The Network for Public Education enthusiastically endorses Steve Zimmer for Re-Election to the board of the public schools of Los Angeles.
In the primary, he received nearly half of all the votes, barely missing the majority he needed to avoid a run-off.
His opponent is funded by the Billionaire Boys Club. They are pouring millions into the race in an effort to gain control of the school board and enact Eli Broad’s nefarious plan to put half the children of Los Angeles into privately run charters.
Once again, the billionaires from across the nation are gathering to privatize public education.
Steve Zimmer is their number one target.
He needs your help. Volunteer if you can. Send money if you can.
If 100,000 of us from across the nation each sent him $25, it would make a huge difference. I just sent my second contribution to his campaign.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Would you be able to post an explanation of why an endorsement from Arne Duncan is not anything to brag about? I live in an area where Zimmer’s opponent has a great deal of support, mostly because they know his family and feel he is a nice young man.
Anne Richards:
What do you know and not know? What area are you talking about? You live in Eli Broad’s Brentwood house? (Melvoin is a lawyer from from Brentwood.) You don’t know anything about Arne Duncan? Sounds like you could stand to get out more. Maybe read more. I recommend Reign of Error. Then, maybe we can stick to information instead of fluffy opinions.
I didn’t mean to call you stupid, though. If you’re a suburban mom, Arne Duncan already did.
Anne …evidently you are a newcomer to this blog. For many years Diane Ravitch has led the information exposure of Arne Duncan whose goal it was, is, to charterize America’s public schools. He was a basketball player who never made it to the NBA and as a friend of Obama, ended up leading Chicago schools, badly. Most educators find his Wall Street approach to public education to be a death sentence for public schools.
As to Melvoin, he may indeed be a nice young guy from a nice family in WLA, but that in NO WAY qualifies him to be an LAUSD BoE member. Perhaps when he has far more life and job experience he can again glean a fortune from the billionaire privatizers like Broad and Riordan and he can run with at least some experience, which he lacks right now.
Melvoin has experience suing LAUSD to layoff good, career teachers so that inexperienced, unqualified, TFA temps like him can play.
I would be very concerned about anyone endorsed by Arne Duncan. He spent his seven years in office berating public schools and teachers. He led the privatization movement. Sad. He cheered the firing of the entire staff at a Rhode Island school. He cheered when the LA Times published fraudulent ratings of thousands of teachers. He was missing in action when unions were attacked or vouchers proposed. Poison ivy.
AMEN, Diane. Totally AGREE. Arne is a bafoon and a (fill in the blanks).
Anne, I agree Melvoin seems like a nice person. I live close-ish but not in the same “suburb”, though we don’t call them that here. I don’t know him personally though you may. I can well believe that were we to meet in person I would be charmed as are so many. His personality is magnetic; I do feel like I want him to be my friend. But….:
There’s a lot of smear-by-association going on in this campaign (for which I own some blame), so I’d suggest focusing — really hard, if possible — on him and his policies, not on the endorsement by Duncan or on Melvoin’s relaxed smile. I understand, for example, that board member Rodriguez (http://www.laprogressive.com/ref-rodriguez/) is also a very nice man. It turns out that “niceness” doesn’t track well with the effect on society of charters. Or morality.
Mr Melvoin has been – among other bad things – involved with the design and execution of the Vergara lawsuit which finally failed in the courts. It is a thinly masked attempt to establish precedent for destroying unions in general. Having lost that lawsuit in the courts definitively there is one last opportunity available to turn it around. By gaining a seat on the board and swinging its majority there, Mr Melvoin, co-architect of this lawsuit, will effectively swap the hat of the defendant (LAUSD) for that of the plaintiff (Privatizer). Like a true trojan horse he will morph those determined by the courts definitively not-guilty, into those same entities the lawsuit claims are victimized. He will do an end-run around the entire, discredited, lawsuit.
Clever.
Watch him, listen to him. He can’t talk for more than 5 minutes without the hatred for teachers emerging. It’s like watching Dr. Jekyll/Mr. Hyde. Like Odysseus you sort of have to metaphorically stuff your ears with filters for the personality-magnetism and listen to the words. They’re scary while all the time he’s smiling charmingly.
It’s an apt metaphor, a microcosm perhaps better, for the relationship of corporatizing democrats, like Arne Duncan, to the destruction of public education.
This is a long story, well-told in the right places. And in our polarized world you could easily travel for years without catching a whisper of it. Just not here, as others have noted!
The TL;DR version is: being Democrat doesn’t mean you necessarily operate democratically or with respect for the plurality of democracy.
I hope you will start reading about privatization and charterization and its impact on democracy as we know it. Schools on our westside of LA are hugely impacted by the segregation that comes of charterization and privatization. None of these schools here “looks” anything like LA (including the public ones; they are disproportionately poor and non-white while the others reverse that proscription). Not even by skin color but certainly not by SES. We’ve all self-segregated ourselves, to terrible, deeply morally impactful effect. We have indeed met the enemy and he is just us, you and me.
IMO the seeds of Melvoin’s outrage are right there in his own words and actions, you don’t have to resort to guilt-by-association. Please try to listen very carefully. And think hard about the consequences of those who have not chosen his path. It is profoundly different.
rq lays out a number of vital things to consider when voting for the BoE in Dist. 4.
The charming young Melvoin has a clear and unequivocal agenda…and it is the same as his billionaire donors, Broad and Riordan. His rigorous support for Vergara-like lawsuits to break the back of the teacher’s unions while eliminating due process for teachers so that they many be fired on the whim of a Prinicpal, is the brain child of Welch and Broad and their profiteering associates. Now Broad has both the infamous and unscrupulous Ben Austin of Parent Revolution fame, and his equally egregious privatizing partner, ex Supt. John Deasy who is the originator of the wasted $1.3 Billion from the iPad debacle, working for him.
Broad is drooling at the prospect of having Melvoin join his other LAUSD puppets, Refugio Rodriguez who is founder/director of 16 PUC charter schools which are still being investigated for financing shenanigans, and Ref’s Right Hand partner girl, the ever lying and manipulating Monica Garcia. Broad’s Great Public Schools Now, (which means private charters FINANCED on the taxpayer’s cash with little to NO oversight), is moving ahead at lightening speed to take over another 50% of LAUSD. If this is the case, the District will probably go bankrupt and Broad and his Billionaire Buddies will be able to buy up all the real estate and accoutrements for pennies on the dollar.
No wonder these Wall Street high flyers who live in a parallel universe to the ‘little people’ are willing to invest $4 Million on a local school board election. With the preponderance of the LAUSD BoE charter owners and charter supporter/wannabees voting to support charters (joined by CCSA, the most powerful lobby in Ca.), their investment will be poised to return multi BILLIONS to their personal coffers. Please google Rupert Murdoch’s OpEd about 3 years ago in the NY Times to read about this plan which he lays out in detail…and it has come to pass.
As to Melvoin being endorsed by former Mayor Tony Villaraigosa, the longtime number one Broad puppet and outspoken charter supporter, and anything else Broad demands, is beyond pathetic. Villaraigosa needs Broad’s cash to fund his current run for Governor of California…which is true disaster planning. (Hopefully the smart voters of my state understand they will be far better off voting for John Chiang.)
So….With all this info, and yesterday’s info on this same topic of Zimmer v. Melvoin which is a MUST READ, it is a NO brainer to vote for the incumbent teacher/board member who has learned on the job these last years that public schools MUST be saved from the corporate profiteering and charterizing.
Listen to Diane and…..Vote for Steve Zimmer.