Smart Education
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New Mexico educators say fossil fuel funding is unreliable | Local News

Israel Budz

The fossil fuel industry has been a mainstay for New Mexico’s education funding, but the state should seek more stable and reliable revenue streams as the industry grapples with market fluctuations and a global push toward green energy, a coalition of children’s advocates wrote in a letter Monday. 

In the letter, 16 education, community and conservation groups ask the governor and state lawmakers to establish new revenue sources for schools, so New Mexico isn’t overly dependent on oil-and-gas dollars in a market that can be volatile and with an industry facing a sweeping energy transition to combat climate change. 

“We don’t want to sound like ungrateful recipients of oil-and-gas revenues,” said Mary Parr-Sanchez, president of NEA-New Mexico, one of the groups that signed the letter. “We’re not ungrateful. It’s just that we have to be smart about now and leaning forward in the future. We need to have a stable

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Education Management
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Charter schools: House Democrats call for cutting federal funding for charters

Israel Budz

The National Alliance for Public Charters Schools is calling the cut “particularly egregious” and said that the move would impact a majority of 3.3 million charter school students, who are overwhelmingly children of color and from low-income families.

Charter schools, which are publicly funded but usually run independently from local school districts, had the support of the Bush, Obama and Trump administrations. But some Democrats have targeted charter schools in recent years, arguing that they take away money from other public school students. On the campaign trail last year, now-President Joe Biden, Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders and Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren opposed federal funds going to “for-profit charter schools.”

The vast majority of charter schools are nonprofit organizations, though some states allow for-profit companies to manage charter schools, making up 10{13aab5633489a05526ae1065595c074aeca3e93df6390063fabaebff206207ec} nationwide.

The Democrat-backed budget proposal shows how those campaign pledges may lead to legislation that would funnel money away
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Education Management
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Provision in federal spending bill jeopardizes charter school funding

Israel Budz
Andrew Lewis
Caption

It is under these circumstances I am dismayed to learn of proposed federal funding cuts to public charter schools by the U.S. House Appropriations Committee. The proposed cuts fly in the face of public policy that has been supported by every president since Bill Clinton.

The committee, under Democrat leadership, has proposed a $40 million reduction of the federal Charter Schools Program, a grant created under President Clinton. The committee is recommending these cuts even though President Joe Biden’s budget recommends no reductions. The committee is suggesting these cuts even as the public charter school sector continues to add more schools and students across the nation.

More alarmingly, the committee has included broad and sweeping language within the bill potentially barring “a charter school that contracts with a for-profit entity to operate, oversee or manage the activities of the school” from receiving any federal funding. This language is

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Education Management
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Biden promised to end federal funding of for-profit charter schools. A new report explains how they operate.

Israel Budz

They set up nonprofit schools and then direct the schools’ business operations to related corporations. For example, it says, one of the largest EMOs, National Heritage Academies, “locks schools in with a ‘sweeps contract’ where virtually all revenue is passed to the for-profit management corporation, NHA, that runs the school.”

“In other cases, the EMO recommends their own related companies for services that include leasing, personnel services, and curriculum,” it says.

The report was produced by the Network for Public Education, an education advocacy group that opposes charter schools. It was written by Carol Burris, executive director of the Network for Public Education and a former award-winning New York principal, and Darcie Cimarusti, the network’s communications director.

The authors wrote that despite “strict regulations against the disbursement of funds from the federal Charter Schools Program (CSP) to charter schools operated by for-profit entities,” they identified more than 440 charter

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