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Maurice Cunningham: The Walton Family’s Investment in Massachusetts

By dianeravitch
April 19, 2023 //
8

The Network for Public Education has its own blog, where it posts timely articles about the attacks on public schools and ongoing strife over privatization. This is an important article by Maurice Cunningham about the continuing interest of the Walton Family Foundation in Massachusetts. Walton (and other billionaires) tried but failed to win a state referendum to allow unlimited expansion of charter schools in 2016; Maurice Cunningham played an important role by exposing the Dark Money behind the referendum, which was pitched as “saving poor minority kids from failing public schools.” When school boards, civil rights groups, teachers’ unions, parent associations and other friends of public schools saw who was paying the bills, they overwhelmingly defeated the referendum. It would have been quite a coup to plant the flag for privatization in Massachusetts, the birthplace of Horace Mann.

Maurice Cunningham: Banned in Boston (Globe): the Walton Family’s 2021 Political Team

Maurice Cunningham is a retired professor and experienced tracker of dark and murky money in education politics. Periodically he rolls out some of the information that some media outlets never quite get around to publishing.

We all love us some Market Basket so imagine if the Walton family of Arkansas (d/b/a WalMart) bankrolled a takeover of our local grocer! News coverage would be constant—the Globe, the two NPR radio stations, local TV descending on shoppers to ask about their favorite possum pie recipes (it’s an Arkansas delicacy).  But the Waltons spend millions to privatize Massachusetts public schools and what do we get for coverage? Bupkis.

So read on if you dare, you’ll see this information nowhere else, the super-secret 2021 WALTON POLITICAL TEAM!

What is the 2021 Walton political team? It is America’s wealthiest family underwriting fronts that seek to influence government to achieve the policy goal of school privatization. As political scientists Kristin A. Goss and Jeffrey M. Berry teach us philanthropies sometimes act as interest groups. This political spending constitutes, as Robert Reich has written in Just Giving: Why Philanthropy Is Failing and How It Can Do Better, a little recognized and unaccountable form of oligarchic power.

The National Parents Union is one of his favorite groups to track, and he’s adding another to the mix.

Mea culpa, mea culpa, mea maxima culpa! Because I’ve been leaving Educators for Excellence out of these equations. E4E is a billionaire funded “teacher” house operation intended to undermine real democratic unions. Diane Ravitch explains E4E here: “It is funded by the reactionary anti-union Walton Family Foundation, the Rightwing William E. Simon Foundation, the anti-union Bodman Foundation, and the Arnold Foundation, which wants to eliminate pensions.” From 2017-2021 E4E took in $5,495,000 from the Waltons, some of which probably found its way to Boston.

As to that asterisk in 2020 the Waltons sent $400,000 to Massachusetts Parents United to establish National Parents Union, installing MPU  president Keri Rodrigues as co-founder (the other co-founder mysteriously disappeared, to be replaced as treasurer my Rodrigues’s husband). In 2021 the Waltons duked NPU another $1,200,000.

I did a search for “Walton Family Foundation” from 2017-present in the Boston Globe archives and found only five references[1] for Walton Family Foundation. None covered Massachusetts WFF’s political largess but for one letter to the editor (in response to a letter from NPU/MPU/Walton agent Keri Rodrigues) and a snippet from AP. Except . . .

For a 2021 op-ed by free-lance journalist Amy Crawford titled Do-it-yourself education is on the rise. Crawford offers a big plug for Rodrigues and wrote that WFF “channeled $700,000 into direct grants (to NPU) for technology, training, and supplies for homeschooling families, cooperatives, and learning pods, in which families pool resources to hire a private teacher.” But what I think Crawford meant was the $700,000 invested in NPU by the Vela Fund, a joint venture of the Waltons and Charles Koch. Both the Waltons and Koch seek the privatization of public schools.

The post is filled with detail and specifics of particular interest to folks who follow education in Massachusetts.

Bottom line: The Waltons spend millions to influence education policy in Massachusetts and the Globe not only keeps its readers in the dark about that but promotes DFER and Rodrigues/National Parents Union/Massachusetts Parents United as authentic voices of Democrats and parents.

Read the full post here. 

You can view the post at this link : https://networkforpubliceducation.org/blog-content/maurice-cunningham-banned-in-boston-globe-the-walton-familys-2021-political-team/

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Categories Accountability, Billionaires, Charter Schools, Corruption, Dark Money, Disruption, Education Industry, Failure, Funding, Hoax, Massachusetts, Parents, Privatization, School Choice, Supporting public schools, Unions

Walton Family Foundation and PNC Bank Will Give $100 Million to Charter Schools

By dianeravitch
November 4, 2022 //
8

The Walton Family Foundation has poured hundreds of millions, possibly billions, into privatizing America’s schools via charter schools. It recently announced that it would add another $100 million, in alliance with the PNC bank, to enable charters to grow.

The curious aspect of Walton’s devotion to charter schools is its complete indifference to the failures, poor performance, scandals, and frequent closures of charters.

Clearly the foundation has a goal that is unrelated to performance or success. The funders criticize public schools for poor performance, but in many states, the public schools outperform the charter schools. Nonetheless, Walton keeps pouring in more money.

Its goal seems clear: not to provide better opportunities for kids, but to undermine and disrupt public schools.

If they cared about students, the Waltons would pour hundreds of millions into improving public schools, which enroll 85-90% of American students.

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Education Industry, Privatization, Walton Foundation

Gates, Walton, and Chan-Zuckerberg Join to Find “Breakthroughs” in Education

By dianeravitch
August 18, 2021 //
52

Why do so many billionaires think that it is their responsibility to redesign education? I, personally, would prefer to see them spend their time figuring out how to reduce poverty, how to provide medical care in low-income communities, how to provide affordable housing for all. But they don’t ask me.

Chalkbeat reported recently that three of our biggest billionaires are combining forces to discover “breakthroughs” in education. As usual, the billionaires—Gates, Walton, and the Chan-Zuckerberg Initiative—assume that they will discover a magic trick that solves all problems. Like the Common Core, which David Coleman and Bill Gates believed would raise test scores and close all achievement gaps. They assumed that standardization of curriculum, standards, tests, and teacher training would produce high test scores for all students. Except it didn’t.

Matt Barnum wrote:

Three of the biggest names in education philanthropy have teamed up to fund a new organization aimed at dramatically improving outcomes for Black, Latino, and low-income students.

The Advanced Education Research & Development Fund, announced Wednesday, is already funded to the eye-popping tune of $200 million from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, and the Walton Family Foundation. (Gates and Walton are also supporters of Chalkbeat.)

AERDF (pronounced AIR-dif) says its focus will be on what it calls “inclusive R&D,” or bringing together people with different expertise, including educators, to design and test practical ideas like improving assessments and making math classes more effective. Still, the ideas will have “moonshot ambitions,” said the group’s CEO Stacey Childress. 

“One of our mottos for our program teams and the projects they fund is ‘heads in clouds and boots on the ground,’” she said. 

It’s an unusually well-funded start for a new education organization, especially as big education funders have seen their influence wane in recent years after some of their ideas showed uneven results and prompted backlash. AERDF suggests these funders still have significant ambitions for improving education in the U.S., even if those efforts are less splashy — or controversial — than they once were.

The organization emerged from work that began in 2018, when CZI and Gates teamed up to invest in R&D. That resulted in a project known as EF+Math, which funds efforts to embed lessons in executive functioning — a set of cognitive skills related to self control and memory — into math classes. 

Read on.

Categories Accountability, Billionaires, Chan-Zuckerberg Initiative, Education Reform, Gates Foundation, Bill Gates, Philanthropy, Walton Foundation

Arkansas: Voucher Forces Trying Again, Backed by Walton Money

By dianeravitch
March 18, 2021 //
8

Max Brantley writes in the Arkansas Times that the voucher lobby is determined to reverse their 44-52 loss in the Arkansas House. Backed by Walton money, they are naming and shaming the legislators who stood up for their community’s public schools.

Although Sam Walton, founder of Walmart, and his children attended public schools, they are determined to destroy public schools that provide the same opportunity for other people’s children. They blithely toss out millions to buy the support of people who have no heart or soul and will gladly lobby to harm the institution that has been an abiding symbol of our democracy for generations. Public schools have failings, like every other institution. They must be far better, and they should have the respect and the funding to provide equal opportunity to all children.

But the Waltons have led the forces of greed that seek to undermine public schools that accept all students and have standards for professionals. Let me tell you what I think of the Waltons: I think they are greedy. I think they don’t care about other people’s children. They hate unions and public schools. They love privately managed charter schools, vouchers,and any other substitute for the public schools they attended. They treat everyone else as peasants. They are arrogant. They are prideful.

The Waltons represent the worst of American society: people who have become fabulously wealthy by killing small towns, driving small stores out of business, underpaying their one million employees, using their vast wealth to impoverish others and to undermine the community institutions that enrich the lives of people they treat with contempt. For them and their ilk, playing with the lives of other people’s children is a hobby, a pastime. They are very, very rich, and they must have their way. They don’t understand why the peasants refuse to bow down to their wishes.

Categories Accountability, Arkansas, Charter Schools, Education Industry, Privatization, Vouchers, Walton Foundation

When Walton Family Says “Innovative,” They Mean Privately Controlled

By dianeravitch
October 8, 2020 //
15

What do you think the Walton Family Foundation has in mind when they seek out “innovative” approaches to schooling? We know that they speak their mind when they hand out millions every year to charter schools, school choice organizations, privatization advocacy groups, and Teach for America. They usually drop a few dollars in the bucket of their Bentonville, Arkansas, public schools, peanuts compared to the money for privatization.

Media Contact: Vanessa Steinhoff, 240-432-1428, vsteinhoff@wffmail.com                  

Walton Family Foundation Announces 

#SchoolsIN Campaign to Inspire, Spotlight 

Innovative Educational Approaches During COVID-19


Families, Students and Educators Invited to Share Their Creative, Surprising 

and All-Too-Real Moments This School Year on Social Media

BENTONVILLE, Ark. – Today the Walton Family Foundation launched #SchoolsIN, a national campaign to provide inspiration, spotlight innovation and build an inclusive community in support of student learning. With COVID-19 shifting how learning happens across the country, the campaign is an opportunity to build awareness about creative approaches and emphasize the importance of continuing learning amid adversity. 

“At this pivotal moment, America’s students, families and educators are reinventing when, where and how learning happens,” said Marc Sternberg, K-12 Education Program Director at the Walton Family Foundation. “As challenging as this school year is and will be, I’m inspired and energized by families and educators channeling frustration into inspiration in all settings. From parents to policymakers, we all must do whatever it takes to ensure learning continues and #SchoolsIN for students.”

The four-week campaign encourages families, students and educators to share on social media the ups and downs of keeping school in session – with a focus on student success during a difficult school year. From brilliant ideas to flashes of inspiration, and occasional moments of chaos, the campaign will chronicle and celebrate the wide range of experiences people across the country are having in all different types of educational settings, linked by the hashtag #SchoolsIN.  

The Walton Family Foundation has been supporting innovative approaches to teaching and learning for over 30 years, guided by the belief that a great education can put opportunity and a self-determined life in reach for every child, regardless of background. The foundation works alongside and sources ideas from families, educators, innovators and community leaders who have a bold vision for student success. This surfaces new ideas and practices that challenge traditional assumptions about where and how learning happens and what’s possible for children.

To learn more, visit www.schoolsin.org. 

# # #

About the Walton Family Foundation
The Walton Family Foundation is, at its core, a family-led foundation. Three generations of the descendants of our founders, Sam and Helen Walton, and their spouses, work together to lead the foundation and create access to opportunity for people and communities. We work in three areas: improving K-12 education, protecting rivers and oceans and the communities they support, and investing in our home region of Northwest Arkansas and the Arkansas-Mississippi Delta. In 2019, the foundation awarded more than $525 million in grants in support of these initiatives. To learn more, visit waltonfamilyfoundation.org and follow us on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram….

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Categories Charter Schools, Philanthropy, Privatization, Walton Foundation

Maurice Cunningham: Why the Waltons and Koch Support Charter Schools

By dianeravitch
September 4, 2020 //
10

Maurice Cunningham, a political science professor at the University of Massachusetts, specializes in exposing the role of Dark Money in education. If you read my book, Slaying Goliath, you know that Cunningham’s research and blog posts helped to turn the tide against a state referendum in 2016 to expand the number of charter schools in Massachusetts. Cunningham showed that “Yes on Two” Organization was funded by billionaires and that the billionaires were hiding their identities. Despite being outspent, the parent-teacher-local school committee won handily.

In this post, originally from February, Cunningham explains why the Waltons and Charles Koch are so devoted to privatizing public school governance. He’s right that they want to lower their taxes. They also want to smash teachers’ unions; more than 90% of charters are non-union. The corporate sector doesn’t like unions, and most private unions have been eliminated. The teachers’ unions are still standing, which annoys the billionaires.

Categories Accountability, Billionaires, Charter Schools, Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, Koch Brothers, Massachusetts, Privatization, Unions, Walton Foundation

For Your Browsing Pleasure: Who Got Walton Money for Education Disruption in 2018?

By dianeravitch
February 3, 2020 //
27

The Walton Family Foundation is the fruit of the Walmart chain. It was created by the Waltons, one of the richest families in the world. The three senior members of the Walton family–Alice Walton, Jim Walton, and Rob Walton–have a collective net worth in excess of $150 billion. There is a younger generation of Waltons whose wealth is not included in that total. The Walton family increases its wealth by $4 million an hour, every hour of every day.

The Walton Foundation has a few causes in which it concentrates its giving. Reforming K-12 education is one of the major areas for giving.

The Walton Foundation is the biggest single private funder of charters schools and vouchers in the United States.

In 2018, it gave $210 million to a long list of grantees to promote its K-12 goals, especially privatization of public schools via charters and vouchers.

In the same year, it increased that giving by another $238.6 million, in a section of its website called “Special Projects,” many of which went to the same K-12 charters and vouchers, or advocacy for charters and vouchers.

I am leaving it to you to review the list of grants. What do you see that is interesting or surprising? Some years I read the entire list. Now I am asking you to do it and report back.

The only other source of funding at this scale is the U.S. Department of Education’s Charter Schools Program, which gave $440 million in 2018 to launch new charter schools, most of which went to large corporate charter chains like KIPP, IDEA, and Success Academy in New York City. The original federal program, created in 1994, was intended to launch start-up charters that needed a financial boost, not to build financial behemoths to replace public schools. Under DeVos, the CSP has become a juggernaut to disrupt communities and states, whether or not they want charters. New Hampshire, for example, got the largest single state grant of $46 million, and its Democratic-controlled legislature has thus far refused to accept the money, which would double the number of charters in the state and knock a huge hole in the financing of public schools.

 

 

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Education Industry, Education Reform, Privatization, Vouchers, Walton Foundation

Maurice Cunningham: Why the Waltons Fund the “National Parents Union”

By dianeravitch
January 15, 2020 //
24

Maurice Cunningham is a professor of political science at the University of Massachusetts who specializes in shining a bright light on Dark Money, the money insidiously inserted into political campaigns under false pretenses, where the donors try to hide their identity. In the instance described below, the identities of the donors are mostly known, so technically it is not Dark Money, but the purposes of the donors are hidden. The Waltons are part of the hard rightwing. They  oppose higher taxes, unions, or anything that might diminish their fortune of $150 billion. They advocate for vouchers and charters, never public schools. They employ one million low-wage workers. They have launched lawsuits to lower the property taxes of their Walmarts, which reduce state and local funding for public services. Their entry into Democratic politics is intended to boost conservative candidates who support their preference for low taxes on the richest. It’s actually a brilliant strategy, like DFER: the billionaires already own the Republican Party and benefit from its tax cuts and deregulation, time to use their money to gain influence in the Democratic Party too.

Cunningham writes:

Waltons Dive into Democratic Primaries Behind National Parents United

 

The Walton family, heirs to the Wal-Mart fortune, are trying to deal themselves in to Democratic primary politics. It isn’t any mystery why. Conservative billionaires feel gravely threatened by Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren. Their vehicle is yet another new privatization front posing as a parents group, National Parents Union.

National Parents Union appears to be an umbrella for groups working in their states on privatization of public goods, primarily schools. It’s hard to tell since they haven’t published their membership list, just a claim that groups from all 50 states will meet in New Orleans. Since the headquarters is listed as Malden, MA and the co-founder is Massachusetts Parents United’s Keri Rodrigues Lorenzo, we can take that operation as representative. Here’s how I introduced Massachusetts Parents United: Old Win in an Empty Bottle last year: “Massachusetts Parents United claims to be ‘the independent voice of parents.’ But it’s entirely dependent on funding from the Walton Family’s (tax deductible) political operations.” Since then I’ve learned there are some other givers—two $100,000 checks in 2018, etc.— but the Waltons are still the chief underwriters, giving $366,000 in 2017 and $500,000 in 2018.

So we’ll await the list of member organizations but it is most likely they will be fronts for privatization interests funded by the Waltons, Eli Broad, and other billionaire privatizers. When I first wrote about NPU in Keri Rodrigues Goes Coastal with Plans for National Parents Union I wrote “Funding! There is nothing in it about who would be bankrolling this operation. There is a list of advisors (in formation) and wouldn’t some of them want to know who is funding such an ambitious proposal? Enough suspense: it will be the WalMart legatees.” In other words, this is the kind of faux Fortune 500 grassroots operation I wrote about in Massachusetts Parents United: Grassroots or AstroTurf?

The pitch Rodrigues made to the Waltons to fund NPU was calculated to activate the Walton check writing glands. It leaned heavily on positioning NPU as a voice in the Democratic Party primary season that would attack unions. Labor is anathema to the Waltons because it advocates for a livable wage and decent benefits (against the Wal-Mart business plan) and for public goods that require taxation of the rich and rich companies (see The Waltons: From Dark Money to Dark Store Theory, It’s All About Taxes).

To linger on the union question for a moment, how many corporations are big, powerful, and awful enough to get trashed by Human Rights Watch, as Wal-Mart was in Discounting Rights: Wal-Mart’s Violation of US Workers’ Rights to Freedom of Association.

One fascinating aspect of NPU’s corporate public debut has been its Right Wing Rollout. A PR firm sent out a press availability and in the past week NPU has been featured on SiriusXM Patriot (featuring Breitbart News Daily and Sean Hannity), the conservative Washington Examiner, and FoxNews. Not your typical progressive outlets but a good clue as to where the Waltons’ new operation has appeal.

In recent years the Waltons have also heavily backed Democrats for Education Reform, which has promoted itself as seeking school privatization as an “inside job” within the Democratic Party. There is evidence that younger Waltons are donating more to Democrats, as Leslie K. Finger and Sarah Reckhow wrote in Walmart Heirs Shift From Red to Purple: The Evolving Political Contributions of the Nation’s Richest Family. Partisan labels don’t matter as much as does the shared interest among the extremely wealthy to protect their incomes and wealth and to keep their public obligations (taxes) minimal, as Jeffrey A. Winters explains in Oligarchy.

So NPU is another extension of the Waltons effort to use various vehicles to protect the Waltons and increase what goes into their own bank accounts. This has already been evident during the Democratic primary season, as I wrote in Walton Family Political Front Disrupts Elizabeth Warren Speech. In that one I included a tweet by CNN’s Ryan Grim, who was covering the event: “So the nut of what happened tonight in ATL is that a pro-charter group funded by the Waltons protested a Warren speech about a pioneering union led by black women. And, bc it’s all so on the nose, Warren had been talking about corrupt systems are designed to exploit ppl in pain.”

At the end of the NPU media advisory there is this: “At the conclusion of the summit, delegates will vote in a straw poll assessing the education proposals and policies of the 2020 Presidential Candidates.” (bold in original). Bernie and Elizabeth, do not wait up late at night for a big puff of white smoke coming from the local Wal-Mart. This could be a big night for privatization champion Michael Bloomberg (any chance he’s among the NPU financial backers?).  I can’t wait for the endorsement advertisement.

Wal-Mart’s workplace practices include “a vociferous anti-unionism, embedded gender discrimination, compulsive cost cutting, and near-comprehensive control over workers and the workplace.”—Prof. Thomas Jensen Adams

[Full disclosure: as an educator in the UMass system, I am a union member. I write about dark money, not education.]

Categories Billionaires, Democracy, Democrats, Education Reform, Walton Foundation

Michael Kohlhaas: Charter Leader Embarrassed to Admit That He Took Money from the Waltons and Broad (“Great Public Schools Now”)

By dianeravitch
January 11, 2020 //
9

Michael Kohlhaas, the blogger who has used the California Public Records Act to obtain emails among charter leaders, the California Charter Schools Association, and their enablers, reveals here what happened when protestors shut down a charter board meeting last March, accusing the charter school of taking money from the nefarious Eli Broad and the Waltons. Broad and Walton have a shell takeover corporation deceptively titled “Great Public Schools Now,” whose goal is to turn public schools into privately managed charter schools. The leader of the Extera Charter School did not directly answer the question, but Kohlhaas answers it now. Yes, the charter did take money from the Waltons and Broad.

The public is getting wise to the deceptive tactics of the charter lobby. Public schools are accountable and transparent. Charter schools are not. Public schools are audited and overseen by public officials. Charter schools answer to no one but their self-selected private boards.

Kohlhaas writes:

So you probably heard about how activists from Centro CSO and the United Teachers of Los Angeles and Eastside Padres Unidos Contra la Privatizacion protested vigorously and shut down the March 19, 2019 meeting of the Extera Charter Conspiracy Board of Directors to express their opposition to Extera’s colonial co-location at Eastman Avenue Elementary School in Boyle Heights.

And one of the key exchanges was between a protester, whose name I don’t know, and self-proclaimed doctor and supreme Extera commander Jim Kennedy, and you can watch it here.1 The backstory is that Corri Ravare had been talking previously about how Extera was getting some money from famous Walton/Broad privatizing front organization Great Public Schools Now, which, as the protester notes, is extraordinarily revealing with respect to which team Extera plays for.2

The protester called Dr. Jim Kennedy out on this and he denied that they had taken any money from GPSN: “At this point we have not …” But the truth, as the protester said, is that Corri Ravare had already “said we pretty much have the money.” And the problem with this? Well, clearly, it is that “Great Public Schools Now have declared themselves an enemy of public education. Those are the people we have to work against because they are selling out our public schools to Eli Broad and the Walton Foundation.”

She’s absolutely right about that, of course, and Doctor Jim Kennedy seems to understand that, or at least to realize that Extera’s association with GPSN doesn’t look so good. No doubt this is why he went on to tell her straight out that “[Extera has] not yet accepted that money.” But, as you may already have guessed, Doctor JK is being extraordinarily deceptive here with his mumbled half-denials. In fact Extera had been actively pursuing money from GPSN since December 2018, four months before the date of this meeting.

And the money they were pursuing was not innocuous. Not meant for important things like supplies, textbooks, instructional materials, anything at all to be used to actually educate actual children. They were seeking money from GPSN’s charter school expansion funding program for a planning grant to support their continued colonial charter conspiracy expansion, this time into the majority-Latino Montebello Unified School District. In other words, the protester’s criticism was right on target.

Things are going badly for the charter industry when their mask of beneficence is stripped away and behind it are the same voracious billionaires, eager to strip democratic control away and privatize public schools.

Categories Accountability, Broad Foundation, Charter Schools, Corporate Reformers, Disruption, Education Industry, Los Angeles, Privatization, Walton Foundation

Waltons and Broad Fund a “Grassroots Parents’” Group

By dianeravitch
January 11, 2020 //
13

If you believe that any genuine parent organization is funded by the Waltons, Eli Broad, and the City Fund (which was funded by the Reed Hastings, John Arnold, and other billionaires), please contact me at once, as I have a bridge in Brooklyn that I can sell you for a reasonable fee. Really! I’ll even print up a gen-u-wine bill of sale!

One of the leaders of the National Parents Union, Keri Rodrigues, runs the Massachusetts Parents Union, which was also bankrolled by the Waltons. Her group was one of the prominent voices demanding more charters in a state referendum in 2016, which was overwhelmingly defeated. The Waltons invested a few million in that referendum. Keri’s MPU reported revenues of $957,683 in 2018, half from the Waltons. Her salary at MPU, that grassroots parent group, is $172,500, according to Dark Money specialist Maurice Cunningham, a political science professor at U Mass. Just an average parent.

Many grassroots parents groups belong to the Network for Public Education. None of them have bank accounts with six figures or nearly seven figures. All are powered by volunteers.

New Orleans is an apt place for the big launch of NPU. It is the first (and thus far the only) school district that has eliminated all public schools and the teachers’ union. According to the latest reports, 49% of its highly segregated schools received a D or an F from the state. The selection of NOLA suggests the goal of this faux “parent union”: the elimination of public schools.

Here is an announcement of the organizing event of the new Walton-funded NPU:

 

NPU is launching on the streets of New Orleans (1/16-/18) with delegates from all 50 states with parents of color, low-income parents, special needs parents, single moms and dads, grandparents, formerly incarcerated parents, and parents in recovery. Led by Alma Marquez and Keri Rodrigues, National Parents Union co-founders, Ilyasah Shabazz, Community Organizer and daughter of Malcolm X and Sharif El Mekki, Black Male Educators for Social Justice. 

 

Keri is an education activist (and a Democrat) who is launching a new organization, the National Parents Union, which will heed the call to organize otherwise independent and uncoordinated parent organizing efforts into a national voice and movement to ensure teacher unions no longer have a stranglehold on the education system in America. She’s a former labor activist who plans to use the tactics that make unions so powerful and apply them to this movement led by parents.

 

MEDIA ADVISORY 
FOR PLANNING PURPOSES ONLY

Contact: NPU@mercuryllc.com 

 

THE REVOLUTION IS COMING… NATIONAL PARENTS UNION TO OFFICIALLY LAUNCH AT PARENT POWER 2020 IN NEW ORLEANS 

Kick-off summit will bring parent activists and organizations to New Orleans to define a national K-12 agenda and make education equity a reality for all children 

 

New Orleans, LA – The National Parents Union (NPU), an intersectional, parent-led organization, will hold its inaugural summit in New Orleans to advance education reform and define a new K-12 national agenda. 

Parent Power 2020 (January 16-18) will bring over 100 delegates and organizations from all 50 states for a series of skills-building workshops, campaign clinics and activations designed to provide parents with the tools and infrastructure to effect change in their own communities and exert greater influence on the national conservation around education reform.  Parent Power 2020 will feature several notable speakers, including keynotes from journalist and activist Felipe Luciano, and author and activistIlyasah Shabazz, the daughter of the late Malcom X. 

The summit will also include a Jazz Funeral through the French Quarter in New Orleans on January 17, to officially bury the status quo that has been plaguing education in America for decades and commemorate the dawn of a new day in our schools.

The convening will conclude with a vote and ratification of NPU’s Statement of Values that lays out the goals and objectives of parent activists ahead of the 2020 Presidential election. At the conclusion of the summit, delegates will vote in a straw poll assessing the education proposals and policies of the 2020 Presidential Candidates. 

 

Parent Power 2020 is open to press. Please contact Dan Bank npu@mercuryllc.com to register for credentials.    

 

Click here to learn more about NPU’s mission. 

                          

WHO: 

Featured speakers at Parent Power 2020 will include: 

·        Alma Marquez and Keri Rodrigues, National Parents Union co-founders

·        Ilyasah Shabazz, Community Organizer and daughter of Malcolm X

·        Antonio Villaraigosa, Former Mayor of Los Angeles 

·        Felipe Luciano, The Young Lords 

·        Colleen Cook, National Coalition for Public School Options 

·        Gerard Robinson, Center for Advancing Opportunity  

·        Sharif El Mekki, Black Male Educators for Social Justice 

 

WHEN: 

Parent Power 2020

January 16 –January 18, 2020

 

Jazz Funeral 

Friday, January 17

6:30pm-7:00pm local time

Additional details will be provided 

 

WHERE:

Parent Power 2020 will be held in New Orleans. The exact location will be shared during the registration process. 

 

About National Parents Union:

The National Parents Union is a network of parent organizations and grassroots activists across the country committed to improving the quality of life for children and families in the United States. NPU unites these organizations behind a common set of principles that put children and families at the center of education politics and policy. With delegates representing each of the 50 states, NPU disrupts the traditional role of parent voice in policy spaces and develops a new narrative that is inclusive of families from a wide variety of intersectional perspectives.

Categories Billionaires, Education Reform, Massachusetts, Walton Foundation
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