He wanted to establish a charter school in his hometown that specialized in helping disadvantaged and at-risk students earn their high school diplomas.

So he did what Florida law required. He took his proposal for the new charter school to the Polk County School Board’s Charter Review Committee, two different times. And twice he came away without permission to open his school, according to the Sunshine State News.

What was the committee’s hang-up? Were members afraid that Feacher would establish a bad school? Do they have a problem with the idea of creating a special school for children who are struggling in traditional schools?

It was nothing like that. The board members were just worried about losing money.

Every student that transfers from a traditional public school to a charter school takes with them thousands of dollars of per-pupil state aid. And many school boards and teachers unions are very hesitant to give up any state money, even if changing schools is in some students’ best interest.

Luckily, Feacher appealed to the full Polk County school board and received permission to open New Beginnings High School last fall. But the hoops he had to jump through left a lot of reasonable people shaking their heads.

“To say that only school districts may issue charters is as anti-competitive as saying Publix can’t open a new store in a particular county unless the local Winn Dixie or Wal Mart gives its permission,” commented Bob Sanchez, director of public policy for the James Madison Institute.

School boards, unions hate competition

From one angle, it appears as though charter schools are thriving across the nation. They are legal in 41 states and the District of Columbia. There are roughly 5,600 charter schools serving two million students.
But many more charters are waiting to open, and that’s frequently a difficult process, even in areas where the public demands more school choice.

The problem is that many states require proposed charter schools to gain the permission of the school board in the district where they want to locate. Not surprisingly, many school boards, urged on by teachers unions, often do everything possible to squash competition.

Ninety percent of all charter school authorizers in the U.S. are public schools, yet they only approve and oversee about 48 percent of charter schools, according to a report from the National Association of Charter School Authorizers. The other 10 percent of authorizers – universities, special state governing boards, etc. – approve and oversee the other 52 percent.

That suggests a definite hesitation on the part of school board members to approve charter applications.

In short, school boards don’t want to share their resources with charter schools, even if families in the community demand more options. Teachers unions tend to oppose charter schools because they generally hire non-union staffs who do not pay union dues.

For many in the educational establishment, happiness means no competition and no accountability.

This dilemma goes back years. Here are just a few examples, courtesy of a 2007 article published by Joe Williams, president of Democrats for Education Reform:

The organizers of a proposed charter school in Albany, New York hoped to obtain a zoning variance to occupy a particular building. Local school and union officials protested, and the city council and zoning board of appeals denied the request, claiming the building was on a site inappropriate for a school.

Here’s the zinger – the same building had been home to Albany’s Public School #3 for 70 years. The New York Supreme Court eventually stepped in and allowed the school to open.

The problem has not gone away in more recent years.

In Brooklyn, the Success Academy charter network has been fighting for permission to use space in a building that has room for 700 student desks. Success Academy already operates nine charter schools in various locations that have made great strides with traditionally underprivileged students, according to the New York Post.

But the United Federation of Teachers has been putting up a fight, claiming the new charter school would disrupt existing school programs in the building. A recent informational session for parents who might be interested in the charter school had to be cancelled due to insults and catcalls shouted at Success Academy founder Eva Moskowitz.

“There are some (charter applications) that never get off the ground,” said Todd Ziebarth, vice president of state advocacy and support for the National Alliance for Public Charter Schools. “And some applications should get bounced. But there are some jurisdictions where local school districts take more of an ideological view. They are not looking at applications, but their own personal dislike for charter schools.”

A handful of states have no appellate procedure when a charter school is turned down by a local school board, Ziebarth said. One good example is Virginia, which has only four charter schools in the state, he said.

“If you just leave it up to local school boards, you’re not going to end up with many charter schools,” Ziebarth said.

Appeal mechanisms on the rise

Not all the news regarding charter school authorization is bad.

A majority of states now have some form of meaningful appeal process for charter schools that are shot down by local school boards, according to Ziebarth. Some states allow colleges or universities to approve and oversee charter schools, while others are creating statewide agencies that have the power to approve a charter application in any school district.

One good example is Illinois. While there are 109 charter schools in and around Chicago, there are only 14 in downstate areas, according to a report from WBEZ radio. That’s because Chicago Public Schools officials want to give students an escape route from failing neighborhood schools, while many downstate school boards are hostile to the idea of sharing resources, the radio report said.

Under the old system, if a local school board rejects a charter application, the only appeal was to the state board of education, which displayed little inclination to overturn school board decisions, Ziebarth said. While there have been dozens of appeals, the state board only reversed school board decisions and authorized charter schools three times.

But now a new entity, the Illinois State Charter Commission, has the power to approve the establishment of charter schools that have been rejected by local school boards. The commission will also have oversight powers over those schools.

But the new board has its critics, including Illinois Federation of Teachers President Dan Montgomery, who was quoted as saying “I don’t think the people of Illinois would stand for the gaming industry, say, to have the right to reverse a community’s decision not to allow a race track in its town. I don’t know why we wouldn’t give at least the same protections to the children of Illinois.”

As if children need protection from charter schools. On the contrary, charter schools were created because many children desperately need protection from failing neighborhood union schools.

A similar new law in Florida allows “high performing charter school systems” to replicate their programs in various communities without the interference of local schools boards. Florida now has more than 500 charter schools, Ziebarth said.

But the war is clearly not over. In California, where there are 900 charters serving about 2 million children, the powerful California Teachers Association is sponsoring a bill that would give local school districts and other authorizers more power to deny charter applications based on finances.

The bill says “a chartering authority may deny a charter petition if it makes a written factual finding that the charter school would have a negative fiscal impact on the school district,” according to the Orange County Register.

As Larry Sand, president of the California Teachers Empowerment Network put it, “This law seems like an attempt to make it more difficult for charters to come into existence. Some oversight is good, of course, but this seems to be excessive.”

Aldrich testified about his volunteer efforts on behalf of the Democrat party, which included knocking on doors and handing out brochures.  McDonough’s defense attorney, Brian Premo, pointed out that Aldrich’s name is on 13 of the allegedly fraudulent ballots.  Aldrich however, said that “He was not involved in any wrongdoing, and had no reason to believe anything illegal was happening…”

Perhaps more intriguing was the testimony of James Welch, Chairman of the Rensselaer County WFP.  A 2009 report by the Times Union indicates that some of the absentee ballots were returnable either to Democrat or WFP operatives, including Welch and Aldrich.  In a statement at that time, Welch claimed that “my conduct was strictly proper”.

However, on January 26th, State Police Investigator John Ogden testified that Welch was given a cooperation agreement to testify in the case.

Despite such lofty status as Chairman of county WFP, Welch apparently had little idea of how the rules involving absentee ballots worked, even though it would impact the integrity of his party’s ballot line.

From the Troy Record:

James Welch, the chair of the county Working Families Party at the time of the primary, rounded out Monday’s testimony. Welch said that on the morning of the primary, John Brown called him to ask if he could put Welch’s name on the “release to” line on five absentee ballot applications. Welch said he didn’t understand what Brown meant, since he wasn’t familiar with the applications, but said that Brown assured him it was a good move because “it would look better” to have a WFP member’s name in that slot instead of a Democrat’s name.

He said he asked Brown if that was allowed, and when Brown assured him it was, he agreed. Brown pled guilty to a felony late last year and is looking at six months behind bars.

John Brown was a former Democrat Councilman.

Welch went on to state that he received a phone call later in the week, in which Brown suggested that “We should get our stories straight.”  Welch responded, “It sounds like you’re asking me to commit perjury in a courtroom setting.”

The question is, why would Welch or any member of the WFP need a cooperation agreement to testify?  If they were truly simply ignorant of the process, naive pawns in the voter fraud being schemed by the Democrats, then why wouldn’t their honest testimony be enough.

Worse, Welch seemingly isn’t the only member of the WFP who was ignorant of the voter fraud being perpetrated upon innocent people using their ballot line.  Karen Scharff, co-chair of the Capital District WFP at the time, the branch which controlled Welch’s Rensselaer County arm, had this to say:

It’s extremely troubling that local Democrats in Troy appear to have committed fraud in an attempt to win a primary fight with Troy Republicans for our ballot line.”

The really troubling matter with Scharff’s WFP is that they’re a stone’s throw away from the influence of the
New York Communities for Change – formerly known as ACORN.  At the time that this ballot fraud in Troy was allegedly being carried out, the two organizations had several ties:

As for Scharff, who co-chaired the Capital District Branch and thus oversaw Welch’s county branch, she also shares a history with the uber-corrupt ACORN:

Welch’s testimony is scheduled to resume on Wednesday.

Rusty can be contacted at the Mental Recession

He says the board’s big-spending habits, particularly when it comes to union labor costs, are jeopardizing the financial futures of taxpayers and younger school employees, and threatening the quality of instruction for students.

Over the past decade, Signorile has watched his school property taxes increase by 232 percent – from $2,584.97 in 2001-02 to $5,994.71 in 2011-12.

During that same period, the West Hempstead Union Free School District’s budget has increased by 56.7 percent – from $34.7 million to $54.4 million – even while enrollment has dropped by 200 students.

Signorile says “runaway” taxes make it difficult for him to keep his home or send his children to college, while the ballooning school budget puts the jobs and pensions of district employees at risk.

New York’s Education Commissioner John King echoed those concerns at a budget hearing last week. King told state lawmakers that a number of school districts are facing insolvency over the next few years, according to TimesUnion.com.

In an interview with EAG, Signorile estimated that over half of West Hempstead’s commercial property sits vacant. That leaves the average homeowner – whose income has mostly flat lined in recent years – to shoulder more of the tax burden.

West Hempstead is located in New York’s Nassau County which has the highest median property taxes in the nation, reports CBS 880.

“That means the community has to come up with the money to pay the ever increasing school costs,” he said. “Does everybody want the train to crash?”

Signorile shared his concerns at a school board meeting last summer, in hopes of waking district officials up to the possibility of a serious financial calamity in the near future.

“I told them, ‘Let’s freeze everything for five years and let the economy come back,’” he said.

Signorile was shocked by the response he received.

“A retired teacher told me, ‘If you can’t afford to pay the taxes, you shouldn’t live here.’”

That response not only revealed the selfish attitude of the local teachers union to Signorile, but it also inspired him to run for the school board this coming spring.

“I’m getting involved,” he said.

Teachers union caused much of the mess

Signorile worked for 13 years as a New York City firefighter and is proudly pro-union. Those sentiments initially made him a strong supporter of teachers unions, but not any longer.

He said he was turned off by the union’s selfish behavior during the most recent contract negotiations, which spanned two years.

Even though a state-appointed fact finder determined “the district’s financial woes are significant,” the West Hempstead Education Association managed to gain school board approval for a new contract last spring which included pay raises – 2 percent for 2011-12 and 1.75 percent for 2012-13.

The WHEA did agree to forego other types of bonuses – for longevity and continuing their education –  concessions the union president characterized as “a major sacrifice.”

Signorile was not impressed.

“How do they expect me to keep giving them more money?” he asked, noting that student achievement has stagnated over the past few years.

“If the kids’ grades are jumping up, people wouldn’t have much problem with the pay raise,” he said.

Equally appalling to Signorile is the fact that a number of young, less senior teachers have been laid off since 2008, even while the union keeps demanding more at the bargaining table.

“A union’s job is not to demand an increase in salary if it results in your brethren getting laid off,” he said. “There’s a lot of self-serving going on. They don’t even care about their fellow members.

“It’s IGM – I got mine.”

‘This is a story that is consistent across New York State’

Richard Cunningham, deputy superintendent for West Hempstead schools, understands Signorile’s concerns about taxes, but says the situation is not unique to the district.

“This is a story that is consistent across New York State,” Cunningham wrote in an email to EAG.

Like many New York school districts, Cunningham said West Hempstead is faced with higher employee pension costs, more state mandates over special education services, and the costs of transporting West Hempstead students to private schools.

He believes the district is taking a balanced approach to controlling its financial problems.

“There are many people working very hard in West Hempstead to continue to improve education and find ways to stem tax growth,” Cunningham wrote.

He added that “total budget growth … since July 1, 2009 equals 3.39 percent” and the union’s “salary schedules are among the lowest percentile” in New York’s Nassau County.

Signorile remains very skeptical.

“I’m at a loss to explain wage and benefit increases during a deflationary period,” he said, a reference to his days as a stock market forecaster.

Signorile believes West Hempstead students stand to lose the most – fewer teachers and reduced academic and extracurricular offerings – if the district doesn’t make serious changes to its budget, particularly labor costs.

“The boat is taking on water,” he warns, “and most people are oblivious to it.”

According to a recent Fox News report, Anthony Renna, a Democrat guilty of second-degree forgery, and Anthony DeFiglio, a Democrat guilty of first-degree falsifying business records, are trying to drag all local politicians, regardless of party affiliation, down with the ship.  Thus far, eight people have been charged in connection with the ballot fraud investigation, four of which have pleaded guilty.

Reports emerging from the investigation indicate that the Democrats are trying to implicate Republicans of the same conduct they have been charged with.  According to the state police, Renna and DeFiglio both claimed that, ”voter fraud is an accepted way of winning elections, and faking absentee ballots was commonplace.”

Renna explained that the process of handing in forged ballots and fake votes ensures that “ballots are voted correctly.”  He adds, “‘Voted correctly’ is a term used for a forged application or ballot.”

DeFiglio added that such fraud is actually “an ongoing scheme and it occurs on both sides of the aisle.  What appears as a huge conspiracy to nonpolitical persons is really a normal political tactic.”

Local Republicans, presumably the party being referred to on the other side of the aisle, are vehemently denying that ballot fraud was,or is, a normal political tactic.

James Gordon, Chairman of the Troy Republican Committee said, having been a part of the election process for a number of years that he has, “never heard or seen anything resembling these actions.”

He added, “In fact, after the Democrats were caught in 2009 the records at the Board of Elections were searched.  More cases of fraud were found dating back to 2007 or 2008, all attributed to Democrat candidates and operatives.  Nothing from any GOP members.”

One particular case involved former Troy City Clerk, William McInerney, who resigned from his position after being implicated for falsifying absentee ballots dating back to 2007, the year he helped Democrats seize control of the Council.

Recent Troy Mayoral candidate and former Troy City Councilmember, Carmella Mantello, also denied that these election tactics were ever commonplace in the GOP.

“This ‘practice’ was never part of the electoral process.”

With eight Democrats facing charges in the investigation, Gordon sums up the situation by saying, ”Democrats wanted to win and it appears at any cost.”

“This was greed, ignorance, lack of ethics, and laziness.  Bad people doing bad things.”

Rusty can be contacted at The Mental Recession

A Brooklyn man living in an apartment with his two daughters was alerted to the fact that his in-foreclosure-home had been broken into and occupied by Occupiers, as in Occupy Wall Street activists. When he rushed to his home he found a group of strangers that had broken into his home claiming to have “reclaimed” the house and given it to another family.

“They’re trying to take a house and say the bank is robbing the people because the mortgage is too high — so contact the owner!” fumed Wise Ahadzi, 28, who owns the home at 702 Vermont St. in East New York.

Apparently Ahadzi had bought the house in 2007 for the princely sum of $424,500 but during the housing bubble of 2009 the house ended up being worth only half that. Then, when he lost his job and got behind on the mortgage, the bank foreclosed on the property.

Enter — illegally, mind you — Occupy Wall Streeters who discovered the home in foreclosure and decided that they’d steal it away from “the bank” with the ostensible goal of helping the needy.

Ahadzi is rightfully indignant that they didn’t contact him so that they could help him retake possession of his own house. Ahadzi also asked why they didn’t try to help him and his two daughters to which the Occupiers claimed he “didn’t qualify” because he wasn’t in their group. “Why can’t you fight for me?,” he wondered.

So, who did they want to “give” the house to? An organizer for VOCAL-NY — a gay rights activist group. A fellow with a job and one that belongs to their own group, yet.

Worse, when Ahadzi got to his home he discovered that the Occupiers had taken all his personal belongings and shoved them in a pile in the basement and then began to tear out walls and “remodel” the place, spending, they claimed, over $9,000 in the effort.

This isn’t a lone incident, either. It is apparently an idea that the OWSers are going to try and push nation-wide. At a recent Chicago OWS rally, for instance, a purported Lutheran pastor preached an OWS sermon urging OWSers to do the same thing in the Windy City.

John Ruberry attended the speech and notes that Reverend Tom Gaulke told those assembled that they were going to repeat the New York efforts.

“We will be supporting a homeless family in reoccupying a vacant house,” the reverend claimed.

As Ruberry notes, this is called trespassing.

So, what have we learned form this? We’ve learned that OWS is not altruistic in anything they do even as they claim the mantle of Mother Theresa — well, Mother Theresa if she engaged in rapes, drug abuse, deaths, racism, anti-Semitism, property destruction and general lawlessness, anyway.

We’ve learned that, like any self-interested Wall Street Banker, the OWSers only want to enrich themselves and help their own members. They aren’t really interested in helping defend the poor and downtrodden. Just helping themselves.

Think how many tax cuts we could have with the money we are spending. If you’re a Republican – think how many tax cuts (federal, state and local) could be bought with the money you’re spending to lock people up for something as dangerous as drinking. Think how many poor people could be helped with that money. We need to reform our drug laws as soon as yesterday by stopping the prohibition of marijuana and regulating its sale.

If you think the drug war makes you and your children safer, think again. The International Center for Science in Drug Policy stated: “Drug prohibition likely contributes to drug market violence and higher homicide rates.” But you don’t need to be a scientist, or the governor of a border state, to understand why: the drug war creates violent criminals.

Criminals deal drugs because drugs make them money, a lot of money. When that kind of money is in play, people kill for it. Entire armies of crime have built up on our streets and across the border in Mexico. But we can stop that tomorrow – with drug policy reform. We know that prohibition makes prices higher. Our own history with prohibition proves that. When we make something illegal, we keep the supply artificially low, and that keeps the price artificially high – and that means violence.

When marijuana is legal, farmed and taxed, we will suck the lifeblood from violent gangs and place the money in the public good. We tax and regulate alcohol and cigarettes, and we prevent kids from using these dangerous substances. Marijuana is no more dangerous than those, and yet Democrats and Republicans can only unite to allow this weed to fund entire armies of crime.

These criminals take to violence because, in absence of normal market regulations, only violence controls territory and market. Liquor stores don’t shoot each other over territory. If a newsstand up the block starts selling cigarettes, are you going to do a drive by and shoot their family?

Take for example the AP report on New York City. New York’s lowest-level marijuana-possession charge – criminal possession of marijuana in the 5th degree, a misdemeanor – has been the most common arrest charge in the city for much of the past decade, and the numbers have been steadily rising. So far this year there have been 38,359 reported arrests. Last year, there were 50,377 arrests citywide, up from 46,492 in 2009, according to statistics from the state Division of Criminal Justice Services. That represents about 616 arrests per 100,000 city residents.

A report done earlier in 2011 by the Drug Policy Alliance concluded it cost an estimated $75 million in 2010 to process, jail and prosecute the low-level arrests in New York. That figure was a compilation of estimated court costs, police manpower and jail time, averaging about $1,500 per arrest – a cost shared by the state and city. The city budget alone is $65 million.

Every experiment in drug reform and decriminalization has met with a drop in crime. When New York State reformed its harsh Rockefeller drug laws, the precipitous drop in crime rates continued. When Portugal decriminalized drugs, crime dropped. Drug use dropped. New HIV infections dropped. Brute force has failed. And we should know better – our own experiment with prohibition virtually created organized crime in our country. Prohibition doesn’t work – users and addicts find a way to use drugs anyway. All prohibition does is create a black market that kills innocent people, when the DEA isn’t shooting them already.

I’m not soft on crime – as Governor I presided over a drop in the crime index from of almost 20%. If I had the tools to treat drug use as a public health hazard rather than a crime, I could have made that even lower. Thousands of retired drug enforcement agents, police and district attorneys join me in wanting to overhaul America’s drug laws. Democrats and Republicans don’t seem to understand, but as millions of people leave the two parties, independents can find new solutions. So join countless law enforcement officials, and a humble two-term governor; together we can save this country from crime – and our broken two-party system.

The Empire State is struggling to bring in additional tax revenue it projected it would gain from efforts to stop smokers from buying untaxed  cigarettes on Indian Reservations, reports the New York Post:

The state’s tax collectors were recently calling around to convenience-store owners, wondering what was up. The $130 million in extra tax that Albany was expecting from a change in the law about cigarette sales on Indian reservations wasn’t happening.

A memo sent to members of the New York Association of Convenience Stores from the group’s president, Jim Calvin — a copy of which I have on my desk — said, “I got a call from Gov. Cuomo’s budget office yesterday. In examining cigarette tax receipts so far this fiscal year (April 1 to March 31) it looks like they will fall considerably short of their projection in new revenues. . . .”

The state had hoped to get the extra dough by enforcing a new law that made it illegal for licensed cigarette wholesalers in the state to sell untaxed name-brand cigarettes like Newport and Marlboro to Indian reservations.

Why the need for the extra measures focused on Indian Reservation sales in the first place?

In short, going “On The Reservation” and buying untaxed, name-brand cigarettes became an appealing prospect to many smokers following New York’s institution of a $1.60 per pack cigarette tax hike in 2010:

The reservation store would sell the cigarettes to non-Indian customers who were trying to avoid the hefty taxes imposed by the state. The state and legitimate sellers of cigarettes were both hurt.

The sale of nontaxed smokes by stores on Indian reservations became an issue two years ago when the state cigarette tax was raised significantly and many smokers took more of their business to reservations — or to Internet sellers — whose packs aren’t taxed. Some folks even bought lower-taxed cigs smuggled in from out of state.

The news that New York could be $130 million short of projected revenue as a result of its particular approach to sin tax policy may serve as a timely reminder to legislatures kicking off their sessions in states around the country where cigarette tax increases are being proposed, either by lawmakers or influential interest groups.

Among those states are Alabama, Georgia, Idaho, and Maryland, the latter of which in particular is no stranger to the issue of black-market sale of smuggled cigarettes.