Will Ducey finally kill the charter cash cow?

While 49 percent of his students drop out, the CEO of Primavera online charter school continues to cash in.

The Republic’s Craig Harris reports that Damian Creamer scored another $1.3 million from the online charter school over the most recent school year.

This, in addition to the $27.6 million in state education funds Creamer used last year to buy curriculum and other services from another company he owns. This, in addition to $8.8 million in “shareholder distribution” he collected in 2017.

This, we call a racket. A state-sanctioned racket that allows crafty entrepreneurs to set up state-funded cash cows and call them “schools.”

Look for Gov. Doug Ducey — who, by the way, got $8,000 in campaign contributions from Creamer and his wife — to at long last do something about it when the Legislature convenes next year. How could he not, given the rampant charter-school abuses Harris has been uncovering all year?

But where have Ducey, his predecessor and the rest of this state’s leaders been?

Where were they in 2012, when this charter school was putting $22.4 million — or about 70 percent of its public funding — into an investment portfolio, rather than its students’ education? Where were they in 2015, when that number had grown to $36 million?

A year ago, the centrist Grand Canyon Institute released the results of a three-year study that found up to 77 percent of charter-school holders are using public funds on “potentially questionable financial transactions” — often paying themselves or their various relatives to provide goods and services to their charter schools under a price they get to set, courtesy of nobid contracts.

The study found charter-school executives earn, on average, 50 percent more than their school-district counterparts, while teachers earn 20 percent less. Our leaders’ response was ... non-existent, justified by their belief that the Grand Canyon Institute is “anti-charter.”

Just about every year, we hear an outrageous story about a charterschool operator who has fundamentally failed the smell test, either by shorting kids or by lining their pockets — or both.

Just about every year, Democrats propose reforms to fix laughable state laws that require hardly any oversight or public accountability.

And just about every year, Republicans ignore all evidence of a problem, to the delight of their “dark money” pals who shovel campaign money their way.

Nothing’s been done because in Arizona, “choice” has for too long trumped all. Even, apparently, when the choice is to make off with our money, leaving kids with failing grades and dismal futures.