alternet--2020-12-15--Hunger in America: On the frontlines of the COVID-19 nightmare

As autumn fades and winter looms , the dire predictions public-health experts made about Covid-19 have , unfortunately , proven all-too-accurate .
On October 27th , 74,379 people were infected in the United States ; less than a month and a half later , on December 9th , that number had soared to 218,677 , while the 2020 total has just surpassed 15 million , a number no other country , not even India , which has a population three times that of the U.S. , has surpassed And now , it seems , the third wave of the virus @ @ @ @ @ @ @ October , the embattled Dr. Anthony Fauci , the nation 's leading infectious disease expert , warned that `` we are in for a whole lot of hurt '' and that infections could reach 100,000 a day .
As it happens , he was wildly optimistic .
A little more than a month later , there were more than twice that many .
Is it possible , however , that the current surge is due in part to increased testing , as President Trump and others have regularly claimed ?
Here 's the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ true , it ca n't account for the spiraling death toll , which is now more than 300,000 and could hit 450,000 by February , according to Robert Redfield , the head of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention .
Nor can it explain the daily Covid-19 hospitalizations , the first round of which peaked at 59,712 on July 23rd , dropped pretty steadily to a low of 28,606 on September 20th , and then started to soar , reaching 106,671 on December 9th .
Though big-picture statistics like these should help @ @ @ @ @ @ @ current public-health crisis , what they do n't reveal is the searing effects it 's had on the lives of millions of Americans , even those who have managed to evade the virus or have n't seen friends or family fall ill or die from Covid-19 .
The pandemic has been especially hard for those on the front lines : doctors , nurses , and other hospital workers who experience battle fatigue and despair while besieged by suffering and deaths , visceral reminders of their own vulnerability .
In society at large , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ limits on festive gatherings -- necessary to keep Covid-19 at bay have increased loneliness and social isolation .
Contrary to early expectations , reports of abuse and violence within families have n't actually spiraled , but experts suggest that may be because the victims , confined to their homes alongside their tormentors , are finding it harder to seek help and fear reporting what 's happening to them .
As for children , teachers are no longer seeing their pupils in person as regularly and so are less able to spot the typical @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the pandemic has yet to increase this country 's already alarming suicide rate , but the same ca n't be said for levels of stress and depression , both of which have risen noticeably .
School closures and the move to online learning have forced parents , particularly women , to scramble for childcare and to work less , even though many of them were barely getting by while working full-time , or stop working altogether , often a genuine disaster in poor families .
Not surprisingly , people who have been laid @ @ @ @ @ @ @ have fallen behind on their mortgage and rent payments .
Although various federal and state moratoriums on such payments , as well as on evictions and foreclosures , were enacted , such protections will eventually end .
And the moratoriums do n't negate renters ' or homeowners ' obligations to settle accounts with their bankers and landlords somewhere down the line ( which for many Americans may , in the end , prove an impossibility ) .
Apart from the illness and death it causes , perhaps the most poignant consequence of Covid-19 @ @ @ @ @ @ @ what 's called `` food insecurity '' across the United States .
That ungainly term does n't refer to the chronic food scarcity and undernourishment , which afflicts more than 800 million people in poor countries , but rather to the disruption of people 's typical food-consumption patterns .
The U.S. Department of Agriculture ( USDA ) distinguishes between what it calls low food security ( `` reduced quality , variability , or desirability of diet '' ) and the very low version of the same ( `` multiple indications of disrupted eating @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
Surveys by the USDA and the Census Bureau show that both variants have risen steeply during the pandemic .
Just before the coronavirus struck , 35 million Americans , 11 million of them children , experienced food insecurity , the lowest figure in two decades .
This year , those numbers are projected to reach 54 million and 18 million respectively .
In 2018 , 4 % of American adults reported that at least some members of their family did not have enough to eat ; by July 2020 , that figure @ @ @ @ @ @ @ a study by Northwestern University 's Food Research and Action Center , and will only increase as the pandemic worsens .
Income supplements provided by the $ 2.2 trillion CARES Act that Congress passed in March in response to the economic problems created by Covid-19 , increases in the government 's Supplementary Nutritional Program ( SNAP ) , and the Pandemic Electronic Benefit ( P-EBT ) , which helps parents whose children no longer get free or subsidized school lunches , have made a difference -- but not enough to make up for @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , and other disasters of this moment .
And sadly , any follow-up to the CARES Act , assuming Congress reaches some kind of agreement on its terms before the current legislation expires at the end of December , will almost certainly be far less generous than the original law .
The SNAP increases already excluded the poorest seven million households that were then receiving the maximum amount , and the new increases now under discussion in Congress would add less than one dollar to a four-person family 's maximum daily benefit .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ end of September , in some as early as July .
That food insecurity has `` skyrocketed , '' as the Center for Budget and Policy Priorities puts it , during the pandemic despite government assistance should n't come as a surprise .
Millions of people have lost their jobs .
Some have seen their earnings diminished because of furloughs , wage cuts , freezes , or reduced working hours .
Others have looked for jobs in vain and finally given up ( but are n't included in official unemployment statistics ) .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ longer receive those free or subsidized lunches because of the switch , in whole or part , to online teaching .
Worse yet , as pandemic-induced firings , layoffs , and wage cuts have reduced incomes , and so consumer purchasing power , food prices , especially for meat , fish , and eggs , have only risen .
Such costs have increased for other reasons as well .
The pandemic has disrupted supply networks , national and international .
Leery consumers , anticipating shortages or seeking to reduce trips to grocery stores @ @ @ @ @ @ @ have also resorted to panic buying and the stockpiling of food and other necessities .
Who You Are and Where You Live Matters Most Of course , not everyone has been hit with equal force by rising food prices .
Americans high on the income ladder can absorb such extra costs easily enough and , in any case , spend a substantially smaller portion of their income on groceries .
According to the USDA , adults with incomes in the top fifth of society spent 8 % of their income on food last @ @ @ @ @ @ @ it was 36 % .
The first group also obviously has a lot more money available to stock up on food than that bottom fifth , so many of whom have also become jobless or seen their paychecks diminish since the pandemic started .
In March , for example , 39 % of those making less than $ 40,000 had already lost their jobs or had their paychecks reduced , but only 13 % of those who earned $ 100,000 or more , and that gap continued into the fall .
Not surprisingly @ @ @ @ @ @ @ people took from the Covid-19 recession , the more likely they were to experience food insecurity , which is why aggregate statistics on the phenomenon and other societal problems attributable to the pandemic can be misleading .
They tend to mask the reality that its effects have been felt primarily by the most vulnerable , while the others have been touched much more lightly , or not at all .
The variations are rooted in ethnicity and location as well as income level ( and the three tend to be closely linked ) @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of Black households and 16 % of Hispanic households as food insecure in 2019 , compared to 8 % of their white counterparts .
By this summer , food insecurity had increased significantly across the board , afflicting 36 % of Black , 32 % of Hispanic , and 18 % of white households .
While the pandemic has certainly made matters worse , African Americans had the highest rate among those three groups even before it started .
This was especially true of counties -- the U.S. has more than 3,000 of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the majority .
In 2016 , those particular counties accounted for a mere 3 % of the national total , but 96 % of them had `` high food insecurity , '' as the Department of Agriculture defines it , as well as a poverty rate more than twice the national average ( 12.7 % that year ) .
Native Americans have had the worst of it , however , since many of their families lack access to running water and plumbing ( 58 per 1,000 households compared to three per 1,000 for @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Native Americans must travel more than a mile to reach a supermarket , compared to 40 % of the population as a whole , and the disruption of supply chains has only diminished their food security further relative to other ethnic communities .
Even prior to the pandemic , counties in which they ( or Native Alaskans ) constituted a majority were among those with the highest levels of food insecurity .
Not coincidentally , in 2016 , the poverty rate in nearly 70 % of Native American-majority counties averaged a whopping 37 @ @ @ @ @ @ @ every group has suffered in this pandemic year , race matters -- a lot -- when it comes to the degree of suffering .
So does income .
In coronavirus-stricken America , only 1 % of adults with an annual income exceeding $ 100,000 surveyed by the Census Bureau this summer responded that , during the preceding week , their household `` sometimes or often did not have enough to eat . ''
Compare that to 16 % of those making $ 25,000- $ 35,000 and 28 % of those earning less than @ @ @ @ @ @ @ during the pandemic has varied by location as well .
Ten states ( and the District of Columbia ) had the highest rates , ranging from Mississippi ( 33.5 % ) , which stood atop this group , to Alabama ( 27 % ) , which had the lowest .
In between , in descending order , were Washington , D.C. , Nevada , Louisiana , New York , New Mexico , Florida , Tennessee , and North Carolina .
Food Banks and Pantries : On The Front Lines The other day , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ daily scene at a food distribution center in New York City 's Harlem neighborhood .
Well before trucks laden with food pulled up early in the morning , he said , the lines had already started forming , hundreds of people waiting patiently in a queue that encircled the block .
And that 's just one of many neighborhoods in New York where this is all too typical these days .
In Queens , for instance , one pantry regularly faces a demand so steep that lines can extend for eight blocks .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ must be .
All told , 1.5 million people in the city , unable to buy the groceries they need , rely on food pantries , and New York is anything but unusual .
Photographs abound of cars lined up by the hundreds , even thousands , at food pantries in major cities around the country .
Feeding America , a non-profit organization that supports 200 food storage centers and 60,000 pantries nationwide , reports that the country 's food banks have provided the equivalent of more than 4.2 billion meals since March @ @ @ @ @ @ @ a year ago and 40 % of the people who come to such pantries are first-time visitors .
A Consumer Reports survey of grocery shoppers found that nearly a fifth of them had turned to a food pantry since the pandemic began ( half of whom had n't sought such help at all in 2019 ) .
In March , before the first wave of Covid-19 began to peak , 18 million Americans already used food pantries ; by August , that number had climbed to 22 million , even though an additional @ @ @ @ @ @ @ SNAP ( the food-stamp program in common parlance ) between March and May alone .
By early July , 37.4 million people had signed up for SNAP compared to 35.7 million for all of last year .
Little wonder , then , that food banks , facing a tsunami of demand , have struggled to stay stocked amid rising prices , shortages , reduced donations from big chain supermarkets , and disrupted supply chains .
It 's also become even harder for them to raise the money they need to operate .
Not @ @ @ @ @ @ @ and many have been forced to shut down .
Pantries have also had a hard time mustering volunteers , in part because seniors , particularly vulnerable to the virus , made up a significant segment of such helpers .
Not surprisingly , then , food banks and pantries have battled to function or simply survive in these months , while also having to implement an array of cumbersome and costly safety measures to keep volunteers , staff , and clients infection-free .
Despite their heroic role , such food banks and pantries are @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the dike .
For Covid-induced food insecurity and hunger to decline significantly , the third wave of infections will have to subside and Congress will have to offer more effective aid .
The Trump administration 's recent proposal , blessed by Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell , to provide a one-shot $ 600 check to all adults ( whether they 're unemployed or not ) certainly is n't .
At the same time , vaccines will have to be produced in sufficient quantities and distributed rapidly .
( We are far from ready @ @ @ @ @ @ @ in a country where striking numbers of people look askance at vaccination -- in a December survey only 63 % of Americans said they would be willing to get vaccinated against Covid-19 -- and are also drawn to conspiracy mongers whose appeal has grown , thanks in part to social media .
Once the virus is vanquished or at least brought under reasonable control , the economy can be reopened .
Then , many of the nearly 11 million at-present unemployed people will perhaps have a shot at working again or having their @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
Here 's hoping that these various stars align by summer 2021 .
We can then revert to pre-pandemic normalcy , even though that state of affairs was marked by substantial poverty -- 34 million people last year -- and rising inequality .
Rajan Menon , a TomDispatch regular , is the Anne and Bernard Spitzer Professor of International Relations at the Powell School , City College of New York , senior research fellow at Columbia University 's Saltzman Institute of War and Peace Studies , and a non-resident fellow at the Quincy @ @ @ @ @ @ @ book is The Conceit of Humanitarian Intervention .
Follow TomDispatch on Twitter and join us on Facebook .
Check out the newest Dispatch Books , John Feffer 's new dystopian novel ( the second in the Splinterlands series ) Frostlands , Beverly Gologorsky 's novel Every Body Has a Story , and Tom Engelhardt 's A Nation Unmade by War , as well as Alfred McCoy 's In the Shadows of the American Century : The Rise and Decline of U.S .
Global Power and John Dower 's The Violent American Century : @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .

As autumn fades and winter looms, the dire predictions public-health experts made about Covid-19 have, unfortunately, proven all-too-accurate. On October 27th, 74,379 people were infected in the United States; less than a month and a half later, on December 9th, that number had soared to 218,677, while the 2020 total has just surpassed 15 million, a number no other country, not even India, which has a population three times that of the U.S., has surpassed
And now, it seems, the third wave of the virus has arrived. As recently as late October, the embattled Dr. Anthony Fauci, the nation's leading infectious disease expert, warned that "we are in for a whole lot of hurt" and that infections could reach 100,000 a day. As it happens, he was wildly optimistic. A little more than a month later, there were more than twice that many. Is it possible, however, that the current surge is due in part to increased testing, as President Trump and others have regularly claimed? Here's the problem. Even if that theory were true, it can't account for the spiraling death toll, which is now more than 300,000 and could hit 450,000 by February, according to Robert Redfield, the head of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Nor can it explain the daily Covid-19 hospitalizations, the first round of which peaked at 59,712 on July 23rd, dropped pretty steadily to a low of 28,606 on September 20th, and then started to soar, reaching 106,671 on December 9th.
Though big-picture statistics like these should help us grasp the staggering magnitude of our current public-health crisis, what they don't reveal is the searing effects it's had on the lives of millions of Americans, even those who have managed to evade the virus or haven't seen friends or family fall ill or die from Covid-19. The pandemic has been especially hard for those on the front lines: doctors, nurses, and other hospital workers who experience battle fatigue and despair while besieged by suffering and deaths, visceral reminders of their own vulnerability.
In society at large, precautions -- lockdowns, social distancing, limits on festive gatherings -- necessary to keep Covid-19 at bay have increased loneliness and social isolation. Contrary to early expectations, reports of abuse and violence within families haven't actually spiraled, but experts suggest that may be because the victims, confined to their homes alongside their tormentors, are finding it harder to seek help and fear reporting what's happening to them. As for children, teachers are no longer seeing their pupils in person as regularly and so are less able to spot the typical warning signs of mistreatment.
Thankfully, the pandemic has yet to increase this country's already alarming suicide rate, but the same can't be said for levels of stress and depression, both of which have risen noticeably. School closures and the move to online learning have forced parents, particularly women, to scramble for childcare and to work less, even though many of them were barely getting by while working full-time, or stop working altogether, often a genuine disaster in poor families.
Not surprisingly, people who have been laid off or had their work hours reduced have fallen behind on their mortgage and rent payments. Although various federal and state moratoriums on such payments, as well as on evictions and foreclosures, were enacted, such protections will eventually end. And the moratoriums don't negate renters' or homeowners' obligations to settle accounts with their bankers and landlords somewhere down the line (which for many Americans may, in the end, prove an impossibility).
Food and the Pandemic
Apart from the illness and death it causes, perhaps the most poignant consequence of Covid-19 has been the way it's increased what's called "food insecurity" across the United States. That ungainly term doesn't refer to the chronic food scarcity and undernourishment, which afflicts more than 800 million people in poor countries, but rather to the disruption of people's typical food-consumption patterns. The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) distinguishes between what it calls low food security ("reduced quality, variability, or desirability of diet") and the very low version of the same ("multiple indications of disrupted eating patterns and reduced food intake").
Surveys by the USDA and the Census Bureau show that both variants have risen steeply during the pandemic. Just before the coronavirus struck, 35 million Americans, 11 million of them children, experienced food insecurity, the lowest figure in two decades. This year, those numbers are projected to reach 54 million and 18 million respectively. In 2018, 4% of American adults reported that at least some members of their family did not have enough to eat; by July 2020, that figure had hit 11%, according to a study by Northwestern University's Food Research and Action Center, and will only increase as the pandemic worsens.
Income supplements provided by the $2.2 trillion CARES Act that Congress passed in March in response to the economic problems created by Covid-19, increases in the government's Supplementary Nutritional Program (SNAP), and the Pandemic Electronic Benefit (P-EBT), which helps parents whose children no longer get free or subsidized school lunches, have made a difference -- but not enough to make up for lost or reduced income, lost homes, and other disasters of this moment. And sadly, any follow-up to the CARES Act, assuming Congress reaches some kind of agreement on its terms before the current legislation expires at the end of December, will almost certainly be far less generous than the original law. The SNAP increases already excluded the poorest seven million households that were then receiving the maximum amount, and the new increases now under discussion in Congress would add less than one dollar to a four-person family's maximum daily benefit. P-EBT expired in most states at the end of September, in some as early as July.
That food insecurity has "skyrocketed," as the Center for Budget and Policy Priorities puts it, during the pandemic despite government assistance shouldn't come as a surprise. Millions of people have lost their jobs. Some have seen their earnings diminished because of furloughs, wage cuts, freezes, or reduced working hours. Others have looked for jobs in vain and finally given up (but aren't included in official unemployment statistics). Millions of adults have children who no longer receive those free or subsidized lunches because of the switch, in whole or part, to online teaching. Worse yet, as pandemic-induced firings, layoffs, and wage cuts have reduced incomes, and so consumer purchasing power, food prices, especially for meat, fish, and eggs, have only risen. Such costs have increased for other reasons as well. The pandemic has disrupted supply networks, national and international. Leery consumers, anticipating shortages or seeking to reduce trips to grocery stores to avoid being infected by Covid-19, have also resorted to panic buying and the stockpiling of food and other necessities.
Who You Are and Where You Live Matters Most
Of course, not everyone has been hit with equal force by rising food prices. Americans high on the income ladder can absorb such extra costs easily enough and, in any case, spend a substantially smaller portion of their income on groceries. According to the USDA, adults with incomes in the top fifth of society spent 8% of their income on food last year; for the bottom fifth, it was 36%. The first group also obviously has a lot more money available to stock up on food than that bottom fifth, so many of whom have also become jobless or seen their paychecks diminish since the pandemic started. In March, for example, 39% of those making less than $40,000 had already lost their jobs or had their paychecks reduced, but only 13% of those who earned $100,000 or more, and that gap continued into the fall.
Not surprisingly, then, the bigger the hit people took from the Covid-19 recession, the more likely they were to experience food insecurity, which is why aggregate statistics on the phenomenon and other societal problems attributable to the pandemic can be misleading. They tend to mask the reality that its effects have been felt primarily by the most vulnerable, while the others have been touched much more lightly, or not at all.
The variations are rooted in ethnicity and location as well as income level (and the three tend to be closely linked). A USDA report classified 19% of Black households and 16% of Hispanic households as food insecure in 2019, compared to 8% of their white counterparts. By this summer, food insecurity had increased significantly across the board, afflicting 36% of Black, 32% of Hispanic, and 18% of white households. While the pandemic has certainly made matters worse, African Americans had the highest rate among those three groups even before it started. This was especially true of counties -- the U.S. has more than 3,000 of them -- in which they were in the majority. In 2016, those particular counties accounted for a mere 3% of the national total, but 96% of them had "high food insecurity," as the Department of Agriculture defines it, as well as a poverty rate more than twice the national average (12.7% that year).
Native Americans have had the worst of it, however, since many of their families lack access to running water and plumbing (58 per 1,000 households compared to three per 1,000 for whites). Nearly 75% of Native Americans must travel more than a mile to reach a supermarket, compared to 40% of the population as a whole, and the disruption of supply chains has only diminished their food security further relative to other ethnic communities. Even prior to the pandemic, counties in which they (or Native Alaskans) constituted a majority were among those with the highest levels of food insecurity. Not coincidentally, in 2016, the poverty rate in nearly 70% of Native American-majority counties averaged a whopping 37%.
In other words, while every group has suffered in this pandemic year, race matters -- a lot -- when it comes to the degree of suffering.
So does income. In coronavirus-stricken America, only 1% of adults with an annual income exceeding $100,000 surveyed by the Census Bureau this summer responded that, during the preceding week, their household "sometimes or often did not have enough to eat." Compare that to 16% of those making $25,000-$35,000 and 28% of those earning less than $25,000.
Finally, food insecurity during the pandemic has varied by location as well. Ten states (and the District of Columbia) had the highest rates, ranging from Mississippi (33.5%), which stood atop this group, to Alabama (27%), which had the lowest. In between, in descending order, were Washington, D.C., Nevada, Louisiana, New York, New Mexico, Florida, Tennessee, and North Carolina.
Food Banks and Pantries: On The Front Lines
The other day, a close friend described to me the daily scene at a food distribution center in New York City's Harlem neighborhood. Well before trucks laden with food pulled up early in the morning, he said, the lines had already started forming, hundreds of people waiting patiently in a queue that encircled the block. And that's just one of many neighborhoods in New York where this is all too typical these days. In Queens, for instance, one pantry regularly faces a demand so steep that lines can extend for eight blocks. Try to imagine what the waiting time must be. All told, 1.5 million people in the city, unable to buy the groceries they need, rely on food pantries, and New York is anything but unusual. Photographs abound of cars lined up by the hundreds, even thousands, at food pantries in major cities around the country.
Feeding America, a non-profit organization that supports 200 food storage centers and 60,000 pantries nationwide, reports that the country's food banks have provided the equivalent of more than 4.2 billion meals since March, a 50% increase compared to a year ago and 40% of the people who come to such pantries are first-time visitors. A Consumer Reportssurvey of grocery shoppers found that nearly a fifth of them had turned to a food pantry since the pandemic began (half of whom hadn't sought such help at all in 2019). In March, before the first wave of Covid-19 began to peak, 18 million Americans already used food pantries; by August, that number had climbed to 22 million, even though an additional 6.2 million people had received benefits from SNAP (the food-stamp program in common parlance) between March and May alone. By early July, 37.4 million people had signed up for SNAP compared to 35.7 million for all of last year.
Little wonder, then, that food banks, facing a tsunami of demand, have struggled to stay stocked amid rising prices, shortages, reduced donations from big chain supermarkets, and disrupted supply chains. It's also become even harder for them to raise the money they need to operate. Not a few have buckled under the strain and many have been forced to shut down. Pantries have also had a hard time mustering volunteers, in part because seniors, particularly vulnerable to the virus, made up a significant segment of such helpers. Not surprisingly, then, food banks and pantries have battled to function or simply survive in these months, while also having to implement an array of cumbersome and costly safety measures to keep volunteers, staff, and clients infection-free.
Despite their heroic role, such food banks and pantries are the equivalent of the proverbial finger in the dike. For Covid-induced food insecurity and hunger to decline significantly, the third wave of infections will have to subside and Congress will have to offer more effective aid. The Trump administration's recent proposal, blessed by Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, to provide a one-shot $600 check to all adults (whether they're unemployed or not) certainly isn't. At the same time, vaccines will have to be produced in sufficient quantities and distributed rapidly. (We are far from ready on that front.) All this in a country where striking numbers of people look askance at vaccination -- in a December survey only 63% of Americans said they would be willing to get vaccinated against Covid-19 -- and are also drawn to conspiracy mongers whose appeal has grown, thanks in part to social media.
Once the virus is vanquished or at least brought under reasonable control, the economy can be reopened. Then, many of the nearly 11 million at-present unemployed people will perhaps have a shot at working again or having their employers end reduced hours and cut wages.
Here's hoping that these various stars align by summer 2021. We can then revert to pre-pandemic normalcy, even though that state of affairs was marked by substantial poverty -- 34 million people last year -- and rising inequality.
Rajan Menon, a TomDispatch regular, is the Anne and Bernard Spitzer Professor of International Relations at the Powell School, City College of New York, senior research fellow at Columbia University's Saltzman Institute of War and Peace Studies, and a non-resident fellow at the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft. His latest book is The Conceit of Humanitarian Intervention.
Follow TomDispatch on Twitter and join us on Facebook. Check out the newest Dispatch Books, John Feffer's new dystopian novel (the second in the Splinterlands series) Frostlands, Beverly Gologorsky's novel Every Body Has a Story, and Tom Engelhardt's A Nation Unmade by War, as well as Alfred McCoy's In the Shadows of the American Century: The Rise and Decline of U.S. Global Power and John Dower's The Violent American Century: War and Terror Since World War II.
Copyright 2020 Rajan Menon


alternet--2020-12-15--Why a city’s new marijuana delivery plan is an important move

During the pandemic , services that deliver food and other supplies have become invaluable .
Some companies in the industry , such as the Philadelphia-based GoPuff , also do beer and liquor deliveries for adults .
In states like Colorado , where cannabis is legal and regulated somewhat like alcohol , home delivery is the next frontier of a new and thriving industry .
This is exemplified by a new ordinance approved by the council of Aurora , Colorado on December 7 , which will allow marijuana deliveries to begin in the city in January .
Cannabis delivery is not @ @ @ @ @ @ @ is usually a privilege reserved for medical cannabis patients .
Aurora appears to be the first Colorado municipality authorizing delivery services for nonmedical consumers .
Yet the significance of this measure reaches far beyond customer convenience .
Alcohol and cannabis do not have the same history , even if they both were illegal on US soil at one time .
While the notion of illegal alcohol businesses conjures images of 1920s white gangsters , flapper dresses and speakeasies , people who sell marijuana—and above all people of color—have faced arrest , prosecution , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to a century longer .
State legalization campaigns have often been criticized for centering the white experience and not doing enough to address directly the racist mass enforcement of anti-cannabis laws .
In many states , including California , the law forbids people with cannabis-related criminal convictions to receive licenses for cannabis-related business ventures .
That has been true in Colorado , too .
In Denver , for example , the legacy of racist enforcement has without doubt contributed to the underrepresentation of Black cannabis business owners and employees , at only 6 @ @ @ @ @ @ @ white cannabis business owners , at 75 percent—figures found by a June 2020 study .
As a result , organizations like Denver-based Color of Cannabis are now fighting to ensure that new laws regulating cannabis businesses are racially just and socially equitable .
Color of Cannabis was involved in the successful push for a new state law that created a category of social equity applicants who would receive first dibs on cannabis business licenses—a person is eligible if they or an immediate family member were arrested or convicted on a marijuana charge .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ cannabis entrepreneur and Color of Cannabis 's director , has explained to policymakers that this alone does not solve the inaccessibility problem of this new industry for people of color most impacted by cannabis-enforcement injustices .
Woodson achieved another important win in Aurora , where she helped shape the city 's cannabis delivery ordinance .
Crucially , social equity applicants will receive exclusive consideration for the first three years of the city 's new cannabis delivery program .
This focus on social equity is not without its detractors , however , most of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Aurora , city councilmembers Marsha Berzins and Dave Gruber expressed concern over potential issues stemming from temporarily barring certain applicants from the industry .
But even in a mainstream political climate that is still far from authorizing widespread reparations to marginalized communities of color for everything from the War on Drugs to slavery , fear over the mere risk of hypothetical legal battles should not stop ethical politicians from taking action for equity where they can .
The constitutional contours of equity policies even have a significant level of clarity after decades of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ While , for example , in the college admissions context , explicit racial quotas have been deemed unconstitutional under Gratz v. Bollinger ( 2003 ) , the Supreme Court decided the same year in Grutter v. Bollinger that admissions criteria benefitting marginalized minority groups are constitutionally permitted—so long as group status is not solely determinative of admission .
It is hard to say for certain that the Aurora ordinance would be iron-clad in court .
But it is certainly worth fighting for , given what is common knowledge of the racist history and @ @ @ @ @ @ @ article was originally published by Filter , a magazine covering drug use , drug policy and human rights .
Follow Filter on Facebook or Twitter .

During the pandemic, services that deliver food and other supplies have become invaluable. Some companies in the industry, such as the Philadelphia-based GoPuff, also do beer and liquor deliveries for adults. In states like Colorado, where cannabis is legal and regulated somewhat like alcohol, home delivery is the next frontier of a new and thriving industry.
This is exemplified by a new ordinance approved by the council of Aurora, Colorado on December 7, which will allow marijuana deliveries to begin in the city in January. Cannabis delivery is not uncommon in the US, but it is usually a privilege reserved for medical cannabis patients. Aurora appears to be the first Colorado municipality authorizing delivery services for nonmedical consumers. Yet the significance of this measure reaches far beyond customer convenience.
Alcohol and cannabis do not have the same history, even if they both were illegal on US soil at one time. While the notion of illegal alcohol businesses conjures images of 1920s white gangsters, flapper dresses and speakeasies, people who sell marijuana—and above all people of color—have faced arrest, prosecution, and harsh terms of imprisonment for close to a century longer.
State legalization campaigns have often been criticized for centering the white experience and not doing enough to address directly the racist mass enforcement of anti-cannabis laws. In many states, including California, the law forbids people with cannabis-related criminal convictions to receive licenses for cannabis-related business ventures.
That has been true in Colorado, too. In Denver, for example, the legacy of racist enforcement has without doubt contributed to the underrepresentation of Black cannabis business owners and employees, at only 6 percent overall, and the overrepresentation of white cannabis business owners, at 75 percent—figures found by a June 2020 study.
As a result, organizations like Denver-based Color of Cannabis are now fighting to ensure that new laws regulating cannabis businesses are racially just and socially equitable.
Color of Cannabis was involved in the successful push for a new state law that created a category of social equity applicants who would receive first dibs on cannabis business licenses—a person is eligible if they or an immediate family member were arrested or convicted on a marijuana charge. However, Sarah Woodson, a Black cannabis entrepreneur and Color of Cannabis's director, has explained to policymakers that this alone does not solve the inaccessibility problem of this new industry for people of color most impacted by cannabis-enforcement injustices.
Woodson achieved another important win in Aurora, where she helped shape the city's cannabis delivery ordinance. Crucially, social equity applicants will receive exclusive consideration for the first three years of the city's new cannabis delivery program.
This focus on social equity is not without its detractors, however, most of whom cite apparent legal fears. In Aurora, city councilmembers Marsha Berzins and Dave Gruber expressed concern over potential issues stemming from temporarily barring certain applicants from the industry.
But even in a mainstream political climate that is still far from authorizing widespread reparations to marginalized communities of color for everything from the War on Drugs to slavery, fear over the mere risk of hypothetical legal battles should not stop ethical politicians from taking action for equity where they can. The constitutional contours of equity policies even have a significant level of clarity after decades of Supreme Court decisions on the issue.
While, for example, in the college admissions context, explicit racial quotas have been deemed unconstitutional under Gratz v. Bollinger (2003), the Supreme Court decided the same year in Grutter v. Bollinger that admissions criteria benefitting marginalized minority groups are constitutionally permitted—so long as group status is not solely determinative of admission.
It is hard to say for certain that the Aurora ordinance would be iron-clad in court. But it is certainly worth fighting for, given what is common knowledge of the racist history and practice of the drug war.
This article was originally published by Filter, a magazine covering drug use, drug policy and human rights. Follow Filter on Facebook or Twitter.


alternet--2020-12-15--A flood of new charters shows how the industry may try to thrive — despite the pandemic

As the COVID-19 pandemic began closing school buildings and forcing schools to quickly ramp up online learning programs in April , an op-ed by Alex Medler , the executive director of the Colorado Association of Charter School Authorizers , made an appeal to Betsy DeVos 's Department of Education to change the guidelines of her department 's grants for new charter school startups to allow the money to go to existing charter schools .
Medler justified the request to address `` immediate needs during the pandemic . ''
But when Chalkbeat broke the story that DeVos would agree with Medler @ @ @ @ @ @ @ about $ 10 million in grant money for new charter schools to be redirected to existing charters , Medler made the curious admission to Chalkbeat reporter Matt Barnum that another reason for the need to change grant requirements was because `` there are n't enough new [ charter ] schools being created across the country to spend all the… money on the one purpose of funding the start-up of new charters . ''
Is the charter school industry , even before the current crisis , really on the skids ?
The annual rate @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to 2016 was half of what it was between 2008 and 2014 , according to a 2019 report from pro-charter nonprofit Bellwether Education Partners .
And in some states where charters have proliferated , these schools are seeing student enrollments drop .
Many communities that have been reliable markets for the charter industry are now having fewer new charter school openings .
Some of these cities are getting no new charters at all .
But this negative view of the charter market is contradicted by evidence of new charter schools proliferating in some @ @ @ @ @ @ @ northeast Wake County , North Carolina , a suburban sprawl outside Raleigh that includes Rolesville , Wake Forest , Wakefield , Zebulon , and other rapidly growing bedroom communities .
The generally affluent region—the sixth-wealthiest zip code in the state—is now home to 11 out of the 24 Wake County charter schools .
And more are scheduled to open .
In 2019 , local school officials and school PTAs implored the North Carolina State Board of Education not to approve the two newest charters coming to Wake Forest , a community in northeast @ @ @ @ @ @ @ saturation '' was adding to racial segregation in local schools and threatening to financially destabilize the district .
The state board approved the schools anyway .
In 2020 , Wake County parents have written letters to local news outlets saying new charter schools are n't needed , and they 've protested at public hearings considering whether to open the new charters .
One of the charters the state had approved to open in Wake Forest , Wake Preparatory Academy , was rejected by the town 's Board of Commissioners , the Wake Forest @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the school 's site plan and subdivision proposal had not met the town 's requirements .
The school is appealing the ruling to the state .
Why are new charter schools opening in northeast Wake County ?
`` Charter schools can open where they choose , '' Christine Kushner answered .
Kushner , a Princeton graduate in public policy who has lived in Wake County for more than 20 years , has been on the school board of the Wake County Public School System since 2011 .
In our phone conversation , Kushner @ @ @ @ @ @ @ `` academically or for capacity reasons . ''
She disputed claims charter operators have made that the northeast part of the county `` needs seats , '' and she called that claim , `` not an accurate statement . ''
One reason why charter schools are expanding in northeastern Wake County seems to be because they can .
In 2011 , when the North Carolina state legislature voted to lift the state 's maximum limit of 100 charters allowed in the state , there was little to no consideration of where charters should @ @ @ @ @ @ @ with the number of charters nearly doubled , it seems that the charter industry itself has been allowed to determine that .
The state 's light regulatory hand consists of a Charter Schools Advisory Board that receives and reviews charter applications and renewals and makes recommendations to the State Board of Education , which makes the final decision .
It is not uncommon for members of the advisory board to have close associations with charter schools , including Joe Maimone who co-founded a charter , NC Policy Watch 's Progressive Pulse reported ; @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of a charter school , Blue Ridge Now reported ; Cheryl Turner who was a principal of a charter school , Movement reported ; and Lindalyn Kakadelis who was an employee of a state-based right-wing advocacy group that promotes charter schools , Nonprofit Quarterly reported .
Another member , Steven Walker , was appointed by Lieutenant Governor Dan Forest , who the Asheville Citizen-Times and the Courier-Tribune reported has repeatedly tried to squelch information from the state 's education department showing charter schools serve disproportionately larger percentages of white and affluent students .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ a pretty low bar '' for new charter applicants to gain approval , Kushner told me , and the State Board of Education `` often follows the advisory board 's recommendations , '' according to NC Policy Watch .
From a policy standpoint , the geographic placements of charter schools are murky .
The shifting policy justifications for charters—whether they 're a civil rights cause , an agent for improving the performance of public schools , or a necessary choice for choice 's sake—do n't clearly explain why charter schools show up where @ @ @ @ @ @ @ for equity , then why are they showing up in affluent northeast Wake County ?
If charters are needed in places where the state 's public schools are the lowest-performing , then Wake County is well down the list of districts in need .
And if choice for choice 's sake is the goal , then the state 's many rural school districts—where schools are often few and far between , and parents do n't have the wherewithal for private school or homeschooling—seem much more in need of new state-supported education options .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ sake argument seems especially misapplied to Wake County is that the district already offers more choices than are typical of most school districts .
Kushner pointed out that the district has adapted to the `` culture of choice , '' as she put it , by expanding its magnet programs , adding 12 new ones in the last eight years .
In her mind , many of the new charters that have recently opened amount to a `` duplication of seats '' because they 're not offering anything more innovative than what the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ 2019 letter to the state education board , Wake County school board members note one of the new charters offers a Chinese immersion curriculum , despite the district already having a Chinese immersion school and several schools `` where significant portions of the instructional day are provided in Chinese . ''
The letter also points out that another new charter , Doral Academy , is located within 5 miles of 22 schools , two of which are charters and 10 of which are public magnet schools , each with its own diverse curricular @ @ @ @ @ @ @ school proponents who claim these schools have long waitlists of parents who want to enroll their children but ca n't .
Although some of these claims may be true , the numbers often ca n't be confirmed , as pointed out in a 2014 National Education Policy Center memo about charter waitlist numbers generally .
`` I 've heard there are waitlists , '' Kushner said of charters in northeast Wake County , `` but I do n't know if those lists are verified .
[ District schools ] have to be transparent @ @ @ @ @ @ @ that schools are needed in northeast Wake County for academic reasons seems thin too .
Based on an analysis of NC Department of Public Instruction data conducted by nonprofit education advocacy group EducationNC , the state 's school performance report card from 2018-2019 grades about 82 percent of Wake County schools either A , B , or C. Only two schools were rated F. School performance in the district based on EducationNC 's data tends to trend downward going from the western part of the county to the eastern , with more C @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , which could bolster the case for charters in these communities .
However , these school ratings are deceptive .
As state-based advocacy group Public Schools First NC explains , the ratings are calculated based on 80 percent of the weight drawn from test results and 20 percent from year-over-year growth .
This gives a significant advantage to schools serving higher-income students who tend to get better results on standardized tests .
So schools serving greater percentages of low-income students are at a distinct disadvantage even if they produce greater gains with their @ @ @ @ @ @ @ back to the EducationNC analysis of state ratings , when the growth rate is adjusted to 50 percent of the ratings , almost 90 percent of Wake County schools are A , B , or C rated , and none are F schools .
The number of D-rated schools in the northeast corner is significantly reduced .
When income is taken into account , many more schools with 50 percent or more of their students receiving free or reduced-price lunch , a common measure of poverty , are located in the eastern part @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
So if public schools in northeast Wake County have a performance problem , it likely correlates to the population of students they serve and not their ability to serve them .
So why are new charters converging on these communities ?
A few of the more than 900 parents who signed a petition calling for an end to new charters told me their ideas .
Julie Raftery said , `` [ The ] area has become a cash cow for charter schools . ''
`` All these charters are setting up in @ @ @ @ @ @ @ done market research that convinced them to set up here , '' Brad Saunders , another parent and petition signer , told me .
`` They probably have some sort of data . ''
`` It seems like it 's mostly a financial decision , '' Kushner ventured after being pressed .
Charter schools are , after all , businesses , and businesses have existential needs and interests , and when they decide to expand to new markets they can pick a market with evidence of higher consumer demand or a market that @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , rather than being under the regulatory umbrella of democratic school governance , charters are operated by private boards that have intentions that are n't as well known to the surrounding community .
And charters often employ private , even for-profit , organizations to manage their schools , adding yet other motivational factors that can drive expansions .
So if the charter industry is experiencing growth declines in its traditional markets , as Medler and Bellwether have stated , charter entrepreneurs have gradually turned to new markets in suburban America .
Another Bellwether @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the decline in charter growth set in , 57 percent of charter-school students lived in cities , versus just 25 percent of public school children .
In a 2015 article for the Atlantic , Laura McKenna observed that charter schools were `` less popular in suburbs than in cities '' due to policy decisions and high levels of dissatisfaction urban parents had for their public schools .
Many states , such as Missouri , confined charters only to the largest urban school districts , and charter advocates have been lobbying to eliminate those @ @ @ @ @ @ @ were eagerly eyeing states that had recently lifted restrictions on charter expansion , where they expected new markets would open up in suburban communities .
When charters were legalized in North Carolina in 1997 , early charter startups were mostly in urban communities—including Durham , Charlotte , and Raleigh .
But as elsewhere , new startups and enrollment growth in these communities have been slowing down .
So when the state lifted the cap on the number of charters , suburban communities became logical targets for the industry .
But if business imperatives @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , why Wake County suburbs ?
`` It 's an easier entry point to get into the school business , '' Kushner offered .
She suggested that by expanding in these communities , charters can attract marginal-cost students who are less likely to require special services , which can lower the school 's outlay per student without affecting revenue .
They can also attract parents who have increased mobility because they have a car and time to transport students to and from school .
In one of the few empirical studies of why @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of Illinois professors Christopher Lubienski and Peter Weitzel and Brown University professor Charisse Gulosino found that `` market competition induces most charter schools to locate in areas where they have a competitive advantage ( often on the periphery ) , capitalizing on the opportunity to target students with less risky socioeconomic and demographic backgrounds . ''
Especially when communities are being targeted by for-profit-oriented charter schools , as is the case in northeast Wake County , the study found , `` key decisions about where to locate appear to be driven by the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ in exchange for appealing to less riskier students in neighborhoods with low need indices , utilizing the incentives that arise from choice and competition .
For-profit charter schools frequently avoid areas with students who may be most likely to damage their market position . ''
When I first contacted Lubienski about the study for an article I wrote in 2016 , he described to me how charter operators , especially those operated by for-profit management companies like the ones moving into Wake County , employ `` ringing strategies '' in which they 'll @ @ @ @ @ @ @ with more disadvantaged students to lure the more-advantaged families with time and access to transportation to enroll their children in suburban schools .
Lubienski described how this strategy often leads to the creation of `` white flight '' schools that serve higher concentrations of white and more well-off families , which is what parents say seems to be happening in northeastern Wake County .
`` Charters have become a vehicle for which we see more forms of student sorting , '' he said , `` not just by race , but that 's @ @ @ @ @ @ @ those harder-to-see student characteristics is when the appeal of attending a sparkling new charter that has just shown up in a neighborhood of well-worn public schools attracts the attention of parents who generally have higher aspirations for their children—what I called , and he agreed , a `` bright flight '' of students more inclined toward striving academically .
Another obvious strategy charter school operators use is to cluster near other schools , including charters .
Clustering is a well-known strategy used in the retail industry to more effectively and efficiently market all @ @ @ @ @ @ @ uses of the clustering strategy are food courts , where food vendors actually benefit from being located close to their competitors .
But clustering also works for higher order purchases too , like car dealerships that often locate nearby each other on the outskirts of a metropolitan area to enable families to quickly compare different makes and prices of cars .
`` Obviously , businesspeople are doing the analysis to determine locations of charters , '' Lubienski surmised , `` and there are a lot of considerations , including the availability of buildings @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to site new schools .
`` Land is still generally available in the eastern part of our county , '' Kushner confirmed , `` which is not true of the western part . ''
Not only is land available in eastern Wake County , it 's also rapidly increasing in value .
Communities being targeted by charters are some of the fastest-growing in the state , with housing markets that are booming .
Even though charter schools are financed with public money , they often own their land and school buildings and can @ @ @ @ @ @ @ sell them at a profit .
This is a reason why many charter operators have their own associated real estate development businesses .
Charter Schools USA , which operates two of the new charters Wake County parents are objecting to , has its own development firm , Red Apple Development .
Doral Academy ( which Wake County school board members pointed out in their 2019 letter was redundant to existing schools nearby ) is operated by Academica , which is also a landlord to charter schools it manages , according to In the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ are based in Florida , where charter schools have become a hugely lucrative investment and real estate enterprise .
It 's also not at all unusual to find charter school boards populated with people who have connections to the real estate industry .
Hilda A. Parlér , for instance , is owner of Parlér Properties LLC , founder and president of Wake Forest Charter Academy , and founder and president of Wake Preparatory Academy , according to her business 's website .
She also briefly served on the state 's Charter Schools Advisory @ @ @ @ @ @ @ make money operating and building charter schools , according to the News and Observer .
`` Charter schools are mostly looking for places where they can locate and sustain their revenue sources , '' Lubienski said .
In the case of northeast Wake County , the more lucrative revenue source by far could be in real estate .
Better Schools or Better Marketing In their applications to open new campuses , charter operators justify the need for their schools with multiple reasons , often by including an analysis showing the need for more @ @ @ @ @ @ @ argument about the low performance of a district 's current schools compared to the charter 's supposed superior instructional model—an argument that is often unsupported by any third-party research .
However , charter school applications often seem to read as if they were conceived after the decision was already made about the education market to be targeted .
Applications for two new schools managed by Charter Schools USA—North Raleigh Charter Academy and Wendell Falls Charter Academy—include the statement , `` The information we have provided in this application may be similar or identical @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the application of other applicants who have also partnered with CSUSA . ''
The application for North Raleigh Charter says the school `` plans to focus on the student population residing in and around the Wake Forest community located in north Wake County , '' while the application for Wendell Falls pledges to `` focus on the student population residing in and around the Wendell community located in northeast Wake County . ''
`` Wake Forest was chosen due to its current student-aged population and population growth rate , as well as the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ schools , '' one application states , while the other declares , `` The community of Wendell was chosen due to its population growth and lack of school choice in the area . ''
Much of the rationale for the perceived need for charter schools often seems to boil down to marketing .
`` Charters have honed their message to attract Black and Latinx students over the years , particularly with the ploy that charters can provide students with a private school educational experience , '' Preston Green told me .
`` It @ @ @ @ @ @ @ also sway suburban parents . ''
Green , a University of Connecticut professor , is the author of numerous critical studies of charter schools , including one in which he argued that the charter industry 's operations resemble the business practices of Enron , the mammoth energy corporation that collapsed under a weight of debt and scandal .
`` Some of these charters are also marketing themselves as a vehicle for students to attend well-regarded universities , '' Green said .
`` This advertising can be very attractive to parents who want to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ '' Some Wake County parents also attributed the allure of charters to a narrative created by news media .
`` You hear the nightly school reports about bad things happening in public schools like a student bringing a knife to school or a student calling in false alarms about a shooter , '' said Saunders , whose work is in sales and marketing .
`` Some parents just do n't want their children to be exposed to this .
People think these kinds of things never happen in charters . ''
A new @ @ @ @ @ @ @ North Carolina is about how during the pandemic local public schools struggled to provide remote learning to their students while charter schools `` have n't missed… a step . ''
Yet , many new charter schools that were scheduled to open during the pandemic have chosen not to open , Kushner said .
And existing North Carolina charters that have stayed open have become sites of cluster outbreaks , report WFAE and the Charlotte Observer .
When I reached out to Lubienski to see if there was an update to his 2009 study @ @ @ @ @ @ @ in an email that he and his coauthors were completing a statewide analysis of charter schools in Indiana and were n't ready to share results .
But consistent with his previous findings , he continues to find that charters , especially the ones that count on making profits , tend to `` focus on the bottom line by limiting costs '' and `` locating in places that tend to filter out the 'less desirable ' students . ''
`` There are certainly a lot of charter operators trying to do good , and @ @ @ @ @ @ @ he wrote .
`` But the amazing amount of financial scandals we 've seen with many charter operators suggests that some are in it for the money , and not for the kids . ''
Ferreting out the intentions of charter school operators may or may not be something government officials or parents are very good at .
But in the meantime , having the decision of where to locate charter schools solely left up to the business plans of charter entrepreneurs seems like a less than effective way to ensure all families @ @ @ @ @ @ @ What gets lost in the discussion , '' said Kushner , `` is that schools need to be accountable to the whole of the community , not just to the parents who may happen to choose them . ''
This article was produced by Our Schools .
Jeff Bryant is a writing fellow and chief correspondent for Our Schools .
He is a communications consultant , freelance writer , advocacy journalist , and director of the Education Opportunity Network , a strategy and messaging center for progressive education policy .
His award-winning commentary @ @ @ @ @ @ @ news outlets , and he speaks frequently at national events about public education policy .
Follow him on Twitter @ jeffbcdm .

As the COVID-19 pandemic began closing school buildings and forcing schools to quickly ramp up online learning programs in April, an op-ed by Alex Medler, the executive director of the Colorado Association of Charter School Authorizers, made an appeal to Betsy DeVos's Department of Education to change the guidelines of her department's grants for new charter school startups to allow the money to go to existing charter schools. Medler justified the request to address "immediate needs during the pandemic." But when Chalkbeat broke the story that DeVos would agree with Medler and approve Florida's request to repurpose about $10 million in grant money for new charter schools to be redirected to existing charters, Medler made the curious admission to Chalkbeat reporter Matt Barnum that another reason for the need to change grant requirements was because "there aren't enough new [charter] schools being created across the country to spend all the… money on the one purpose of funding the start-up of new charters."
Is the charter school industry, even before the current crisis, really on the skids?
The annual rate of charter school growth nationwide from 2014 to 2016 was half of what it was between 2008 and 2014, according to a 2019 report from pro-charter nonprofit Bellwether Education Partners. And in some states where charters have proliferated, these schools are seeing student enrollments drop.
Many communities that have been reliable markets for the charter industry are now having fewer new charter school openings. Some of these cities are getting no new charters at all.
But this negative view of the charter market is contradicted by evidence of new charter schools proliferating in some places.
One of those places is northeast Wake County, North Carolina, a suburban sprawl outside Raleigh that includes Rolesville, Wake Forest, Wakefield, Zebulon, and other rapidly growing bedroom communities. The generally affluent region—the sixth-wealthiest zip code in the state—is now home to 11 out of the 24 Wake County charter schools. And more are scheduled to open.
In 2019, local school officials and school PTAs implored the North Carolina State Board of Education not to approve the two newest charters coming to Wake Forest, a community in northeast Wake County, arguing that charter "saturation" was adding to racial segregation in local schools and threatening to financially destabilize the district. The state board approved the schools anyway.
In 2020, Wake County parents have written letters to local news outlets saying new charter schools aren't needed, and they've protested at public hearings considering whether to open the new charters.
One of the charters the state had approved to open in Wake Forest, Wake Preparatory Academy, was rejected by the town's Board of Commissioners, the Wake Forest Gazette reported, because the board found the school's site plan and subdivision proposal had not met the town's requirements. The school is appealing the ruling to the state.
Why are new charter schools opening in northeast Wake County?
"Charter schools can open where they choose," Christine Kushner answered. Kushner, a Princeton graduate in public policy who has lived in Wake County for more than 20 years, has been on the school board of the Wake County Public School System since 2011.
In our phone conversation, Kushner asserted the schools are not needed, "academically or for capacity reasons." She disputed claims charter operators have made that the northeast part of the county "needs seats," and she called that claim, "not an accurate statement."
One reason why charter schools are expanding in northeastern Wake County seems to be because they can.
In 2011, when the North Carolina state legislature voted to lift the state's maximum limit of 100 charters allowed in the state, there was little to no consideration of where charters should expand to. Ten years later, with the number of charters nearly doubled, it seems that the charter industry itself has been allowed to determine that.
The state's light regulatory hand consists of a Charter Schools Advisory Board that receives and reviews charter applications and renewals and makes recommendations to the State Board of Education, which makes the final decision.
It is not uncommon for members of the advisory board to have close associations with charter schools, including Joe Maimone who co-founded a charter, NC Policy Watch's Progressive Pulse reported; Jeannette Butterworth who served on the board of a charter school, Blue Ridge Now reported; Cheryl Turner who was a principal of a charter school, Movement reported; and Lindalyn Kakadelis who was an employee of a state-based right-wing advocacy group that promotes charter schools, Nonprofit Quarterly reported.
Another member, Steven Walker, was appointed by Lieutenant Governor Dan Forest, who the Asheville Citizen-Times and the Courier-Tribune reported has repeatedly tried to squelch information from the state's education department showing charter schools serve disproportionately larger percentages of white and affluent students.
The Charter Schools Advisory Board sets "a pretty low bar" for new charter applicants to gain approval, Kushner told me, and the State Board of Education "often follows the advisory board's recommendations," according to NC Policy Watch.
A Policy Mystery
From a policy standpoint, the geographic placements of charter schools are murky.
The shifting policy justifications for charters—whether they're a civil rights cause, an agent for improving the performance of public schools, or a necessary choice for choice's sake—don't clearly explain why charter schools show up where they do.
If charters are necessary for equity, then why are they showing up in affluent northeast Wake County? If charters are needed in places where the state's public schools are the lowest-performing, then Wake County is well down the list of districts in need. And if choice for choice's sake is the goal, then the state's many rural school districts—where schools are often few and far between, and parents don't have the wherewithal for private school or homeschooling—seem much more in need of new state-supported education options.
Another reason the choice for choice's sake argument seems especially misapplied to Wake County is that the district already offers more choices than are typical of most school districts.
Kushner pointed out that the district has adapted to the "culture of choice," as she put it, by expanding its magnet programs, adding 12 new ones in the last eight years. In her mind, many of the new charters that have recently opened amount to a "duplication of seats" because they're not offering anything more innovative than what the surrounding district schools offer.
In a 2019 letter to the state education board, Wake County school board members note one of the new charters offers a Chinese immersion curriculum, despite the district already having a Chinese immersion school and several schools "where significant portions of the instructional day are provided in Chinese."
The letter also points out that another new charter, Doral Academy, is located within 5 miles of 22 schools, two of which are charters and 10 of which are public magnet schools, each with its own diverse curricular theme.
Kushner is skeptical of charter school proponents who claim these schools have long waitlists of parents who want to enroll their children but can't. Although some of these claims may be true, the numbers often can't be confirmed, as pointed out in a 2014 National Education Policy Center memo about charter waitlist numbers generally.
"I've heard there are waitlists," Kushner said of charters in northeast Wake County, "but I don't know if those lists are verified. [District schools] have to be transparent about our enrollments."
The Education Imperative
The argument that schools are needed in northeast Wake County for academic reasons seems thin too.
Based on an analysis of NC Department of Public Instruction data conducted by nonprofit education advocacy group EducationNC, the state's school performance report card from 2018-2019 grades about 82 percent of Wake County schools either A, B, or C. Only two schools were rated F.
School performance in the district based on EducationNC's data tends to trend downward going from the western part of the county to the eastern, with more C and D-rated schools in the northeast corner, which could bolster the case for charters in these communities.
However, these school ratings are deceptive. As state-based advocacy group Public Schools First NC explains, the ratings are calculated based on 80 percent of the weight drawn from test results and 20 percent from year-over-year growth. This gives a significant advantage to schools serving higher-income students who tend to get better results on standardized tests. So schools serving greater percentages of low-income students are at a distinct disadvantage even if they produce greater gains with their students from year to year.
Going back to the EducationNC analysis of state ratings, when the growth rate is adjusted to 50 percent of the ratings, almost 90 percent of Wake County schools are A, B, or C rated, and none are F schools. The number of D-rated schools in the northeast corner is significantly reduced.
When income is taken into account, many more schools with 50 percent or more of their students receiving free or reduced-price lunch, a common measure of poverty, are located in the eastern part of the county than in the western.
So if public schools in northeast Wake County have a performance problem, it likely correlates to the population of students they serve and not their ability to serve them.
The Business Imperative
So why are new charters converging on these communities?
A few of the more than 900 parents who signed a petition calling for an end to new charters told me their ideas.
Julie Raftery said, "[The] area has become a cash cow for charter schools."
"All these charters are setting up in northeast Wake County because they've likely done market research that convinced them to set up here," Brad Saunders, another parent and petition signer, told me. "They probably have some sort of data."
"It seems like it's mostly a financial decision," Kushner ventured after being pressed.
Charter schools are, after all, businesses, and businesses have existential needs and interests, and when they decide to expand to new markets they can pick a market with evidence of higher consumer demand or a market that offers prospects for higher profitability.
Also, rather than being under the regulatory umbrella of democratic school governance, charters are operated by private boards that have intentions that aren't as well known to the surrounding community. And charters often employ private, even for-profit, organizations to manage their schools, adding yet other motivational factors that can drive expansions.
So if the charter industry is experiencing growth declines in its traditional markets, as Medler and Bellwether have stated, charter entrepreneurs have gradually turned to new markets in suburban America.
Another Bellwether report found that in 2015-2016, before the decline in charter growth set in, 57 percent of charter-school students lived in cities, versus just 25 percent of public school children.
In a 2015 article for the Atlantic, Laura McKenna observed that charter schools were "less popular in suburbs than in cities" due to policy decisions and high levels of dissatisfaction urban parents had for their public schools. Many states, such as Missouri, confined charters only to the largest urban school districts, and charter advocates have been lobbying to eliminate those restrictions.
McKenna also noted charter advocates were eagerly eyeing states that had recently lifted restrictions on charter expansion, where they expected new markets would open up in suburban communities.
When charters were legalized in North Carolina in 1997, early charter startups were mostly in urban communities—including Durham, Charlotte, and Raleigh. But as elsewhere, new startups and enrollment growth in these communities have been slowing down. So when the state lifted the cap on the number of charters, suburban communities became logical targets for the industry.
Charter School Retail Strategies
But if business imperatives demand that charters move to the suburbs, why Wake County suburbs?
"It's an easier entry point to get into the school business," Kushner offered.
She suggested that by expanding in these communities, charters can attract marginal-cost students who are less likely to require special services, which can lower the school's outlay per student without affecting revenue. They can also attract parents who have increased mobility because they have a car and time to transport students to and from school.
Kushner's hunch is supported by research.
In one of the few empirical studies of why charters locate where they do, University of Illinois professors Christopher Lubienski and Peter Weitzel and Brown University professor Charisse Gulosino found that "market competition induces most charter schools to locate in areas where they have a competitive advantage (often on the periphery), capitalizing on the opportunity to target students with less risky socioeconomic and demographic backgrounds."
Especially when communities are being targeted by for-profit-oriented charter schools, as is the case in northeast Wake County, the study found, "key decisions about where to locate appear to be driven by the willingness to pay high real estate costs in exchange for appealing to less riskier students in neighborhoods with low need indices, utilizing the incentives that arise from choice and competition. For-profit charter schools frequently avoid areas with students who may be most likely to damage their market position."
When I first contacted Lubienski about the study for an article I wrote in 2016, he described to me how charter operators, especially those operated by for-profit management companies like the ones moving into Wake County, employ "ringing strategies" in which they'll locate schools on the outskirts of communities with more disadvantaged students to lure the more-advantaged families with time and access to transportation to enroll their children in suburban schools.
Lubienski described how this strategy often leads to the creation of "white flight" schools that serve higher concentrations of white and more well-off families, which is what parents say seems to be happening in northeastern Wake County.
"Charters have become a vehicle for which we see more forms of student sorting," he said, "not just by race, but that's easier to see."
One of those harder-to-see student characteristics is when the appeal of attending a sparkling new charter that has just shown up in a neighborhood of well-worn public schools attracts the attention of parents who generally have higher aspirations for their children—what I called, and he agreed, a "bright flight" of students more inclined toward striving academically.
Another obvious strategy charter school operators use is to cluster near other schools, including charters. Clustering is a well-known strategy used in the retail industry to more effectively and efficiently market all sorts of goods.
The most obvious uses of the clustering strategy are food courts, where food vendors actually benefit from being located close to their competitors. But clustering also works for higher order purchases too, like car dealerships that often locate nearby each other on the outskirts of a metropolitan area to enable families to quickly compare different makes and prices of cars.
A Land Rush
"Obviously, businesspeople are doing the analysis to determine locations of charters," Lubienski surmised, "and there are a lot of considerations, including the availability of buildings and land" that can influence where to site new schools.
"Land is still generally available in the eastern part of our county," Kushner confirmed, "which is not true of the western part."
Not only is land available in eastern Wake County, it's also rapidly increasing in value. Communities being targeted by charters are some of the fastest-growing in the state, with housing markets that are booming.
Even though charter schools are financed with public money, they often own their land and school buildings and can lease them to a subsidiary and eventually sell them at a profit.
This is a reason why many charter operators have their own associated real estate development businesses.
Charter Schools USA, which operates two of the new charters Wake County parents are objecting to, has its own development firm, Red Apple Development. Doral Academy (which Wake County school board members pointed out in their 2019 letter was redundant to existing schools nearby) is operated by Academica, which is also a landlord to charter schools it manages, according to In the Public Interest.
Both of these companies arebased in Florida, where charter schools have become a hugely lucrative investment and real estate enterprise.
It's also not at all unusual to find charter school boards populated with people who have connections to the real estate industry.
Hilda A. Parlér, for instance, is owner of Parlér Properties LLC, founder and president of Wake Forest Charter Academy, and founder and president of Wake Preparatory Academy, according to her business's website. She also briefly served on the state's Charter Schools Advisory Board where she had the opportunity to make money operating and building charter schools, according to the News and Observer.
"Charter schools are mostly looking for places where they can locate and sustain their revenue sources," Lubienski said. In the case of northeast Wake County, the more lucrative revenue source by far could be in real estate.
Better Schools or Better Marketing
In their applications to open new campuses, charter operators justify the need for their schools with multiple reasons, often by including an analysis showing the need for more seats in a given area or an argument about the low performance of a district's current schools compared to the charter's supposed superior instructional model—an argument that is often unsupported by any third-party research.
However, charter school applications often seem to read as if they were conceived after the decision was already made about the education market to be targeted.
Applications for two new schools managed by Charter Schools USA—North Raleigh Charter Academy and Wendell Falls Charter Academy—include the statement, "The information we have provided in this application may be similar or identical to information that you will find in the application of other applicants who have also partnered with CSUSA."
The application for North Raleigh Charter says the school "plans to focus on the student population residing in and around the Wake Forest community located in north Wake County," while the application for Wendell Falls pledges to "focus on the student population residing in and around the Wendell community located in northeast Wake County."
"Wake Forest was chosen due to its current student-aged population and population growth rate, as well as the overcrowding and below-average performance of the public schools," one application states, while the other declares, "The community of Wendell was chosen due to its population growth and lack of school choice in the area."
Much of the rationale for the perceived need for charter schools often seems to boil down to marketing.
"Charters have honed their message to attract Black and Latinx students over the years, particularly with the ploy that charters can provide students with a private school educational experience," Preston Green told me. "It is quite possible that this messaging might also sway suburban parents."
Green, a University of Connecticut professor, is the author of numerous critical studies of charter schools, including one in which he argued that the charter industry's operations resemble the business practices of Enron, the mammoth energy corporation that collapsed under a weight of debt and scandal.
"Some of these charters are also marketing themselves as a vehicle for students to attend well-regarded universities," Green said. "This advertising can be very attractive to parents who want to give their children every possible advantage."
Some Wake County parents also attributed the allure of charters to a narrative created by news media.
"You hear the nightly school reports about bad things happening in public schools like a student bringing a knife to school or a student calling in false alarms about a shooter," said Saunders, whose work is in sales and marketing. "Some parents just don't want their children to be exposed to this. People think these kinds of things never happen in charters."
A new narrative pushed by pro-charter media outlets in North Carolina is about how during the pandemic local public schools struggled to provide remote learning to their students while charter schools "haven't missed… a step."
Yet, many new charter schools that were scheduled to open during the pandemic have chosen not to open, Kushner said. And existing North Carolina charters that have stayed open have become sites of cluster outbreaks, report WFAE and the Charlotte Observer.
'What Gets Lost'
When I reached out to Lubienski to see if there was an update to his 2009 study of charter school geolocation, he replied in an email that he and his coauthors were completing a statewide analysis of charter schools in Indiana and weren't ready to share results.
But consistent with his previous findings, he continues to find that charters, especially the ones that count on making profits, tend to "focus on the bottom line by limiting costs" and "locating in places that tend to filter out the 'less desirable' students."
"There are certainly a lot of charter operators trying to do good, and do it the right way," he wrote. "But the amazing amount of financial scandals we've seen with many charter operators suggests that some are in it for the money, and not for the kids."
Ferreting out the intentions of charter school operators may or may not be something government officials or parents are very good at. But in the meantime, having the decision of where to locate charter schools solely left up to the business plans of charter entrepreneurs seems like a less than effective way to ensure all families and taxpayers are well served.
"What gets lost in the discussion," said Kushner, "is that schools need to be accountable to the whole of the community, not just to the parents who may happen to choose them."
This article was produced by Our Schools. Jeff Bryant is a writing fellow and chief correspondent for Our Schools. He is a communications consultant, freelance writer, advocacy journalist, and director of the Education Opportunity Network, a strategy and messaging center for progressive education policy. His award-winning commentary and reporting routinely appear in prominent online news outlets, and he speaks frequently at national events about public education policy. Follow him on Twitter @jeffbcdm.