Washington state has a school problem. The legislature confronts two court decisions that it doesn’t like.
First, the highest state court ordered the legislature to fund the schools fairly. For every day the legislature fails to do so, it pays a fine of $100,000. This affects 1,070,000 children.
Second, the court ruled that charter schools are not public schools and cannot receive public funding. This was a direct rebuff to Bill Gates, who lives in Seattle and spent millions on a referendum supporting charters that won by less than 1%. He and his friends want the legislature to bypass the court ruling so charters can get public money. This affects 1,000 children.
Which issue do you think the legislature acted on?
The one that mattered to Bill Gates and 1,000 students, of course.
The State Senate voted 27-20 in favor of a “fix” that allows charters to get public funding that helps 1,000 children. The legislature has done nothing to increase the fair, equitable funding of 1,070,000 children.
The dissident senators understood what an epic fail this vote was:
“Yet some legislators disagreed that the bill was the measure that was needed when the legislature is being fined $100,000 a day by the state Supreme Court for failing to fully fund education. Referred to as the McCleary lawsuit, legislators questioned whether that sweeping imperative should take priority over the fate of charter schools. Some proposed amendments to the charter school bill, which would have added language to confirm the precedence of fully funding K-12 education.
“We have a systemic divestment in public education in this state,” said Sen. Pramila Jayapal, D-Seattle. Jayapal said she didn’t look to pit one issue against the other, but argued that the Senate needed to address its paramount duty.
“Sen. Rosemary McAuliffe, D-Bothell, agreed, adding that a move to create smaller class sizes — something she heard charter students testify was beneficial to their learning — should be accessible to the other 1 million children in the state’s K-12 system, not just the roughly 1,000 students in charter schools.”
Now the other house of the legislature will decide whether to address the problem of the 1,000 students in charters or the 1,070,000 children in public schools.
Parents and teachers should contact their representatives at once. Send letters, emails, phone calls. If the parents or guardians of more than 1 million children spoke up to defend their children, the plutocrats would lose.
The issue is this: the common good or special interests? Why doesn’t Bill Gates, with his $60 billion or so, pay to keep the charters open and insist that the legislature meet its constitutional obligation to the children of Washington state? Why not promote the greatest good for the greatest number?
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Who pays the most taxes? Gates not Children or Families!!! Has the most friends in the legislature? Gates not children!!! Apparently not Legislators!!!! Who cares the most about children and their education? The Families!! Not Gates or the Legislators!!! It is a very simple answer to a question that should not had to be asked if the Legislators had done the job they were elected to do.
I would ask viewers of this blog to focus on one excerpt from the online piece referenced in the posting:
[start]
Sen. Rosemary McAuliffe, D-Bothell, agreed, adding that a move to create smaller class sizes — something she heard charter students testify was beneficial to their learning — should be accessible to the other 1 million children in the state’s K-12 system, not just the roughly 1,000 students in charter schools.
[end]
Remember the rheephorm mantra that charters are the rising tide that lifts all boats, that they are the friendly innovative helpful competition that shows the way, that they are boiling cauldrons of innovation and creativity that public schools should emulate? That any resistance to their 21st century cage busting achievement gap crushing practices is a clarion call to maintain the education status quo?
Time to put up or shut up. Charters get smaller class sizes. 1,000. Public schools should get smaller class sizes. 1,070,000.
Charter advocates should be the first to support, without reservation, what Sen. McAuliffe proposes if they are truly “platform-agnostic” and are in it “for the kids.” Or will they maintain their cutthroat bidness-minded approach that tries to reserve all competitive advantages for them and theirs and disadvantage the vast majority of supposedly uncompetitive others?
More likely we are in for another example of rheephorm double talk. Don’t be surprised if there is a mandate from someone imitating that rheephorm paragon leading DPS, Mr. Darnell Earley, who might say something in the spirit of: “Here’s some bitter medicine you need to take. Don’t worry if the water looks bad: it’ll do you good! I know, because when others took it, it did me $40,000@year more good!”
😎
Almost three years ago, we had the same thing out here in Los Angeles. Pro-charter and anti-public school LAUSD school board members pushing the expansion of privately managed charters who had, as one of their main selling points — low class size. Meanwhile, those same anti-public-schools board members, Monica Garcia and Tamar Galatzan, threw up every roadblock imaginable to prevent the rest of LAUSD — the public schools, around 86% of the district at the time — from getting those same lower class sizes.
Galatzan and Garcia’s explanation for that contradiction?
You see… when it comes to lower class sizes for the charter schools, low class size is sound education policy that’s all about helping children.
When it comes to the traditional public schools, low class size is about lazy teachers, and greedy unions out for more dues and more members.
Got that?
The pro-public school LAUSD school board members led by Steve Zimmer were not having it. Here’s Steve Zimmer going all-Al Pacino on Garcia and Galatzan during the debate on a motion to lower class size:
Here’s what I wrote at the time:
With mounting irritation, Zimmer starts shouting—quoting and throwing the paper printouts from the charters websites wildly over his shoulder (where the charters’ websites’ main page touts and specifically cites their exact student-to-teacher ratios.)
This was breathtaking.
You can’t see this because of the camera angle, but Board Member Galatzan was visibly angry at this point.
A little subtext here.
Both Galatzan and Monica Garcia have strongly backed the private charters in general—and the ones mentioned by Zimmer in particular, while at the same time, lambasting teachers in the traditional public schools and those teachers’ union, UTLA for doing a lousy job, and “obstructing reform” and being “defenders of a failed status quo,” and on and on… (In the process, Galatzan and Garcia are parroting the talking points of the “reform” organizations who pumped millions into their campaigns… but that’s another story).
In 2009, Galatzan and Garcia also voted to raise class size in the traditional public schools—and saying nothing about the ratios at their beloved charter schools. While the state budget was a contributing factor to the vote, Galatzan and Garcia also cited in part the following reasons for raising the class size in the traditional public schools:
1) “Lowering class size is just about teachers
unions wanting more members and more dues,
and more power… with no proof that it helps kids.”
2) “Lowering class size is about advancing adult interests
at the expense of children’s interests.”
3) “Lowering class size is just so teachers, who have
it easy enough already, will have it even easier, with less
work required from less students.”
Zimmer makes brief reference to these objections…
” to those who think that (lowering) class size is solely
about jobs.. ”
For Galatzan and Garcia, they take a seemingly contradictory (hypocritical?) stance on this, as again, they bend over backwards supporting and praising the charter schools whose success is in part due to their low class size—the low class size the charters tout on their websites.
Anyway, back to the video.
Galatzan starts picking up the papers that Zimmer flings indiscriminately over his head and slapping them down angrily on the counter, and says to him, “Are you gonna clean this up?”
Not flinching a bit, Zimmer continues his laser-like focus, not even looking sideways at Galatzan as he snaps, “I’ll clean it up!” as if to say, “Don’t butt in.. I’m on a roll here.”
Again… a breathtaking performance.
Really a display of the power of money over morally informed judgment. The damage Gates is doing to public education is without precedent. I say that because, in addition to his own deep pockets, he is the instigator of collaborations with other billionaires in destroying public education.
I am curious. Who pays the fine and who collects it? After they collect it what do they do with it?
Why don’t you research that and get back to us. I’m sure it’s publicly available information.
I don’t think the fines are being collected. I believe it is more symbolic than anything tangible.
Ugh. Wait ’till they’re embedded at every level of government, Washington. This is just the beginning.
You won’t even hear public schools mentioned unless the word “failing” is in front of the phrase when ed reformers are in charge.
They’re not, actually, about “improving public schools” unless “improve” has been redefined to mean “replace” just like “public” has been redefined to mean “publicly-funded”.
Ohio has had ed reform for 15 years- vouchers, charters, the whole works, and public school leaders have to hold press conferences to get the attention of state government. 93% of the kids in the state in their schools- ignored. The only publicly-paid advocates they have left are district superintendents.
Unfortunately, politicians seem to ignore public schools in most states. What is upsetting is that some public school parents keep voting in these politician who ignore us and our children.
However, there is a positive in your numbers. After 15 years of vouchers and publicly funded charters in Ohio, 93% of children are still educated in public schools. This means that parents know the value of Real public schools. Now we all have to vote in politician who will support and defend our children in our public schools.
Not every voter is interested in the public school issue. Some vote because their passion is abortion or the right to own firearms or the wars in the Middle East and their vote goes to the candidate that supports that one issue the voter is interested in.
“Sen. Bruce Dammeier, R-Puyallup, pointed out that Wednesday’s vote wasn’t about the state’s other educational woes, but about closing charter schools or keeping them open.”
Priorities! They’ll get around to “improving public schools” sometime after hell freezes over. I bet every single one of these people ran on “supporting” public schools in their districts, because none of them would be sitting there had they told the truth- that the public schools the vast majority of their voters use were a distant second or third or fourth. They’ll be back when they’re running again, because obviously they can’t win an election with 1000 people, no matter how much money Gates pours in there.
Then, it is time for voters to unseat those that are seated for the purpose of destroying the public schools that majority of students attend and whose parents want. We need a scorecard of all the prevaricators that have run to support education, but whose voting record suggests otherwise. It is time to cast them out!
Gates the un-elected King of Washington will always get his way, why even bother voting at all.
“Why not promote the greatest good for the greatest number?”
Um – because there’s not enough profit in that.
It seems that the answer to the question of this post title is quite obvious: The only children that matter are those of the upper echelon economic ladder. Screw the serfs and anyone below them.
And apparently the number is even smaller thatn 1,000 — more like 840, from what I recall.
I can’t even.
Bill Gates launched the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation in 2000 to give away his fortune to improve life around the world, end disease and starvation.
Can anyone explain how Gates gives away billions and his fortune between 2009 and 2014 doubled from US $40 billion to more than US $82 billion. And Between 2013 and 2014 his wealth increased by another US$ 15 billion.
But their foundation has paid out $34.5 billion since inception in 2000.
http://www.gatesfoundation.org/Who-We-Are/General-Information/Foundation-Factsheet
My conclusion: This alleged charitable philanthropy capitalism really pays off. You give away $34.5 billion and your wealth more than doubles. I ask, How does Bill Gates give away so much money and end up with more—a lot more?
At this rate, if Bill Gates gives away $70 billion through his foundation, his net worth will also grow to more than $160 billion or more. The more he gives away, the more he gets back. Is his foundation a boomerang—what goes out always comes back with more?
Gates and his allies have given over $500,000 to getting their pet charters “fixed” during this short legislative session. Never mind our state constitution. They even bought (very expensive) advertising during the Seahawks playoff games. Not to mention the $700,000 given to the Seattle Times Education Lab for reporting on education.
The new bill passed by our state senate in a record eight working days declares charters not common schools and funds them from the state lottery “opportunity fund” which also funds early childhood education and opportunity scholarships for our state universities. Wonder which good cause will win out with lottery funding.
Pat,
Gates should fund his charters and demand that the legislature fund the public schools attended by 1 million plus kids. His folly matters more than our Nation’s future
Campbell Brown’s website “The 74” is
gushing that the legislation BELOW just
passed the Wasthington state Senate — thanks to Gates,
Broad, Walton, et al pouring in ungodly amounts of
money and lobbying. As of yesterday, it only needs the
state house and a governor’s signature to happen —
Supreme Court ruling be damned:
https://www.the74million.org/article/washington-state-senate-passes-charter-bill-legislative-battle-advances-to-house
We need a Call to Action, so anti-privatization
citizens can flood the Washington State Assembly’s
switchboard,email folders, etc. before it’s too late.
As you know, this new development follows last year’s pretty definitive defeat for privatization / charter advocates in the Washington State Supreme Court.
Here are the details:
————–
” … on January 4 2016, Senate Bill 6163, also known as the ‘Charter School Fix’ bill was filed in the Washington State state legislature. According to Public Disclosure Commission filings, the prime sponsor of the Charter School Fix bill was one of two dozen legislators who received a down payment from the Bill Gates funded WA Charter School PAC. Their bill would allow up to ten percent of all Washington schools to be ‘converted’ into unregulated and unaccountable fraud factories that could rob taxpayers and public schools of more than one billion dollars per year.”
—————-
The site / webpage where this above quote is from has an unabashed and impassioned anti-charter bias — a little over-the-top at times, imo — and the article goes on forever in its comprehensive overview of the whole charter school phenomenon (I thought that I was long-winded), but it includes all the language of the new proposed legislation sprinkled throughout the piece, followed by explanations and implications — with supporting documentation — of what it all means.
Here’s the link:
http://coalitiontoprotectourpublicschools.org/charter-school-fix-is-a-framework-for-fraud
Here’s some mainstream coverage … which doesn’t really explain the extreme changes, fraud-enabling, and the full ramifications of what the school privatizers are trying to pull off. Indeed, this article makes the “Charter School Fix” bill sound fairly uncontroversial and benign, but as the above link from “Coalition to Protect Our Schools” lays out — in great detail — that this most surely ain’t so:
http://mynorthwest.com/174/2887369/Washington-lawmakers-propose-new-charter-school-fix
Here’s some excerpts from the “Coalition to Protect Our Schools” website:
http://coalitiontoprotectourpublicschools.org/charter-school-fix-is-a-framework-for-fraud
————————
Coalition to Protect Our Schools:
“In December 2015, three fake Education Reform front groups (each of which receives millions of dollars in funding from Bill Gates) announced that they had formed a PAC to give legislators a half million dollars in bribes (also known as campaign contributions) in trade for “fixing” the problem created when the Washington State Supreme Court ruled that that the Charter School Initiative 1240, also funded with millions of dollars by Bill Gates, did not comply with the Washington State Constitution.
“Naturally, with this much money up for grabs, on January 4 2016, Senate Bill 6163, also known as the ‘Charter School Fix’ bill was filed in the Washington State state legislature. According to Public Disclosure Commission filings, the prime sponsor of the Charter School Fix bill was one of two dozen legislators who received a down payment from the Bill Gates funded WA Charter School PAC.
“Their bill would allow up to ten percent of all Washington schools to be ‘converted’ into unregulated and unaccountable fraud factories that could rob taxpayers and public schools of more than one billion dollars per year.
“It is important to note that this bill has nothing to do with school choice or school innovation or even helping the kids who were enrolled in illegal charter schools. School districts are already allowed to create any type of alternative school that complies with our state laws and state constitution. Former charter school kids can attend public schools like any other kids. Parents are allowed to petition school boards to allow their student to attend any school in the school district or move to a different school district or run for the school board and create their own innovative schools.
“Instead, this Charter School Fix bill is purely about robbing up to one billion dollars per year from public schools and turning these tax payer dollars over to private for profit corporations. One only has to look at how charter schools have turned into fraud factories from California to Florida to New York and Ohio and many other charter school states to understand what the real purpose of charter schools is – it’s robbery of tax payer funds pure and simple.
“Here is the math.
— Washington State has about one million public school students.
— Each student receives about $10,000 in school funding (about $8,000 from the state plus about $2,000 from local levies and federal funding).
— This is about $3,000 per pupil less than national average of $13,000 per student – which is why Washington state has among the lowest school funding and highest class sizes in the nation.
“This extremely low level of funding is also why the Washington State Supreme Court has held the state legislature in ‘Contempt of Court’ for failing to comply with their Constitutional ‘Paramount Duty’ to fully fund our public schools.
“The total funding for all one million Washington state students is about $10 billion per year. This is $3 billion per year less than the national average – with the difference being diverted into billions of dollars in tax breaks for wealthy corporations like Microsoft and Boeing. If the charter school fix bill were to pass, yet another billion dollars could be siphoned off from public school funding and diverted into charter school fraud factories.
“Here is the language from the bill:
” ‘ A school district board may not approve more than.. ten percent of the total number of public schools in the district as district charter schools.’ (SB 6163, Page 18) Ten percent of $10 billion is one billion dollars.
“The actual amount of the robbery could be much higher because the above figure does not include school construction funds which would also be siphoned off by charter schools.
“Here is the language from the bill that gives away up to ten percent of school construction funds:
” ‘School districts providing facilities that serve district charter school students are eligible for state matching funds for common school construction. District charter school facilities not owned by the school district may request state construction funds through the office of the superintendent of public instruction.’ (Senate Bill 6163 Page 27)
“But a billion dollar loss to students and tax payers is only one of many drawbacks of this 37 page bill. In this report, we will describe the following 12 major drawbacks of the Charter School Fix bill:
” #1 The bill violates the “Uniformity” Clause of our State Constitution.
” #2 The bill provides no protection for teacher salaries, and no protection for class sizes, and therefore, no protection for students to insure that they receive a quality education.
” #3 The bill would expose Washington State Students to Poorly-Trained and Inexperienced TFA Teachers
#4 The bill opens the door for deregulation, privatization and corruption of our public schools and our political process.
#5 The bill would transfer oversight of tax payer dollars from a publicly elected school board to a privately appointed group of corporate rubber stampers and transfer waiver of state laws from the state legislature to local school boards – meaning a single corrupt school board could waive many state laws intended to protect children.
” #6 Charter Schools Could Use Any Number of School Days, Any Number of School Hours and Any Curriculum
” #7 The bill would reduce public meetings and public accountability for parents and tax payers.
” #8 The bill would allow state funding to be handed over to private schools for the wealthy.
” #9 The bill would provide financial incentives for closing public schools and converting them into for profit charter schools
” #10 The Non-profits used in the bill are actually money laundering operations for For Profit Corporations
” #11 Increased Flexibility simply means increased Fraud for Charter School Contractors
” #12 The bill diverts attention away from the Paramount Duty of the State legislature to provide full funding for our public schools.
“Because the ‘Devil is in the Details’, we will go into the details of each of these problems on the following pages. … ”
———————-
and on it goes.
Again, read the whole thing here:
http://coalitiontoprotectourpublicschools.org/charter-school-fix-is-a-framework-for-fraud
A big think underlying all this is that the corporate education reformers and school privatizers HATE democracy. The main reason the earlier charter law was thrown out was that the Washington State Constitutions mandates that …
— if you receive funding from the state, you must be governed by the citizens via democratically-elected school boards, where you are answerable and accountable to those same citizens.
If the school is private, and the operating funds come from parent’s writing checks, or foundation support, or school fundraisers… then yeah, you don’t have to answer to the citizens.
However, again, if you get public money, you have to be accountable to the public.
This new law, and the one struck down by the Washington State Supreme Court based their ruling on this.
Ohhhh no! Say the money-motivated charter honchos. Just give us $1 billion in taxpayers’ money, then back the-Hell off, and butt the-Hell out when it comes to whatever the-Hell we do with it.
Of course, they are never so blunt. Instead, it’s couched in pretty language like “we need to freedom from regulation, so that we can innovate with non-traditional models that will challenge the failed status quo… ” blah-blah-blah
The boards of these organizations are totally private, stacked with business people with zero background in education, and are non-transparent to that same public, and who don’t educate all the public, keeping out or kicking out the most expensive and most difficult to educate … Special Ed, homeless kids, foster care kids, immigrants who don’t yet speak English, behavior problem kids.
The notion of democracy, or of citizens having a say over how those privately-run charters use that money — that originally came from those same citizens — is abhorrent to money-motivated charter school operators.
With any luck we’re well on the road to the nuclear option How? How Can Washington Properly Fund Its Schools? Do What New Jersey Did
Before anyone decides it’s time to jump off Galloping Gertie, (which is really a lovely bridge here in my town) we can take heart that: 1) Republicans may have the state Senate but they don’t have the House. Won’t pass there and I suspect Chairman of the House, Frank Chopp, won’t let any similar legislation see the light of day on the floor. 2) Our Guv. ain’t gonna sign any charter legislation. No. Way. So the whole thing is an optics play going nowhere. Billy will throw more money, perhaps big, big, money at future Supreme Court races but right now Billy doesn’t have the votes there either. King County Superior Court Judge William Downing just ruled that Initiative 1366, another Tim Eyeman anti-tax measure, was unconstitutional and void. Schadenfreude Alert! Congratulations, Tim, on winning the quadfecta of unconstitutionality! Whee! Love ya Judge Downing! We’ve got some firewalls. We can be assured that all future district legislative seats will be big $$ races. I’m working with a small funding group building the bench on the hyperlocal level…county, city and school board races. This is happening in several places in Western Washington. Doing what we can..working the refs when we can. Some stealth, some bigger efforts. Lots of different players playing to keep the charter gazillionaires on the outside. It’s been self-evident we wouldn’t get the McCleary decision funded when our Guv. didn’t call legislators back to a special session last summer. As they say in the south, “Oh honey, bless your heart!” November’s election might shift things a bit…we’ll have to see. Gov. Jay Inslee will take the Guv’s mansion in the re-election. His opponent…who? Some guy named Bill Bryant, who has *no* name recognition outside of King County, home of the City of Seattle. Me to future doorbeller, “What did you say your name was? Aaand..who are you with? Wait, who is your candidate again? Hmmm…let me Bing that.” Bwaahahaha! Yeah, zilch. Not enough Republicans statewide to counter three counties that dominate elections west of the Cascade range. The bottom line is our State Constitution tells us funding K-12 public education is a paramount duty and the Supremes ruled against Billy’s charter initiative. They still don’t have a foothold anywhere in the state to steal a dime of public money and the opt-out movement is gonna show how much it’s grown in a couple of weeks. We’re ready to expose any OSPI candidate that’s a charter shill. Anyhoo…we’re ground zero and we hope you’ll follow our little state funding drama. Defense is strong….parents and families are fighting. Think rebel alliance. Washington State progressives and many conservatives who support public schools have some serious juice out here. We’re chipping away at it. Stay tuned. Hey Billy! I hope you like reading Diane’s comment section! We love ya Diane. Thank you for helping us keep at it. Dog. Bone. etc.