Friday, February 27, 2009

Putting the profit back in 'non-profit'

Readers have often asked me how companies could ever expect to make money running a charter school? Eva Moskowitz might answer--"it's easy." The former N.Y. City Council member, and possible mayoral candidate, who founded and runs the four Harlem Success Academy charter schools, is making "a bundle," writes Daily News columnist Juan Gonzalez:

The nonprofit organizations connected to the schools have yet to file more recent tax returns, but Moskowitz said in an interview late Thursday she received $310,000 last year - the 2007-2008 year - $250,000 in salary and $60,000 in a bonus.
If you're counting, that means Moskowitz, who is responsible for four schools, makes more than Chancellor Klein, who gets $250,000 to run 1,400 schools. Now she says, she wants to operate 40 schools. It's impossible to know how Moskowitz' schools are performing since the DOE hasn't ever posted any independent test results. Moskowitz says her schools are going great but complains that they're "underfunded."

4 comments:

  1. How much of her pay is tax-payer funded?

    Thanks for this. That "np" word is so misleading.

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  2. Yes, especially when so many not-for-profits are given charters and then sub-contract them to for-profit management companies to run.

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  3. People who work for non-profits get salaries; they don't work for free. Evidently there is no rule against obscenely large salaries, unfortunately.

    Unrelated, probably a typo:
    "but complains that their "underfunded."
    The contraction of "they are" is "they're", not "their."

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  4. Anon,

    Yes they do and no there's not. Thanks for catching the typo, albeit nearly two years late. Please try and be quicker next time. OK? :>)

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