Charter School Financial Accountability
Registry covers 8,288 charter schools across 47 states enrolling 3,761,396 students
Published March 27, 2026
Key Findings
- Registry covers 8,288 charter schools across 47 states enrolling 3,761,396 students
- 3 charter entities matched in federal campaign finance and PPP loan records
- Charter-affiliated entities and individuals contributed $66K in documented FEC contributions
- Charter-affiliated entities received $2.4M in PPP loans
- Top entity: KIPP NYC Washington Heights Academy — $25K FEC contributions, $2.4M PPP loans
Charter schools receive public funding but operate with less financial oversight than traditional public schools. This investigation cross-references charter school registries against federal campaign finance records (FEC) and Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) loan data to map the financial footprint of charter operators, management organizations, and their affiliated entities.
Political Spending
Charter-affiliated entities and individuals contributed $66K in documented federal campaign contributions across multiple election cycles. The analysis matches school names, operator names, and affiliated entity names against the FEC individual contributions database using multi-tier entity resolution (exact match, containment, word overlap).
PPP Loan Exposure
Charter-affiliated entities received $2.4M in PPP loans during 2020–2021. Cross-referencing PPP borrower names against charter registries identifies overlap between publicly funded schools and pandemic relief recipients.
Related-Party Lease Flags
The pipeline identifies potential related-party lease arrangements where charter schools may be paying rent to entities controlled by their own operators or board members — a common vector for self-dealing in the charter sector.
Downloads
For newsrooms: contact editor@thepublicledgers.org for the full dataset.
Explore Charter School Data
Charter school lease flags and financial risk indicators.