Members of the Florida Retirement System will most likely become owners of Edison Schools Inc., the nation's largest for-profit school management company. While nearly half of the plan's 850,000 members are either current or retired school employees, Clive Belfield, assistant director of the National Center for the Study of Privatization in Education, said he did not believe that the Edison school management model's potential threat to public jobs was the real issue upsetting the unions.

Belfield thinks that they are more concerned, and with good cause, about investing in a company that lost $25 million on revenues for fiscal year 2003, and $86 million in 2002. "It's a very difficult industry to make a profit in," said Belfield, "and this is a strange financial move, leaving aside whether or not privatization is a good or bad idea."

The article, entitled "Florida Teachers Riled by Edison Deal" appeared in the October 8, 2003 edition of the Education Week.

Published Tuesday, Nov. 18, 2003