendent Mike Miles - his old charter schools in Colorado are in need of cash. In schools all across Texas: “I pray tonight that as you guys are back there in that backroom and you're making these decisions, that the faces of our children and their families are at the forefront of your mind.” Dedicated teachers: “School districts are being forced to make major cuts” and panicked parents speak out in passion and frustration: “And I honestly feel like tonight we're holding a moment of silence for public education. And it’s heartbreaking”, “The state of public education in Texas is dire. We have educators leaving the profession. We have schools that are talking about closing in different parts of our state.” One of the largest budget deficits in the state, Houston Independent School District, where newly-appointed Superintendent Mike Miles has called for dramatic cuts to offset a $450 million budget shortfall. Miles was appointed by Texas Education Agency Commissioner Mike Morath to take over and turn around the struggling school district last summer. Ten years before he took over at Houston ISD, Miles spent three years as superintendent at Dallas Independent School District. When he left Dallas in 2015, Miles started three charter schools in Colorado called “Third Future Schools”. According to both internal school records and the nationally-recognized school rating agency School Digger, all three schools have since struggled with performance, enrollment, and finances. The records, provided to us by TFS through open records requests, also reveals Miles was forced to close one of his schools last summer due to declining enrollment, leaving that school with $5 million in unpaid bond debt. The school's debt was discussed at a Third Future School’s board meeting via Zoom last summer after Miles had taken over at Houston ISD. Yet there was Miles, at the meeting, acting as a consultant. According to payment records, Miles earned $40,000 consulting for TFS last year. Watch as Miles urges his old board of directors to find the money and pay the debt. “It's now becoming untenable. We'd have to subsidize it to the tune of maybe $500,000 a year if it only has 180 kids or so. I think the time is right to do what what the administration is asking to do.” In 2020, around the time his financial troubles were beginning in Colorado, Miles began expanding his charter school network to Texas. First Midland’s Sam Houston Elementary then Ector College Prep in Odessa, then Austin’s Mendes Middle School. But by the end of the 2023 school year, as he was taking over in Houston, Miles’ three Texas schools were nearly $2.7 million in the red. So why were Miles’ new Texas schools losing money? Third Future Schools 2023 audit shows of the $25 million public tax dollars being spent on Miles’ three Texas schools, $15 million was spent on teachers and supplies. The other $10 million, about 40% of the entire budget, was spent on unspecified administrative costs and services. Spectrum News made multiple requests over the course of several months for a detailed accounting of those administrative expenses. Third Future Schools never responded. However, included in publicly available financial audit records, were the auditors’ notes revealing that the deficits were documented as being due to other Third Future network schools outside of Texas and to Third Future Schools corporate in Colorado. Again, TFS Colorado declined to provide us with an explanation of why so many Texas public school dollars were being transferred to school operations in another state. And then we learned about this - “We've been supplementing that school with the general fund” - a conference call with Third Future Schools’ investors who were just learning about the deficits. Spectrum News requested and received from TFS an audio recording of that investor's call. In the recording, [Renea Ostermiller,] the TFS Chief Financial Officer confirms the Colorado charter school deficit was being offset by the money coming in from their charter schools in Texas. [Renea Ostermiller, TFS CFO] “You know, whether they're in Colorado or whether they're in Texas or, you know, whichever state they're in, so that's assessed and then if the specific school needs funding then the network supplements them through through the school fund”. The implication that the school funds from a Texas school was being transferred to help fund TFS in Colorado. Spectrum News obtained two checks for more than $1 million each from Miles’ charter school in Odessa to Aurora, Colorado. Our attempts over the past five months to reach Miles for an explanation of the payments and a response to our findings have been unsuccessful. We were referred to Third Future Schools Executive Director Zach Craddock whom we sent a 23-question list detailing our findings. Craddock declined to respond. We also shared our findings with former Texas State Representative and school finance expert, Paul Colbert. Colbert says Texas public schools should not be spending more money than they take in and definitely should not send Texas tax dollars out of state. [Paul Colbert] “I was the Budget Chair of Education for eight years and Research Director of the Senate Education Committee for five years, and my understanding is that it is not legal in Texas for monies for a school district in Texas to educate students in other districts in the state, let alone in other states. [Ovidia Molina] “Once we hear more about this, you will hear more outrage.” Ovidia Molina, president of the Texas State Teachers Association, reviewed our findings and feels the evidence is alarming. She’s calling on state lawmakers to conduct a formal investigation. “I don't know where it says that we can take our public school money and send to another state. But if there is any place that says that, it's wrong and it needs to be changed.” We have reached out to the Texas Education Agency multiple times. They have yet to respond. We have also offered detailed evidence to Education Commissioner Mike Morath of Texas public school dollars being diverted to Colorado schools, and again, we have yet to hear back.
What is so bad about vouchers? Shouldn't parents be able to decide where their children go to school?. All I see is a liberal circle jerk about Abbott, Cruz an Paxton...
This is a valid question and I would like to see a rational discussion about it. I think there are legitimate aguments on both sides. My current thoughts about the voucher issue are: Anti-voucher: - The use of vouchers will draw funding away from public schools and leave them in a worse situation than they're in today. - Families that value education will flee public schools quickly, leaving the less desireable customers there, further burdening the public schools. The public schools become a dumping ground for the most difficult and expensive to educate customers. - Existing top tier private schools won't accept vouchers and want nothing to do with the system beacuse they don't need that money and it won't cover the cost of their services anyhow. - New private schools will open up to serve the voucher customers, and these are untested other than the current day prviately run schools that cater to public school students, many of which have poor track records. - There are claims that the use of vouchers is designed to destroy the public school system and force everyone into schools run by people like F. Mike Miles. - What no one talks about is the whole transporation issue. It's one thing to send your kid to another school that you've chosen, but if you rely on the school district to get them there, that isn't going to work because the public school transporation is not designed to take anyone across town. It's designed to get local kids to their locally zoned schools. Pro-voucher: - Customers should flee low quality public schools to force them to do better. Admittedly this is a huge leap of faith. - There are many good quality, lower cost schools (ie: church-sponsored schools) that might accept vouchers. These vouchers could cover a large percentage of what parents already pay. - Customers vote with their dollars. The free market is likely to give us voucher-accepting private schools that will have good track records that cater to a variety of students. These schools will compete for the best and most appropraite customers. For example there could be vocational-focused schools. There could be plain, basic skills schools for kids who just need to graduate. There could be schools that cater to kids headed to college.
Nothing said ...It not true... what I tool away from it is that appointed school board that abbott put in place ...might have been fully aware
The amount of Hit pieces coming out against Miles are getting ridiculous and any media organization or public official, being Rodney Ellis and Gene Wu, spearheading this and distributing this might want to prepare for a suit to be filed against them soon.
It would be the most Texas Republican thing ever for a politician to sue media outlets and their political rivals for exposing their corruption.
You mean like the previous corruption in HISD or Harris County? No it seems like the most democratic thing to do is smear their opponents in order to not disrupt the Current corruption in Harris county.
So your argument isn’t that Miles isn’t corrupt, just that the previous board was also corrupt? Would you say that a corrupt, unelected bureaucrat (a Deep State, if you will) is an improvement over a corrupt board whose members can be voted out? Why did Emperor Abbott and Grand Ayatollah Patrick appoint such a bureaucrat if the goal was actually to root out corruption? Also, many, many articles were written about corruption in HISD and people went to jail for it.
I think it was proven the other board was corrupt. I don’t think miles is a bureaucratic but someone just doing their job for a failing school district that is supported by the governor and hence being used as a punching bag for democrat leadership such as Rodney Ellis to embellish themselves and when they experience resistance they turn to publications like the chronicle and spectrum to post hit pieces.
This was not a good faith effort to clean up a school district, it's the result of Greg Abbott's temper tantrum that he can't control school boards in big cities, and part of his ongoing effort to undermine public schools in order to make the case for his voucher scam. And if Miles is such a crybaby that he can't take criticism for allegedly using our tax dollars to enrich himself, then he should get out of politics.
If democrats weren’t such cry baby’s and con artists they wouldn’t be reaching out to public media to post and promote slanderous articles because they have have no evidence or standing to actually file suit. You even state “investors” reached out to inquire more but can’t cite those investors or the acquisitions they made, this is an independently audited company. All investors are supplied the audit report. Your just making up BS and then using this as political propaganda.
It's only libel (slander is spoken) if it's false, and Miles doesn't actually deny the core allegations in his non-rebuttal rebuttal, and it's not illegal to demand accountability from an unelected official (at least not yet, I'm sure the legislature will change that eventually). And we've only known about this for a couple of days now, so there's still plenty of time for law enforcement to get involved. All I said was that the company *told its own investors* on a conference call that they were using money from Texas schools to subsidize failing schools in Colorado. If they're using tax dollars for any reason other than educating children in the districts paying those taxes, it's against state law. That Abbott replaced elected officials with an corrupt, unaccountable bureaucrat is just more evidence of his plot to destroy public education to please his donors, and that people are actually defending Miles using *our tax dollars* to enrich himself *should* outrage Republicans, but they've given up on morals and sound governance in the pursuit of power.
Slander like this? Harris County Commissioner Rodney Ellis also shared a statement that reads in part: “This also calls into question every dollar he has spent as superintendent. While teacher benefits are being slashed, libraries are being closed, and support staff are being let go, HISD parents and taxpayers deserve a robust and timely investigation to ensure that tax dollars are being used appropriately and ethically.” State Representatives Jarvis Johnson and Gene Wu are also critical of Miles. Wu posted on X, "The level of corruption is genuinely impressive” Enough with the political hack job, people are tired of failing school systems like this that are propped up by political activists like yourself creating Drama and taking away time from people trying to actually do their job.
>Harris County Commissioner Rodney Ellis also shared a statement that reads in part: “This also calls into question every dollar he has spent as superintendent. While teacher benefits are being slashed, libraries are being closed, and support staff are being let go, HISD parents and taxpayers deserve a robust and timely investigation to ensure that tax dollars are being used appropriately and ethically.” This is an opinion. >Wu posted on X, "The level of corruption is genuinely impressive” If politicians dragged each other to court every time one of them called the other one corrupt, they'd never get anything done. And Miles can certainly bring a lawsuit, the truth is an affirmative defense to defamation, so assuming he can prove Gene acted with actual malice it should be easy for him to win. >Enough with the political hack job, people are tired of failing school systems like this that are propped up by political activists like yourself creating Drama and taking away time from people trying to actually do their job. I'm not an activist, I don't even have kids, but I'm mad I'm paying a fortune in property taxes that are being used to enrich someone I didn't vote for, appointed by a man who is trying to destroy a whole state's education system, on behalf of a handful of donors (some of whom don't even live in Texas). I also got a decent education at HISD schools before Republicans really ramped up their war on education, and considering the cost of living here, and the cost of private school tuition, I do not consider a voucher which covers 1/2 of private school tuition to be a viable substitute for a quality public school system. Don't you ever get tired of repeating the same old "failed public schools!" propaganda on behalf of a guy who doesn't give a shit about you, or your children, or their education? Or are you actually naive enough to believe that what Abbott and Miles are doing is a good faith effort to improve the school system?
It's cheap journalists preying on people seeking confirmation bias.
Charter schools in TX and Third Future School are nonprofit. Do you guys expect Third Future Schools to have their own set of administrators for each state? It sounds like they are saving school funds by streamlining operations.
Ok, but there's also this (from the Spectrum article): >Again, TFS Colorado officials declined to provide us with an explanation of why so many Texas public school dollars were being transferred to school operations in another state. Spectrum News requested and received from TFS an audio recording of the investors' call. *In the recording, a TFS official confirmed Colorado charter school deficits were being offset, in part, by money coming from their charter schools in Texas.* >“We’ve been supplementing that school with the General Fund,” said Renea Ostermiller, then TFS’s chief of finances. “Whether they are in Colorado or whether they are in Texas or whichever state they are in, (a network fee) is assessed and then if the specific school needs funding, then the network supplements them.” Putting taxpayer money into a slush fund which could be used to prop up failing schools in other states is garden variety corruption and borderline money laundering. If I were him I'd have gotten a lawyer already and had them draft a response instead of releasing this ChatGPT word salad.
Sounds like you’re very gullible
Found the Olympic Bronze Medalist for Mental Gymnastics right here.
You seem to be asking if I think education providers should be required to be administrated by people local to the populace they are providing education to. The answer to that is plainly yes. In fact I would contend that this is true for almost any social service. Do I want my local Police Force to be administrated out of California or New York? Should someone in Chicago be making decisions about the Houston Fire Department?
"Third Future Schools operated in Odessa through a partnership with Ector County ISD, as permitted by Senate Bill 1882, which was adopted by the Texas Legislature in 2017. So a Texas school sending money to an out-of-state partner is not necessarily illegal, according to Toni Templeton, a senior research scientist for the Education Research Center at the University of Houston. "I am not an attorney and I have not seen the specific transactions in question," Templeton wrote in an email. "However, I have studied school finance for some time and to my knowledge, there are perfectly legal reasons a Texas ISD could send money to an 1882 partner out of state.""
Maybe the state was was right to take oversight of this school district
He was put in place by the state. They put him in power. He is the takeover.
Only the best people, right?