This just happened in Los Angeles: Educators at four LAUSD public schools turned away money from the two billionaire backers of privatization. Broad and Walton are offering funding to these schools at the same time that their charters are diverting hundreds of millions of dollars from the district’s public schools.
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UTLA Educators Overwhelmingly Vote Against Broad-Walmart Grant Funding
Los Angeles, CA – This week, educators at four LAUSD schools voted to reject grant money from “Great Public Schools Now,” the public face of a group backed by the California Charter School Association and bankrolled by billionaires Eli Broad and the Waltons of Walmart.
Educators say that this is a PR stunt, not a genuine effort to fund schools in need and are calling on the District to uphold the vote by not accepting the grant money from GPSN, in any way. These four schools are within the targeted 10 areas for Broad-Walmart funding.
The vote was 98% in favor of rejecting the money; ballot counts at Drew Middle School, Pacoima Middle School, San Fernando High School, and Gompers Middle School were, respectively, 35 to 1, 58 to 0, 72 to 0, and 22 to 3.
Jared Dozal, who voted against his school receiving Broad-Walmart money, is a math and computer science teacher at San Fernando High School. He says this is a distraction from real, lasting efforts for sustainable funding for all public schools.
“We know that some will see this as an opportunity missed for funding, but the amount offered is peanuts for the billionaires behind this effort,” Dozal said. “We won’t let this distract us from saving our schools from a corporate takeover, paid for by the people who only want to destroy public education.”
Dozal said the grant’s offer of “up to” $250,000 per year for three years is insulting, considering the amount of money siphoned from public schools to subsidize rampant charter school growth.
For example, according to LAUSD’s own numbers, Gompers Middle School has $1.4 million less in its budget than 2013. Since school budgets are in large part determined by enrollment, the rapid expansion of charter school growth has clearly impacted the middle school.
In the zip code that Gompers is in, and in the nearby zip codes, there are 21 charter schools. Thirteen of these are the largest corporate charters, including Green Dot, Alliance, Aspire and Kipp. The Waltons of Walmart have contributed generously to these four corporate charters, and Eli Broad alone has contributed more than $75 million over the last few years. In fact, in the June 2015 GPSN plan, Broad and Walton say they will be raising $135 million more for these charter school operators.
Getting the funding and resources our students need requires meaningful and sustainable initiatives. To that end, members of United Teachers Los Angeles join with parents and community members to address issues like school site improvements and student safety, enriched curriculum that includes funding for arts, music and ethnic studies as well as fully staffed schools with full-time nurses, librarians and counselors.
UTLA is also working to pass Prop. 55 on next week’s ballot, pursuing long-term funding solutions in Sacramento, and supporting efforts such as the Make It Fair campaign to close corporate property tax loopholes.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Wow, sad that ideology and centralized labor union greed are put ahead of the good of the kids that clearly would benefit from these schools/funds. There is no question that school choice/charters help the poorest families the most, yet the big union bosses don’t care that their monopoly and forced funding is maintained on the backs of the poorest families who have no choice. Shameful.
Martin Trelane,
The shame is that the poorest families have their school funding — the real funds, the PUBLIC funds — hijacked by entrepreneurs and real estate scams to pay for inexperienced, unsupported teachers at low quality test prep factories called charters.
As I recall, it was $600,000,000 that LAUSD lost from their last budget with the growth of the charters in the district. A paltry $250K is no where near this loss to students in the inner cities whose education is stymied while charters in upper class, privileged neighborhoods like El Camino HS and Granada HS run as private schools with no oversight.
GPSN jumped in ‘rapidly’ to hand out a few million since their recent inception and which the LA Times gave much visibility. But it is history that Broad/Walton “gifs” to these schools always comes with steel/steal strings attached.
Is Martin Tremane, a pseudonym of a mediocre singer, perhaps Ben Austin or Gabe Rose of Broad’s own team and PRev….or Mrs. Angel or Clarice Young of CCSA and Gulen’s Magnolia charters?
As I recall, LAUSD was in the ‘red’ by over $600,000,000 in their last budget due to the cost to the district of the charter schools. This paltry $250K donated by GPSN is a drop in the bucket compared to the vast loss of funds when charters steal students from the public schools.
And it is ludicrous to see that some of these schools such as El Camino HS and Granada HS (which Carl Petersen has written about) are truly private schools in privileged mainly white neighborhoods.
I wonder if Martin Tremane is really Ben Austin or Gabe Rose or Mrs. Angel or Clarice Young or Mr. Litt…..all of CCSA and PRev fame and all Broad’s employees and/or toadiest? When Broad “rapidly” makes these new donations for private schools financed by the public with NO oversight, it is clear they will benefit him, not inner city students, and it always comes with steel/steal strings attached.
You have only to review his history with making vast profits off the sale of his Beaudry building to the LAUSD…and other of his profiteering off the district using his deep pockets to leverage these investments.
Agreed, Ellen. It is painful to witness firsthand the damage wrought in LA by privatization forces inside the district. Broad needs to go. His paternalistic, faux philanthropic ilk need to follow. Their district implants too. California must throw off its charter chains (and Prop 13) to return to its place as the best place in the world to get an education.
Your slanted and biased comments are shameful. I applaud the teachers for having the character and courage to stand up to corporate money and the attempted corporate takeover of our schools. Charter schools drain funds and resources from the district schools.
Joe, unfortunately, he doesn’t seem to realize (or just doesn’t care) that this is equivalent to a bone thrown to the peasants, meant to placate them and make them shut up while the robber-barons divert a much, much larger amount away from the public schools, and into the charters.
“Let them eat cake,” eh, Martin?
There is a lot of question that putting schools on the free market of “school choice” benefits students. As to teachers, being greedy, they are just trying to make a living. Do you really want our schools to be staffed by teachers living in poverty? The school “choice” hucksters are just trying to make a profit at the expense of students and teachers.
I’m so proud of my UTLA colleagues right now I could just burst. It’ll be interesting to see if the reformsters at the LA Times and Weekly try to spin this into a negative, but even if they do, these votes were entirely positive, the right thing to do. The Broadies can keep every red cent, every red herring cent!
IT’S UP TO EACH OF US NOW AS INDIVIDUAL CITIZENS TO AGGRESSIVELY SPREAD THE WORD to our state and local lawmakers and social media friends everywhere because they need to know right now that the Office of Inspector General of the U.S. Department of Education has issued a warning that charter schools posed a risk to the Department of Education’s own goals. The report says: “Charter schools and their management organizations pose a potential risk to federal funds even as they threaten to fall short of meeting the goals.”
The report documents multiple cases of financial risk, waste, fraud, abuse, lack of accountability of federal funds, and lack of proof that the schools were implementing federal programs in accordance with federal requirements.
Throughout our nation, private charter schools backed by billionaire hedge funds are being allowed to divert hundreds of millions of public school tax dollars away from educating America’s children and into private corporate pockets. Any thoughtful person should pause a moment and ask: “Why are hedge funds the biggest promoters of charter schools?” Hedge funds aren’t altruistic — there’s got to be big profit in “non-profit” charter schools in order for hedge fund managers to be involved in backing them.
And even the staunchly pro-charter school Los Angeles Times (which acknowledges that its “reporting” on charter schools is paid for by a billionaire charter school advocate) complained in an editorial that “the only serious scrutiny that charter operators typically get is when they are issued their right to operate, and then five years later when they apply for renewal.” Without needed oversight of what charter schools are actually doing with the public’s tax dollars, hundreds of millions of tax money that is supposed to be spent on educating the public’s children is being siphoned away into private pockets.
One typical practice of charter schools is to pay exorbitant rates to rent buildings that are owned by the charter school board members or by their proxy companies which then pocket the public’s tax money as profit. Another profitable practice is that although charter schools use public tax money to purchase millions of dollars of such things as computers, the things they buy with public tax money become their private property and can be sold by them for profit…and then use public tax money to buy more, and sell again, and again, and again, pocketing profit after profit.
The Washington State and New York State supreme courts and the National Labor Relations Board have ruled that charter schools are not public schools because they aren’t accountable to the public since they aren’t governed by publicly-elected boards and aren’t subdivisions of public government entities, in spite of the fact that some state laws enabling charter schools say they are government subdivisions.
Charter schools are clearly private schools, owned and operated by private entities. Nevertheless, they get public tax money. Moreover, as the NAACP and ACLU have reported, charter schools are often engaged in racial and economic-class discrimination.
Charter schools should (1) be required by law to be governed by school boards elected by the voters so that they are accountable to the public; (2) a charter school entity must legally be a subdivision of a publicly-elected governmental body; (3) charter schools should be required to file the same detailed public-domain audited annual financial reports under penalty of perjury that genuine public schools file; and, (4) anything a charter school buys with the public’s money should be the public’s property.
NO FEDERAL MONEY SHOULD BE ALLOWED TO GO TO CHARTER SCHOOLS THAT FAIL TO MEET THESE MINIMUM REQUIREMENTS OF ACCOUNTABILITY TO THE PUBLIC. Hillary Clinton could, if elected President, on day one in office issue an Executive Order to the Department of Education to do just that. Tell her today to do that! Send her the above information to make certain she knows about the Inspector General’s findings and about the abuses being committed by charter schools.
Those are impressive votes in opposition to Broad: 35 to 1, 58 to 0, 72 to 0, and 22 to 3. They show that teachers in these schools know the game being played by Broad and others.
Dozal said the grant’s offer of “up to” $250,000 per year for three years is insulting, considering the amount of money siphoned from public schools to subsidize rampant charter school growth.
It is hard to know what strings are attached to the iffy “up to” $250,000, per year over three years.
This offer reminds me of the Gates District-Charter Collaboration Compacts managed by the Center for Reinventing Public Education (CREP).
Since 2011 the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation has funded “District-Charter Collaboration Compacts” in more than 23 cities. The compacts were marketed as if they would initiate a “collaboration, ” a “let’s make nice” process, between districts and charter schools. The real purpose was to dilute the authority of elected school boards. Gates promised districts some money (initial grants of $100,000) if they would agree to share their resources with charter schools , especially by rearranging their central office operations to support charter school expansions.
The $100,000 bait for districts to enter into these compacts came with the prospect, not a guarantee, that a district could receive much more money for compliance with the Gates agenda. The details in these compacts were not exactly the same in every city, but the Gates Compact wish list included district support for:
—Implementing the Common Core,
—Having a unified application/enrollment system for all schools,
—Allowing co-location in public schools of charters schools, but also free of any obligation for charters to pay for capital improvements. Add freedom for charters to “adapt” the space to fit their needs
—Reinventing other operations in the central office to create a “portfolio” of public and charter schools, with new charters located in high-need areas,
—Foregoing or changing union contracts with teachers,
—Providing charters with equitable funding for special education, transportation, food services and the like.
—Introducing or expanding “personalized learning,” with investments in technology.
—Providing charter students access to extracurricular and co-curricular classes and athletic programs.
Some districts received $100,000 for planning. Some received money in steps if they were moving toward compliance with their compacts. Among the districts receiving the largest grants (up to 2015) were Hartford, CN, $5 million; Denver, CO ($4 million); Boston Catholic District Charter, MA, $3.3 million; New Orleans, LA $3 million; Chicago, IL, $2.7 million; and Spring Branch (greater Houston) TX, $2.2 million.
According to the researchers at CREP, ” By 2016, …”collaboration projects have stalled or even regressed among about half of the Compact signatories.”
This is not the first major initiative from the Gates foundation that has failed to recognize the obvious. Districts are not steady-state entities with little or no turnover in leadership, staff, school boards, federal and state regulations, and local events, some unforeseen. The “Gates compacts” had no legal force and the compacts (memoranda of understanding) were not persuasive as instruments for change, either for districts or for charter operators.
School districts are part of a political environment where wishful thinking and vague promises of some cash from by a billionaire-funded foundation compete for attention with specific, immediate, and local concerns. Districts have plenty of problems without having to “make nice” with charters and their supporters, especially charter franchises run from afar, financed by deep pockets, and eager to get rid of public education.
The CREP report completely ignored corruption within the charter industry, also flaws in the Common Core (still pushed in every Gates grant to schools).
This report, aptly called “Herding Cats,” concludes: “After five years of research on Compact cities, we have seen that both districts and charter schools have much to gain from collaborating. But as this paper shows, effective long-term partnerships require more than simply getting sign-off from two “sectors.” Diverse charter politics, missions, and even personalities call for savvy coalition-building efforts and strong leadership. Creating a unified coalition of fiercely autonomous schools led by independent-minded individuals is difficult but definitely not impossible.” p. 10.
And therein lies the problem: The Gates Foundation and people at The Center for Reinventing Public Education—hired to serve as one of the Gates Foundation’s many operating arms—are unwilling to concede there are real contradictions in wanting “a unified coalition” made up of “fiercely autonomous schools” and led by “independent-minded individuals.”
Gates and Gates surrogates at CRPE have no respect for the fact that most urban districts have taxing power, and usually have elected school boards for a good reason. Those board members, like most government officials with taxing authority, are directly accountable to voters.
The Gates Collaborative Compact rewards districts if they participate in a scheme intended to distribute their authority and funds from taxes to schools that are structured like a private corporation. Operators of charter schools want to be subsidized, on the dole, for those funds while also being “fiercely autonomous,” and led by “independent-minded individuals.”
Real collaboration is not a bribe. ”Charter operators and their supporters are on the take. The most agressive supporters are billionaires who are fiercely opposed to public schools, and more generally institutions created for the common good and built to have democratic governance.
In real terms, that’s 187 real teachers to 4 in favor of turning down participation in the Broad-Walmart PR stunt. In Common Core math, it’s 96 to 95, as long as you show your work.
Very enlightening info about the real string puller Gates, Laura. Would that everyone were as knowledgeable as you. Thank you.
Taking money from these opportunists would be like taking an apple from the serpent.
In essence, they are not offering grants, but rather, they are offering bribes. Blood money to try to fool the public into thinking these phony philanthro-pus-ts are serving the education needs of poor children.
One lesser known aspect of this donation was that those schools’ UTLA Chapter Chairs — the teachers’ union leaders elected by the teachers at each respective site — would have to agree to submit to a background check conducted by the Broad-Walmart people behind Great Public Schools Now, as a condition for receiving this grant.
WTF is that all about?
Here’s some more fine print: “Under the application rules, any of the schools, however, could have been included in a district proposal that envisioned replacing the school’s leadership — and possibly the faculty — with educators brought in from a separate, more academically successful program.”
http://www.latimes.com/local/education/la-me-edu-teachers-reject-potential-funding-20161104-story.html
Please Jack, expand on this info re background checks. Whose backgrounds must be checked, and is that stipulated in their RFP? or the quid pro quo K that must be signed to seal the deal?
It would appear that the teachers at the schools stood up to Supt. of LAUSD, Michelle King, and they (and UTLA) understand better than she does that taking paltry amounts of money from GPSN equates to vindicating and validating this Broad 501c3 which is intent on “rapidly” taking over another 50% of LAUSD to charterize these schools.
Myrna Castejon, (who Broad and billionaire his ilk chose as the CEO of GPSN) spent her entire career as a lobbyist for charter schools, and never taught. She only got the big bucks from Broad, Walton, etc. to manufacture scenarios to sell to legislators. She is NOT an educator.
Thanks to the many brave teachers (and Alex C-P) who denounced this blood money offering and stood against the district and the Supt. who seems to have completely sold out to Broad and company and looks more like Deasy every day.
Thanks Leftie for posting the link to the LA Times article.