#devoswatch

The creeping federalization of charter schools into communities that don’t want them is accelerating under the DeVos Department of Education.

The previous Obama/Duncan/King Department of Education pushed lots of stimulus into the state education agencies to created the sub-programs for competitive grants given to qualified and many obviously unqualified charter school applicants.

One must look carefully at how the ED web page (as of today 6/5/2017) reads:

The FY2017 CSP State Entities application period closed on May 18, 2017.  The U.S. Department received applications from Entities in the following states: Texas, Arkansas, North Carolina, Michigan, Tennessee, Arizona, New Hampshire, Maryland, New Jersey, Oklahoma, Alabama, Indiana, Minnesota, Hawaii, Mississippi, Missouri, Rhode Island, Florida, Idaho, Wisconsin and District of Columbia.

Now under Devos, this pool of money is available to “a state education agency; a state charter school board; a governor of a state or a charter school support organization.”

Further down the chain of definitions in the Federal Register notice for this program, a Charter School Support Organization is “a nonprofit, non-governmental entity that is not an authorized public chartering agency and provides, on a statewide basis: (a) Assistance to developers during the planning, program design, and initial implementation of a charter school; and (b) Technical assistance to operating charter schools. (ESEA section 4310(4)).”

So it follows that a non-profit applicant would be legal equivalent in the eyes of this program to the state agency or board under the Freedom of Information act in their state or the federal statute.  But I figure that is not the case as the Federal notice also clearly signals to applicants their ability to exempt out for “business confidential” information:

“Submission of Proprietary Information: Given the types of projects that may be proposed in applications for the State Entities grant competition, your application may include business information that you consider proprietary. In 34 CFR 5.11 we define ‘‘business information’’ and describe the process we use in determining whether any of that information is proprietary and, thus, protected from disclosure under Exemption 4 of the Freedom of Information Act (5 U.S.C. 552, as amended). Because we plan to make successful applications available to the public, you may wish to request confidentiality of business information. Consistent with Executive Order 12600, please designate in your application any information that you feel is exempt from disclosure under Exemption 4. In the appropriate Appendix section of your application, under ‘‘Other Attachments Form,’’ please list the page number or numbers on which we can find this information. For additional information please see 34 CFR 5.11(c)”

This type of business exemption is used frequently in the CSP grants for the charter chain expansion awards but seemingly now goes to the non-profit applicants in COMPETITION against public agencies.  ED did not release the list of applicants for that program even though its competition window closed earlier this year on March 15. 2017.