A “free market” approach to education can bring negative unintended consequences. We need wise stewardship for Sarasota’s A-rated school system. August 28 is election day (not a primary) for the school board. The health and vitality of our school system is on the ballot. At least two school board seats will be decided in the nonpartisan races. These nonpartisan elections will determine Sarasota’s future regarding corporate charter schools.

Corporate charter schools have been hailed as the fix for what is wrong with public schools. Give a private company local tax money for a school and let them compete with the public school. Education will improve! The corporate charter school will be more customer oriented! Is that true? A look at the policies and performance of some corporate charter schools indicates otherwise.

A 2008 internal memo written by Imagine School president Dennis Bakke demonstrates disregard, even contempt, for the input of parents and school board members. Advising Imagine’s executives and school principals, he wrote: “… you can protect yourself from board members that you chose, by getting undated letters of resignation from the start that can be acted on by us at any time.” He said of the individual school boards: “I do not mind them being grateful to us for starting the school (our school, not theirs), but the gratitude and the humility that goes with it, needs to extend to the operation of the school” and “It is our school, our money and our risk, not theirs.”

Financially, corporate charter schools have been compared to Enron. Citing the corporate practice of setting up two companies, one which runs the school, the other an acting landlord which leases the building to the charter school, reports of financial gouging via leases are troubling. According to one study, an average charter school rent is about 14 percent of the school budget, whereas Imagine Schools can charge up to 40 percent of the school budget.

Here in Florida, the Imagine Schools in St. Petersburg and Land O’Lakes each paid 2016 rents of $649,312 and $757,989 respectively to their affiliated corporate landlord. That’s $133 and $121 per student per month. In contrast, Plato Academy, a local, homegrown charter school firm in the Seminole-Clearwater area, paid rents ranging from $12.15 to $32.99 per student.

What happens to these outrageous rent payments? They are bundled and sold as financial instruments to real estate investment trusts—another way Wall Street is siphoning money from Main Street.

Do charter schools outperform public schools? Not necessarily. A search for independent information on Imagine schools performance yields surprisingly little information. In 2016, Corporate charter school performance in Duval County showed charter school pass rates were behind their public school counterparts in 17 of 22 tests in math, science, reading, history and civics.

Take a good look at the school board candidates running in August, and beware of those who tout the benefits of a “free market” approach to education. The ones who benefit most may be their corporate donors.

Cathy Antunes is host of The Detail on WSLR.