Grifters Gonna Grift

The charter system (#notallcharters) is a license to steal.

The district is concerned that ASPIRA is improperly shuffling money around those various subsidiaries and the parent organization. Thum said the district has many questions about the "management agreements" that guide the way money flows among these subsidiaries.

ASPIRA of Pennsylvania "can dictate the content of those agreements, and the amount of money that flows to ASPIRA, and then what they do with that money," Thum said. "And we have concerns about how much money is being sent up to ASPIRA, and then our ability to effectively know what they do with those dollars."

In a letter sent to ASPIRA officials last July, the charter office's Peng Chao spelled out some of the district's concerns in detail. The five charters "cannot be operated as if they are subsidiaries," he wrote. The "intercompany" payments between schools are "not a permissible use of charter school funds," and the practice of using one school to guarantee a bank loan for another school is likewise "not permissible," he wrote.