Charter school regulators refuse to turn over records involving troubled Minnesota schools

A group of 10 nonprofits that oversee almost all of the publicly funded charter schools in Minnesota refuses to turn over documents showing how they handle contract violations by the schools they supervise, arguing that they are private organizations not subject to the state law requiring disclosure of all public records.

The Minnesota Star Tribune filed requests for the records in early November as part of the newspaper’s ongoing investigation of Minnesota’s troubled charter school sector. The Star Tribune published a three-part series detailing oversight problems and widespread failures among Minnesota’s charter schools in September.

So far this year, nine of the 181 charters schools operating in the state at the beginning of 2024 have closed — the most since the first charter school failure in 1996, state records show.

At least one more charter school, STEP Academy — which has campuses in St. Paul and Burnsville and is one of Minnesota’s largest charter schools — has been threatened with the termination of its contract. It was repeatedly cited for contract violations by Innovative Quality Schools (IQS), the nonprofit that oversees the school on behalf of the Minnesota Department of Education (MDE).

To find out if other charter schools are on the brink of collapse, the Star Tribune asked all 12 of the state’s authorizers for letters sent to schools this year documenting concerns over failing academics, financial instability or other issues that could jeopardize a school’s ability to remain open.

The documents are not available from MDE because the department does not routinely require authorizers to provide such records, MDE officials said in a previous interview.

The only authorizers that complied with the Star Tribune’s request are two public school districts that oversee three charter schools. One of those schools, TRIO Wolf Creek Distance Learning Charter School in Chisago City, received a warning letter in June that outlined three concerns, including the school’s failure to meet various “equity and inclusion” goals. The school’s authorizer, Chisago Lakes School District, accepted the school’s corrective action plan in September.

Though private organizations typically are exempt from the Minnesota Government Data Practices Act, that exemption is lifted when nonprofits enter into agreements with the government to carry out some of its functions, such as regulating a large portion of the state’s public school sector, said the Star Tribune’s attorney, Leita Walker.

In a Nov. 20 letter, attorneys representing the 10 nonprofits argued that the organizations are not required to comply with the data practices act because they did not sign contracts with the state education department and are not performing a government function.

The attorneys noted that state law gives authorizers the exclusive right to grant a charter to a new school.

“MDE has no statutory authority to authorize a charter school,” attorneys Amy Mace and Tessa Wagner said in the letter. “Because of this, the charter school authorizers are not performing a function that the MDE otherwise would have to undertake itself.”

Though each of the nonprofits had to seek MDE’s approval to become authorizers, the department’s approvals “do not create a contract between the parties,” Mace and Wagner said in the letter.

In a brief response to questions from the Star Tribune, MDE officials declined to address the lack of transparency by the nonprofits and suggested the newspaper contact each charter school for the requested records.

“MDE does not enter into agreements or contracts with authorizers,” MDE spokeswoman Sam Snuggerud said in an email, referring a reporter to a state department that assists in data requests from the public or media.

Don Gemberling, former director of the state’s Data Practices Office, said MDE should have required each of the authorizers to sign agreements indicating their willingness to comply with the public records law. He said such agreements have been standard in contracts in which government functions have been privatized for more than 25 years.

He said the failure to provide access to authorizer records makes the regulatory process meaningless.

“Who watches the watchers?” said Gemberling, who is now spokesman for the nonprofit Minnesota Coalition on Government Information. “This is big bucks, and it affects lots of kids.”

State records show that the 10 nonprofits collect more than $3 million in fees from the charter schools they supervise each year. Altogether, Minnesota’s charter schools received more than $1 billion in state and federal tax money last year.

Gemberling said state lawmakers should address the loophole by passing legislation requiring all authorizers to comply with the data practices act.

“This really is something that is ripe for a legislative fix,” Gemberling said.

A review of the MDE-approved authorizing plans for the nonprofits shows that the organizations are required to hold charter schools accountable for abiding by the requirements of the state’s data practices act, with the ability to penalize schools that violate the rules.

But those requirements do not extend to the authorizers themselves.

Instead, the authorizers have rules that specifically exempt school data from being disclosed, such as the individual student data MDE provides to the authorizers.

Novation Education Opportunities, for instance, requires consultants to agree to a nondisclosure clause that prevents them from sharing data without prior written consent from Novation. Even if the consultant has received a subpoena or a court order for records, the consultant is required to immediately notify Novation so that Novation can respond and “take any other action it deems necessary or appropriate.”

MDE initially failed to turn over more than 2,000 documents involving charter schools in response to a February request from the Star Tribune, but the department produced more than 1,600 of the records after the newspaper threatened to sue MDE over the documents in September.