Three candidates who support Superintendent John Deasy received a gift of $250,000 from M. Rhee today.
This is added to the $1 million supplied by Mayor Bloomberg, and the $1.5 million raised by Eli Broad and his friends (including Joel Klein).
Clearly there is an all-out effort to make sure that corporate reform policies favored by the Gates Foundation win the day.
DFER called on its friends across the nation to send money to Board President Monica Garcia, the billionaires’ favorite.
Garcia is the choice of Bloomberg, Broad, and DFER.
Question to be answered by the voters of Los Angeles: Is the school board for sale to the highest bidder?
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Imagine the impact those funds could have spent the right way in a school. This is criminal.
Monica Garcia is the worst. She is methodically destroying public education at LAUSD. Let us all thank the billionaires for Superintendent Deasy who has a phony PHD. He quit his Prince Georges County superintendents job one week after the stories break on his phony PHD and one week after that he is hired by Gates and one year later is at LAUSD. These people are rolling nation wide and must be stopped. Unfortunately, we are so corrupt that you easily and cheaply buy our legislators.
Why isn’t this unprecedented expenditure of private funds on a local school board election front page national news?
Bloomburgs was. This is a new twist in the ongoing war for total control.
If Ms. Rhee derived these funds from her StudentsFirst slush fund, we should be entitled to a full itemized accounting of where the funds originated. Like Gloria Romero and the Koch Brothers secret Arizona PAC that they were using to try and undermine Gov. Brown’s Prop 30, there are concerns that ALEC, convicted felons, right-wing foundations, and all sorts of malefactors are behind that money. AFIK there’s still a lawsuit over the Arizona PAC that Romero and her Koch friends, were involved in. Maybe someone can contact Attorney General Harris about this latest money laundering scheme to help my opponent.
Thank You corporate owned Federal Supreme Court.
This school board and many others have been for sale for a very long time as in all political adventures where there is easy money to be made by those you put into the decision making seats. What else is new, unfortunately.
Answer: apparently.
More precisely, is the LA school board to be opened to all bidders, not just the unions.
You’ve got to be joking, the ratio of plutocrat to union spending in this race is in orders of magnitude. All bidders indeed. My campaign has raised $17,245.22 with just contributions from working class families and community members of $25—$50. One big check from AALA of $500. UTLA hasn’t even sent me their promised $300 check yet. But these billionaires are giving my opponent millions upon millions to offset some phantasmagorical union advantage? You’re more than a liar Mr. Undehill, you’re a shill for power and privilege. Essentially, just a single donor to the CSR corporate slush fund has more say over the election than all the families in my district. That’s some kind of democracy.
It is one thing to put the money up for grabs, that is really disgusting but very much the business way. It is quite another to take the money and then say it is in the best interests of the children. That is evil!!!!
HEY New Yorkers!! Some of your TAX Dollars have gone into this!!!! Yes Joel Klein also contributed BIG BIG bucks into this and we all know that it was discovered a little while back that Bloomberg gave Joel Klein a 10 Million dollar contract using NYC TAX Dollars to track NYC student test scores!! Hmm. wonder just how much of those tax dollars are being used to buy a Los Angeles school board member!!
Why, in G*D’s name, does a school board candidate need *that* kind of money to get elected??
If billionaire privatizers control the board, they can convert hundreds of millions of dollars of public school property and annual school budgets—currently under the control of and responsive to the public via democratically-elected school boards—and give them over to private interests. After busting the union, they will make billions off the now-privatized system, even though the product will be worse. The bosses will get paid more, and the workers (most prominently the teachers) will get paid peanuts, and no longer receive decent health benefits or any retirement. Bloomberg and others also make money from the on-line and digital products that these schools will now “choose” to purchase.
A million or so is a good investment.
Very cheap buy in considering the profits at hand and control of young minds. At LAUSD the crooks have been here for a long time. Really starting with Roy Romer who put the theft on steroids considering the $27 billion in school bonds where they have been paying for construction 2-3 times the average in L.A. County by all else according to LAUSD’s documents and the Calif. Office of Public School Construction (OPSC) Jan. 2008 study on school const. costs. This is about real money and power and who cares about the youth and public at large.
Why is this legal? Why are there so many raccoons trying to steal from public education in Los Angeles. Can’t someone do something about these corporate backers and hijackers? We have had so much taken away from our kids in some of the most economically hard hit neighborhoods! I have taught in Watts for 15 years and never had it so bad as this year. I can’t stand some of the people that run this city. Sony pictures has thrown in money to back Garcia as well, so the entertainment industry is trying to throw it’s greedy hat in…do these people have no shame?