Jonathan Pelto reports that charter advocates have dumped at least $50,000 into the Bridgeport school board elections in hopes of maintaining a board that will create more charters and defend Paul Vallas.

Expenditures of this magnitude are still fairly rare in school board elections, except in cases where the privatization movement has decided that they want control, like the Louisiana, Indiana, Idaho, and Los Angeles school board races, as well as the charter referenda in Washington State and Georgia.

Where is the money coming from?

Pelto writes:

In this case, A Better Connecticut is claiming that their five largest funders were Education Reform Now Advocacy of New York City, 50CAN Action Fund, Inc. of New York City, Real Reform Now Network, Inc. of Loudonville, New York, Families for Excellent Schools – Advocacy Inc. of New York City and Students for Education Reform (SFER- Action Network Inc.) of New York City.

A Better Connecticut was created at the beginning of this year by ConnCAN, which was created by the original funders behind Achievement First, Inc.

As readers know, Achievement First, Inc. is the large charter school management company that was co-founded by Stefan Pryor who served on Achievement First’s Board of Directors until he resigned to become Governor Malloy’s Commissioner of Education.

Note how many of these groups are not based in Connecticut. Families for Excellent Schools in NYC is funded by the Walton Family Foundation, the Broad Foundation, and other corporate reform activists.