A teacher read the discussion about the “parent trigger,” which assumes that schools improve when parents have the power to fire some or all of the staff, or to turn the school over to a private charter operator.
This teacher disagrees, based on direct experience:
I can add to this discussion. I am a teacher in a “failing” inner city school that was closed down and had its leadership and faculty changed. I came in a year after the new principal and have been there for several years now.
What happened is that changing the leadership, the staff and structure of the school, the supervisory network, the uniform requirements all has not changed the school’s low performance. The reasons are clear, it’s because it’s the kids are all the same, the families are all the same, the neighborhood is the same and all of the same community-wide problems are the same.
Changing principals, APs, teachers, or even the name on the school does not address the underlying troubles in our school – poverty, drugs, crime, violence and teen pregnancy.
But education-related factors can be just as damaging, from the regimen of standardized tests that makes school mind-numbingly boring to the cherrypicking of “desirable” students by nearby charter schools. These are the fault of politicians and corporations, not local school staff, but cut into valuable learning time and waste tax dollars just the same.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Being a mass customer base does catch the attention of the owner, any owner.
What is difficult is getting mad at folks who do try to make a difference but forget that they are not the only difference makers. For every teacher who influences a student we have chance to be the best of ourselves. Creating the tools for the use of education should not create the illusion in the mind of the creator that children are the extended tools for profit or use of that creation.
Robert Skeels posted this about Parent Revolution’s Ben
Austin being disbarred and “not eligible to practice law
in California because of his failure to take a LEGAL
ETHICS course as part of
Minimum Continuing Legal Education.”
Given the countless lies Austin throw around impuning
the ethics of others, I think it’s fair game to point Austin’s actual
and documented ethical lapse, and should be a subject of a
blog article on your site.
Here’s the link:
http://rdsathene.blogspot.com/2011/11/schools-matter-parent-trigger-charlatan.html
and here’s text with Robert Skeels’ take (in
Robert’s inimitable prose):
– – – – – – – – – – –
Sunday, November 13, 2011
Schools Matter: Parent Trigger charlatan Ben Austin booted off The State Bar of California
First published on Schools Matter on November 9, 2011
“Making students accountable for test scores works well on
a bumper sticker and it allows many politicians to look good
by saying that they will not tolerate failure. But it represents
a hollow promise. Far from improving education, high-stakes
testing marks a major retreat from fairness, from accuracy,
from quality, and from equity.” — Sen. Paul Wellstone
(1944-2002) quoted on Alfie Kohn’s site
Defend Public Schools from Corporate Charter-Voucher Charlatans like the foppish millionaire from Benedict Canyon, parent trigger pusher Ben AustinApparently the right wingers at Parent Revolution are immune to cognitive dissonance. How else could we explain an organization that frequently co-hosts meetings with The Heartland Institute calling the National Educators Association (NEA) teabaggers? In a desperate attempt to preserve George W. Bush’s fringe right-wing No Child Left Behind legislation (NCLB), the Parent Revolution reactionaries claim that anyone opposed to Rod
Paige’s vicious anti-public school project are teabaggers, and
somehow opposed civil (read corporate) rights.
The basis for these wild and specious claims? Parent Revolution
doesn’t want to see what they term “accountability” removed from
ESEA/NCLB. Never mind that NCLB’s false forms of accountability
were never intended to do anything other than make it easy for
the neoliberal consensus in Washington to push the corporate
agenda.
That agenda includes forced school closures, reconstitutions, and
ultimately the privatization of the whole system for the benefit and
profits of Wall Street hucksters like Whitney Tilson, real estate
moguls like Eli Broad, and convicted predatory technology
monopolists like Bill Gates. Indeed, in defending NCLB, Parent
Revolution wants to maintain the standardized testing status quo.
All their astroturf blather about “accountability” got me thinking.
When I think of paragons of accountability, Ben Austin and
Parent Revolution are poles apart from those thoughts in every
sense. Let’s look at the facts. California Parent Trigger author
Austin was under investigation by the Los Angeles City Ethics Commission
(Case # 2010-36) because he was collecting a check at
the City Attorney’s Office while at the same time he was a
full time charter school advocate (and part time Green Dot consultant) at Los Angeles Parents Union (aka LAPU or Parent Revolution).
Besides double dipping, he used his city employee connections to host closed meetings with his political connections garnered from his City job, like with Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa. Those connections also brought lucrative business to his wife, Tracy Austin, who makes a fortune as a fundraising consultant for the very same politicians that gave Austin a pass on his ethics violations. Where was the accountability in all of that?
Of course, Austin’s conflicts of interest while working at the City
of Los Angeles pale in comparison to when arch-reactionary
Milton Freidman acolyte Schwarzenegger appointed the Parent
Revolution chief to the California State Board of Education (SBE)
to join the rest of the charter-voucher profiteers the SBE was stacked
with. Austin used his SBE seat to push through the California Charter
Schools Association agenda. He also used the seat to lobby for and
manipulate the implementation of
his and Gloria Romero’s hideous charter takeover law
entitled the Parent Empowerment Act, but most often
referred to by culturally loaded name Parent Trigger.
Austin’s unethical and illegal behaviors on the SBE earned
him a letter of censorship from the SBE demanding he stop
breaking the law. Where was the accountability in all of that?
Ben Austin’s latest foray into the realm of accountability?
Parent Trigger charlatan Ben Austin booted off State Bar of California. Here’s the link to the documentation of Ben Austin’s disbarment
I’ll reproduce my original take on this situation:
Parent Trigger author, Benjamin Benchley Lain Austin,
aka the Beverly Hills Barrister, aka the Foppish Millionaire
of Benedict Canyon is not eligible to practice law
in California because of his failure to take a
LEGAL ETHICS course as part of
Minimum Continuing Legal Education.
It’s no small irony that a charlatan that claims to know
so much about education doesn’t keep up with his own,
and more importantly, avoids taking classes on ethics!
I suppose we can’t blame Austin for avoiding classes on ethics,
since ethics are anathema to him. So next time the slick charter
school spokesman and his band of pernicious privatizers prattle
about accountability, we can remember that they have no
understanding of the word whatsoever.
Special thanks to Lisa for bringing Austin’s current State Bar of
California status to our attention.
Addendum: A reader chastised me for not noting another
form of accountability Parent Revolution astroturfers are guilty
of shirking, and that’s keeping their paperwork for tax exempt
status in order. I’m a little embarrassed that I neglected to
mention this, but in
Trigger Happy Parent Revolution Refuses Form 990 Request,
we explored how the Parent Revolution scoundrels weren’t
accountable to the tax paying public. The IRS sent me a letter
explaining that they are investigating these poverty pimps.
While we’re at it, let’s not forget wealthy white Gabe Rose,
deputy director of Parent Revolution, has the dubious
distinction of being caught posing as a Compton parent
when he has never lived in Compton, nor been a parent.
The elitist reformers have little interest in improving education. Instead we have an “Emperor had No Clothes” education fable where parents are told that Common Core, parent triggers, stack ranking teachers, and endless standardized testing will be the elegant cloth that will solve all of education’s “problems”. Like the unscrupulous tailors, the parents are fooled and paraded through legislatures and governors’ mansions. As yet the paraents have not realized they in fact have been sold something that was not in their childrens’ best interest. The danger is that when the parents finally realize the ruse, instead of demanding action, the tailors will game the results and convince the parents that being half dressed is the new normal and perfectly acceptable.
Yes, education “reform” is a perfect example of this old tale.
Sure, removing teachers may not have improved the education students are getting, but I’m sure it lowered the part of the school budget devoted to teacher salaries.
As Charlie Sheen would say, “Winning!”
Education reform causes students to care less about learning. I heard a twelve-year-old say out loud, ” I give up!” He was referring to school and not caring anymore. Should a teacher take the blame for that student’s attitude? Or maybe student’s parents should be blames? Maybe learning for this student is just like playing a video game: can’t get pass level 12. “Damn, I give up!”
There is nothing wrong with the Parent Trigger or as it is known in California the Parent Empowerment Act. It is how it is being used especially by Parent Revolution which is Ben Austin. They have every time gathered illegal signatures according to the law, rules and regulations. Also, under the California law parents can run the school they do not need a charter operator. If any of you would read the law, which you obviously have not, you would know this if you can read legalese. This is an important tool for parents who are in districts like LAUSD where they do not care about you. This is a lever for parents, students and teachers to do what they can do best when informed. We are starting training sessions so that parents, students, teachers and community will know the legal options and what they mean on the ground. This is “Informed Consent” before they vote and they should not be allowed to vote before training so that they know what they are doing as Parent Revolution is specializing in small elementary schools in poor areas with high lack of english as it is easier there for them to shuck and jive their way in. However, they have now been busted and the information sent to the LAUSD Board. They have no more ability to deny knowledge of the illegal Parent Triggers.
There is EVERYTHING wrong with a law that enables a small group of parents to give away a public school to private companies. That school does not belong just to the parents whose children are there today, but also to future parents who may want their kids to attend that school. There is no mechanism for parents to take back the school in the future. There is not even a requirement that the company they give it to provide democratic representation of parents and communities on their board. You are supporting a very insidious law, George!
Don’t forget, the school also belongs to the community whose taxes support it. If we forget this, the next thing we will face politically will be what I am starting to hear here in Nevada. People without children will convince politicians that they should not pay for schools. Just let the parents pay, it is their job after all. Let the market guide them. Didn’t Mitt say everyone should get the education they can afford? This law just serves to further fragment the communities we live in.
They once changed the name of a one of the major prostitution strolls in Atlanta in hopes of changing its character. Didn’t work there either. Was it Sarah Palin who said something about lipstick on a pig?
There is no real desire it seems to fight the causes of low school performance. They have gotten so far into behavior modification that they refuse to address the issues.
http://www.thenewamerican.com/culture/education/item/15213-data-mining-students-through-common-core
In the interview linked to BELOW, Parent Revolution leader
Ben Austin characterizes the opposition to the Parent
Trigger in Compton(December 2010) thusly:
“The teachers’ union struck back”,
He then proceeds to describe McKinley Elementary
in Compton (the target school) overall as a
child-abusing hell-hole.
(Oh really? Then why did 90% of the parents
choose to remain at McKinley… the child-abusing hell-hole…
instead of at the charter school that Parent Revolution helped
open just a block away?)
Seriously, Dr. Ravitch. You’re not going to believe this—but Austin claims
THAT the the unionized teachers at McKinley retaliated against the the
pro-Parent Trigger parents by physically torturing the children of
those parents (???!!!) while the children of anti-Parent-Trigger,
pro-evil-union parents were spared this Abu Ghraib-like physical
and mental torment.
Austin said this an interview for the far-right-wing, anti-union Choice Matters,
where he is being interviewed by Bob Bowden, who had previously made
an anti-union, pro-charter documentary, “THE CARTEL”.
Check out this link for the video:
(NOTE: the scary, unnerving tinkling piano music underscoring the urination / defecation torture story)
Next, try watching it while reading along to my transcript:
(ALSO NOTE: Dr. Ravitch, I was very precise in my transcription of this part of the interview—including all the pauses, ellipses ( … ), “uhh” ‘s, “uhhmm” ‘s, etc.. .
I did this to illustrate that Ben Austin is clearly lying his head off. Show this video
to any police detective, or anyone else trained in lie detection, and see
what they say. Compare Austin’s delivery and demeanor to that of
the interviewer Bowden, who is not under pressure to knowingly lie.
Austin is bumbling, while Bowden remains smooth.
Lying is hard work. It places intense cognitive demands and pressures
on the person who is lying, and as a result, when you get someone who
is not very effective and/or experienced in lying, you get a ridiculous, stumbling,
bumbling performance like that of Austin’s in the video.
Also, the bolding during the torture story is mine, Jack)
– – – – – – – – – – – – – – –
TRANSCRIPT: (00:41 – 02:06)
AUSTIN: “Instead of being embraced and applauded for getting involved
in the education of their own children, (THE PRO-PARENT-TRIGGER PARENTS) were intimidated uhhh… and abused and harassed… uhhmm… and… uhmmm… we quiclkly found out that there were few… moral boundaries that the other side was unwilling to cross.
“One story in particular that was… uhmmm… jaw-dropping.. was that… uhmm… we found out pretty quickly that parents… whose… who—uhh… children whose parents signed the petitions… uhhm… were not allowed to go to the bathroom, and… when the children peed in their pants, they were sent to the… Nurse’s Office… uhh… and… that is where the parents… uhmm… parents got called in to bring in clean underwear… uhh… and that’s where the parents got hit up to give their … uhhh… to rescind their… signatures.”
BOWDEN: “Let me get this straight? In the same classroom where the parents who didn’t support the Parent Trigger petition… those students were allowed to go to the bathroom, and if your mom or dad supported the Parent Trigger, you were told, ‘Too bad. Stay there.’ ” (and thus, be forced to urinate/defecate on yourself, Jack)
AUSTIN: “That’s right. I mean it’s.. it’s… i-i-i-i-i… the-the… Things got so bad that the parents… uhhmmm… uhh… had to
—-(AUSTIN STARES DOWN AT SOMETHING… another “tell” of lying)
” … uhhmmm… sue the school district… and uhhmm… they … ”
– – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – –
Austin doesn’t even seem to believe the
bullshit that he’s spewing. His mind is jumping
around awkwardly… rambling about kids peeing in
their pants, then about parents forced to
bring clean underwear…
It’s like he’s trying to remember whatever phony story
that he, Gabe Rose, Pat DeTemple, and/or other Parent Rev. folks
vomited up during a secret strategy session.
In this instance at least, Austin’s a pretty unconvincing liar.
the same video is also here:
I have never seen a video where it was
more completely obvious that someone (Austin) is
lying his head off. The “uhh..”‘s,
“uhhmmm”s… pauses etc…. repeatedly’
the staring down, and looking to the side.
Again, note the contrast with cadence
and manner of the interviewer,
who is not lying.
CONCLUSION:
THIS__STORY__IS___TOTAL___AND___UTTER___BULLSHIT.
NOTE: Austin was an uncredited consultant to the
screenwriters of ‘WON’T BACK DOWN’. The urination
scene is in the movie, with the added wrinkle
that the evil unionized teacher first locked the
pro-Parent-Trigger parent’s kid in a dark closet.
When the hero mom shows up, the evil teacher
says that’s what your kid gets for you being
a trouble-maker—i.e. signing the petition,
and gathering signatures.
Sheesh!
If that ever happened in real life, the teacher
would be taken out of the school in handcuffs.
These Parent Rev. people are sociopaths, or
psychopaths who are so steeped in pathological dishonesty—
telling whatever lie they want to tell
whenever they want to tell it, so long as
it advances their agenda—that, in this
instance at least, they’ve lost
touch with reality.
In my next two posts,, I’ll tell you about
1) the bogus “McKINLEY PARENTS FOR CHANGE” flyer
that Robert Skeels wrote about:
2) Parent Revolution’s despicable “Plan B” they tried to put into effect in Compton, and which ultimately failed.
Also, check out this near the end of the BEN AUSTIN / BOBBY BOWDEN INTERVIEW video:
– – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – –
( 02:51 – 03:13 )
BOWDEN: “What happened to the teachers who did that?”
AUSTIN: “Nothing”
—-LONG PAUSE where Ben doesn’t clarify this in the least
BOWDEN: “They’re still working?”
AUSTIN: “Uhhmmm… yeah… and… and… I mean our-our goal is not to teacher-bash… or even union-bash… for some people see this simply as a struggle for power… not an issue of social justice… not an issue of …. ”
– – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – –
Right… Ben says that he and Parent Revolution are “not about teacher-bashing”… Oh, no… not at all… he just tells some horrific (and totally bogus) story about teachers at a school torturing children as a means of winning a “struggle for power.”
As anyone on either side of the issue would, Bowden is genuinely interested in whether or not the perpetrators of this were ever held accountable for this alleged conspiracy of abuse.
But Ben doesn’t want to go there… other than to say “Nothing.” when asked if the anything happened to these teachers.
Somewhat embarrassed and staring down (another “tell” of lying), Ben just quickly moves on from this line of questioning to blather about “struggle for power” and “issue of social justice.”
—I’m going into Sam Kinison voice as I type this (I know that dates me with some folks reading)
Hey Ben!!!!!
Didn’t someone ever think of alerting Compton Unified?!!!
Didn’t you think of calling the police?!!
Have those kids gotten psychological treatment?!
Have the child victims’ parents done anything in response?
Are they suing?
The answer to all these question is,,,
—more Sam Kinison Voice
HELL- NO!!!!
Why?
BECAUSE NONE OF THIS EVER FREAKIN’ HAPPENED!!!!!
OH!! OH!! OHHHHHHH!!!!!!
OH!!! OH!!! OHHHHHH!!!!!
BEN AUSTIN… YOU FREAKIN’ LIAR!!!!
OH!! OH!! OHHHHHHH!!!!!!
OH!!! OH!!! OHHHHHH!!!!!
—back to normal voice
I’m an elementary school teacher who has to take the Child Abuse Awareness Training video and test annually.
Here’s how it works.
If I—or ANY teacher / administrator—became aware that another teacher or an administrator had been torturing a child—forcing the child to urinate / defecate on himself / herself…
Like all teachers, administrators and other “mandated reporters”, I am required BY LAW to report this immediately… if not, I will be immediately removed from the classroom, will be prosecuted, and will be open to be sued for a six-figure sum (at least), and I will lose my job and my credential… and eventually get banned from teaching for life.
Look at how blase Austin is when Bowden asks him if anything happened to these teachers. There’s not the slightest bit of anger or outrage on Austin’s part… he’s a bit annoyed at the question, and instead moves on..
Oh well, la-di-dah… kids got tortured… let’s change the subject…
Austin then abruptly changes the topic to “we’re not here to teacher bash or union bash”…
Ridiculous!
If this HAD actually happened, the Parent Revolution douchebags would have gone to the police, held press conferences, had the “pro-bono legal team” sue everyone and every organization in sight—Compton Unified, the teachers, the union, the administrators… etc.
And then publicize the hell outta ALL OF THE ABOVE from now till Doomsday. They’d milk this for all its worth, AS PROOF OF HOW EVIL TRADITIONAL PUBLIC SCHOOLS AND and HOW EVIL TEACHER UNIONS ARE.
Why haven’t they?
—going back into a Sam Kinison Voice
BECAUSE_IT_NEVER_FREAKIN’_HAPPENED!!!!!!
—more Sam Kinison Voice
OH!! OH!! OHHHHHHH!!!!!!
OH!!! OH!!! OHHHHHH!!!!!
BEN AUSTIN… YOU FREAKIN’ LIAR!!!!
OH!! OH!! OHHHHHHH!!!!!!
OH!!! OH!!! OHHHHHH!!!!!
Actually, I’m going to combine the two subjects — the phony flier & Plan B — into one post. Here goes.
Here’s a blast from the past—2 1/2 years ago to be precise—of the infamous events in Compton, California during December 2010:
This is the flyer—claiming to be from the parents running “McKinley Parents for Change”.
This was supposedly group of parents of Compton’s McKinley Elementary who were ostensibly out gathering signatures to turn over McKinley Elementary’s multi-million dollar campus/annual school budgets in perpetuity over to the private Charter company Celerity—i.e. from the public sector where it is controlled by an elected school board accountable to the public…. to the private sector, where the Board meets in secret, and the public is cut out of all decision-making.
At this point, a community activist—with an admittedly anti-charter school point-of-view—named Robert Skeels then called the number at the bottom of the flyer, and here’s what he found out:
http://rdsathene.blogspot.com/2010/12/update-on-veracity-of-mckinley-parents.html
– – – – – – –
ROBERT SKEELS (December 2010): “Considering the certainty and conviction of the bullet points on the flyer by this newly formed, pro-Celerity ‘parent’ group, supposedly wholly unrelated to the well-paid professional staffers at the billionaire-financed Parent Revolution, I figured my questions and concerns would be promptly addressed.
“I left a message with my name and number for McKinley Parents for Change last night, and lo and behold Parent Revolution returned my call this morning. Yuri (not sure if I’m spelling that right, my apologies if I’m not) must not be aware of my years of investigative journalism exposing the insatiable greed of the lucrative charter-voucher industry. The poor woman couldn’t answer any of my questions about Celerity’s lack of compliance with the Modified Consent Decree or the State Board of Education’s proposed regulations on their Corporate Charter Trigger Law, so she said she’d have Gabe Rose (an official of Parent Revolution) call me back to clarify.
“She also was very helpful and explained to me that Gabe Rose played a major role in the creation of the flyer (who would have guessed?), so he was the best person to explain it. So much for McKinley Parents for Change’s claim that they are parents at McKinley Elementary School. I somehow doubt I’ll receive that second phone call.”
– – – – – – – – – – – –
Over a hundred McKinley parents demanded that they be allowed to rescind their signatures that Parent Revolution collected, claiming that the signature gatherers were not McKinley parents, and that those paid signature-gatherers lied to them about the full implications of what all the parents were signing (“This is for new computers… sign here…. this is to beautify the campus… sign here… ” and on and on)
Parent Revolution officials disputed this, claiming that 70% of the parents at the school signed with fully knowledge of the petition’s implications, and that all those parents were indeed demanding Celerity take over the school.. and that it was the McKinley parents, not Parent Revolution doing all the signature gathering.
(See BELOW where Parent Revolution eventually comes clean about this lie)
This went to court, and also prompted hearings at the State Board of Ed.
Hmmm… who was telling the truth?
Well, we eventually found out, as there eventually was a metric to
show which side was telling the truth.
Parent Revolution then assisted Celerity in opening a charter school a block away from McKinley in an abandoned Catholic school building (NOTE, this was a charter authorization separate from the contentious Parent Trigger process.)
The new “Plan B” was to depopulate McKinley—with the students leaving to the new Celerity school—and then use Prop. 39 to have Celerity co-locate and invade the school anyway because of all the empty classrooms—Prop 39 allows this. They were even promising free laptops to all the students who defected from McKinley to the Celerity Charter. Given how impoverished the typical family was/is in this community, free laptops must have been tempting.
Check out L.A Weekly’s Simone Wilson’s article about Parent Revolution’s ‘Plan B’ :
http://blogs.laweekly.com/informer/2011/05/parent_trigger_plan_b_charter_school_to_open_2_blocks_from_mckinley_elementary.php
(the pro-Parent Revolution / pro-charter writer, Simone Wilson, is positively salivating at this prospect of Celerity “U-Hauling its top-notch operations” into McKinley):
– – – – – – – – – –
SIMONE WILSON: “Indeed, Plan B is looking pretty promising. If Celerity opens a first-rate campus — laptops for all ! — two blocks from McKinley, chances are at least 200 of roughly 400 students will leap at the chance for a better education. This would leave the McKinley campus ‘underutilized,’ at which point another controversial California law, Prop. 39, could force the district to let a charter school take over its facilities.
” ‘I’m excited because I know my daughter is going to get the education she needs and deserves,’ parent Shemika Murphy told the Los Angeles Times.
“With this kind of support, Celerity would be ready, willing and perfectly poised to U-Haul its top-notch operations from the church over to the elementary school — virtually the same outcome as a successful Trigger would have allowed.
“… In the end, we’ve got to give props to Revolution for finding the sneaky back-door alternative to a Trigger. Whatever it takes to rescue Compton kids from the poor-get-poorer dis-educational system to which district officials have condemned them.”
– – – – – – – – – – – – –
How nice. Simone praising the “sneaky back-door” antics of Ben Austin & Co. That speaks volumes for the character of all who were participating in, and backing “Plan B”.
Alas, Simone was salivating over this “sneaky back-door” tactic in vain as it turned out.
In the coming fall, the public finally got definitive proof that the Parent Revolution was not on-the-level. Only 10% (or less, depending on reports) of the parents opted to go to the new Celerity school—far short of the 70% Parent Revolution organizers—and writers like Simone Wilson—had been telling everyone were clamoring for the Celerity takeover.
Also, U-Haul must not have been pleased as Celerity had to cancel any trucks they had booked for invasion and exfiltration of McKinley.
At about the same time, Parent Revolution’s Ben Austin was removed from the State Board of Ed. by California’s newly elected Governor Jerry Brown.
In the face of this public relations fiasco—where it became obvious to all that only a mere 10% (or less) of McKinley parents actually wanted Celerity taking over their school, after all—Ben Austin and Parent Revolution put out this new version:
http://parentrevolution.org/content/mckinley-elementary
– – – – – – – –
PARENT REVOLUTION: “We have also been very public about the fact that the McKinley campaign was not a perfect campaign… the vast majority of the signatures gathered were ultimately gathered by our organizers, not by the parents themselves.”
– – – – – – –
Oh really, Ben?
That’s most certainly NOT what you and your cohorts were saying back December 2010. No, you said it was the parents doing everything, with only minimal Parent Revolution assistance… or again, that’s what Parent Revolution claimed.
Their new story was that Parent Revolution had recently “became very public about” all this… yeah… but this was ONLY AFTER people like Robert Skeels exposed them, and the shenanigans in which they were engaged.
A little tid-bit about Parent Revolution’s biggest “success” to date…
the takeover in Adelanto.
A hastily-organized and penniless group of parents
in Adelanto tried to have their signatures rescinded,
claiming that they had been lied to and misled into
signing the petition.
They even testified to that in court.
This testimony from Ben Austin responding to their claims says it all:
– – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – –
BEN AUSTIN: “There are certainly voters who are going to vote
on ballot initiatives this November that do not understand
everything they’re voting on… That doesn’t illegitimize
an election.”
– – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – –
Wow!
That is some Classic Ben Austin! You can find it here:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/10/03/wont-back-down-inspiratio_n_1935876.html
Ben is tacitly admitting that—in the course of Parent Revolution’s
signature gathering—there were and are indeed petition signers
who were misled and confused when signing on
(and presumably would not have signed otherwise)…
with Austin conceding that it was AT LEAST SOME OF
HIS OWN SIGNATURE GATHERERS WERE DELIBERATELY
MISLEADING AND CONFUSING PEOPLE.
There were almost 100 parents who wanted to rescind
their signatures after finding out they had been “duped”.
ANATOMY OF THE “DUPING”:
the Parent Revolution organizers rented a house
across the street from the school, and elicited what
the parents by saying, “This is to make the school better… ”
Well, duh! Who’s not going to sign that?
In an argument that inexplicably prevailed with
an appeals court judge, Ben tries to draw an equivalency…
between petitions and elections…
in that both usually have signers / voters
who may be misled or confused when they
vote for / sign something… and so what if they do?
Once again…
– – – – – – – – – – – –
BEN AUSTIN: “There are certainly voters who are going to vote
on ballot initiatives this November that do not understand
everything they’re voting on… That doesn’t illegitimize
an election.”
– – – – – – – – – – – – –
WTF???!!!
This idiotic argument—attempting to equate elections
and signature-gathering for a petition—essentially legitimizes
wholesale fraud in signature-gathering.
It essentially gives license to any and
every kind of dishonest tactic:
— lying,
—phony promises
—threats
and on and on…
Because later, you can just claim… “well, they do this in elections,
and you’re not allowed to take your vote back… so you shouldn’t
be allowed to take your signature back.”
Unlike an election, petition-gatherer engages in a one-on-one communication
and relationships with the prospective signer… one in which the prospective signer
is at the mercy of the signature-gatherer as to what he or she is
saying—promises, representations, threats, etc.—are actually
truthful.
If the signer of the petition—once he discovers that has “been had”—
is not then allowed to rescind the signature… then the whole fraud
will then run rampant.
An election is nothing of the kind.
The only reason this was not appealed to the Supreme Court was that the School Board in Adelanto had been financially drained by Parent Revolution’s high-powered lawyers. This cash-poor school district was broke, so they had to basically surrender at this point.