Karen Wolfe is a parent activist and blogger in Los Angeles. She interviewed several of the leading figures in the recent school board elections and shares her thoughts about why the board president Steve Zimmer lost and his billionaire-backed challenger Nick Melvoin won. [Sorry for original error; Freudian slip.]
Back in the distant past, a person could raise $30-50,000 and run for school board. This race cost millions of dollars. The billionaires spent four times as much money as the supporters of Zimmer. Zimmer was backed by UTLA (United Teachers of Los Angeles), Melvoin was backed by billionaires like Eli Broad, Michael Bloomberg, Alice Walton, Reed Hastings, and others with no connection to the schools other than their desire to put one of their own in control. It was the most expensive school board race in history (as the referendum last fall about the expansion of charter schools was the most expensive ballot question about schools in history–the billionaires hand over a million or two without thinking twice, when charters are involved.)
Melvoin had another advantage besides copious cash for TV and print advertising. He was able to spend full-time campaigning every day for the last 18 months, while Zimmer had a day job.
Melvoin and his campaign also lied shamelessly. They blamed Zimmer for John Deasy’s $1 billion iPad scandal. Deasy is now working for Eli Broad. Now, that’s chutzpah. Or a bald-faced lie.
Karen Wolfe is not as impressed by the power of the money and lies as I am. I think that Melvoin is a puppet of Broad, and his campaign excelled at mud-slinging and succeeded in depressing the vote.
My take: Steve Zimmer, an honorable and decent man, failed to present a sharp alternative to Melvoin. He was always on the defensive. He supported charter schools, but thought they should be held accountable. He did not make a compelling case for the importance of public education and the dangers of privatization. He had one foot in each camp. That’s not good enough. I wish he had come out against charter schools for draining hundreds of millions from the district and luring away the easiest to educate students. I wish he had called them parasites.
Now the new board president is likely to be run by Ref Rodriguez, who runs a charter chain that was recently under investigation. He has contracts with the board. He shouldn’t even be on the board. Doesn’t California have conflict of interest laws? Guess not.
What is the future of public education in Los Angeles? Ask Eli Broad. He considers privately managed and unaccountable charter schools to be “public schools.” There will be many more of them in the near future. That’s why the billionaires invested.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
The amount of money is indicative of the income inequality in our country and how it is destroying our democracy. It edges out regular citizens to participate equally in out democracy. The latest trend of acceptance of celebrities in presidential races is another example. If we don’t talk openly about this inequality only the rich and famous will be running for political office. Many people don’t see this as a trend that is ushered in through income inequality.
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I am not sure if “parasite” is strong enough for Eli Broad and his pals who want control of LA schools. But you are correct about boots in both camps doing serious damage to public education while perpetuating the myth that charter schools are “public.”
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Another problem- media like Politico won’t scrutinize the deception of calling contractor schools, “public schools”. Apparently, Politico’s press standards are no higher than echoing industry publications. If Boeing, Halliburton, and the entire defense industry, referred to itself as public, as in answerable like a public agency or department, that’s what Politico would post. The conclusion, the defense industry has more integrity than the ed reformer industry. They don’t mislead the public about their ownership.
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No matter how much money UTLA would spend, they have lost the confidence of the public. Voters respect teachers, but as long as the union is defined as protectors of incompetent faculties, they won’t have a voice in our elections. Even LAUSD employees couldn’t be bothered to get out the vote to protect Steve.
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Tangential topic- Gordon Lafer published a book about the corporate lobbies that attack public interest in state capitols. One point he makes is corporate legislation creates one-way doors. He cites, as an example, the parent trigger laws that permit conversion of a public school to a contractor school but, not the other way around.
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I just started reading Gordon Lafer’s book, “The One Percent Solution.” It is brilliant! I will review when I get time from other deadlines.
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The first “one-way door” that I recall, related to the water supply. Government funds for facility updates were limited to municipal water plants that privatized.
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For the record, Eli Broad once served as Vice President of the national Democrats for Nixon committee.
He has put great time, money, effort, passion and power into voicing his support for a certain market-based education philosophy that serves the interests of mostly white and economically well-off families.
On the subject of someone like Donald Trump, he is completely silent. Like many of his other billion/millionaire corporate peers, they do not use their clout to criticize one of the most dangerous individuals on the planet.
Why?
Because Donald Trump is still economically beneficial to the Broad, to Gates, to the Waltons, to Rex Hastings to Silicon Valley. The utter amorality of these people who DO NOT SPEAK OUT against Trump and what he is doing to the country is ALL one needs to know about their priorities.
Let me expand on Karen Wolfe’s terrific article to direct our attention to the Bigger Picture of who and what we are up against.
Both Eli Broad and Republican Richard Riordan are the titans of Los Angeles and have made their fortunes off GOP tax and financial policy. They have come together to back “education” initiatives that are embraced by EVERY SINGLE GOP national representative (even if they eschew the most violent extremes of Republican education policy because in Blue Blue Los Angeles, it would be seen as absolute lunacy).
Throughout the school board campaign, Nick Melvoin spoke glowingly of John Deasy’s leadership and tenure at LAUSD. The Loyola Marymount University education cabal that spawned Melvoin, Deasy, Ref Rodriguez and Kelly Fitzpatrick-Gonez has created a destructive pedagogy/pathology throughout the district and will be the Brain Trust of what happens next.
What LAUSD has lacked is a true Progressive Voice in extolling the virtues and benefits of this sort of pedagogy and leadership in our urban, children of color school district. Although I am an adamant union supporter, there are areas where UTLA does not always (unfortunately) speak for Progressive concerns in terms of community and education needs, thus, for purposes of this debate, I would separate Progressivism from UTLA-ism.
As much as they don’t want to discuss it, the Democratic Party is most obviously split along who supports the corporate ECONOMIC and EDUCATION policies that overlap with Republican interests and those who want nothing to do with either.
Eli Broad and his ilk do not feel it is in their interest to attack Donald Trump. They understand his hubris. They understand his narcissism. They understand his “Great Man” theory of human nature.
Many of Donald Trump’s policies are also Eli Broad’s. While he tries to remake education nationwide, he certainly won’t rock the boat in confronting the most grotesque immorality of them all.
At this point in our collective Trump history, it’s unimaginable what horror won’t Broad tolerate.
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What I’m posting here is most likely the last time that I post as a teacher because I’ve decided to retire. What I’m posting does not have to do with this thread but I wanted to share this video that I found that I believe resinates with the whole attack on public education. When we start standardizing people we tend to standardize everyone so we end up all the same. I believe that our politicians and corporations want standardized people to control. They want everyone to be the same so then they don’t have to deal with different beliefs, issues, or lifestyles. We as teachers are also being standardized and its making us grey. (Watch the video and you’ll understand).
http://www.filmsforaction.org/watch/how-society-kills-our-creativity-in-a-breathtaking-awardwinning-short-film/
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I agree with what Diane wrote in the last three paragraphs of this post. You can’t have one boot in each camp and get either camp to support you wholeheartedly. The push for Zimmer at the end of the runoff was too little, too late. You either support public education and teachers or you don’t. There were sycophants of the Gates Foundation making phone calls with the teacher’s union for Zimmer’s campaign, for crying out loud! This is lesson learning time, people. If you claim to support teachers, but quietly, tacitly support school choice and/or high stakes testing and/or computer-based curricula, don’t run for election. You will lose.
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And it’s not acceptable to, like Steve, say you’ve made mistakes in the past but know better now. If you understood education you wouldn’t have made the mistake of supporting school choice. Sorry to be so blunt. We need only true advocates of public schools like Board Member Scott Schmerelson from now on.
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Unless you’re Dr. Diane Ravitch who has fully recanted and made up for supporting standardization, and then some.
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I feel the need to weigh in at this time. I worked for Steve Zimmer for 7 years, the last 4 I was his Chief of Staff. I appreciate Diane speaking to the complexity of the issues in this election. I want to add a couple of pieces that need to be taken into consideration, in my opinion.
The first one is that Steve did not come out strongly enough against charter schools. I was there when Steve called for a moratorium for new charters petitions prior to his previous election – which was determined not to be legal and generated a massive campaign against him. Despite this, he prevailed in the election. Steve objected time and again against charters for not serving special education students or a diverse enough populations. Charters have long responded to these issues by saying, we’re trying. Some do and some don’t. Steve also called out the massive expansion of charters that Broad and his billionaire friends were (are) planning.
And Steve made a strong case for changing the narrative to one that focused on increasing enrollment. He authored resolution after resolution asking Superintendent’s Deasy, Cortines and now King to make strategic investments in the programs that were drawing parents back into our schools.
And it’s important to look at the issue in its complexity. We can’t forget that like it or not, charter schools parents are also constituents and cannot be flat out ignored. And let’s remember that Districts have to deal with the reality that even when they reject a charter petition at the onset, charters have the right to appeal both at the County level and at the State level again. So, a charter can be denied by the local Board and still have a right to be co-located in District schools that have available classrooms. Consider the complexity of this.
Some people have argued that Steve lost his election because he supported the resolution that called for supporting SB 808 – which asks that an appeal at the county level can only be denied on the basis of the local Board committing a procedural violation. Whether this is the right fix or not, is an open question. Consider again, the complexity of this.
Others have argued that the more appropriate arena for local Boards to engage in is the difficult conversation of defining what a ‘sound educational plan’. The LAUSD Board of Education began this conversation, and would have continued it if Steve had been re-elected. But consider how complex this conversation, is, if you will.
My point is not to be a Zimmer apologist. We all know that like all of us, Steve is human and made mistakes. Our democracy does not require perfection from our leaders. But we are learning, all too painfully, that it requires our leaders to consider matters carefully. And it requires that more people join the conversation and have thoughtful conversations.
In my opinion, Steve made a valiant effort to make a case for public education. He authored and supported countless resolutions detailing the many elements that make our District schools the best choice in some communities, and supported the District in making the improvements needed to make sure they are the best choice in the communities where parents don’t find them to be so. Anyone who cares to look, will find that his policy legacy is robust, and that we don’t need to start from square one to build progressive policy. There is a lot there to build on for those who want to do this.
I am not sure if calling charters parasites is the best way to go. But I am sure that in California we have to start by working to repeal Proposition 39. I don’t believe there is a voter that is not shocked to learn that they voted to support the mayhem this has created. Voters across the state need to learn what this looks like on the ground, and we need to consider a better alternative.
In Los Angeles, I also feel that there has been insufficient attention to making charters accountable. The LA School Report provides a daily dosage of LAUSD’s failings. But I don’t know which media outlet has ever sent a reporter to charter board meetings. No one has studied how many of those Boards have A-G resolutions, or resolutions that promote restorative justice. I am not sure if the civil rights groups in Los Angeles have paid the same attention to the rights of the over 100,000 students in charter schools.
If charter schools are public schools, entitled to public dollars and public school classrooms, they require the same attention from those committed to social justice.
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Rhetorically, did Steve refer to contractor schools as “public” or “charter”?
That is the language of the anti-democracy richest 0.1%. It is similar to their creation of the word “outsourcing”, which is avoidance of safety precautions and labor exploitation.
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My profile was not showing my name, the previous post is mine
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I appreciate all the support of more moderate, less privatization hungry officials. Sort of. I believe that, like VAM teacher evaluations, however, if something is too complex to be clearly understood, it’s simply not true. Charters are not “valued partners”. Standardized testing does not promote equality. Corporate reform is never acceptable.
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