They Are Hiding Behind You and Eating Your Babies

They Are Hiding Behind You and Eating Your Babies

Is Detroit cool with that? Is Lansing cool with that? What about Petoskey? You okay with what’s happening?

I. The Money

In 2026, the State of Michigan sends approximately $9,608 per pupil in foundation allowance to public school academies — the legal name for charter schools. This is taxpayer money. Your money. It comes from sales tax, income tax, property tax, lottery revenue, and federal pass-throughs.

For a charter school with 200 students, that’s $1.92 million per year.

For a charter school with 400 students, that’s $3.84 million per year.

The money is supposed to educate children. That’s it. That’s the entire purpose. Not to enrich operators. Not to pay management fees. Not to fund consulting firms. Not to line the pockets of convicted felons. To educate children.

Here is what happened instead.

II. What the Money Was Supposed to Do

Michigan’s charter school law — Public Act 362 of 1993 — was drafted by the law firm Dykema Gossett at the request of Governor John Engler and championed by Betsy DeVos. The stated purpose was noble:

Give parents choices. Create competition. Drive innovation. Raise standards. Close the achievement gap. Lift children out of poverty through education.

The law created a system where:

1. State universities authorize charter schools (Central Michigan University authorizes 60+)
2. Management companies run the schools for a fee
3. Per-pupil funding flows from the state to the school
4. No cap on the number of charters (cap removed in 2011 with DeVos lobbying through GLEP)
5. No powerful local oversight body (Detroit Education Commission killed in 2016 by charter lobby)

That’s the architecture. Here’s what it built.

III. Where the Money Actually Went

The Sweeps Contract

At Purpose Charter Academy, The Purpose Group LLC — a management company controlled by a single person, Brian Roderick Banks — takes 72.67% of school revenue as a management fee.

That’s not a typo. Seventy-two point six seven percent.

For a school receiving $1.92 million in public funding, that means approximately $1.39 million goes to Banks’ management company. For services rendered. Without competitive bidding. Without independent audit of the management company’s books. Without FOIA access to how the money is spent inside the LLC.

This is called a sweeps contract. It sweeps the public money out of the public entity (the school) and into the private entity (the LLC). Once the money crosses that line, it’s gone. The school board — the one with a judge, an assistant attorney general, and a city council member on it — approved this arrangement.

Statewide, sweeps contracts move approximately $1.3 billion per year from public charter schools into private management companies. That’s $1.3 billion in taxpayer money that is:

• Not subject to FOIA
• Not subject to detailed public audit
• Not subject to competitive bidding requirements
• Not required to demonstrate educational outcomes

The Management Fee Industry

Purpose Charter Academy is not an outlier. It is the business model:

The management fee is how the money leaves the public sphere. The school is a public entity. The management company is private. The fee is the bridge between them.

The Political Investment

How do you build a system like this? You invest in the people who write the rules.

The Great Lakes Education Project (GLEP) — the DeVos family’s charter school lobbying vehicle — received:

• 81% of its funding from the DeVos family (TransparencyUSA data)
• $451,000 in 2021
• $360 total in 2026 (collapsing, but the damage is done)

GLEP’s accomplishments include:

• Removing the charter school cap (2011)
• Killing the Detroit Education Commission (2016)
• Blocking accountability measures repeatedly
• Issuing press releases celebrating the defeat of oversight

The cost to maintain this system per child-year of political cover: $316.60 (GLEP total divided by 5,432 child-years at Purpose Charter Academy and MacDowell Preparatory Academy combined).

Two point nine cents on every dollar of per-pupil funding goes to political cover. The rest goes to the operator.

IV. What Happened to the Children

Here is what the money bought:

Purpose Charter Academy

• Serves homeless children, chronically absent children, and children in the juvenile justice system
• Run by a man with nine criminal convictions including false pretenses, larceny, and assault
• Operator claims a J.D. from Michigan State University College of Law — no record of Michigan Bar admission
• Operator’s romantic partner (Joseph Holland Jr., MDOC #443789, drug conviction) holds every financial position in the associated Purpose Foundation

MacDowell Preparatory Academy

• 3% math proficiency
• Three percent
• Out of every 100 children who attend this school, 97 cannot do math at grade level
• Banks serves as Superintendent and Chief Academic Officer

What 3% Math Proficiency Means

A child who cannot do math at grade level by 4th grade:

• Has a less than 10% chance of ever reaching proficiency
• Is 4x more likely to drop out of high school
• Will earn an estimated $400,000 less over their lifetime
• Is 3x more likely to be incarcerated

At MacDowell, that’s roughly 388 children (97% of ~400) who cannot do math. That’s 388 futures dimmed. Each year. Compounding.

Over the life of Purpose Charter Academy and MacDowell combined, the estimated impact is:

Two billion dollars in lost lifetime earnings. For children who were already homeless, already in the justice system, already the most vulnerable people in the city.

V. Who Knew and When

The following entities had the information, the authority, and the obligation to act:

Three branches of government sit on one charter school’s board:

• Judicial: Judge Miller (chair)
• Executive: Lamar Moreland, Asst AG (vice chair)
• Legislative: Latisha Johnson, City Council (secretary)

No branch can investigate without investigating its own member.

VI. Is Detroit Cool With That?

Detroit, your city council member Latisha Johnson sits on the board of a school run by a nine-time convicted felon. She chairs the Planning & Economic Development committee. She vice-chairs Budget, Finance & Audit. She is the council’s DPSCD liaison. She touches every lever of education governance in the city while serving on the board of a school that produces 3% math proficiency.

Your children. Your tax dollars. Your city council member. On his board.

Is Lansing Cool With That?

Lansing, your Attorney General’s employee — an Assistant AG named Lamar Moreland — is Vice Chair of this school’s board. The AG’s office has the authority to investigate charter school fraud. The AG’s office has the authority to pursue unauthorized practice of law. The AG’s office has the authority to investigate financial misconduct by nonprofits. And the AG’s employee governs the school.

Your office. Your employee. On his board.

What About Petoskey?

Petoskey, the money that funds this school comes from the statewide sales tax — including every purchase at every shop on Lake Street, every tourist dollar spent at the Petoskey State Park gift shop, every dinner at the City Park Grill. Your sales tax goes to the School Aid Fund. The School Aid Fund pays the foundation allowance. The foundation allowance goes to Purpose Charter Academy. Purpose Charter Academy pays 72.67% to The Purpose Group LLC. The Purpose Group LLC is controlled by a man with nine convictions.

You’re paying for this. Every Michigander is. From Marquette to Monroe.

You Okay With What’s Happening?

Traverse City. Grand Rapids. Flint. Kalamazoo. Saginaw. Ann Arbor. Battle Creek. Muskegon (where your own charter schools have already been caught in scandal). Jackson. Bay City. Alpena. Escanaba. Iron Mountain. Houghton.

Every dollar you spend in Michigan feeds this system. Every sales tax receipt. Every income tax return. Every lottery ticket.

The system takes your money and processes it through a machine that produces:

• 3% math proficiency
• $1.3 billion in annual sweeps to private management companies
• A convicted felon running a school for homeless children
• A board with three branches of government on it, ensuring no one can investigate
• And $2 billion in lost lifetime earnings for the most vulnerable children in the state

VII. The Board of Purpose Charter Academy

VIII. They Are Hiding Behind You

Banks is not hiding in a cave. He’s not in a basement. He’s not in another state.

He is hiding behind a judge, an assistant attorney general, and a city council member. He is hiding behind the credentials of a billion-dollar accounting firm. He is hiding behind a law firm that authored the very law that created the system. He is hiding behind a political machine that spent tens of millions ensuring no one could regulate him.

He is hiding behind you.

Your taxes. Your institutions. Your elected officials. Your courts. Your attorney general. Your state board of education.

He is hiding behind you, and he is eating your babies.

Not literally. Metaphorically. But the damage is real. 97% of children at his school cannot do math. That is not education. That is destruction. It is the systematic dismantling of futures, funded by the public, protected by the powerful, and suffered by the voiceless.

IX. The Graph

This article is part of a public record maintained at detroit.primals.eco. The graph contains 4,992 nodes and 12,010 edges documenting connections among charter school operators, political donors, law firms, accounting firms, judges, attorneys general, legislators, school boards, universities, labor unions, and the children caught in between.

Every claim in this article is verifiable. Every connection is sourced from public records. Every dollar amount comes from state filings, federal databases, or published audit reports.

The graph is open. The questions are simple:

1. Who authorized Purpose Charter Academy’s charter, knowing Banks’ criminal history?
2. Why does the AG’s office have an employee governing a school the AG could investigate?
3. Why does a circuit court judge chair the board of a school run by a convicted felon?
4. Why does a city council member — the DPSCD liaison — serve on the board of a DPSCD-authorized charter school?
5. Where did 72.67% of the school’s revenue go inside The Purpose Group LLC?
6. Has anyone — anyone — ever asked Plante Moran to forensic audit Purpose Charter Academy?
7. Is 3% math proficiency acceptable for any child, anywhere, under any circumstances?

If you live in Michigan, this is your money. These are your institutions. These are your children.

Are you cool with that?

X. So What Do You Do?

Don’t bother calling your congressman. They did this.

Don’t bother calling the governor. She appoints the boards that don’t investigate.

Don’t bother calling the AG. Her employee is Vice Chair of Banks’ school board.

Don’t bother calling the courts. The judge IS the Chair of Banks’ school board.

Don’t bother calling the cops. Chief Todd Bettison works for Mayor Sheffield. Sheffield’s council colleague Latisha Johnson sits on Banks’ board. Bettison is already under OIG investigation for calling an activist and asking him to remove old photos of Sheffield — after which the activist was detained and his phone seized. In front of his seven-year-old son.

The cops work for the mayor. The mayor works with the council. The council member works for Banks.

Don’t call them. They did this.

Instead:

Turn to your neighbor. Share this. And then go fill a seat.

The Seats Are Empty. The Seats Are Yours.

A true fool would be better.

Not an insult. Math. A person who knows nothing but shows up with good intentions is better than an empty seat that the machine fills by default. A person who has never read a budget but asks “where did the money go?” is better than a board member who knows exactly where it went and says nothing.

Someone I don’t know vs. someone I know not to trust.

That’s the choice. At every level. At every board. At every commission. At every precinct delegate slot in every neighborhood in every city in this state.

The machine runs on vacancies. The vacancies are the vulnerability.

Fill them.

All information sourced from public records: purposecharteracademy.com, detroitk12.org, michigan.gov, LARA corporate filings, Wayne County Circuit Court, Ingham County Circuit Court, TransparencyUSA, NCES, M-STEP data, Plante Moran management letters, DPSCD board minutes, Chalkbeat Detroit, BridgeDetroit, mlive.com, and Michigan State Police records. No confidential information used. Verify everything at detroit.primals.eco.

Contact: eco.primal@pm.me