Headlines
Segregation Fear Sinks Charter School
NH: What’s driving prison privatization?
FL: Horrors continue in privatized lockups – opinion
FL: State: Too Late for Prison Privatization
IN: Indiana Toll Road raises fees for some drivers

Segregation Fear Sinks Charter School
Nashville school officials have rejected a proposal to open a charter school in a middle-class part of the city, highlighting a broader national battle over efforts by operators of such publicly financed, privately run schools to expand into more affluent areas….But as the charter movement expands, and more middle-class parents become disenchanted with local public schools, charter operators have pushed to open schools in middle-income and suburban communities, triggering battles in such places as New Jersey and New York similar to that seen in Nashville. The share of low-income students in charter schools dropped to 51% in the 2009-10 school year from 62% in 2004-05, according to the U.S. Department of Education. Wall Street Journal

NH: What’s driving prison privatization?
…The generalized claim of cost savings has little or no support unless the intention is to provide even fewer services and substantially reduce conditions in the prisons… So, if cost saving is not the goal, what is going on? There is reason to suspect that there are those in the Legislature who wish to reduce the size of government regardless of the consequences and others who believe that the private sector can always do things more efficiently than the government can. In the case of prisons, New Hampshire should have learned by now that constitutional constraints impose standards that cannot be ignored. Those constraints do not permit reductions in staffing and conditions that are required to make the operation “profitable.” It defies logic to believe that an institution can be operated at cost plus profit for less than it can be operated at cost alone. Therefore, if cost saving and efficiency are the legislative goal, the search should be for a more efficient operating system rather than a new operator with a profit motive. That is especially true when the private operators have a track record of cutting corners which expose the state to liability. Concord Monitor

FL: Horrors continue in privatized lockups – opinion
Yet again, a judge has been tasked to sort through wrenching allegations of abuse and neglect and violence at a privatized juvenile lock-up. …[T]he allegations echo charges in a 2010 federal lawsuit filed by the Southern Poverty Law Center, which claimed Thompson staffers “choked and slammed children head-first into concrete walls,” that the young inmates were chronically undernourished and that they were denied access to their attorneys. One kid claimed he had been sexually abused. (The 2010 lawsuit was settled and the records sealed.) It all sounds so familiar in the era of privatization. In a 1998 scandal at the Pahokee Youth Development Center, kids were subjected to a violent and abusive staff. Rehab and education programs were a joke. Classes were canceled, at one stretch, for 13 straight days. And a state monitor charged that the private penal outfit running the joint, Correctional Services Corp., was keeping kids locked up beyond their release date so the company could bill the state for the extra money. Miami Herald

FL: State: Too Late for Prison Privatization
A lawyer for the state urged an appellate court Wednesday to uphold a South Florida prison privatization plan although he conceded it’s too late to carry out before a budget provision authorizing the outsourcing expires Saturday. The three-judge panel also questioned Jonathan Glogau on whether his boss, Attorney General Pam Bondi, had the legal authority to appeal a trial judge’s decision saying the budget provision is unconstitutional after the Department of Corrections, the defendant in the case, declined to do so…Circuit Judge Jackie Fulford ruled in Tallahassee last year that the Republican-led Legislature violated the Florida Constitution by using the proviso instead of a stand-alone law to order the prison privatization. A separate privatization bill then was filed earlier this year, but it was narrowly defeated in the Senate. The Police Benevolent Association represented Florida’s correctional officers when Fulford ruled, but the guards voted in a new union, the Teamsters, in November despite the PBA’s courtroom victory. The Ledger

IN: Indiana Toll Road raises fees for some drivers
The cost of vehicles traveling on the Indiana Toll Road for vehicles without an I-Zoom transponder is going up starting Sunday. Private operator ITR Concession Inc. says tolls for all vehicle classes without the devices will go up an average of 3 percent. Motorists in cars and other two-axle vehicles using the I-Zoom will continue to pay the same toll they have since ITR Concession leased the roadway from the state in 2006. That discount ends in 2016. The full toll for cars and other two-axle vehicles running the length of the road will go up to $9.40 from its current $9. Indianapolis Star