Back in 2015 I wrote a post called “We bought it twice but we no longer own it.” The idea is simple. Taxpayers build a school with a voter-approved bond, pay it off, and own it outright. Then the district sells it. A private buyer leases it back to a charter operator, and public per-pupil dollars pay the rent. We bought the building once with the bond and again with the rent, and after buying it from ourselves, we no longer own it.
A decade later the plumbing is the same, and the numbers are bigger. So here it is as a 1970s Saturday-morning civics lesson, with your professor at the chalkboard and a receipt for every line.
Every line has a receipt
Nothing in the song is invented. The mechanisms come from The Business of Charter Schooling (Baker & Miron, NEPC, 2015) and my 2015 post. The cases come from state auditors, a state comptroller, a court ruling and the sources collected in the Edu-Grift Top 5. The $10 million interest comparison in the video is my own illustration: a $10M building amortized over 25 years at each rate.
| The lyric | The receipt | Source |
|---|---|---|
| “The voters said ‘Build it!’ and the bond went boom… rated it double-A, and the interest stayed down” | Districts finance buildings with voter-approved general obligation bonds backed by local taxing power, typically rated AA, at around 4.5%. When the bond is paid off, the public owns the building. | Baker & Miron (2015) |
| “The bond’s paid off and the building’s free, it belongs to the public, to you and to me” | The one structural virtue of the old system: at the end of the financing, the public owns the asset and the payments stop. | Baker (2015) |
| “The district sold it off… a private buyer bought it, and they leased it right back to a charter” | The “we bought it twice” scenario: enrollment shifts, the district sells the building, and a private owner leases it back to a charter operator. | Baker (2015) |
| “Our bond was four and a half, their loan’s eight and a half” | Sale-leaseback deals have carried debt at roughly 8.5%, vs. about 4.5% on the district’s own bond. On a $10M building over 25 years, that’s about $14.16M in interest instead of $6.67M. | Baker (2015); author’s calculation |
| “No taxing power and a five-year view… triple-B, with a minus on the end… five or six percent” | Charters can’t levy taxes, and their charters come up for renewal every few years. Their facility revenue bonds typically land at BBB−, the lowest investment-grade rung, at 5–6%. | Baker & Miron (2015) |
| “My company buys the land, my company holds the keys, and my school pays my company whatever rent I please” | Related-party real estate: a founder’s or management company’s affiliate owns the building, and the school pays it rent from per-pupil operating funds. In this version the public never holds title at all. | Baker & Miron (2015) |
| “Imagine schools paid twenty-three twenty-five a kid, a year… eight forty-eight, that’s all” | Ohio’s state auditor found Imagine-managed schools paying an average of $2,325 per pupil in rent, vs. $848 at Ohio charter schools without a management-company lease. | Eddings (2019), Ideastream |
| “The founder of the school’s manager also owned the land. He sold it to a brand-new nonprofit, fifty point seven mil” | Chester Community Charter School (PA): the founder of its management company sold buildings he personally owned to a newly created nonprofit in a $50.7M sale-leaseback in 2010, which the school leases. The deal was flagged by the Pennsylvania Auditor General. | PA Auditor General; Edu-Grift Top 5 |
| “Six-sixty grand became two million… I see multiple red flags!” | Hellenic Classical Charter Schools (Queens, NY): a related-party sublease marked up from about $660K to more than $2M a year. An Albany judge’s March 2025 ruling cited “multiple red flags.” | Chalkbeat New York (2025) |
| “The manager held all three leases… sublet them to the school it runs and took its fee on top, fourteen percent” | CAPS Asbury (NJ): the management company holds all three of the school’s master leases and subleases them to the school it manages, on top of a 14–15% management fee. | NJ Office of the State Comptroller (2026) |
| “Eight hundred fifty-three million dollars in tax-free bonds, for sixty-nine schools… and nobody broke a law” | National Heritage Academies’ 2021 sale-leaseback of 69 schools: $853.6M in tax-exempt municipal bonds, issued through Campus Partners 1, a newly created nonprofit, with NHA’s owner on both sides of the deal. Fully legal. No charges. | Edu-Grift Top 5; Strauss & Burris (2021) |
| “A lease can run for thirty… the district still must teach them, but where are they gonna stay?” | Leases and bonds outlive five-year charters. When a charter closes, the district remains the backstop for every eligible child, whether or not it still owns a building to put them in. | Baker (2016), EPI |
Three little questions
The song ends with the three questions to ask about any charter facility deal:
- Who’s the landlord? If the landlord traces back to the people who run the school, that’s the fact that made every case in the song worth investigating.
- What’s the rent really buying? Compare total facility costs per pupil with schools that aren’t leasing from an insider, the way Ohio’s auditor did.
- When the charter’s through, who keeps the building? A lease that outlives the charter by decades is a bet placed with public money.
None of this requires anyone to break a law, and that’s the point. The largest number in the song belongs to the one deal nobody was ever charged over. The fix isn’t a ban on chartering. It’s keeping the public’s school buildings, the capital stock every child depends on, under public ownership or public control.
Read the full case
- Baker & Miron (2015), The Business of Charter Schooling: Understanding the Policies that Charter Operators Use for Financial Benefit, NEPC (PDF)
- Baker (2015), We bought it twice but we no longer own it: Is co-location the better option?
- Baker (2016), Exploring the Consequences of Charter School Expansion in U.S. Cities, Economic Policy Institute
- Edu-Grift Top 5: Ranking Charter School Financial Grift by Magnitude (Sept. 2026)
Full lyrics: We Bought It Twice (And We No Longer Own It)
Kid: Hey mister, who owns my school? Narrator: Well, kid, that depends. Grab a seat. The Old Way Way back when, when a town needed room, The voters said “Build it!” and the bond went boom! It was backed by the taxes from every house in town, So they rated it double-A, and the interest stayed down. Pay it off in twenty, pay it off in thirty, And the school belongs to us (though the floors get dirty)! Sold Off and Leased Back Now the bond’s paid off and the building’s free, It belongs to the public, to you and to me! But enrollment dipped and the halls got thin, So the district sold it off to bring some money in. A private buyer bought it, and they leased it right back To a charter down the street. Now listen, keep track: Our bond was four and a half, their loan’s eight and a half, whoo! And the rent comes out of public funds. So who’s paying? You! Chorus We bought it once, we bought it twice, We paid the bond, now we pay the price! We sold it off, and we leased it back, Now we’re paying rent on the school we had! Bought it once (with the bond!), bought it twice (with the rent!), And we no longer own the school! Along Comes a Charter Now here comes a charter, shiny and new, With no taxing power and a five-year view. The bankers took a look and they scratched their chins: “A tenant that might vanish when the next term begins?” So they rated it triple-B, with a minus on the end, And five or six percent is what it costs to lend. The Bright Idea Then the founder had a bright idea one night: “I’ll start an LLC, and I’ll set it up just right. My company buys the land, my company holds the keys, And my school pays my company whatever rent I please!” The board said “Aye!” (’cause the board’s his friends), So the public pays the rent, and the rent never ends. Kid: Wait. So the school pays rent… with school money? Narrator: Per-pupil dollars. Every month. Same budget that pays for teachers and books. Kid: And when it’s paid off, we own it, right? Narrator: Nope. This time we never owned it at all. The founder’s company does. Chorus Let’s Do the Numbers In Ohio the auditor took the leases and compared: Imagine schools paid twenty-three twenty-five a kid, a year! The schools without a landlord pal? Eight forty-eight, that’s all, Nearly triple for the very same four walls! In Chester, Pennsylvania, here’s a deal to understand: The founder of the school’s manager also owned the land. He sold it to a brand-new nonprofit, fifty point seven mil, Then the school leased it back, and the public paid the bill! In Queens a little sublease grew, now listen to this tune: Six-sixty grand became two million, way too much, too soon! A judge looked at the paperwork and said “Hey, what’s this mess? I see multiple red flags!” Well, more or less. In Jersey the comptroller found a cozy little scheme: The manager held all three leases. Now what does that mean? It sublet them to the school it runs and took its fee on top, Fourteen percent for managing. Does the money ever stop? And the biggest of them all, eight hundred fifty-three Million dollars in tax-free bonds, for sixty-nine schools, you see, Through a brand-new nonprofit, with the same owner on both sides, And nobody broke a law! Nobody broke a law. When the Music Stops Now a charter gets a term of five years, then review, But a lease can run for thirty, and the bond runs longer too. So if the school shuts down one day and the kids get sent away, The district still must teach them, but where are they gonna stay? That building that we paid for, through the bond and through the rent? It belongs to someone else, and so does every cent! Final Chorus So next time someone tells you that the rent is fair and square, Ask three little questions: Who’s the landlord there? What’s that rent really buying? And when the charter’s through, Who keeps the building? Kid: Not us, right? Narrator: Not anymore, kid.
