Wait, Emergency Managers were supposed to solve these problems weren’t they???
In what can only be seen as an embarrassing repudiation of the Republican idea that Emergency Managers are capable of “fixing” financially-struggling schools, the Muskegon Heights schools system has had to borrow nearly a quarter million dollars from the state in order to make payroll. This was after Emergency Manager Gregory Weatherspoon turned the school system entirely over to Mosaica Education, Inc., a for-profit charter school corporation — or as Mosaica likes to call itself, a for-profit education management organization — a year and half ago.
The state is fronting $231,000 to the charter school district in Muskegon Heights so it can pay its employees. Teachers and staff didn’t get paid like they were supposed to on Monday.The new Muskegon Heights Public School Academy System was set up in June 2012 when the old school district there went broke.
A state-appointed emergency manager created the PSA, which hired Mosaica, a charter school company, to run the school system. Now the new school system is running a deficit of its own.
An independent audit published last fall reports the district ended the fiscal year in June 2013 with a deficit of a little more than half a million dollars.
Not as profitable as they thought it would be, it appears. Still, I’m sure that Mosaica has cashed the taxpayer-funded checks it gets from the State of Michigan to run the schools. Funny how that works.
