As the next school board election approaches, the audit of a charter school run by a candidate for the board has been withheld.
The candidate, Ref Rodriguez, is the darling of the privatizers. Apparently, his ally on the board Minuca Garcia asked to delay release of the audit until after the election. This is outrageous!
His opponent is Bennett Kayser, who has criticized the charter industry. The industry has made it a priority to unseat him.
Frankly, it should be a conflict of interest for a charter operator to be a member of the board that allegedly oversees his operation.
Los Angeles needs sunlight. It needs to see the audit of Ref’s school. It needs board members dedicated to serving the public interest, not the charter industry.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Outrageous indeed. In my ten years of community activism, I have read the Brown Act (California’s stunning public records law) probably 25 times. I am not a lawyer, but I do not agree that some vague potential of a lawsuit somewhere, somehow, someday, allows the school board to withhold a public document.
This is a perfect example of the way the Los Angeles school district and school board keeps the public in the dark. Other ways? Scheduling regular board meetings during the exact time that teachers are required to attend school site faculty meetings, making parents stand in line for hours to make public comment and publishing required public notices in cities far away so that concerned community members are left in the dark. This is disgusting.
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I mean the Calif Public Records Act, rather than the Brown Act (California’s stunning open meetings law). 🙂
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Here’s where you can donate on-line to Bennett’s campaign:
http://www.bennett2015.com/donate-online.html
Here’s his website in general:
http://www.bennett2015.com/
One more thing, Ref portrays himself as a poor Chicano from the barrio who cares about the education well-being of poor Chicanos in the barrio.
Well, let’s see… because charters are unregulated, he can pay himself whatever he wants, and his works as little as he wants.
So what does he do?
He pays himself $350,000 (a third of a million dollars) annually, while he pays his custodial and cafeteria workers—all low-income Latinos—$8/hour instead of the living wage that their counterparts in the traditional public schools get paid… while principals in traditional public schools earn around $100,000 annually.
Try to live in L.A. on $8/hour.
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Ref Rodriguez’ backers DON’T EVEN BELIEVE IN THE EXISTENCE OF DEMOCRATIC SCHOOL BOARDS LIKE THE ONE FOR WHICH RODRIGUEZ IS RUNNING. The California Charter School Association’s true and openly-expressed (BELOW) end game is to abolish the LAUSD Board that meets down at 3rd and Beaudry (and abolish all schoolboards everywhere, by the way).
Their goal is to eliminate any voting or input from the public, and have unelected charter school boards—made up of businessmen, profiteers, and non-educators—free to whatever they want, whenever they want to maximize profits, and with no one to stop them.
In short, Rodriguez is cynically running for an elected position, and to serve on an elected body—per his masters’ marching orders—whose functioning he will endeavor to undermine and hopefully eliminate… or, failing to do that while in office, Ref will do his corporate masters’ bidding and do as much damage to the board’s functioning, and lessen the number schools under its oversight, and make as much progress towards the board’s elimination as he can while serving on it.
His whole campaign is an affront to the citizens and taxpayers in his district. Tell them a bunch of lies to trick them into voting for someone—funded by out-of-state billionaires—who will endeavor to… END THOSE SAME CITIZENS’ POWER TO VOTE FOR, AND ULTIMATELY TO CONTROL PUBLIC SCHOOLS.
Netflix CEO Reed Hastings just dumped $1.2 million dollars into the PAC that is backing the slate of Rodriguez, Lydia Guttierez, and Tamar Galatzan.
In his keynote address at the California Charter School Association’s annual dinner last year, Netflix CEO and corporate ed. reformer Reed Hastings stated the CCSA’s goal should be to abolish all democratically elected school boards, and end any input and participations of citizen-taxpayers in how their tax money in spent in education, and in which people are chosen to decide how money is spent. (CCSA is Rodriguez primary financial backer… he serves on its board)
REED HASTINGS (March 3, 2004): “The importance of the charter school movement is to evolve America from a system where governance is constantly changing… (i.e. democratically elected school boards, where the citizen-taxpayers have decision-making power.) to an all-charter school system, with no traditional public schools under the governance of an elected school board.
Hastings further says charter school chains are superior because “they don’t have an elected school board.” He celebrates New Orleans system where every school is a privately-run charter with ZERO accountability to the public, and where the public has ZERO power to influence their governance.
“Now if we go to the general public and we say, ‘Here’s an argument for why we should get rid of school boards,’ of course, no one’s going to go for that. School boards have been and iconic part of America for 200 years.”
Since in most cities, corporate reformers cannot do a New Orleans-style wiping out of democratically controlled school boards—as there’s no Katrina-like catastrophe to exploit—Hastings instead recommends a slow, deceptive, stealth strategy. He instructs the charter schools and their advocates to “work with districts” quietly and “grow steadily”. This means that the charter industry will falsely profess that they wish to co-exist with the traditional public schools, and complement the public school system, while the truth is that they are merely putting on that façade with the ultimate goal being the total elimination of public schools via this “slow growth” strategy.
The other prong of this strategy—one that Ref will be engaging in—is to sabotage the traditional public schools through starving of them of funds, jacking up class size, cutting the arts, libraries, etc. … all to trigger low performance… and use that low performance that they initially and actually caused, as justification for closing public schools and replacing them with private charter management.
Eventually, as the percentage of traditional LAUSD public schools shrinks, and the percentage of charter schools within LAUSD grows, they cost of maintaining the salary, health benefits, retirement, etc. will cause the district to collapse from within. The end game is a small pseudo-“board” whose sole function is to rubber stamp charter school authorizing… and no control actual over charter schools’ functions after doing so… no transparency to the public, no accountability to the public, and that can and will refuse to educate all of the public—i.,e. those who are expensive to educate, and who will not produce high scores on tests… special ed., English language learners, recent immigrants, homeless, foster care.
That’s why out-of-state billionaires, Wall Street hedge fund charter proponents, etc. are pumping millions into his campaign. Even though Ref has more money, this fact can be used against him—ju jitsu stye—as it was successfully used in the Zimmer, Ratliff, and McKenna campaigns (and in Bennett’s first race for the board.)
If the public knows all this, there’s no way they will want to to vote for Ref Rodriguez (or for Tamar Galatzan, or for Lydia Guttierez, for that matter
And right after Hastings’ speech at the same CCSA celebration, guess who gets an award from the CCSA—the “2014 Hart Vision Elected Official of the Year”?
Why it’s the privatizers’ and corporate reform’s bought-and-paid-for LAUSD School Board Member Monica Garcia:
The best part of her speech is when Garcia courageously uses this opportunity of her acceptance speech to respectfully contradict Hastings’ fervent dream—expressed moments earlier to a rapturous standing ovation—that school boards like the one on which she serves should not be wiped off the face of the earth, as Hastings so desires… as, you know, Hastings’ goal would end two centuries of democratic control of schools in the United States… and how not responding and contradicting Hastings would be a total betrayal of the voters who voted for her to serve on the LAUSD Board, not destroy it through a Smarick-ian, Hastings-ish slow stealth charterization / privatization.
Just kidding 😉 she never says anything of the kind.
Seriously, when Garcia asks the charter honchos in the audience, “Do you believe that all kids can learn?” and they chant “Yes”, keep in mind that included in those charter leaders chanting are folks who have unashamedly kicked out… errr… counseled out up to 70% of their students before graduation. (see Caroline Grannan’s investigation on charter school attrition)
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One more tidbit—(from one Allie Wall)—regarding Monica Garcia’s ties to billionaire privatizers: (it’s a hoot!)
Back when she was running for re-election in 2012, Garcia gave an interview on that very topic a reporter from L.A. School Report (LASR).
Check out these interesting (to say the least!) answers to these two conflict of interest questions:
(KEEP IN MIND… these are YES or NO questions, so the first word out of Garcia’s mouth should be “Yes” or “No”, and then a further clarification and explanation behind the “yes” or the “no.” That’s not what happened here.)
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/12/21/monica-garcia-lausd-board_n_2347337.html
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LASR: “You’ve raised a lot of money from charter schools. Isn’t that a conflict of interest since it’s the school boards job to approve or disapprove of charters?”
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MONICA GARCIA: “I’ve raised money from a very diverse set of folks. Charters are one of them. That’s a separate conversation than the way I do my job.
“I need people to invest in the campaign. Whether it’s the largest public works program that built 129 new schools, 160,000 new seats, and the equivalent of 8 acres of parkland, or the people that, everyday we buy paper and pencils and toilet paper and napkins from — those people care about who’s here.
“Like I said, there are people who contribute to a campaign and want to support my reelection. I welcome that.”
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LASR: “If a Congressman was on the Energy committee and was taking money from the coal industry, I think people would look at that as a story. Isn’t this the same thing?”
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MONICA GARCIA: “The effort to raise money for my campaign reelection is not about the influence in how I do my job. Or the decisions. I’ve done my job, I have a record, it’s been very clear, it’s about kids. I’m inviting whoever wants to invest. They can do their $1,000.”
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Great questions… ridiculous answers….
Let me see, Monica… you get millions from privatizers, yet you tell LASR with a straight face that there are no strings attached or expectations from the privatizers for donating those millions to your campaign?
And yet you want the public to believe it’s just pure coincidence that—before and since—you’ve said and done everything that that your privatizer backers wanted you to?
Whatever you say, Ms. Garcia.
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Item 3 on this First Amendment Coalition website makes it very clear that this case is not exempt from public records laws. http://firstamendmentcoalition.org/public-records-2/cpra-primer/cpra-primer-exemptions/
(Exemptions from the California Public Records Act)
3. Records pertaining to pending litigation to which public agency is a party (Government Code § 6254(b)).
-To qualify, the records must have been prepared for use in the litigation.34.
– The PRA may be used to obtain documents generated in litigation in which the requestor was a party.35.
– The exemption terminates when the litigation is resolved.36.
– The exemption is broader than the attorney work-product exemption; it protects any work product generated by a public agency in anticipation of litigation. 37.38
But note: records protected by the attorney-client privilege or attorney work-product doctrine remain exempt from disclosure (under section 6254(k) and the California Evidence Code) even after the litigation is resolved.
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I am in total agreement with my friend and colleague, Karen Wolfe. Wish there were far more dedicated LAUSD parent/activists like Karen who is tireless in her work to save our public schools.
As a public policy educator, I have sat on both Commissions and Boards that fell under the Brown Act, and all were assiduous in following these mandated rules. The LAUSD BoE seems to feel they are above the law of California and their frequent secret meetings and arrogance add to the public distrust.
Rodriguez is using the Latino organization SouthWest Voter Education and Registration to encourage the part of his constituency that is Spanish speaking, to vote…and of course to vote for the Latino surnamed candidate, ergo Rodriguez, the charter school owner and multi millionaire who is in league with Eli Broad and the LA Times, it seems.
To enrich his pot of tricks, he and the Voter group are offering a bribe of $25, 000 to draw non voters to the polls, and then to show their voter receipt to enter into the drawing for this very large amount of money. It is questionable if this lottery is even legal…but it is surely immoral. Rodriguez and his corporate claque use every dirty trick they can think of to beat the liberal teacher/union member incumbent, Bennett Kayser.
In addition to Monica Garcia (whose name is misspelled in the article above) who is termed out on the BoE and has always been a huge fan of former Supt. Deasy (even doing some illegal things herself in his support). Now Deasy is under investigation by the FBI and the SEC.
Rodriguez’s other partner is another purveyor of filthy politics, Tamar Galatzan, who joined Garcia in every pro Deasy vote. They too should be investigated to see how much they knew about and factored in to Deasy’s $1 Billion iPad, and MiSiS, failures.
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Our country is for sale—our schools are not, but http://www.examiner.com/article/our-country-is-for-sale-our-schools-are-not-but
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There are so many voters oblivious to the charter/public school dichotomy. American people for the most part are out of touch with key issues that impact the type of society we have. We see this in the voter apathy and this leads to people ignoring what is going on in regards to public education, environmental issues, and the double standards that permeate communities (without even viewing double standards as a reason to be concerned).
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I just shared this. People in LA need to know that Bennett Kayser cares about the children, not cash for people who just want to make money from those children.
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Unfortunately, the LAUSD BOE is already bought by the charter industry. A review and audit should have already been done on this deformer. UTLA should jump on this except that they have been bought also. I agree with you Diane, it’s an obvious conflict of interest for this multi charter owner to be on our public school board but at LAUSD, conflicts of interest is standard operating procedure.
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Agree Paula…and thanks Diane for publishing this, but sample ballots and VBM ballots have already gone out so this is after the fact info.
The public is voting as we are speculating here…and they have virtually no truthful information on the BoE candidates since the $billionaire$ run/owned LA Times last week endorsed both of the Rheeformers (see Karin Klein and the editorial board at this slanted newspaper) and charter supporters, Rodriguez and Galatzan.
It stinks…and though there is a group of muckrakers, most of whom write on this site, who have attempted to inform the public about all this (best and most comprehensive article on Rodriguez is by Robert Skeels), the leading news source in LA is the print media that is bought and paid for by Broad and his cronies who feel they own the world.
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Yes, it is insane that this charter operator is trying for a board seat. It’s like a builder who competes for district contracts. These charters are no different. How can we circumvent Monica to get a look at this audit? Someone in Beaudry leaked this story. Maybe another someone ought to leak the audit.
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It is outrageous but I am not surprised. The charter industry is more about secrets and lies than anything else. Full disclosure is for public schools that they are trying to shut down. It is not for them.
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Apparently a copy was obtained, here it is: http://www.scribd.com/doc/263583262/CCSA-s-Ref-Rodriguez-s-PUC-Lakeview-Charter-Academy-Audit
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Thanks…yes, this material was offered to various sites some weeks ago when Robert Skeels did his excellent investigation. Sadly, few chose to report this in time to perhaps stop the biased LA Times from endorsing, and lauding, Rodriguez.
The election is on May 19, with mail in ballots already filled out. How many people were in on this FIX?
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This was from Repairs no iPads, just want to give credit. It needs to be shared far and wide. I am hoping Diane can do a new post with this.
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tmareace…please contact me at
joiningforces4ed@aol.com
so I can share some other info on this issue.
Ellen
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Exactly! This is clearly a conflict of interest. Another indication of things gone wrong with LA.
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An honest question to the thread here, and I’m interested in what folks would say. Diane says it would be a conflict of interest for a charter operator to be a member of the board because the board is supposed to oversee charters. By that logic, then, would it be a conflict of interest for a board member to be a teacher, given that boards also have oversight responsibilities for the work of a district’s teachers? Further, what if the teacher who was a member of the board also was a member of a teacher union (e.g., imagine a retired teacher who had signed up for a lifetime membership with AFT or NEA and then ran for school board); should that person be disallowed from being on the board because boards negotiate with unions over teacher contracts, which, based on Diane’s standard, potentially could be a conflict of interest, right?
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I believe you are right, sir. It certainly would be an anomaly in my NJ town for a teacher to be on the BOE, which negotiates the contracts with the teachers’ union.
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Paul Manna,
Charters are businesses with contracts. Their conflict as board members is larger than someone who is a teacher, who may gain a small dollar amount from a new contract while the charter operator may get hundreds of thousands of dollars or millions. The teacher adds expertise to the board. What does the charter operator add?
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Sure, the individual teacher who served on a board would stand to gain a small amount, personally. The larger issue, though, would be whether the person would be able to oversee teachers well and to bargain in good faith with their unions. “Conflict of interest” does not need to be read as a narrow concept relating only to the degree to which one would personally benefit from their position. It also can imply the potential power to steer resources toward their other business or professional associates in a way that would compromise their ability to serve their broader role as a representative. The comments from SP & Fr Freelancer and Duane Swacker on this thread seem to suggest as much based on local practice and state law. As far as what the charter operator would add, I think it completely depends on the individual. Charter operators are not ex ante good or bad potential representatives for school boards, nor are teachers or union leaders for that matter.
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I had always thought that a teacher in a district could not be on the board for that conflict of interest. I believe that in Missouri it is law that one can’t serve on the board of the district in which he/she works.
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Active teachers in our state are not board members. Whether by choice or law, I am not sure. I would agree it would be a conflict of interest. But to turn your point around, what if a teacher had children in the district? Is that denying parent’s rights?
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It’s a great point, MathVale. It seems like one could make a reasonable argument that any parent of a child in a school district should be able to run for school board, regardless of whether that is parent a teacher, charter operator, or whatever. Candidates for school board office are not simply defined by their professional lives (e.g., teacher, charter operator, etc). They could be parents, too, as you say.
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After reviewing the audit report that LAUSD refused to release, the public should be alarmed about the lack of oversight over these charters especially by the agencies whose job it is to provide that oversight. These charters are out of compliance with a number of federal and state laws and have been throughout their existence. In the case of this school, for nine years of its operation, it has literally been insolvent with an inability to account for over 100,000 dollars in public funds in this recent year. This school does no documented child abuse training or notification procedure, for nine years. Reading the audit will make you wonder how many of the other schools in this network are doing the same things that are covered up by the national organization. This school was randomly audited after nine years? This gives you an idea of how concerned LAUSD is about your tax monies. The public is really being scammed by these charters.
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But on the other hand, who cares what the audit shows? Even if it were stellar, that does not negate the clear conflict of interest represented by a candidate running for school board who stands to profit personally from board decisions.
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This is similar to the Gulen schools in LA, known as the Magnolia Charter Schools.
Last year the FBI investigated them and their records showed an ongoing shortfall of where/how our taxpayer money was being used. The FBI and the LAUSD BoE wanted to shut them down, when the Gulen rep leapt in and hired a woman who had been on the LAUSD BoE some years ago, as their new director. She was a prominent charter operator when on the BoE, and is even more so now. She has made a fortune in this role. She seems to have turned around their financial shortfalls, and she was also head of the California Charter School Association before her new gig. Talk about one hand washing the other.
It is always the same cast of characters who pull off these taxpayer heists.
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After reading the LA Times article on Rodriguez and the charter audit, I could have sworn the accompanying photo was of John Deasy. His actions are reprehensible. The organization’s lack of operational and financial accountability, among other gross sins that are under wraps, should be more than enough to make sure that he loses in this election.
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