The honeymoon is over for SC charter school “sponsors”
The honeymoon is over for SC charter school “sponsors”
A private religious college became the largest authorizer of "public" charter schools. Now its being countersued by a former partner for allegations including breach of contract and racketeering.
Americans take it for granted that their schools operate with student and community well-being in mind, and not the fundamental mission of wringing profit out of the enterprise.
-Jennifer Berkshire and Jack Schneider, The Education Wars
About a year ago, I shared a piece about “classical education” in which I wrote:
The intellectual shallowness of the “classical education” platform is that many of its proponents believe everyone should read, say, Homer’s Odyssey, while no one (at least, no student) should pursue gender studies as a major or read How to Be an Antiracist. This argument will be made on the basis that the “classical education” folks find specific words— like a single, out-of-context passage about affirmative action from Kendi— offensive. Yet if we asked if they believed the depictions of murder, religious impiety, sexuality, adultery, and other vices in The Odyssey, or the explicit promotion of slavery in Aristotle’s Politics, or the depiction of incest and fratricide in Sophocles’ Oedipus the King, or the theoretical promotion of disinformation and indoctrination in Plato’s Republic, disqualified these pillars of the “classical” canon from being read by children, many of the same folks would scoff and say that these things must be read in context of the text, that we don’t have to agree with everything Homer or Plato writes in order to gain academic skills or wisdom from his writing.
But recent reporting from The State’s Zak Koeske (also available here) and others demonstrates yet again that the “classical education” game can be not only intellectually shallow but also ethically questionable and structurally opaque.
Charter Institute at Erskine (CIE) is South Carolina’s largest public charter authorizer. It is affiliated with the private, Christian “biblical worldview” Erskine College (which, depending on who you ask, might mean that the two entities are essentially the same organization). Erskine seems to have gotten into the public charter authorizer game at least in part because its own declining enrollment was hurting its finances.
In May of this year, CIE sued one of its former partners, Reason & Republic, for allegedly failing to pay $1 million as part of a buyout deal between the two groups. In response, last week, Reason & Republic countersued, alleging that CIE had violated the terms of their agreement and deliberately sabotaged Reason & Republic schools, as part of a scheme to promote its own competing private K-12 services.
The main players in the drama, as indicated in the filing, are Cameron Runyan and James Galyean.
Cameron Runyan (Charter Institute at Erskine)
Cameron Runyan is a former Columbia City Council member, perhaps most infamous for his 2013 plan to unconstitutionally round up homeless citizens and bus them up to fifteen miles out of town to a facility where they would essentially be jailed. (The city’s recurring strategy is to close shelters for unhoused people, increasinly arrest homeless residents, and then to freak out when having nowhere to stay results in large numbers of people on the streets.)
Runyan’s policy was passed by the council, but the city’s interim police chief told The State at the time (via HuffPost), “Homelessness is not a crime. We can’t just take people to somewhere they don’t want to go. I can’t do that. I won’t do that.” After national outcry, the city backed down, and Runyan claimed that the moving to a shelter part of the plan was optional, even though this was unstated in the original policy language.
Runyan was also the only council member to vote against providing health benefits for city employees who are LGBTQ+, making a statement in which he said,
…my eyes were opened a few years ago to the reality that increasing moral relativism is contributing to the unraveling of the societal foundations we all depend on. Because so many now see all moral issues as being relative to the individual, we are quickly becoming a society where absolute moral truth no longer exists.
The idea of “absolute moral truth”— which for Runyan apparently does not include compassion for the homeless— is a popular one in classical charter world, where a surface focus on ancient philosophy and “foundational documents” can sometimes seem to be a fancy mask for those who don’t want to come right out and say We want to be able to mandate h a specific ideology, religious worldview, or set of political ideas, and to be able to exclude people we don’t like. This is one thing when a school is openly private, raises its own funds, and caters to clients who choose to be inculcated into that worldview, and another when it seeks to be approved by the state to operate as a public school, receiving public funds.
At some point, Runyan decided he wanted to start his own charter school, and asked the state’s public charter school district to authorize it. The district rejected his request in 2017, saying “Runyan’s team failed to detail a sufficient education program, draft a sound economic plan and delineate students’ rights and responsibilities” (via Post and Courier.) That’s when he seems to have gotten together with Erskine College and founded the Charter Institute at Erskine (CIE), which is sometimes presented as a separate entity from Erskine College, though Reason & Republic’s court filing challenges this notion:
Because South Carolina law requires the Sponsor under these circumstances to be an “independent institution of higher learning,” the activities of Erskine in its charter school program are non-delegable, such that all actions of CIE related to this Counterclaim were taken as Erskine’s agent and are attributable to Erskine…. For the purposes of their statutory role as Sponsor, Erskine and CIE [Charter Institute at Erskine] are alter egos of one another.”
According to this, Erskine, the private college, is administering public funds intended for public schools— as the law, passed by a General Assembly that has long struggled to pass vouchers over public opposition, plainly intends to allow.
In the great tradition of “independent” schools, Runyan, a finance guy who has no educational training or experience, became the superintendent of the CIE school district.
During CIE’s first year, ten schools transferred over from the state-run public charter school district, raising the question of whether they were simply seeking greater freedom to “innovate,” or whether they were trying to stay open without meeting the state’s requirements.
More recently, CIE has created controversy by sponsoring or seeking to sponsor out-of-state schools. As Koeske pointed out in April, this raises additional questions about “why the publicly funded organization’s leaders want to open schools in another state and whether taxpayer dollars or employee time were expended on the effort.”
This effort is part of the evidence Galyean’s complaint lays out for CIE’s alleged scheme to undermine Reason & Republic.
James Galyean (Reason & Republic, Icelaven)
Perhaps fitting for people who like to talk about “classical” education a lot, the charter school authorizer world seems about as incestuous as a Greek tragedy.
Reason & Republic head James Galyean was once house counsel for CIE, and Runyan allegedly approached Galyean about starting up Reason & Republic in the first place. (Or, as the court filing puts it, “Galyean had assisted Erskine in becoming a Sponsor and the establishment of [Reason & Republic’s Belton Preparatory Academy] and Summit as part of Erskine’s initial group of charter schools.”)
Like Runyan, Galyean seems quite politically connected. He ran for a state House seat this year, but lost the Republican primary to Blake Sanders.
Somewhat ironically, given Galyean’s own accusations against his former bosses at CIE, he had this to say about “school choice” on his campaign website:
Those who claim “public dollars shouldn’t go to private education” forget where those “public dollars” come from – they come from the private citizens in paying their taxes. There is nothing wrong with families overseeing their children’s education with some of the tax dollars that are taken from them.
As the complaint itself lays out, the fact that CIE was overseeing the charter for Galyean’s Reason & Republic schools— Summit Classical, Belton Preparatory Academy, and South Carolina Preparatory Academy— meant that it was up to CIE to approve “amendments to the Charters of the Charter Schools allowing Reason & Republic to serve as the management company for the Charter Schools.” It’s hard to see the role of “families”— not to mention other “private citizens” without students attending those schools— in overseeing decisions like this.
And if his significant political contributions are any indication, Galyean is happy to support folks who actively undermine public schools in order to support a privatization agenda. Galyean, his MSE Group, or members of his household have donated at least $41,000 to SC political candidates since 2010, according to ethics filings, including at least $14,000 to Ellen Weaver and at least $1,000 to librarian-doxxing state rep April Cromer. (In a sad irony given the current lawsuit, Galyean personally donated $200 to Runyan in 2016.)
How did we get here?
At some point, Runyan’s and Galyean’s organizations had a falling out, and in May, CIE filed its $1 million suit. The countersuit from Galyean’s organizations against both CIE and Erskine College (and, for defamation, against Runyan and other CIE officials) lays out allegations (including for violation of the Freedom of Information Act and anti-racketeering laws) that give us far more information about what is potentially going on behind the scenes than we perhaps would have gotten otherwise.
The Post and Courier summarizes Galyean’s claims thusly:
In addition to blackmail and criminal coercion, Galyean's 30-page countersuit on a raft of claims alleges the college is guilty of breach of contract, defamation and violations of the Freedom of Information Act.
Galyean’s claim specifically alleges that CIE deliberately undermined the relationship between Belton Prep, “the first classical public school in South Carolina” and Reason & Republic, and that CIE “ conducted a campaign of private phone calls, emails and executive sessions with the Boards of BPA and the other Charter Schools… This aforementioned campaign was in direct violation of South Carolina’s Freedom of Information Act…”
The complaint goes on to allege that CIE used similar tactics at Summit Classical School (which has since shut down) and a third Reason & Republic “classical” charter school, SC Prep.
Intentionally or not, these claims not only allege a chaotic relationship between CIE and Reason & Republic, but also undermine Galyean’s own claims about parents and taxpayers being able to oversee the actions of private entities overseeing public education funds— particularly because it outlines a number of actions taken by Reason & Republic, such as setting up bank accounts and developing new construction, that created tension between CIE and Reason & Republic. The complaint paints a picture of fiscal and educational management where two unelected, private entities and their representatives fight for control over a “public” school.
Battle of the “Classical Charters”
The filing suggests that a motivator for Charter Institute at Erskine’s allegedly nefarious dealings is CIE’s development of its own competing private school services, including Teach Right USA.
Teach Right USA’s board includes:
Todd Atwater is a former SC House representative, and former Attorney General candidate (he lost to Alan Wilson). According to The Post and Courier, Atwater “voted on several bills supported by a state physician's advocacy group while he was the organization's top executive,” so that might give a general idea of how he feels about oversight and conflict of interest.
Dr. Brian Newsome is principal of Grey Collegiate charter (authorized by CIE), a public charter school with both a respected reputation and a history of controversy over its athletics program.
Stewart Rodman is Vice Board Chair of Palmetto Promise Institute (an organization which was until recently run by Superintendent of Education Ellen Weaver, and is currently listed as part of the Project 2025 advisory board).
Teach Right Executive Director Tracey Williams wrote a piece claiming the organization’s goal was to address SC’s catastrophic teacher recruitment issues by reducing the training required to be a teacher (another common school privatization talking point).
Reason & Republic, in contrast, has a board that seems to consist more of trained educators than of political heavy-hitters. Its two chief officers even have formal backgrounds in education. While Reason & Republic certainly has its own issues, what we currently know suggests that CIE has not put itself in a strong position to argue it is the good guy here.
A lack of state oversight leads to “authorizer shopping” and questions about charter school performance.
It makes sense that CIE, in particular, is under the microscope, since the most recent data from the SC Department of Education shows its schools’ median academic “performance index” is actually lower than that of the state as a whole, and lower than that of the state-run Public Charter School District. Both charter districts showed lower performance than the median “traditional” school in the state, but performance in CIE was significant. In a national CREDO/ Stanford study, charter schools in general performed well, and only three states showed “negative and significant learning advances in math” compared to traditional public schools. South Carolina was one of those three.
While some SC lawmakers have been calling for more specific oversight of CIE, SC House Education Chair Shannon Erickson also introduced a budget proviso at the end of the session— a Senate version of which, authored by Tom Davis, was ultimately adopted— that allows charter schools which lose authorization from one provider to seek it from another provider (a practice sometimes called “authorizer shopping,” which is opposed by the National Association of Charter School Authorizers). Essentially, the state created alternative venues for non-state entities to ensure publicly funded schools are complying with the law, but then made that oversight weaker by allowing schools to jump ship when they would otherwise lose their charters for failing to effectively use state funds.
As Senate Education Chair Greg Hembree bluntly stated about the proviso, “This throws out the oversight of charter schools”.
Authorizer shopping isn’t a new problem in the state, either. In 2018, several schools that were deemed failing by the (public) state charter school district requested a transfer— to CIE. They were denied, but there was evidently nothing the state could do to stop them, and CIE ultimately accepted them. As the Greenville News reported at the time,
Wondering aloud how the schools can leave after being denied a transfer, state Sen. Sean Bennett, R-Dorchester, said, “I just thought polygamy was illegal.”
However, according to an attorney for the state charter school district, S.C.
law does not prohibit charter school organizations from holding multiple charters – contracts promising to meet specific goals in exchange for more freedom and autonomy than traditional public schools.
On the one hand, Erickson presented the proviso as an attempt to avoid the specific kinds of problems raised in Galyean’s lawsuit, where a for-profit, private company is able to use state-granted power to interfere with the way charter schools, including “public” charter schools, run themselves— even, as the lawsuit alleges, for private financial gain. Erickson told the Post and Courier that her version of the proviso was inspired by CIE’s decision to revoke the charter of Oceanside Academy.
(It should be noted here that Runyan appears to have donated to Erickson’s campaign,
But on the other hand, all of this back-and-forth highlights a fundamental issue with the way “public” charter schools are managed in South Carolina. The state constitution explicitly forbids “direct aid to religious or other private educational institutions”. Yet the 1996 South Carolina Charter School Act defines authorizers (or, in the phrasing of the Act, “sponsors,”) as any of the following:
the South Carolina Public Charter School District Board of Trustees, the local school board of trustees in which the charter school is to be located, as provided by law, a public institution of higher learning as defined in Section 59-103-5, or an independent institution of higher learning as defined in Section 59-113-50…
Like so-called “Education Savings Accounts” (often called neo-vouchers, and another innovation introduced to the state by Erickson, according to Palmetto Promise’s Oran Smith), this language seems to deliberately attempt to skirt around the state constitution by requiring the state to fund private entities which are supposed to oversee public schools.
The fact that Erickson co-sponsored a resolution to change the State Constitution in order to allow the direct funding of private and religious schools suggests she is aware of this ongoing conflict.
And as with ESAs, this predictably creates a problem where the state is often paying the fox to the supervise the henhouse— since private charter authorizers, as the lawsuit seems to demonstrate, have an interest in promoting their own profit and products even at the expense of their own schools. The difficulties in sorting out the issues between Reason & Republic and CIE demonstrate just how little transparency any of this grants the public.
While an ad hoc committee was formed by the legislature to improve the existing charter school authorizer law, as The Post and Courier reported in May,
Lawmakers on the committee blamed the pandemic for diverting their attention. Around that time, from Jan. 1, 2018, to May 31, 2023, lobbying dollars from pro-charter school advocates surged, a Post and Courier analysis found.
Companies running charter schools at the Institute spent over $429,000 on lobbying during that time frame, according to South Carolina State Ethics Commission filings. The Institute spent more than $526,000 from Jan. 1 2018, to June 1, 2023, and the Association spent $80,000 from Jan. 1, 2022, to June 1, 2023.
It’s bad enough that legislators often shift blame for any real or perceived deficits in the school system to districts, but at least those districts are ultimately run by local elected officials (at least in the majority of districts, where the SC Department of Education hasn’t taken them over).
The result of all this, as the Post and Courier piece demonstrates, is a high cost to the state with little perceptible benefit for students or taxpayers:
Erskine’s charter school district received more than $228 million in taxpayer dollars to operate its schools in 2022, according to its annual financial disclosure forms. Limestone’s district got another $22 million in public funds for its charters, its 2023 yearly audit shows. Combined, they oversee the academic futures of approximately 27,000 students.
And students at these charter schools? Overall, they performed worse in benchmark academic subjects than their peers at charter schools that didn’t jump from one district to another — especially in elementary and middle school math, a Post and Courier analysis found.
There are probably some great schools within the charter school system, including those sponsored by CIE. But it’s hard to understand the advantage of letting an unaccountable private entity with questionable business practices, affiliated with a private college, and investing in its own alternative school options, act as the arbiter of whether publicly funded charter schools are performing well.
It goes without saying that public schools can also mismanage funds, but when public schools do something wrong, they can’t just jump into another district to avoid penalties. For example, Superintendent Weaver, perhaps SC’s foremost voucher champion, called for an inspector general investigation into one Midlands district after allegations of misspent funds. That suggests that even she sees a need for public oversight of taxpayer-funded schools (even if she supports a double standard for private schools).
And it’s likely we wouldn’t ever have found out many of the issues going on with CIE if they hadn’t apparently made the mistake of suing its former attorney and partner James Galyean, a guy who appears to know the inner workings of the Institute much better than they would probably prefer.
In the meantime, Galyean’s filing, and the surrounding drama, paints a picture of "public” charter schools being run largely by dueling wealthy, politically ambitious, and ideologically-driven Project 2025 types.
Just what South Carolina needs.
Keep us posted on this, Steve. I have wondered for a long time about the "coziness" of the private colleges and the charter school network. A lot of dollars are at stake.