Up North Progressive
Politics and commentary for Northern MichiganGrand Traverse Academy School Board Needs To Share The Felon’s Responsibility: The Continuing Story of Dr. Steve Ingersoll
Sunday , 26, April 2015 Dr. Ingersoll, Section 16 4 Comments
On March 10, 2015, Steve Ingersoll was convicted in a federal district court on three out of six counts of felony fraud. What’s been happening since then? A lot. The intrepid Miss. Fortune has all the wonderfully dirty details.
- Steve Ingersoll wants a new trial because he’s still pretty sure charter schools are banks.
- Also, he’s selling derelict Bay City properties cheaper than dirt. Tax liability included!
- Meanwhile, the city’s foreclosing on other properties in an attempt to get the unpaid taxes off their books.
- Ingersoll gets a hearing and a new sentencing date, giving him plenty of time to liquidate as much as he can.
- Bay City Academy will likely be under new management soon!
Since Miss Fortune is the only one doing any real follow-up reporting on the convicted optometrist, bookmarking her blog may be a good idea.
As the U.S. Attorneys try to file restraining orders faster than Ingersoll can offload evidence assets, what about the for-profit charter schools he used to manage, and manages – for now? Grand Traverse Academy is still in the red $1.6 million dollars, but there is no media coverage or parents up in arms over the mishandling of funds. Meanwhile, in the same Michigan city Traverse City Area Public Schools received plenty of media coverage when former school employee Mary Gillison was indicted, convicted, and now serving a nine month sentence for stealing $50,000. How does one convicted felon manage to receive no media coverage and still enjoys freedom after stealing millions, while another convicted felon gets all the media attention the local news can stuff into their papers?
Here is the difference. TCAPS is a real public school system, which means every penny received and spent must be reported to the state. GTA is a for-profit charter school managed by a privately owned third party vendor, and although the charter school must also report finances to the state, the money that goes through the management company magically transforms from taxpayer dollars to private assets.
The GTA board, according to Miss Fortune, were well aware for years there was a problem with Smart Schools LLC’s handling of management payments, but rather than do their job and hold Ingersoll accountable, they simply relabeled the money to hide what was happening.
This is not unusual with Michigan for-profit charter schools. Last year’s Detroit Free Press exposé into the problems charter school boards have with management companies and authorizers illustrates that often the agencies charged with providing oversight are part of the problem.
School boards of real public schools are elected to their positions. Boards of for-profit charter schools are appointed, and then approved by the authorizers. Lake Superior State University dropped the ball with GTA because according to Michigan law, it’s the job of the authorizer to “ensure charter school boards operate independently of any educational management company involved in the operation of the school.”
The GTA board, both past and present, included Ingersoll’s business partners, the business partner’s extended family, friends, and colleagues. Conflict of interest? Let that fester in your brain as you read this:
Service providers/management companies are accountable to the non-profit charter school boards that hire them. The boards are responsible for setting policy, directing operational and academic performance, and ensuring fiscal stability. Regardless of the type or level of support for which it is contracted, each service provider/management company operates at the direction of the charter school board.
LSSU approves the board, but has no jurisdiction over the management company because it’s a for-profit private corporation. The management company is supposed to be accountable to the board, but when the board is made up of friends and family, just how much direction can the board honestly have? Apparently $3.5 million of taxpayers’ money taken from the school and hidden in financial records as “prepaid” expenses much direction. Mark Noss, Bradley Habermehl, and the rest of the optometrist GTA school board were the ones responsible to make sure school funds weren’t mishandled. Ingersoll has 20 years experience making money disappear and reappear through his various LLCs. It took the Feds getting involved to try and rein him in, and they’re struggling now with his shenanigans in Bay City.
The tragic events of Dr. Steve Ingersoll and his 20 year adventure into education and creative financing illustrate why for-profit charter schools in Michigan will never be real public schools. There is too much rampant fraud, mismanagement of funds, and authorizers more than willing to ignore the problem while management companies bleed Michigan taxpayers dry. Everything that is not supposed to happen according to Michigan law Steve Ingersoll got away with. LSSU will never revoke the charter, and the Michigan Department of Education is powerless to do anything. For-profit charter schools in Michigan are parasites – helping themselves to the resources and provide no benefit. At least put the state-wide cap back in place before more can open.
Too much to ask? It’s a rhetorical question, no need to answer.
AAAAAAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA! @onetoughnerd ‘s Running For President!!!
Saturday , 25, April 2015 Nerd Problems, Presidential Primary 2016 3 Comments
Norm Coleman just told reporters at @RJCHQ spring mtg in Vegas that MI Gov @onetoughnerd said he's running for president.
— David M. Drucker (@DavidMDrucker) April 25, 2015
Michigan Women’s Music Festival Ends After 40 Years
Thursday , 23, April 2015 Community, LGBT Rights, Michigan Women Leave a comment
Since 1976 in a secluded wooded setting in Northern Michigan women from all over the world gathered to share space and music at the Michigan Women’s Music Festival. This haven for lesbian and feminist folk began for the purpose of creating women or womyn-only space where lesbian feminist issues could be discussed in a safe and free community. It was with shock that an email from founder Lisa Vogel arrived with sad news.
I am writing to tell you that the 40th Festival will be the last Michigan Womyn’s Music Festival. The spirit of this community will live on forever, the friends and family we have found on the Land are eternal. Everything we have created together will feed the inspiration for what comes next. It’s possible that I will come back with something else, or that other sisters will take the inspiration of the Michigan community and create the next expression of our Amazon culture. What is true for me is that now is the time to bring this 40-year cycle to a close, stepping out on joy at our most incredible anniversary celebration.
This is a great loss to not only the festival attendees, but to those who know about the festival and never had a chance to go. The experience the women who were fortunate enough to attend would come home with them, and they would create their own microcosm of womenspace. The local community of Hart where the festival took place will miss the business the festival brought to the region.
The festival over the years has dealt with increasing pressure from the trans community to allow trans women to come to the festival. MWMF organizers did not welcome trans women because they wanted to preserve the space for women who were born female. The rationale for maintaining the fest as women born female makes sense to women born female, because it was a place where women could unplug and freely express being a woman without outer constructs limiting them. It’s extremely powerful when you experience it for the first time.
When the news spread, the trans community exploded with celebration that they had brought down MWMF. The language used on the internet is the most anti-woman rhetoric seen in a long time, and it’s shockingly abusive and vindictive to see how much they hate women born female. In short, the trans community very clearly demonstrated why they’re unwelcome at MWMF.
It’s a shame to never have the chance to go, especially when one lives so close by. The stories from women who did go were wonderful, and often brought up thoughts of, “perhaps someday.” Someday will never happen for many women; but hopefully the energy and spirit of the Michigan Women’s Music Festival will manifest in some other way in the future.
Making Government Accountable 501(c)(4) PAC Formed: Guess Who Wants To Be Nerd In Chief
Monday , 20, April 2015 Nerd Problems, Presidential Primary 2016 1 Comment
Snyder spokesperson Jarrod Agen told the Associated Press that a group of Snyder’s inner circle created a tax-exempt PAC to raise funds for Snyder to tour the country starting next month after the state votes against raising the sales tax. With that defeat over his head, Snyder will likely want to get out of the state for a while and pretend he’s doing a good job by talking to people who don’t live in Michigan and have no idea who he is.
There’s only one reason anyone would raise money to travel around in May of 2015, and that’s because you’re talking about running for president in 2016. In fact, there’s an unconfirmed rumor Snyder will make an announcement about that in the next few weeks.
So what is Snyder going to tell people around the country about Michigan and what he’s done to the state as CEO? I’m sure Republican voters want to hear all about him expanding Medicaid in the state, and implementing Common Core. Of course, there’s this sales tax increase vote coming up on May 5, but it’s a good bet he will probably not win that one. Dodging the “I’m a Republican and I raised taxes” never goes over well with the GOP voter base. Cutting $2 billion for corporations in taxes while raising taxes on poor people and old people will go over well with Republicans. Freedom to Freeload should also make Republican voters happy, because anything that makes the middle class and poor people poorer are things they like.
The big issue the religious fundamentalists will judge Snyder on is his stand on LGBT rights and same-sex marriage. While the state’s Attorney General Bill Schuette spends taxpayer money preparing for the Supreme Court case, Snyder quietly refused to challenge a judge’s order to recognize 300 marriages that took place in 2014 when the ban was lifted for 12 hours. You need to know the Nerd had no problem denying health benefits to domestic partners of same sex couples. Still, not being anti-gay enough might be a problem for him.
But then, there’s all of the other stuff that’s happened in Michigan these people will never hear about, like cutting a billion dollars from the education budget and raising taxes on poor people, old people and the middle class to pay for those corporate tax cuts, or the secret NERD fund that paid for his personal Общак, Richard Baird. Skunkworks, and Kevyn Orr’s luxury suite at the Cadillac Hotel he was barely ever in.
One thing Snyder will talk about is the “success” of the Detroit bankruptcy. First, Snyder lied about not putting Detroit through bankruptcy, then did it anyway. He also lied about an emergency manager for the city. The land grab between the pizza guy and the Quicken Loans guy in downtown Detroit you will never hear about, or that Snyder’s raiding the School Aid Fund to pay for a new Red Wings Stadium complex in midtown. People having their water shut off while businesses like golf clubs and sports stadiums owe millions for water usage and don’t pay won’t be mentioned either. Detroit is being turned into a rich people’s playground while the residents of the city are pushed away from the downtown area.
Emergency managers. This is something Snyder doesn’t talk about, but some parts of the state are still suffering under them. These people earn six figures, are only answerable to the governor and sell off the assets of the communities they’re forced on into private ownership. Flint has undrinkable water now thanks to an emergency manager. Benton Harbor’s public beach and park is now owned by an exclusive club for the wealthy. Detroit’s public school system has an oxymoron of a malignancy called the Education Achievement Authority. Snyder wants to spread this cancer statewide to the rest of our public schools. The fact about emergency managers is not one has accomplished any of the official goals they are set with when they get the job of depriving a community of their civil rights. Every city, township, or school district strapped with one of these emergency managers are still in the same bad financial shape as before, and Snyder appoints another one to replace them so they continue accomplishing nothing but receiving a large salary.
If Snyder is in your state and he mentions Aramark (highly unlikely), just know thanks to him our prison food service, once well-run by union employees is now a source of constant scandal. Along with bad food, Aramark employees also serve up drugs, sex, and contract hits, as well as rotten food, maggots, food nibbled on by rats and literal garbage.
The 400,000 private sector jobs Snyder loves to brag about are mostly union jobs saved by President Obama with the auto bailout that happened before Snyder was governor. We do, however have some of the worst roads in the state thanks to corporations not paying taxes to fix the roads. Instead, Snyder wants to raise taxes on the rest of us so those corporations can have new roads to destroy and not pay to maintain.
Listening to Rick Snyder talk is like a constantly annoying sound in the background that eventually makes you sick to your stomach. He has terrible speaking skills and it’s rumored he goes through hours of prepping before any public speaking. He literally sounds like the nerd he likes to call himself, because he’s an accountant and he used to be an executive for Gateway Computers, the popular computer company he helped run into the ground. If he’s looking for the millennial vote, bringing up that bit of history won’t do him any good.
Snyder’s chances are very slim he will ever be considered in the same tier of candidate as Jeb Bush or Ted Cruz or for some reason, Scott Walker, but always remember there is the veepstakes to win. Many candidates are actually in the race not to be president, but to be vice president. Either way, getting Snyder out of Michigan would be a happy event for the people of this state. Run Nerd, RUN!
Tribal Injunction Against Graymont UP Land Deal Denied
Saturday , 18, April 2015 DNR, Environment, Upper Peninsula 8 Comments
An injunction to temporarily stop the sale of over 11,000 acres of state forest land in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula to a foreign mining company was denied on April 16th. Several Native American tribes of the Chippewa Ottawa Resource Authority, or CORA, filed the injunction in Grand Rapids immediately after Directer Keith Creagh made his decision to allow the sale of the land to go forward.
The injunction emphasized that the land deal violated the 1836 Treaty of Washington Ceded Land, a treaty that includes 37% of Michigan’s current land area. While the land came under the jurisdiction of the state, the treaty also stipulated that the Native American tribes would still have use of the land for hunting, fishing, gathering, and other activities tribal people used the land for to provide a living. Since most of this land is publicly owned forest, it has always been understood that the way the tribes interpreted the treaty in 1836 would remain the same for the future. The Consent Decree of 2007 is very thorough in describing access Native Americans living in the area are allowed to have. It not only includes fishing and hunting access, but also the ability to tap maple trees, gather vegetation, and even set up temporary buildings.
During the public comment period before Director Creagh made his decision, 90% of the comments submitted to the DNR were against the land deal. It appears the will of the public was not considered when the DNR ruled in favor of allowing the sale of the land to Graymont in March. Graymont has not offered much detail in how exactly the sale of the land will benefit the Upper Peninsula. No firm number on how many jobs the mine will create, but the largest number quoted is 45-50 at the most.
Despite the temporary injunction being denied, the case will be heard before a judge in court on Wednesday, April 29, 2015, at 3:00p.m., 174 Federal Building, 410 W. Michigan Ave., Kalamazoo, MI 49007. The plaintiffs argue that the sale will potentially prohibit them from using the land according to the 1836 treaty, and 2007 Consent Decree. Not only is this unconstitutional, but violates the treaty of 1836. Whatever recourse the tribal people have if the state of Michigan insists on breaking the treaty remains to be seen.
Tea Party Charter School Has A NEW Website (In Development Stages)
Friday , 17, April 2015 Section 16, Tea Party Charter School 2 Comments
Pasquale Battaglia was busy Wednesday afternoon helping Cindy Gamrat ban herself indefinitely from the Michigan House Republican Caucus after posting a status on facebook complaining the other people at the meeting don’t worship God the free market as much as she does. Battaglia has plenty of experience with using social media to expose himself as a bigoted right-wing religious fanatic. This is why he’s attempting to rebrand his for-profit charter school into something that remotely follows state laws, and throw people off track from what he actually had planned.
There’s even a slick new website complete with the most-frequently used stock images ever. At least Battaglia didn’t use this. The website draws heavily on Hillsdale College materials to make the website appear to have actual content. The blog has one article, something Battaglia linked to on his twitter account months ago. There are also about as many typos as the old website, which is always a ringing endorsement for the level of education your new school will provide.
At the bottom of the web page, in small print is this notice:
Which takes you to a form to fill out and even provides an upload tool for your resume. Battaglia’s new website stresses that only professional, certified teachers trained in classical education will be hired by LCA. Hillsdale College’s K-12 academy doesn’t hire certified teachers. So where does Battaglia plan on finding expertly trained classical education teachers?
Kelly Services, the temp employment agency, according to Battaglia has a vast education pool chock full of certified teachers who teach classical education – provided by his VP cousin. If you really want to work for Livingston Classical Academy, maybe you should wait before filling out that form on the website, and head over to Kelly Services.
Social media can be very tricky at times. It might get you kicked out of a political caucus, or exposed for being completely unfit to have anything to do with operating a school, classical or otherwise.
Superintendent of Pine River Area Schools Speaks The Truth: Lansing Must Listen
Wednesday , 15, April 2015 Section 16 12 Comments
The Up North Progressive Lives in the Pine River Area Schools District. Superintendent Matt Lukshaitis published this letter yesterday with the request to share everywhere.
Honorable Gentlemen,
So far, the M-STEP process is a painful invasion of teaching and learning and really, state testing has become an oxymoron. The testing process is not good for kids.
17 different days of testing for 11th grade students? Really? This is the best we can do? We “improve” the test by going from 3 days to 17? Have we collectively lost our minds?
At Pine River, our computer labs are tied up from April 13 to June 4 for testing. This is a good use of taxpayer dollars? I cannot fathom how many great minds it takes to change a state system from one day of juniors taking an ACT test on a Saturday morning in a high school cafeteria to a system testing K-12 students over a period of two months, but I’m pretty sure between the MDE and the legislature that we have discovered the formula. I’m saddened by this.
Education is not happening.
Principals and teachers are in high stress mode. Students are not learning, they are are in Sarcasm 101 mode–how hard they try is going to be a true turkey shoot.
Terri and I have five children. Number five is a senior. Looking at what we are doing to the students in our public schools, I am truly glad to know this fact.
How many people have to be in charge of the local school districts? It seems like the state and the fed have over M-STEPped their boundaries.
How about the growing resentment coming from parents who are starting to demand that we excuse their students from the testing process? And the onus of responsibility is on the LEA to make these kids test? The state is setting up public schools for imminent failure. There will be test cases in our courtrooms soon. This testing system is pushing public schools over a cliff. I am afraid there may be a long, terrifying drop into jagged rocks….
I know a lot of really smart people came up with this wonderful theory of testing. The practice of teaching and learning however, is the provenance of the LEAs. Perhaps we should all take a giant step back and allow the schools to answer the needs of their community with more freedom?
Please stem the tide of this testing. It is just too much. Listen to those of us in the schools. Sitting in an office in Lansing does not help you understand the issues. Come visit us at Pine River Area Schools. Visit every district. Go see the schools while the testing is happening and talk to the teachers and the principals. Help us help the kids.
Respectfully,Matt Lukshaitis, Superintendent
Pine River Area Schools
Go Bucks!
Michigan’s schools are being put through superfluous testing for the sole reason of padding the corporate bottom line. Parents, you can tell your school you don’t want your children going through this. The more of us that opt-out, the stronger our voice.
Betsy DeVos couldn’t write enough checks in 2002 to trash public education in Michigan with vouchers, but that didn’t stop her from working to spread school voucher cancer to other states. Today on her ironically named national organization’s website came the sad news that Nevada succumbed to the disease that will never provide better education for the state’s schoolchildren, but instead leach funds from Nevada’s public schools for corporate gain. Betsy DeVos had this to say about her right-wing hate campaign to destroy public education:
“Thanks to me, Betsy DeVos and my ALEC friends, school vouchers have spread like a malignant tumor School choice is growing in size and scope across the country, and we are excited to add Another notch on our state kill list Nevada to the growing list of school choice states. We would like to applaud Gov. Sandoval and the state of Nevada for taking DeVos money like the prostitutes they are its commitment to rob children of quality public education children and providing the means of for-profit corporations to eliminate access to well-funded public education every child access to quality educational options.”
American Federation for Children works with ALEC and the Alliance for School Choice to push school privatization on states through vouchers, for-profit charter schools, and scholarship tax credits. Convicted Felon Scott Jensen of Wisconsin is the advisor for ASC. Betsy DeVos is the wife of Dick DeVos, owner of the pyramid direct sales soap company Amway. Her brother, Erik Prince, was the founder and CEO of Blackwater.
School vouchers not being enough to starve public schools, AFC is also pushing another bill through the Nevada legislature that would allow parents to draw funds from their children’s per-pupil funding grant like it were a bank account to spend on whatever they want to call a “learning experience”.
The DeVos family has made it their life’s work to eradicate public education according to their Dominion theocratic religious beliefs. Today Nevada became another state to fall under their anti-public education crusade.
Happy Birthday Thomas Jefferson: Secular Champion of America
Monday , 13, April 2015 History Nerd Leave a comment
“It behooves every man who values liberty of conscience for himself to resist invasions of it in the case of others, or their case, by change of circumstances, become his own. It behooves him too, in his own case, to give no example of concession, betraying the right of independent opinion by answering questions of faith, which the laws have left between God and himself.” –Thomas Jefferson, April 21, 1803
Thomas Jefferson was born on this day in 1743. He died on July 4, 1826, only hours before John Adams. He dedicated his life to education, the law, and envisioned a nation where people would rely on reason rather than faith to maintain it. He cut up six bibles to create one, eliminating any reference to supernatural phenomena, the virgin birth, or rising from the dead after being buried three days before. In fact, the Jefferson Bible ends with the death of Jesus on Good Friday. The purpose of Jefferson’s Bible was to eliminate any claim that Jesus was the son of God.
Thomas Jefferson grew up attending church and studying at church-run schools. Those were the only schools available in the colonies before the United States came into existence. That changed after the Revolution, and people like Jefferson worked to create a secular, publicly-funded school system in the nation. When he founded the University of Virginia, he established an institution of higher learning that was completely secular. The central building at the University of Virginia is the library. Unlike other western universities of the time, it was not connected to any church and students did not have religious studies.
Jefferson’s contributions to the founding of the United States includes penning the Declaration of Independence and serving in the Continental Congress. He also held office in the Virginia House of Burgesses and as Governor of the state. One of his noted accomplishments during this time was the Virginia Statute of Religious Freedom.
Be it enacted by General Assembly that no man shall be compelled to frequent or support any religious worship, place, or ministry whatsoever, nor shall be enforced, restrained, molested, or burthened in his body or goods, nor shall otherwise suffer on account of his religious opinions or belief, but that all men shall be free to profess, and by argument to maintain, their opinions in matters of Religion, and that the same shall in no wise diminish, enlarge or affect their civil capacities. And though we well know that this Assembly elected by the people for the ordinary purposes of Legislation only, have no power to restrain the acts of succeeding Assemblies constituted with powers equal to our own, and that therefore to declare this act irrevocable would be of no effect in law; yet we are free to declare, and do declare that the rights hereby asserted, are of the natural rights of mankind, and that if any act shall be hereafter passed to repeal the present or to narrow its operation, such act will be an infringement of natural right.
The separation of church and state for Thomas Jefferson was so important, he considered coercion into belief in any religion an act of treason. A person’s relationship with the Creator was to never extend past that person’s own opinion or belief. Of the three things put on Jefferson’s tombstone, the House Statute of Religious Freedom is one of them. The other two are the writing of the Declaration of Independence, and the establishment of the University of Virginia.
Thomas Jefferson’s strong commitment to establishing the United States to be a nation ruled by law is a commitment all patriotic Americans needs to remember today. Jefferson’s understanding of American religious freedom resonates in his own words when he wrote in 1777, “That our civil rights have no dependence on our religious opinions any more than our opinions on physics or geometry.” On his birthday today, everyone needs to remember this man’s words and work to make sure the United States of America remains a secular nation ruled by law, and not by any religion or church.