Corporate reformers are taking no chances.
They have raised more than $3 million to make sure that they control the Los Angeles school board.
The school board president Monica Garcia will have $1 million, more or less, to fight off education activist Robert Skeels, who has raised $20,000, more or less.
Inexperienced Kate Anderson, the corporate favorite, will have $1 million, more or less, to battle incumbent Steve Zimmer, an experienced teacher. Zimmer will be outspent many times over.
The money continues to pour in from out of state donors, zeal Street, equity investors, and others who think it would be fun to buy a school board of a major city.
Meanwhile, back in New York City, Mayor Bloomberg has announced the closing of another 26 years. This, after 11 years of mayoral control with no dissent permitted. The closing schools are, as usual, disproportionately black, Hispanic, poor, and enrolling large numbers of students with disabilities. Too bad he can’t run for a fourth and fifth and sixth term so he can finish the job of reforming the city’s schools.
Mayor Bloomberg wants Los Angeles to follow his lead. He has contributed $1 million to the corporate campaign fund.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
At the United Way event in Los Angeles:
Stunning.
I’ve heard ‘put students first’, ‘accountability’, ‘school choice’, and many more reformy sound bites throughout this day.
Very few voices of teachers and parents represented here today. Although some did, and were strongly heard. Overall the corporate driven, market-based philosophoes espoused here are an extremely strong force to contend with.
LikeLike
Tuesday students at Roosevelt High school and community members protested at Roosevelt High School which is in Garcia’s district asking the community to vote to remove her from office. Skeels is the best qualified competitor to Garcia. He is white. David Tokofsky has won in a majority hispanic seat before being white however and properly represented his community and the entire district. Tokofsky is no longer on the board of education however he constantly is at the board room whether at board or committee meetings for the students and taxpayers. We need Skeels in Garcia’s office. Yesterday to help defeat Kate Anderson who is the darling of the privatizer set and Bloomburg Jeneen Robinson who was, I think improperly, elininated from being on the ballot and decided to run as a write in candidate just asked her backers to support Steve Zimmer to beat Anderson. I thank Jeneen for her brave and smart move for the students and taxpayers of LAUSD.
LikeLike
By the way United Way has done nothing except mess up education in L.A. They are not a positive force. Just look at who funds them.
LikeLike
I read a couple of days ago that even Eva Longoria was out campaigning for Kate Anderson last weekend. Apparently she asked Arne Duncan for advice on who she should back.
LikeLike
That surely shows her lack of intellectualness. She doesn’t know what is happening just wants some more advertising to promote her career. If you ask Duncan you do not know anything.
LikeLike
Intellectualness? Praying you’re not a teacher, George.
LikeLike
I look for this kind of action in Seattle this fall as we have a mayoral election and three School Board seats. It’s just wrong and outrageous.
LikeLike
Alas. maybe the conspiracy theories are correct and there is an agenda to destroy public education in America. So many with so much money spent for what? What is their agenda beyond privatization and corporate profits?
LikeLike
Even though I am struggling to fund my own School Board campaign in Hillsborough County Florida, I have contributed to Mr. Skeels campaign. I encourage others to do so as well. What money he has collected is from many small donations. I think he will be happy and encouraged to see support coming from across the county. His campaign website is: http://www.robertdskeelsforschoolboard.org/
The primary is Tuesday.
LikeLike
In light of your own straitened circumstances, that’s a genuinely noble thing to do.
LikeLike
It conjures up the opening line of F. Scott Fitzgerald, “The rich really are different from you and me . . .”
One is pressed to remember that the “new normal”, which is the oligarchy that permeates our culture, has dollars outnumbering our budgets. Just look at who is funding the LA school board elections.
But we as voters outnumber them as voters.
All we need is consensus and some critical thinking.
LikeLike
They are using flock theory and they now control the media since Clinton signed the 1996 Telecommunications Act. When you have carefully trained people not to think and just consume this is what you get. Last night I watched an hour of the MLK film not seen since 1970. Wow, what if we could just get 50% of that energy now to save our children and stop the theft of our society? They would not stand a chance.
LikeLike
You’re right, George. The question is not what to do, but how to do it. . . . and perhaps why have we not been doing it.
LikeLike
We have been doing it behind the lines in effecting legislation. Also, by commenting on places like this blog you get ideas out to those who care. For six years myself and Richard Arthur had a cable access show called “Education Watch” every week. I still have every one of the shows on both VHS and 3/4 professional video tape which are easy to convert to digital. Since we do not have a free press anymore we have to do the information through the internet and our own communication channels and to constantly call down the regular press. As Far as I know the only press I trust is Russia Today and much of what is on Al Jazeera. I have had too many reporters tell us in private that they cannot do those stories if they want to continue to be a reporter. One person who told me that was working on a non education story on a major corporation and pollution and they lost their job. Just what they predicted happened. Diane Ravich’s blog and Melody out of Colorado are great in their spreading of information and people being able to communicate ideas. In California we believe that they got rid of cable access T.V. because of the success of Leslie Dutton and the Full Disclosure Network. She is the only person to ever win an emmy with a cable access show. The website is at http://www.fulldisclosure.net. On this site you can see the stories of the toxic school Belmont which cost more than one billion and how corrupt the superior court system is in the State of California with the stories on Richard Fine who discovered this corruption and the illegal payments to judges across the state. For this they put him in solitary confinement for 18 months.
First we must realize what the mess is and who is causing it and why. With the recent elections in LAUSD and the national attention on buying of school boards and the recent election in San Diego of a student, parent and teacher oriented superintendent we have a chance especially with what is happening in Chicago with them fighting corporatization and privatization at their expense and their childrens. You cannot give up now that they are starting to lose battles and credability which is the coin of the realm.
LikeLike