As early returns indicated, Bennett Kayer lost his seat on the Los Angeles school board to charter founder Ref Rodriguez and charter supporter Tamar Galatzan lost her seat to retired public school educator Scott Schmerelson. It was a very low turnout election, as usual (sadly). The president of the school board, Dr. Richard Vladovic, was re-elected. The board will remain divided over the continued privatization of the public schools. Los Angeles already has more students in charter schools than any other city. The charter industry had hoped to gain decisive control of the board to continue its expansion.
The battle continues. The billionaires dropped a few million into the L.A. race, principally to defeat Kayser. They succeeded. They probably didn’t count on losing Galatzan, or they would have spent a few million more to shore up that seat.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
A proven, documented crook—one who couldn’t balance the budget of a school of just 100 students 9 years in a row—just got elected to the board… over a man with unimpeachable integrity, and who successfully balanced a $7 billion budget three years in a row
This was for several reasons… the most prominent being he spent millions more than the good guy.
LESSON: Evil people sometimes win.
That’ said, here’s some words of wisdom from The Walrus:
John Lennon: “Apathy isn’t it. So Flower Power didn’t work. We start again.”
I hope you have reasons/proof for this. Isn’t it easy to be the judge?
If there is a school board of 7 people looking over a budget of 7 billion dollars, that’s a billion per person. Maybe a minimum requirement for the job should be being a CPA. Same with the US congress.
Here is an enterprise of charter leader Tilson, the hedge fund self aggrandizing guy who has classes for his investors on how to profit from public education. It came yesterday as his lead item on his blog.
————————————-
1) The 6th annual Take ‘Em to School Poker Tournament to benefit Education Reform Now, which I’m co-chairing, is coming up in two months on Wednesday, July 22nd. The evening will be emceed by poker legend Phil Hellmuth, and others participating include: poker legends Phil Ivey, Erik Seidel and Layne Flack; sports icons James Blake, Allan Houston, Alex Kovalev and John Starks; and award-winning actors Hank Azaria, Billy Crudup and Seth Gilliam. It will feature a silent auction, a variety of casino games including blackjack, craps and roulette, as well as a full swing golf simulator that will host Long Drive and Closest to the Pin contests. You can come either as a poker player or a cocktail/casino guest. It’s always a ton of fun and will be a great night for players, spectators, and education reformers alike. More info is below and to register you can go to: http://www.TakeEmToSchool.org. I hope to see you there!
The link above is a MUST READ…but might bring on a heart attack for believers in public schools. For Language Arts teachers reading this, it is clear that this purveyor of wealth at taxpayer expense, does NOT write very clearly.
Obviously it had to be the money, the charter people wanted this seat bad… When I went to vote there was no one there. For the whole day, only 32 votes. I guess that 25,000 incentive to vote appealed to some. Very sad day for the district to let this deformer access millions of our tax dollars. If he had to bribe residents of this Latino district to vote for him, expect more bribery.
Now that the bribery has worked, and some of us knew it would, for these same puppets of the ultra rich Rheeformers who worked this scam, have bribed this inner city community before (see all the past orchestrated street theater paid for by them to be held at the BoE building on Beaudry, with ‘bussed in’ inner city folks used as actors, when an important issue is to be decided…not much different than Eve Moskowitz in NY dragging her students to Albany on the taxpayers dime) and you will know how susceptible these residents are to ‘following the money,’
Of course the profiteers will use bribes again. Various inner city legislators representing these districts have been indicted and convicted in California on charges of bribery. It now appears to be an endemic unholy alliance they have with the billionaires, with no holds barred.
When you walk the streets of the local inner city communities, you see signs saying “revolucion” and flags flying of residents countries of birth. The bribers and the bribed have no loyalty to the American process of free universal education through ‘public’ schools paid for by the taxpayers.
The twitter comment by an Obama stooge someone posted above which says the old public education system “did not work for all children” is the hue and cry of the Billionaires Movement to privatize everything and kill all unions….it is all based on “civil rights” which has become their mantra as with Vergara and other court cases they are instituting nationwide.
It appears that “civil rights” only apply to the profiteers however.
The use of bribery is not monolithic, but it is very apparent. In many of these communities, bribery, pay off, is a common way of doing business and has always been used in their countries of origin.
People who are not boots on the ground do not have a clue about any of this, which has been building for decades. It truly is revolution and with the help of the Billionaires who donate the bribe money and direct traffic to creative destruction through their PR and law firms, but who stay locked into their lavish enclaves, it is working.
I do not mean to paint all residents with the same brush. The lawless actors who accept bribes are not representative of all inner city voters, but we see in this election that they can do great damage to our entire society.
As a student of cultural anthropology who has worked on these issues since the 1960s, I fear it is the endgame for America as we knew it. The marriage of the low level bribed with those 1/2 % controlling most of the nation’s wealth, spells the end of democracy. When legislators and citizens can be bought, it becomes a true totalitarian state.
LAUSD is not the only district where this happened. It is now an epidemic in America.
Sounds like the definition of a banana republic. Combined with Vergara, some strange dynamics going on for sure.
I always wonder what is the future of education in urban areas? By evolution, urban areas reject the burden of educating children. If urban areas were to provide an equal education to that of the suburbs, how much would that cost? Urban education is for the poor-austerity, middle class-move, rich-private school.
“you see signs saying “revolucion” and flags flying of residents countries of birth. The bribers and the bribed have no loyalty to the American process of free universal education through ‘public’ schools paid for by the taxpayers.”
Nothing that can’t be cured by a good scouting program, the pledge, and playing this song every day at school.
What a bizarre response…hope it is your own political satire.
I agree with what you said. I was just thinking of what indoctrination to civic duty consisted of when I was growing up. The reality you describe is certainly a world away. The most basic civic duty is to vote and vote educated on the issues. If that is not happening, trouble is ahead.
Last time the billionaires ran a handsome young black man for the board. He lost. This time they found a handsome young Hispanic man to run and won. This highlights a weakness we have fighting the “reformers”, we have not sufficiently educated the Hispanic community about quality education and what his being done to them. I think many of them voted for the Hispanic name because they trust it more.
An Open Letter to Bennett Kayser:
The results are in and now many people will examine why you lost and/or why the Ed Reform candidate won.
I went to the polls in LA’s District 5 and voted for you, even though it was cast with a heavy heart.
There is absolutely no question, you were far better ideologically kin to me than Ref Rodriguez. The people who backed his campaign are the toxic corrupters of the heart and soul of public education.
It is a sad day for LA.
BUT…Now that the election is over, the truth needs to be spoken about the history of Education Reform in LAUSD and the BOE’s (and yours) complicity in the matter.
Back in the spring of 2003, at a huge demonstration down Hollywood Blvd. filled with thousands of thoughtful, passionate activists hollering in the streets to prevent the US from going to war with Iraq, we looked desperately for some leader…some elected Democrat official…to speak at the event to help stop the lunacy.
Nothing.
Crickets.
And so, it is with head-shaking numbness, I watch all the GOP presidential hopefuls rewrite history of how we got into the situation in the first place.
But the Democrats were an equally sorrowful lot.
When Supt. John Deasy was imposed upon the Board, it was a grim time for our democratic municipal government. That was not your fault and it was obvious one needed to extend good will to an incoming superintendent and provide support. However, it was VERY clear to hundreds of educators soon after, that Deasy was not operating in good faith—and worse—GOOD PEDAGOGY—for the students and educators working in LAUSD.
Throughout Deasy’s early years, the Board heard the misgivings and despair of many teachers, yet continued to give Deasy aid and comfort in his reckless autocratic reshaping of LAUSD. To pretend that you were in the forefront of the fight against Deasyism is a rewriting of history.
You voted with the superintendent often enough and even as late as October, 2013, you voted to retain Deasy as Superintendent with every other colleague except the late Marguerite LaMotte. You were never particularly forceful in your public statements about the direction Deasy was taking the district.
When you voted to back Deasy, U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan congratulated you all for your wisdom saying, “LA is absolutely going in the right direction.”
You completely dismissed the agonized cry of the teachers of LAUSD who believed that the students should have a superintendent who championed their causes through education policies.
So many of the things that happened under Deasy—Eli Broad’s financial involvement and influence, the purging of hundreds of teachers whom EVERY SINGLE ONE you fired with no pause of consideration and even the initial IPad planning you did not do your due diligence.
As a LAUSD National Board Teacher, I, along with so many of my colleagues, watched with horror as Deasy implemented his agenda. It is one thing to have so many of the educational and academic intelligentsia on our side—but they have zero political power. Only you and the Board are OUR voices that can argue for a different course. And you and many others let us down because you were not alone in your silence.
Where was your colleague Steve Zimmer during these years? His fiery Youtube speech on your behalf has gotten plenty of attention, but anyone can go back over the public record and see what a conciliating and comforting voice he was during the Deasy years. When schools needed a champion to forcefully combat and denounce what was happening in LA, Zimmer could be counted on an abstract, stirring odes to Martin Luther King rather than dealing with the injustices and grim realities of PRESENT DAY Los Angeles.
For most of the Deasy years he was self-aggrandizingly useless.
Don’t even get me started about Board President Dick Vladovic. This craven individual couldn’t even bring himself to take his name off the odious “Parent Teacher Alliance in Support of Rodriguez, Galatzan and Vladovic for School Board 2015” mailers that swamped our mailboxes with their grotesque messages. It was MORE IMPORTANT for him to not offend these millionaires than stand up for decency.
My only hope is that Monica Ratliff is elected the next Board President and Vladovic can go off to Xanax heaven for the next five years as he self-servingly navigates the waters of whom he might offend to see what is in his own best interest.
Sadly, because the BOE initially did SO PATHETICALLY LITTLE to curtail Deasy, you provided a beachhead for the reformers in our school system. The reason Rodriguez could send those mailers out is because the folks who SHOULD have supported public education on the BOE hoped that by cooperating and staying silent, the Reform forces and money would not come for them.
Well, Mr. Kayser. They came for you.
And they got you.
But they didn’t just get you. They got us.
They got our kids.
Our forces can now examine the tactics of the Charter industry and the Big Money, but really, don’t we know it all by now? What we must do is take lessons from your defeat and those in positions of power must double down and do THE RIGHT THING from Moment One in regards to public education.
I do take some faith in Scott Schmerelson’s victory, and you should too. I hope he is reading this letter as well and can see that these same tactics that were used against him are NEVER going to go away. It is their modus operendi to undermine what is actually good for school, even as they employ Orwellian language to protect THEIR OWN interests in the guise of our children.
I look forward to your voice on the outside now fighting the money and PEDAGOGY that defeated you. I hope you have a clearer sense of what we have all been fighting.
Twelve years into the Iraq War, NO ONE rationale wants to claim to be its champion.
I look forward to the day when no one wants to claim ownership of Education Reform.
I just wish we had those voices back then when these fiascos began.
Yours and good luck in the future,
–Geronimo
Thank you Geronimo…you always tell the truth, and I support everything you said here. We can now assess the damage done by the LAUSD BoE that led to this election.
If “truth will set you free” then you, Geronimo, are a jewel and a leader for our education community. I am so touched by your words.
Save a little opprobrium for United Teachers Los Angeles which actively bullies veteran teachers out of the profession. Kayser like most other people can’t be expected fight by himself, to defend teachers abandoned by their union. The AFT is bankrolling a huge organizing push at Alliance charters which is a brilliant business move going forward. Sign up young short-timers who’ll leave to do a real job after 5 years or so and there will be little cost for representation and none for defense. That’s also why UTLA is holding its “Leadership Conference,” at La Quinta in Palm Springs and including two or three teachers from each school. This allows the leadership to cement allegiances and keep out dissenters who can’t afford the price of a weekend in Palm Springs.
Major victory for right-wing billionaires and neo-segregationists to have foisted this self-colonized, respectability politics loving, charter industry profiteer on the board. If the financial scandals at his PUC empire were bad before, imagine how much money will be diverted from student programs into pockets of charter executives and their corporate partners now that they own a board seat. Ref Rodriguez confidant Ted Fujimoto boasted about 30% profit margins at California Charter Schools Association (CCSA) when Rodriguez was a CCSA board member and Fujimoto was their Senior VP. The greed of these individuals mirrors that of the ruling class finance capitalists that are so heavily vested in them.
Losing Bennett Kayser on the LAUSD Board is a tragedy for public education. However, the defeat of Galatzan shows that the strongest party of all on Tuesday was the “throw the bums out” party. Rodriguez was able to run, however fraudulently, as an “outsider” against Kayser, who was not strong enough in standing against Deasy and his schemes,
as Geronimo above accurately points out. In a low-turnout election the result can turn on a very few votes, whether “bribed” or not. The same may be said of Steve Zimmer, whose recent fiery speech on Kayser’s behalf shows he may have finally learned his lesson: when the other side wants you dead, there is no compromise possible. We’ll have to wait and see.
The election of Shmerelson and the re-election of Vladovic sets up an interesting dynamic on the new Board come July 1. Along with George McKenna, they will form a group of three former LAUSD administrators. At least they will be familiar with where the bodies are buried in our benighted District. Whether they will turn one way, toward the two former teachers Ratliff and Zimmer, or the other way, toward the charter darlings Garcia and Rodriguez, remains to be seen.
One thing is for sure: the battle for the soul of public education in Los Angeles continues.
Rodriguez said that all he needed to win the seat was 17,000 votes…the Billionaires and the Latino leadership joined together and bought most of those votes with bribes, guaranteeing his victory in a light turnout of registered voters.
I assume UTLA ran these numbers as many of us did, so they might have felt it was a lost cause and thus directed their donations to Schmerelson. Only speculation on my part.
So sad, so short sighted. UTLA should have invested in the middle class voters in the district who usually do turn out to vote and without being bribed. This group of voters however, seems to have preferred watching Dancing with…and the Voice to see who won, while all the rest of us lost.
Tilson, the wealthy hedge fund guy who teaches his clients how to invest in public education, just posted this link to Caprice Young, who Fetullah Gulen, the Turkish Imam who owns about 148 charter schools in the US, recently hired to straighten out the books at his Magnolia Schools in LA which are under investigation by the FBI. She was on the LAUSD BoE for one term, and she is another wealthy charter operator and the LASR wiki-Lyntons are in close contact with her. Her stats about LAUSD are correct…the rest of her article, not so much.
Be prepared for a hair raiser. Robert Skeels research on the Rodriguez donors, plus the authentic city issued donor list, shows it is the major millionaire/billionaire Rheeformers who financed the majority of the Rodriguez war chest…with some small donors listed, This has brought up issues of how and where these poverty wage people could come up with large sums to donate. A true snake pit of political maneuvering it would seem.
Ellen
————————————————————————————————
Whitney Tilson’s School Reform Blog
To see my School Reform Resource Page, see http://www.arightdenied.com. To be added to my school reform email list, email me at WTilson at tilsonfunds.com.
SUNDAY, DECEMBER 28, 2014
More Sharing ServicesShare|Share on facebookShare on myspaceShare on googleShare on twitter
Ref Rodriguez for the LA School Board
Please join me in supporting Ref Rodriguez for the LA School Board. Here’s Caprice Young on the race and its importance (and see attached 2-pager about him)
———————————————————-:
Statement of Caprice Young….
The Los Angeles Unified School District serves more than 650,000 K-12 students. 80% of students qualify for free or reduced price lunch, nearly 74% are Hispanic, 10% are African American, 9% are white, 4% are Asian and 3% are others. According to NAEP (TUDA), 18% of LAUSD non-charter school students scored at proficient or above in 8th grade math and 19% in Reading.
See: http://www.nationsreportcard.gov/reading_math_tuda_2013/#/
Out of 1000 schools, more than 250 are independent charter schools. According to both CREDO and CCSA, charters outperform similar traditional public schools consistently.
See: http://www.calcharters.org/POM2014-regional_snapshot-LAUSD-phys_dst.pdf.
This is primarily due to the concentration of high quality charters in Los Angeles providing mutual support, CMO replication, and strong start-up funding from foundations for autonomous charters in low SES neighborhoods.
The board of education is the primary charter school authorizer, although some have used the option of appeal to the county and state because LAUSD has begun denying charter school approval and renewals. Just in the last year, the board has denied renewal of several top academically performing schools including Aspire, STEM and Alliance for College Ready Schools. This week, KIPP schools were renewed on very close split votes. The board is about to undergo a superintendent search that will dramatically impact charter schools, common core implementation, labor negotiations and technology implementation. consists of seven members elected by geographic region. Four members are up for re-election on MARCH 3, 2015 (YES, SOON): Tamar Galatzan (District 3), a strong supporter, faces a crowded field. CCSAdv is leading an IE on her behalf. Richard Vladovic (District 7), the former board chair, has been a fair weather supporter and does not face a significant challenge. George McKenna (District 1), a new member elected in August during a special election, has proven to be anti-reform so far; however, a challenge is not realistic at this time. Finally, Bennett Kaiser (District 5), has been strongly opposed to reform of all types and we have a genuine opportunity to beat him.
Dr. Ref Rodriguez is a strong, proven reform leader who has started several high performing charter schools in his district and serves on the California teacher credentialing commission. His district is a Latino district (based on registered and active voters) that has successfully turned out for strong Latino reform candidates (Yolie Flores, for example in 2007) in the past. He has a large, dedicated volunteer base of families and students and the former school board president, Monica Garcia, is holding a fundraiser at her home tonight. He has a strong campaign team on board. Ref needs 17,000 votes to win in the primary over the white, union-backed reformer and another white challenger. The most important aspect of this race is the ground game. Early GOTV with absentee voters is everything. For that, his campaign needs cash ASAP. Our goal is to raise $250k by the end of December and the max is $1,100. Please urge everyone to help Ref. https://drrefrodriguez.nationbuilder.com/donate
This is a very critical time for Los Angeles reform efforts.
Thank you!!
Caprice Young, Ed.D.
President
Education Growth Group
3750 Lankershim Blvd.
Los Angeles, CA 90068
capricelosangeles@gmail.com
(818)317-1829
@capriceyoung
————————-
POSTED BY WHITNEY TILSON AT 12:52 AM http://www.blogger.com/email-post.g?blogID=18289887&postID=35799763316235944
http://feeds.feedburner.com/blogspot/KfePr Subscribe in a reader
——————————————————————————–
<< Home
PREVIOUS POSTS
Colleges that pledged to help poor families have b…
Is Harvard Unfair to Asian-Americans?
The vast majority of students at American public c…
Colleges using data to identify students at risk o…
College students taking at least one remedial cour…
Charter schools create competition that forces reg…
Special Ed children in charter schools
Carmen Farina Needs to Get Over It and Embrace Cha…
Success in Camden, NJ
More charter schools
ABOUT ME
WHITNEY TILSON
VIEW MY COMPLETE PROFILE
http://www.blogger.com/
If anybody wants to get an idea as to what would happen if a majority of the LAUSD Board chairs were filled with a bunch of Ref Rodriguez’s—and they could just vote to destroy the public schools with no one to stop them—one need only to look at Newark, New Jersey. The deformers are following Andy Smarick plan cited elsewhere—heck, Smarick was the formed deputy commissioner of ed there…
1) Defund public schools… sabotaging them, starving them into failure;
2) Use that “failure”—that the corporate reformers actually cause through the initial sabotage and starvation of the schools—to justify closing more schools, which are then converted to charters;
3) Expand charters more … until eventually … the public schools can’t sustain the health benefits and retirement of the shrinking number of teachers… causing a financial crisis..
4) The financial crisis the becomes a “political crisis,” and the remaining public schools are all turned over to private control—i.e. charter school companies and chains—and the unions can then be busted;
Read this for a preview of what’s coming to Los Angeles… if and when the bad guys get a majority on the board:
http://www.bobbraunsledger.com/the-financial-crisis-as-planned-by-the-state-has-become-a-political-crisis-in-newark/
– – – – – – – – – –
BOB BRAUN: (CAPITAL are mine, JACK)
“The crisis is at hand.
“The decision by Cami Anderson, appointed by Gov. Chris Christie to run the Newark schools four years ago, to cut neighborhood school budgets by an additional five percent brings closer the day, predicted by a deputy state education commissioner, when the financial crisis becomes a ‘political crisis’–and the political crisis results in a decision to turn the entire district over to private hands.
“Andy Smarick, the former deputy commissioner, indicated that was the state’s plan. It’s also the plan outlined by his then boss, Christopher Cerf, in his ‘School Turnaround Proposal’ (Does that word ring a bell?), funded by the Broad Foundation that would create a special ‘achievement school district’ in which all collective bargaining contract provisions would be suspended (Can’t do it, huh? Heard anything about the inviolability of pensions, lately? Public employees now live in a free-fire zone).
“Anderson’s demand that every school in Newark cut their spending plans by anywhere from $200,000 to $700,000 meets her needs–the further degradation of neighborhood schools that would allow further expansion of the privatized sector, meeting the $70 million deficit she ran up through wasteful spending on favored consultants, hopeless legal cases costing hundreds of thousands of dollars, and the assignment of fully paid teachers to rubber rooms, and creating a pretext for the state’s approval of a seniority waiver that is still sitting on the desk of state education Commissioner David Hespe.
“If Hespe signs that waiver, seniority is a thing of the past–and so are public employee unions.
“Newark’s public schools already have been stripped of virtually every service and amenity that would distinguish them from the educational equivalent of an Apple factory inside China. Attendance counselors. Guidance counselors. Meaningful art and music and other non-testable offerings that create human beings rather than cogs for the machine.
“And charters, by the way, are untouched by this. More money to charters, less money to public schools. More failure in public schools, more students sent to charters. The cycle isn’t just vicious–it’s racist and elitist. The people of Newark will have to decide whether it’s every family for itself and to hell with everyone else–the charter game–or whether all Newark’s children are the responsibility of everyone, of every family, in the city and deserve a public school system that serves everyone.
“ ‘What’s really so upsetting,’ said a source familiar with the meeting Anderson held with principals, ‘is that nothing was said about the dozen or so deputy and assistant superintendents who are making more than most superintendents throughout the state. Their salaries won’t be cut.’
“Indeed, it was just those deputy and assistant superintendents who delivered the bad news to the principals at the so-called ‘Principal Leadership Institute’ meeting Tuesday in ‘break out’ sessions.
“The principals will have to come up with new plans Friday for the coming school year, now only three months away. But, given that 85 percent of a school operation is payroll, there’s not much guessing involved what will get cut–staff.
“ ‘You’re talking about bodies here, not pencils,’ said the source.
“Anderson need not fear that her budget cutting will cause more hurtful chaos in the already trouble-plagued Newark schools.
(FOR WHAT FOLLOWS, REFER TO THE STEVE ZIMMER SPEECH BELOW where he mentions Broad Academy grad and former LAUSD Superintendent John Deasy’s deliberate “disruption” of the traditional public schools in Los Angeles.)
“CAUSING ‘DISRUPTION’ IS THE PRIMARY FOCUS OF THE BROAD ACADEMY AND ITS PLANS FOR URBAN SCHOOLS. THE MORE DISRUPTION, THE FASTER THE PROGRESS TOWARDS CREADING AN ALL-PRIVATIZED DISTRICT, LIKE THAT IN NEW ORLEANS—and the Louisiana Supreme Court reminded public employees just the other day just how fragile their rights are.
“But, of course, more is at stake than employee rights. The Anderson budget cuts, combined with the continued draining away of public funds to privately-operated charter schools, MOVE NEWARK’S CHILDREN CLOSER AND CLOSER TO AN EDUCATIONAL WASTELAND IN WHICH ONLY A SELECT FEW WILL HAVE EVEN A MODERATELY ACCEPTABLE EDUCATION, WHILE THE VAST MAJORITY OF OF KIDS—black, brown, and poor—WILL BE WAREHOUSED, PREPARED ONLY FOR LIVES OF QUIET DESPERATION.”
“This is no drill. This is a crisis.”
————
Steve Zimmer echoes Bob Braun in his opinion of Broad Academy grand and recently-departed LAUSD Superintendent John Deasy:
Go to 02:44 – 03:11
STEVE ZIMMER: ( 02:44 – 03:11 )
“What John Deasy tried to do to this school district.
“He tried to bring public education DOWN.
And the MISIS crisis was NO accident.
That is… that WAS INTENTIONAL, because
if you read their websites,
if you read what they’re trying to do…
“ ‘Stability’ is an ugly word.
“ ‘Disruption’ is what it is about.