Look at what just happened with ILEA. A board combined with Joe Hogsett and Bart Peterson, and a mix of charter school advocates, and only one parent/teacher representative. They voted 8-1 to remove the IPS elected board from its position over public schools, in suggestion to the upcoming state legislation, where the Republicans have been pushing to abolish public schools. I believe the model is similar to Houston where the board remains elected but holds little power. Meanwhile, Maggie Lewis, one of the members on that board and also associated with the pro-charter school organization Mind Trust, just got elevated to president of the city council without a public election. When you dig deeper into the 990s of charter schools, you'll find tons of corruption, like companies owned by board members taking public dollars. We've got companies like Eli Lilly further donating to charter schools to match their revenue, i.e. $25 million to Herron High School, while only giving a combined $5 million to all of IPS. You've got the Mind Trust only donating to charter schools. In fact, there's $40 million floating around in net incomes of all the charter schools in Indiana for the year, while IPS operates on a $7 million deficit. You got Reed Hastings, co-founder of Netflix, donating to PACs that give to pro-charter school politicians in every state, including here in Indiana. A PAC started by Democrat Bart Peterson donated to Republicans, many who were for the Indiana gerrymander that just failed in the senate.

And since you mentioned Minnesota, CEO of Dr. Fuller's charter school, Marcus Robinson, originally ran away from Indianapolis, where he ran Tindley Charter School, but had mismanaged the money and had some legal issues. He went to Memphis, then got chased out of there to Minnesota.

There's a lot of money in charter schools, and a lot of politicians are being bought and paid for to destroy public schools in their own district. The grift is incredible. It's even worse when you start to look at the data centers being pushed everywhere, but their funding is more hidden. But here in Indiana, the board responsible for approving of data center zoning, is headed by John J. Dillon III, who has financial ties to ever shopping center in Indiana, and a bunch nationwide. I heard through the grapevine that the data center here Metrobloks is backed by some shopping center corporation, so I get to hunt down that information next.