the chance that the school itself is a scam seems quite high. id suspect they have little regulation and very little transparency about who’s getting the kid’s (and the taxpayer) money
they seem like places that would select for certain kinds of principals instead of certain kind of principles ( or reverse that? anyway… profit centers, not education centers )
Seems a bit rich to blame the victim of the scam. The slime who carry out the scams exploit vulnerabilities and nobody should think they are immune to them, it is not the victim’s fault.
it wasn’t really called out well in the op. i think you’re 100% right that a normal public school would have checks ( errr… checks on checks ) to prevent this sort of thing
Put in practical terms: if you receive a message and it’s an obvious scam, you’re not the intended mark. There definitely exists an approach that’ll work for you or me. But if you can see it’s a scam then this wasn’t that approach, is all.
So I’m not experienced in fund raising at the level of a charter school, but is it common for someone to ask for money in order to get more money? Like “if you donate $1000 to my basketball organization, I’ll get the foundation organizers to write you a check for $10000?”