Maurice Cunningham is a retired professor of political science at the University of Massachusetts. He became expert on the subject of Dark Money in education while covering a state referendum on charter school expansion in Massachusetts in 2016. He noted at the time that the funding on behalf of authorizing more charter schools came from billionaires, many of them out of state. He noticed that while the charter expansion was overwhelmingly opposed by PTAs and local school boards, one parent organization, the “National Parents Union,” supported it. He checked into the NPU’s financials and discovered it had received large grants from the Walton Foundation. Walton is one of the biggest funders of charters in the nation. The referendum went down to a decisive defeat. But NPU carries on, advancing the cause of privatization.
Cunningham is the author of Dark Money and the Politics of School Privatization.
NPU will hold its national conference starting April 9 in D.C. Maurice hopes that reporters will ask the following questions:
National Parents Union’s “#ParentPower2024.”
Some Questions for Journalists.
National Parents Union (NPU), a Koch and Walton funded phony “parents” groups, will hold its #ParentPower2024 meeting this week. For any journalists covering the meeting, here are some questions you should ask.
1. A “union?” Can National Parents Union (NPU) name another “union” that accepts millions of dollars in donations from such notorious anti-union billionaires as the Walton family ($4,466,000 to affiliated Massachusetts Parents United (MPU) and NPU), John Arnold (his City Fund gave $1,028,500 in 2021-2022), and Charles Koch ($350,000 through a joint venture with the Waltons called the Vela Education Fund)?
2. All in the Family. Across NPU and the allied Massachusetts Parents United, Rodrigues and her husband Tim Langan compensated themselves $661,775 in 2022. What justifies paying them 22 percent of 2022 total revenues?
3. Organizing? NPU’s 2022 tax return lists $31,616 in expenditures for “community Organizing EV.” Why is so little spent on community organizing?
4. Sinking Financials. NPU and MPU went from $5,307,190 combined contributions in 2021 to $3,015,449 in 2022. What explains the steep decline in donations?
5. Rising Salaries. At NPU, despite contributions dropping in 2022 from 2021 levels, salaries rose from $1,729,503 to $2,035,201. Why?
6. Gravy Train Leaving the Station. NPU’s financial position is deteriorating while leadership compensation remains high. Why?
7. Dueling Boards of Directors? NPU lists one set of board of directors on its website and an almost entirely different board as part of its annual report to the Massachusetts Secretary of State’s Corporations division. Which is the real board?
8. I Came to Say I Cannot Stay, I Really Must Be Going. Since NPU was founded in 2020 at least twenty-twodifferent individuals have been listed as board members, some with tenures as short as a few months. Why does the board turn over so much?
9. Three Card Monte. In 2020, MPU made a grant to NPU of $170,000 for “contributions held for National Parents Union, Inc.” In 2021, MPU made a grant to NPU of $959,837 for “contributions held for National Parents Union, Inc.” In 2022, MPU made a grant to NPU of $167,622 for “contributions held for National Parents Union, Inc.” Why are such large sums being funneled through MPU? Is MPU concealing NPU’s donors?
10. Ghost members. Recently Rodrigues tweeted that NPU has “1600 affiliated organizations” but there is no proof of that and NPU has never provided a public accounting of affiliates. The only independent study of NPU’s claims in 2020 showed members were in the charter school industry. Why has NPU never released a list of its “affiliated organizations?
11. Bonus Round. Rodrigues and co-founder Alma Marquez were “elected” as president and treasurer in January 2020 for three year terms. Those terms have ended, why has there been no election of new officers? Marquez disappeared in just a few months and was replaced with Rodrigues’s husband, Tim Langan. What happened to Marquez?
Diane Ravitch's blog 
I would add: how many actual parents are in the group? How many have kids in public schools?
Another iteration of Michelle Rhee’s flamboyant old education-“reform” scam, StudentsFirst, which was showered with gushing by the usual gullible media souls, including a big glitzy introduction on Oprah. It was supposed to raise $1 billion for whatever education snake oil Rhee was pushing at the time. It fizzled quietly away and supposedly merged with some other similar operation, and Rhee retreated into a low-profile life out of the public spotlight (taking the money and running? None of the former gushers has apparently asked that question).
StudentsFirst also claimed some vast number of members. Actually it didn’t even seem to have a path for recruiting legitimate members — if you actually wanted to join, there wasn’t really a way. Instead it continued to post deceptive petitions on Change.org, and listed anyone who signed a petition as a member, as well as anyone who came into its orbit in any way. I’m pretty sure I was listed as a member, and I think Diane Ravitch was too. In other words, it actually had no legitimate members.
As long as billionaires keep pouring money down this rathole, these outfits will continue. (By the way, John Arnold should ALWAYS be introduced as the Enron con artist that he was — all mentions of him need to include “of Enron”!)
Pure Orwell. CBK