Governor Cuomo has received about $800,000 from charter supporters in the financial and real estate sectors. To protect their favorite hobby, the governor now proposes to take control of funding charter construction and co-locations. This would effectively nullify mayoral control in New York City and assure that Cuomo’s sponsors in the charter sector can expand at will into other people’s public schools. With the governor’s help, they can insert their privately managed schools into public school buildings, kicking out kids with special needs and kids from the neighborhood. The governor will also make sure that his political patrons never will be asked to pay rent for their use (or usurpation) of public space.
Governor Cuomo is ably representing the interests of the hedge fund managers and the real estate moguls who contributed to his campaign, as well as the 3% of students in New York State and the 6% in New York City enrolled in charter schools.
Money rules!
Media Contacts:
Julian Vinocur, Julian@aqeny.org, 212.328.9268
Dan Morris, dlmcommunications@gmail.com, 917.952.8920
Firestorm Over Governor Cuomo’s & Senate Majority’s “Pay-to-Play” School Politics
Political Donations from Wealthy Charter Investors Fuel “Gubernatorial Control” over NYC School Issues
New York, NY— Currently, the State Senate Majority is considering a budget proposal that reportedly would invest state funds in capital construction for privately-run charter schools and would undermine the power of NYC to make its own determinations on charter school co-locations and charter school rent.
Governor Cuomo immediately reinforced the Senate proposal by saying today on the Capitol Press Room radio show that charter schools are “the big issue in the budget.” As reported by ChalkbeatNY, the Governor and the Senate Majority have been the beneficiaries of huge campaign contributions from the financiers and ideological backers of privately-run charter schools. New York’s lead education & civil rights advocates released the following statement:
“The ‘pay-to-play’ school politics we are witnessing today between the Governor and Senate Majority is an outrage. The real civil rights issue of our time is that Governor Cuomo has completely abandoned his constitutional responsibility to provide adequate funding for the 97% of students in public schools across the state. Unfortunately, the majority of public school students do not have rich Wall Street honchos to make the Governor pay attention to them,” said Hazel Dukes, president of the NAACP’s NYS Conference.
“Governor Cuomo is the master puppeteer of this ‘pay-to-play’ fiasco, pulling strings in the Senate to get ‘Gubernatorial Control’ over New York City school issues. It’s a power play to satisfy the big-money political donors that want corporate charter school chains to thrive at the expense of public school students. The Governor is the biggest beneficiary in Albany of shady ‘pay-to-play’ interests who want to privatize education, and he is taking it out on the 97% of parents, students and teachers that want him to stop his assault on public schools,” said Jonathan Westin, Executive Director of New York Communities for Change.
“Governor Cuomo has not toured a single public school since he took office, and yet he wants ‘Gubernatorial Control’ of New York City schools. Give me a break—Governor Cuomo has turned his back on the 97% of students across the state attending public schools, but now he says charter schools are his top priority in this budget. Meanwhile the Senate Majority has school districts crying for relief from underfunding, yet they want money for charter schools. It looks like Governor Cuomo and the Senate Majority are bending over backwards for the charter school lobbyists who are big campaign donors,” said Zakiyah Ansari, public school parent and Advocacy Director for the Alliance for Quality Education.
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Diane Ravitch's blog 
Cuomo’s a complete crook. He took at least $800K from the charter operators and hedge fundies and is giving them everything they want on charter funding and co-locations. He took millions from overseas gambling consortia and expanded gambling in the state just to their liking. He took hundreds of thousands from real estate interests and gave them tens of millions in tax breaks. He took tens of thousands from Hollywood producers and movie company folks, then gave them a tax break that essentially pays them to make movies in NY State w/ NY State tax funds. He took millions from wealthy interests as part of the Committee To Save New York PAC, money that was used to push his agenda, then when he was forced to release the names of the donors to this PAC, he shut the Committee To Save New York down instead, so that we don’t know exactly which wealthy interests paid for the governor’s agena to be imposed on the state.
I’d say we need an independent commission to look into this corruption, but the last one we got, the Moreland Commission, took orders from the governor on what they could investigate and what they couldn’t. If you guessed that they couldn’t investigate the governor or any of his donors, you guessed correct.
Albany is a cesspool of corruption and cronyism, and right at the center of that cesspool is one Governor Andrew M. Cuomo.
Scum of the earth. This is exactly why a lot of Americans have given up on voting. why bother, the politician is bought and stands for nothing. The Democratic Party has become a complete joke.
Not voting plays right into the hands of the plutocrats. The average voter must get more involved. That should be the fight. As parents/voters get more involved with education issues the deformers are getting defensive.
Michael is correct. Our votes matter now more than ever. We absolutely HAVE to vote these crooks and liars out of office or the Right and Right Lite parties will remain in power and keep changing the rules of the game, to the advantage of the upper income minority, ad infinitum.
This is all part of a bigger plan by the plutocracy to shore up their control over the masses. The people have got to take a visible stance against this abuse of power NOW.
Voting is important, but it’s not the same as Democracy. Soviet Russia and Saddam’s Iraq had votes, also.
The only way that voting is going to start mattering again is if people are out in the streets and hallways, resisting, disrupting, making noise and not allowing business-as-usual to continue.
Do enough of that, and politicians will respond, either out of fear or opportunism.
We must make them fear us more than they love the Overclass’ campaign contributions.
Diane…I’m sorry…I know you don’t like expletives on your blogs…but these are the only words I can come up with….WHAT THE FUCK!!
We get ABUSED for THREE terms under Bloomberg and mayoral control. We get a mayor who turns things back a tiny bit for the first time using that same power and now the same power that beat on us for a decade is going to be taken away when it’s being used for good so the GOVERNOR can take his turn on us?!
How can he claim in the slightest that this is in the interest of NYC school children when HE IS IGNORING MORE THAN 90% OF THEM!!
M, that wasn’t my precise thought, nor my words, but I understand your outrage.
M, I have to say that I don’t agree at all with you rash choice of words on this blog, but I am completely aligned with your fury and frustration . . . . You are right to feel the way you do . . . .
I don’t use those words lightly in a public forum at all. That being said, something this galling deserves a response at least equally as galling. True it might be more dignified to speak in other ways – but – if there’s one thing I’ve learned from watching these politics for the last 10 years, is that while the “reformers” talk a good game, their tactics verge on the thuggish. Rising above them isn’t going to help because if someone’s intent on breaking your nose, not sinking to their level won’t help you. Sometimes, you need to fight back – that’s why I believe my response appropriate.
M,
I support your mindset. . . . what you said in public is what I am thinking in private. . . . Please do not feel as though you have to defend or account for your choice of words.
I offer you my morale support and solidarity, because I too as a tax paying voter and ELA public school teacher in NY state cannot stand even the remote thought of Frog-and-Lizard-faced Andrew Cuomo . . . . He is a mean spirited, narcissistic politician with a very harsh visage and an even more abrasive, abusive set of policies. . . .
May the voters of NY gain an awareness and wipe the floor with his political career. . . . all at the ballot box . . . . .
I was involved in a project years ago with his mother, and, as I have stated before, I cannot believe they are from the same gene pool. . . .
The very rotten apple with oxidized flesh, squirming bacteria, and worms galore has fallend from far from his parents’ – especially his father’s – tree . . . . . . .
I hope the horses and cattle step on this rotten apple and dump their fertilizer on him to make the barren fields of public education once again fertile . . . . . .
M, The acceptable term today is WTF! Just write that and most of us will know what you mean.
As I’ve stated many times before on this blog. Ed reform is only a symptom of the real problem that is the incredible concentration of wealth and the power that comes with it on our society. NYC’s population is close to one half of NYS. If Cuomo succeeds in taking more control of NYC schools maybe de Blasio can challenge Cuomo next election.
Great idea. DeBlasio has my vote.
As well as my vote…
Cuomo is a “political beast”, and a disgrace to the people of New York.
Courses in the humanities, as well as those that teach morality and ethical codes of conduct….and theological studies, where Cuomo can begin to beg for forgiveness from the children he has sold out would be in order.
Eventually, righteousness will prevail, and he will be held accountable.
US House gets ready to pour more money into charters.
“Rep. John Kline, R-Minn., the chairman of the House education committee, and Rep. George Miller, D-Calif., the top Democrat on the panel, are working to combine forces on a bill to bolster charter schools, sources say.
The measure, which could be introduced in the next few weeks, would be based in large part on another Kline-Miller special, a charter school bill that was approved by the full House in 2011 (during the previous session of Congress). That measure got overwhelming bipartisan support, sailing through the chamber on a 365-54 vote.
Similar language was included in the Student Success Act, Kline’s bill to reauthorize the Elementary and Secondary Education Act, which passed out of the House with Republican-only support last year. (The party-line vote on that broader legislation was due to a host of issues—funding, accountability for special populations, and school turnarounds, but the charter piece remained bipartisan.)
The major difference this time around, sources say, could be a greater emphasis on ensuring that federal funding goes to Charter Management Organizations (such as KIPP, or Aspire). That’s something U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan has supported, and it’s a piece of a bipartisan charter school bill written by Reps. Jared Polis, D-Col., and Tom Petri, R-Wis.”
They can’t get anything through to support existing public schools, and they can’t get anything through to help working class or middle class parents, but they can all agree on more and more and more money for charter schools! Are any of these dopes aware that public schools don’t even have the funding to comply with the LAST set of ridiculous gimmicks they imposed? They do know that ed reformers at the state level have gutted our school funding? Now they’re going to subsidize a whole set of new schools to “compete” with the same public schools they undermined and damaged?
They’ve completely abandoned the public schools that 95% of children attend. The only time public schools get any attention at all is when they’re putting in some gimmicky, faddish corporate-crafted scheme to punish them and shut them down.
http://blogs.edweek.org/edweek/campaign-k-12/2014/03/house_education_leaders_workin.html?cmp=SOC-SHR-FB
What a proud, proud day for Democrats. They work so well with Republicans to destroy public schools!
I haven’t seen bipartisan cooperation like this since they were invading Iraq, deregulating the financial system and passing NAFTA.
This will work out just as well for ordinary people as all those bipartisan genius moves did, too.
Total scum
Good to know Cuomo believes in democracy.
Here’s more about the GOP/Duncan charter school promotion amendment the Democrats in the House are rubber stamping, from 2011.
As usual, the only people we hear from are charter school lobbyists:
“This was the bipartisan one,” said Michael J. Petrilli, a vice president at the Thomas B. Fordham Institute, a Washington research group. “The others aren’t going to be bipartisan.”
“What’s different is this would allow us to replicate and expand the high-quality charters, those with a good track record,” said Alice Johnson Cain, a vice president at the National Alliance for Public Charter Schools.”
It’s funny, because I don’t remember electing either Mr. Petrilli or “Alice Johnson Cain” yet they seem to be writing federal legislation that will plunk down some national charter school chain outlets in my state. I get a choice. It’s KIPP or Aspire.
“Aspire” sounds like an automobile brand. Are they even sure it’s a school? The people in DC may be selling me a four door sedan.
Are there any public school advocates that are allowed to lobby the “our representatives” in the US House? You know, those “failure factories” that serve 95% of US kids?
Yes, many of these charter names are absurd! As if calling them these names- will make it so. Also, gotta love the kindergartener’s of these charter schools visiting college campuses and sitting in the auditorium of these colleges with their hands folded neatly in their laps.
I was also hoping there would be a post on the result of the NYS Regent Elections and how people with education background lost. One new Regent is an upstate judge who not only happened to get on the ballot late, but also happens to run a spiritual weight loss program costing people hundreds to thousands of dollars. She even added she was not up on the controversy surrounding Common Core. (I know I sent emails to both my representative telling them not to rehire these Regents, but that did little good.) And all these Regents were voted in by Democrats!!!
We now know what the NYS legislature and Cuomo are up to, yet where is the outrage from both Weingarten and Mulgrew over both these travesties (the Regents vote and given more money and power to charters). If my Cope $$$ were actually working on behalf of teachers, the Democrats would not have re-elected the incumbent Regents and Democrats would not be looking for ways to give charters extra money to cover the cost of “rent”.
In a move that should surprise no adult in the world – except perhaps Arne Duncan, who seems to think for profit companies are sort of benevolent parents to “youngsters” – Google data mines in schools:
“As part of a potentially explosive lawsuit making its way through federal court, giant online-services provider Google has acknowledged scanning the contents of millions of email messages sent and received by student users of the company’s Apps for Education tool suite for schools.
In the suit, the Mountain View, Calif.-based company also faces accusations from plaintiffs that it went further, crossing a “creepy line” by using information gleaned from the scans to build “surreptitious” profiles of Apps for Education users that could be used for such purposes as targeted advertising.
The U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California is currently hearing the complaint, which alleges that the data-mining practices behind Google’s Gmail electronic-messaging service violate federal and state wiretap and privacy laws. Gmail is a key feature of Google Apps for Education, which has 30 million users worldwide and is provided by the company for free to thousands of educational institutions in the United States.”
http://www.edweek.org/ew/articles/2014/03/13/26google.h33.html
The only possible good that could come from this is that the public will at last see the corrosive effects of money in politics and privatization…
As I read more and more about what’s going on I can envision a political cartoon of an old school house with a bell that rings no more……………………..