Charter schools are heavily regulated and depend on approvals by school boards and other government officials to operate, so convincing school board members of the company's viability was a critical step for nascent charter management outfits.
Jim Pegg, who served as director of the charter schools department for the Palm Beach County school district - which added a Mavericks charter school after Biden joined the company - until his retirement earlier this year, called Frank Biden the "Front guy" for the company, and suggested that the political connections associated with his last name earned him the Mavericks gig.
A former board member for a Mavericks school in Tampa, Florida - which at one point hosted two Mavericks schools - made similar observations.
Dr. Debra Robinson said during the school board meeting that she supported the viability of Mavericks' plan, but objected on the grounds that the school board changed its process to permit Mavericks to resubmit its application and make their case before the board.
A 2014 lawsuit filed by two Pinellas County school district executives - which named Frank Biden as a defendant - accused Mavericks of "Falsely inflating the operating expenses associated with the operations of the charter schools" in an effort to "Divert funds from the education of the students to the owners of [Mavericks]" - to the tune of $22 million.
"Charter management companies can only make money or be profitable if they find a way to maximize per-pupil funding that goes to the school," said Michael Serpe, a spokesperson for EdisonLearning, another for-profit charter school company that later acquired Mavericks' charters.
"These were schools for high school students who dropped-out of traditional public high schools," the person said.
https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/frank-biden-leveraged-famous-business-gain/story?id=68202529
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