The Big Argument in Favor of Charter Schools

is that while they can siphon taxpayer dollars which should go to regular public schools, at the same time they have freedom to do whatever they want, including turning their cafeterias into nightclubs.

I mean, you can't make this stuff up:

Books by day, beers by night — at least that is what school district officials in Philadelphia say was offered at a charter school there, where they say the school’s cafeteria was used weekends as a nightclub.

Fernando Gallard, a spokesman for the school district, said his office was investigating whether the school, the Harambee Institute of Science and Technology Charter School itself rented the cafeteria to the bar, known as Club Damani, or if the landlord did so. In the meantime, Mr. Gallard said, the city has asked the bar to cease operating or the school to move.

The school is home to roughly 500 students in kindergarten through eighth grade. When it opened in 1997, it was one of the first charter schools in the city. Now, there are 67 charter schools educating about 34,000 students, Mr. Gallard said.

Harambee officials did not respond to requests for comment. But they posted an open letter on the school’s Web site, saying reports about the school’s operating a bar, which first appeared over the weekend on a local television station, WPVI-TV, were “a biased depiction of the true success story that Harambee truly is.”