“Hot Wheels,” I love that. I’m going to begin calling him that instead of the Governor Wheelie that I’ve been calling him. For any of us who have been following the far right for years, the intention of so-called Christian Nationalism (which DT now says he is) is to destroy public education and have Jesus taught in every school. I’m a former fundamentalist and graduate of Abilene Christian who has done a total turn-around on how I view Christian Churches in America. There are good people in most churches, and misguided people in a lot, but the source is spiritual rat poison imho.
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His off the record nickname by the media is simply Wheels.
The long game is to starve public schools into failure and push vouchers to be used on “christian” based schools.
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Yep and look what I found…a conservative school boarder who accidentally discovered she still had a brain and a soul. Turns out she didn’t like being lied to, lying to everyone, and figured out the endgame.
Hey guys we can’t be calling Abbott “Hot Wheels”, that’s wrong, I mean the guy can’t even stand up for himself.
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Long read, but happy I did. I admire that lady for standing up
and saying “I was wrong” about the RW propaganda she believed until
she took the time to do a deep dive into the actually curriculum.
Way to stand up Courtney Gore.
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Yeah, you absolutely have to respect her for saying “I was misled, I’ve been misleading you, and this what this is really all about” especially since this is obviously going to come at some serious personal costs to her.
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Schools turn a profit?
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Houston teachers are asked to do so much with a student body in most schools that is predominantly poor. The kids have unmet needs before they even show up in the classroom. Hats off to all teachers. IMO, urban school districts like HISD are doing well to get kids through to graduation. I’m okay with the charter schools (mostly), but they attract the most motivated parents who are no longer advocating for the school on the corner.
Really no good answer, Mike Miles or no Mike Miles.
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So the whole issue as I see it is that charter schools, vouchers, etc. as currently constituted cannot by their very nature be societal solutions and can only create essentially a negative feedback loop.
School/School district failing
open up a legit charter school,
charter school cherry picks the best students does great in the metrics,
public school falls further behind because best students left,
give more money for more charter schools or vouchers for private school, cherry pick the best students again,
public school falls even further behind because now there’s even less money and the students are the lower performers, ESL, and SPED students that the charters and privates don’t want.
And the cycle continues and gets worse. That’s not counting this case bringing in a guy whose purpose is to make the district fail faster and speed up the above cycle.
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I have concerns about the same. Not that things are working currently. We have a mess on our hands.
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Long winded denial.
TL; DR: Admitted nothing, Denied Everything, Made counter accusations of Spectrum News being out to get him
He didn’t address much, I’m sure intentionally. It seems he’s saying the CO schools are the HQ and the TX schools are paying an OH admin allocation to them.
From the spectrum report -
about 40% of the budget, was spent on unspecified administrative costs and services.
Spectrum News made multiple requests over 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 auditor’s notes revealing the deficit was “caused by the liabilities of other Third Future Network schools” outside of Texas and to “Third Future Schools Corporate” in Colorado.
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.
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Well said. Just to point out, not all charter schools are “legit” or high performing. We hear about mismanagement in those just like we do in public schools. The problem is 1. if a charter school fails, and the public school is already failing, where does that leave the student. 2. With vouchers, some less scrupilous operators will open up charter schools to get that state money and spend it all on administration.
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Oh that’s definitely happening, I just didn’t want to get too far into the weeds in that particular post. It was a long one anyways. But yeah plenty of sham schools too
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And of course it is being framed as “school choice” which it really isn’t.
No, don’t think I said that or would want that. My expectations are a school district, or these charter schools, have a budget and not a profit or a loss.
If vouchers become a thing, expect lots of “charter” schools to sudden pop up that has tuition right at the amount of the voucher.
Most vouchers would be about 8-9k per child, and if you look at the cost of the reputable private schools in the area the costs are between 18-30k a year. This is great for parents who already have kids in those schools and for parents who do not have the financial means it still leaves a huge gap in tuition they need to cover.
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Looks like the Texas Observer is also digging into this investigation.
Not an unbiased source but the evidence doesn’t look great for Miles.
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