Minnpost.com reports that out-of-state campaign cash has turned funding of Minneapolis school board race from a raging sea to a tsunami of cash.
“The sea of cash being poured into a Minneapolis School Board race just officially became a tsunami. According to campaign finance disclosures filed Tuesday, spending in the blazing hot four-way race for two citywide seats likely has surpassed $500,000.
The most astonishing donations on the disclosures, the last due before next week’s election: The Minneapolis Progressive Education Fund has received $100,000 from former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg, $90,000 from Teach for America board member Arthur Rock and $25,000 from Jon Sackler, who sits on the boards of the education advocacy groups 50CAN and Students for Education Reform.”
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Welcome to our world, Minneapolis. However, in California, and mainly in LA, we consider a mere $500,000 chump change. Bloomberg poured over a Million bucks into our recent BoE election at LAUSD….and Diane purblished the multi millions these mega rich thugs are lavishing on our race for State Supt. of Public Instruction, now said to be about $8 Million for Tuck, the charter guy. And with the post here today on NY and Cuomo, and his openly hostile statements, which mirrored our former Mayor’s, anyone who does not see the national push for total takeover of public education it BLIND.
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This is repulsive and should be illegal. I guess when you have all the money in the world, you can buy anything. The feds should look into it as racketeering. But, what can we expect when the courts say corporations are people?
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Donna…don’t you think that Broad, Bloomberg, Murdoch, the Waltons, the Kochs, Peterson, Anschutz, et al, supercede the Feds?
How do you think they became multi billionaires?
If they could help bring down the world’s economies, cause a world wide recession from which we are not really recovering, and not one bankster or billionaire has been indicted, why would you think we are still a country based on laws?
Have any anti trust laws been used to stop banks too big to fail? Has SCOTUS not instituted the most democracy-devastating law with Citizens United and McCutcheon? And to break unions, with Harris v. Quinn? And in California, have these oligarchs not given us a new basis for firing teachers and breaking the unions called the Vergara decision?
It not a brave new world.
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Money bags of this size should be refused by the candidate and subjected to ridicule. But then the cash-poor candidate could not afford to run.
The practice of stacking school board races seems to be unimportant to the National School Boards Association, perhaps because that organization has been co-opted as a major supporter of the Gates-funded “Data Quality Campaign.” Gates is determined to make everything about public education look bad in the “data” he wants to collect and feed to the press.
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Read Rolling stone today on the Kochs. These are people who consider themselves above the law. The law is only for the little people, such a we.
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Nice comeback by Minnpost. A few days ago it was being slammed as a Joel Kramer’s mouthpiece and an ed reform propaganda rag. Now it’s headlining!
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Where all this money is coming from is making me sick. It is all racketeering at its finest. Just think of all this money that could have been used on poverty programs and programs to help the disabled children. When will our elected politicians choose to serve the people of America and just not big corporate interest?
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OK, I’ve read the link& I’m still clueless. I thought Minneapolis was already all-charter. What is the race about?
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No, Spanish & French free-lancer, about 3/4 of the students in Mpls attend district schools, about 1/4 attend charters.
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Once again, paging Dr. Nathan.
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Sorry, Dienne, he’s unavailable for comment right now; he’s no doubt busy depositing contributions from the same people trying to buy the school board races.
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Minneapolis is not all charter(my kids are in Title 1 schools on the north side). Joe Nathan surprisingly defended this blog the other day on one of the most toxic yet unfortunately influential FB pages called “Contract for Student Achievement”. People here are outraged at the money and there was a protest last night in front of the last candidate forum that had some local media coverage. It was also the top story in the Mpls StarTrib this a.m. I think even Joe knows this money is indefensible.
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Wow–can you say “Corrupt”???!!!!!
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