Two hedge fund billionaires dropped $1 million each on a controversial charter school advocacy group in April, the Daily News has learned.
Officials at pro-charter lobbying powerhouse Families for Excellent Schools have declined to name the nonprofit’s funders since it was founded in 2012.
But a July filing with the state’s Joint Commission on Public Ethics shows finance titans Dan Loeb and Julian Robertson both donated a cool million to the group.
Critics of privately run, publicly funded charter schools said the rich contributions from the two billionaires reflect an effort to privatize public education.
“It’s clear that this is not educational philanthropy, but the further pushing of an agenda to dismantle public education in the name of privatizing the education system,” said Zakiyah Ansari, advocacy director of the Alliance for Quality Education.
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“Families for Excellent Schools has a nice name, but they are just a tool for billionaires and their political machinations,” said Ansari, whose group is partially funded by the city teachers union.
Most charter schools aren’t unionized, and in many cases the teachers unions have worked to slow the growth of charters.
There are now 207 charter schools in the Big Apple. Most were created under former Mayor Michael Bloomberg, who championed the growth of charters and other market-oriented education reforms.
Both Loeb and Robertson have a history promoting the growth of charter schools, but neither has been directly linked to Families for Excellent Schools until now.
Loeb, who runs an $18 billion investment group called Third Point, is network chair of Success Academy charter schools, the city’s largest charter network.
Success Academy has rescheduled classes to boost attendance at rallies organized by Families for Excellent Schools and provided transportation so families can attend.
The network’s founder, Eva Moskowitz, is a longtime foe of de Blasio and the teachers unions.
But Success Academy officials have always maintained their independence from Families for Excellent Schools, whose aggressive efforts to lobby for charters have made the group both friends and enemies.
A spokeswoman for Success Academy declined to comment on Loeb’s donation to the group, and Loeb did not respond to a request for comment.
Robertson, who founded hedge fund Tiger Management in 1980 and retired in 2000, has helped fund a number of pro-charter projects, including one school founded by his son Spencer in Brooklyn in 2008.
Like Loeb, Robertson did not respond to a request for comment on the motivation for the generous donation to Families for Excellent Schools.
But the $2 million the men gave to the pro-charter group is probably just a fraction of the income the organization will receive in 2015.
One report from March estimated Families for Excellent Schools spent nearly $10 million on broadcast ads alone from January 2014 to June 2015.
A spokesman from the group declined to comment on the donations.
