Facilities and Fresen: What a cozy arrangement

You know that former Florida Representative Erik Fresen is going to jail. In this Palm Beach Post article, some other facts about this champion of for-profit charter schools are revealed. Not only did he fail to file his income tax returns for his eight years in office, he:

  1. was a lobbyist for Academica, the for-profit charter chain that his sister and brother-in-law run.
  2. earned $150,000 a year as a consultant for Civica which is the land use company that builds charter schools for
    Academica.
  3. fast tracked the bill to force local districts to share the tax money they received with charters and then capped
    the amount of funding districts could raise.

The education crisis Florida faces that has resulted in a major lawsuit filed against State and is a direct result of the influence peddled by a man who now is going to jail. What remains to be seen is how the current legislature responds.

Posted in Charter School Management, Charter Schools, Facilities, Florida, Florida House, Legislation, Public Education.

One Comment

  1. Is it illegal to be a paid lobbyist and run ed committees that benefit the people you lobby for? If it is illegal why is thrasher president of FSU?

Leave a Reply

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.