I received an urgent message from a parent of a student at Venice High school in Los Angeles. She was desperate because had just learned that the privatization-friendly LA school board was about to vote on whether to give half of Venice High School to Steve Barr, eduentrepreneur (founder of Green Dot charters but now running a new charter chain). He wanted to start a “pilot school,” and this parent was outraged because, she said, Venice is a good school and didn’t need another school to take half its space away.

She wrote later to tell me that Venice High had narrowly escaped.

This reader offers his perspective:

“At the Tuesday LAUSD Board Meeting Deasy’s and Steve Barr’s sneak attack on Venice High School was stopped. The board voted to approve the plan but not the location because LAUSD and Barr made sure that until the last moment the public did not know. In fact a board member brought up Barr’s name and said it was in their documentation. I looked at my large printout and it was in theirs not ours. A student obtained in less than 2 days about 1,000 signature to not have that school on their campus.

“Previous to this as a result of Steve Zimmer being elected instead of the corporate privatizer put up by Rhee and friends Monica Garcia, every privatizers bought and sold friend, will not be board president after this term. She has had six and that has never before happened. Now no one can have it for more than 2 years.”