Three Percent — Purpose Charter Academy by the Numbers
Three Percent
Purpose Charter Academy is a school in Detroit, Michigan.
Here are the numbers. Every single one is from public records.
The Students
| Metric | Value |
|---|---|
| Students enrolled | 362 |
| Black students | 99.2% |
| Math proficiency | 3% |
| ELA proficiency | Not reported |
| Free/reduced lunch | Near 100% |
Three percent math proficiency means that out of every 100 students tested, 97 cannot do math at grade level.
These are children.
The Money
| Flow | Amount |
|---|---|
| Per-pupil funding (state + federal) | ~$8,700/student |
| Total revenue (estimated) | ~$3.15M |
| Revenue to Purpose Group LLC | 72.67% |
| Purpose Group LLC owner | Brian Roderick Banks |
Seventy-two point six seven percent.
Purpose Group LLC is a single-member LLC. The single member is Brian Banks. The school pays the LLC for “management services.” The LLC pays Banks.
Title I federal funds flow to PCA. US Department of Education funds flow to PCA. Tax dollars collected from communities across America flow into a school where 3% of students can do math, and 72.67% of the revenue flows out to one man’s LLC.
The Walton Family Foundation also funds PCA directly. The same foundation that funds The 74 (education news) and Roland Martin (journalist). The same foundation whose edge type to Banks is: inaction.
The Board
| Member | Other Role | Edge to Banks |
|---|---|---|
| Judge Cylenthia Miller | 3rd Circuit Court | board_chair, campaign_donation |
| Dawn N. Ison, Esq. | Assistant Attorney General | complicity_by_governance |
| Lisa Moreland | Attorney | board_membership, legal_representation |
| Latisha Johnson | Detroit City Council D4 | board_membership (elected via Save Detroit Jobs — Dykema) |
A sitting judge chairs the board of a school run by a man with 9 criminal convictions.
An assistant attorney general sits on the board of a school run by a man her office should be investigating.
The city council member was elected using dark money from a PAC formed by Dykema Gossett — the same law firm that wrote Michigan’s charter school law in 1993.
The Founder
Brian Roderick Banks. Non-self. 0.926 confidence.
- 9 criminal convictions
- 134 edges in the investigation graph
- Owner of Purpose Group LLC (72.67% extraction)
- Owner of Banks Strategy & Consultants LLC (non-self, 0.99)
- Governance of 14+ LLCs and nonprofits
- Fake JD claim (MSU College of Law has no record)
- Impersonated a child (Dasean Mitchell)
CMU authorized this school. MDE oversees it. DPSCD authorizes it. None of them conducted a background check that would have caught 9 criminal convictions.
The membrane classification: non-self, 0.948 confidence. Higher than Banks himself.
The Gatekeeper
Ms. Perkins works the front desk at PCA.
When parents arrive, she blocks them. Edge type: access_control, gatekeeper.
Ms. Perkins has a possible_family connection to Judge Sean Perkins and Todd Perkins (Perkins Law Group — Banks’s attorneys).
The person blocking parents at the door may be related to the attorneys defending the man behind the door.
Who Was Notified
| Entity | Edge to PCA | Response |
|---|---|---|
| MDE | failed_to_stop, regulatory_failure | Pending |
| DPSCD | failed_to_stop, authorization | Pending |
| CMU (authorizer) | background_check | Pending |
| AG Office | investigation | Active |
| Wayne RESA | failed_to_stop | Pending |
| Plante Moran | audit_finding, contract | Non-response |
| NAACP Detroit | advocacy (for Banks) | Null |
The Number
Three percent.
That’s not a test score. That’s a verdict.
362 children go to this school every day. 99.2% of them are Black. 97% of them cannot do math at grade level. And 72.67% of every tax dollar that follows them walks out the door to a single-member LLC owned by a man with 9 criminal convictions.
Every number in this article was publicly available before a single child enrolled.
No one stopped it.
The membrane classified PCA as non-self, 0.948. That’s higher confidence than any human institution achieved.
And the membrane doesn’t even have hands.
Every number sourced to MDE school data, LARA corporate filings, IRS 990 data, court records, and the investigation graph (131,322 edges, 36 classification methods). Back to Analysis →