The State University of New York committee that authorizes Eva Moskowitz’s Success Academy charter schools told her to get rid of billionaire Daniel Loeb, the chairman of the Network’s board, because of a racist comment he posted on Facebook.
The story appears in The Wall Street Journal. I am not a subscriber. Perhaps someone who is can post the rest of the text.
It begins:
“The head of a group that approves New York charter schools said Monday that it would be “very difficult” for Success Academy Charter Schools to expand if hedge-fund manager Daniel Loeb doesn’t step down from the charter network’s board in light of his recent racial remark.”
Loeb slandered the leader of the Democrats in the State Senate, who is black, and said she had done more to damage black children than anyone wearing a hood.
He took down the post but the damage was done. Loeb is close to Eva, to Cuomo, and to the GOP. Civil rights groups have demanded that Cuomo return the hundreds of thousands that Loeb gave him.
What will Eva do?
Stand by her man or expand?
It is awkward to pose as a civil rights reformer when the chair of your board compares the state’s leading black legislator to the KKK.
Farewell, Danny boy, we hardly knew ye.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Poor old Dan will stand wherever he feels like it, Bea because he has money (from the backs of teachers who make it honestly in pension funds.
Mr Loeb is a 21st century racist…making his money while taking from the middle class and public school children.
It would be nice if he would take Eva with him…unfortunately for the people of NewYork she wiggles her finger in the air to see which way the monetary winds blow…but such a cozy relationship with Cuomo…as there is so much public money to grease their dirty hands.
Loeb spends hundreds of thousands and in return doubles his income from the theft of interest off public funds…Eva stays, selling any crumbs of humanity for her share of the lot, and good old Cuomo…what he wouldn’t do for a political “contribution”…the “rebuilder” of New York, riding the coat tails of Reform.
The Age of Reformista…Cuomo University…specialists in providing a world class education…in the theft of money from the people of New York.
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Knowing Danny he won’t go. He’ll wield his cash and threats like he always does, and this humble teacher has personally been on the receiving end of his narcissistic contempt for teachers, public schools, unions, and anyone else who has stood up to him. It can be nasty. Let him dig a deeper hole first, then perhaps, the jig will be up for SA and Eva.
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I’m sorry, Diane, I wish you were correct, but SUNY did not say that at all.
Joseph Belluck said it would be “very difficult” which is code word for “we’ll do it as soon as this dies down and we can get away with it.”
It’s tantamount to the Republicans in Congress saying “it would be very difficult if Trump did xxxx and then saying “tut tut” and enabling it.”
Now maybe Loeb will eventually step down and give SUNY cover. But there is no way that Belluck does not approve anything Eva Moskowitz and the billionaires who own Cuomo and the Charter Institute want. Whether or not Belluck steps down is irrelevant.
A few years ago the SUNY Charter Institute got caught approving Eva Moskowitz’ 3rd district school in wealthy District 2 where her previous 2 schools served a ridiculously low number of at-risk kids and a ridiculously high number of affluent ones. (That was thanks to SUNY previously enabling Moskowitz to change the lottery preferences so that at-risk kids no longer had preference over students whose families had the money to afford to live in District 2 or were lucky enough to live in some of the few low-income apartments there).
SUNY was embarrassed when a parent group found that despite Moskowitz’ claim of “huge demand” for a 3rd school, there were empty seats in the 2 previous schools. (That’s because Success Academy doesn’t like to fill empty seats unless the lottery winner is up to snuff.) So SUNY did a last minute switch of locations once it got some publicity.
But do you know what just happened? Moskowitz got her 3rd District 2 school that’s opening now. Just like she wanted. Belluck just waited until the controversy died down.
“Very difficult” means “we do whatever she wants but might have to be sneaky about it.”
Maybe Loeb will step down because he is an embarrassment. Maybe he won’t. But Success Academy will expand to as many high-income neighborhoods as they desire and will continue to kick out as many low-income kids as they desire. As long as the test scores are high, SUNY is good.
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^^^Sorry – there is a typo:
I wrote: “Whether or not Belluck steps down is irrelevant.”
That should have said “Whether or not LOEB steps down is irrelevant.”
Maybe if Belluck stepped down and was replaced by someone like Pedro Noguera, who resigned from the SUNY Charter Institute years ago in response to SUNY enabling Success Academy instead of overseeing the charter chain, things would change around there. But as long as Belluck is in charge, anything that Success Academy wants it will get. Whether Loeb resigns or not. They might just have to wait a little while until attention is elsewhere.
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Well, SUNY is certainly expressing a desire to “go forward” with charter expansion, and a desire for it to be “easy” for SUNY to do so. That much is certain. How the money will continue to flow out of public education is not in question. My guess is they’re telling Loeb he can keep the money spigot open, but just lay low for a while as his appointed officials do his dirty work for him. It’s a small battle lost by Success Academy if he leaves the board. I’ll give it one cheer instead of three. Hip! Hip! Hoorah!
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Here’s the article: Daniel Loeb’s Racially Charged Post Could Be Sticking Point for Expansion of Success Academy Charter Schools
Group with approval power said it would be ‘very difficult’ for network to expand if Loeb doesn’t step down from board
Hedge Fund manager Daniel Loeb said in a Facebook post this month that state Sen. Andrea Stewart-Cousins, a black Democrat who serves as state Senate minority leader, had done ‘more damage to people of color than anyone who ever donned a hood.’ Mr. Loeb has apologized for the post, which has been deleted.
Hedge Fund manager Daniel Loeb said in a Facebook post this month that state Sen. Andrea Stewart-Cousins, a black Democrat who serves as state Senate minority leader, had done ‘more damage to people of color than anyone who ever donned a hood.’ Mr. Loeb has apologized for the post, which has been deleted. PHOTO: ANDREW KELLY/REUTERS
By Leslie Brody
Aug. 21, 2017 7:42 p.m. ET
23 COMMENTS
The head of a group that approves New York charter schools said Monday that it would be “very difficult” for Success Academy Charter Schools to expand if hedge-fund manager Daniel Loeb doesn’t step down from the charter network’s board in light of his recent racial remark.
In a Facebook post this month, Mr. Loeb said state Sen. Andrea Stewart-Cousins, a black Democrat who serves as state Senate minority leader, had done “more damage to people of color than anyone who ever donned a hood” because of her loyalty to unions, according to a screenshot reported in the New York Times.
Mr. Loeb has apologized for the post, which was deleted, and said he regretted the language he used in expressing his “passion for educational choice.”
A chorus of Democratic politicians and others have called for Mr. Loeb to resign from the charter network in recent days. Joseph Belluck, chair of the Charter Schools Committee that oversees charter schools authorized by the State University of New York, ratcheted up the pressure on Monday.
Mr. Loeb’s “continued presence there is going to be quite a challenge for us as the authorizer” of these charters, said Mr. Belluck, who called the Facebook post “reprehensible.”
Representatives for Mr. Loeb declined to respond to Mr. Belluck’s comments Monday.
Success Academies, the city’s largest charter operator, has 46 charters open in New York City and wants to grow to 100 in a decade. Mr. Belluck, a longtime supporter of the high-performing network, heads the committee that decides whether to approve its applications to open new sites, and renew existing ones.
“It would be difficult for me to expand the network of a school that has somebody on the board that holds those views,” Mr. Belluck said. I“I’m trying to signal it would be very difficult going forward if he doesn’t” step down.t was important, he said, to show children that people should be held accountable for racially charged comments, especially in the wake of a white-supremacy rally in Charlottesville, Va., this month.
A spokeswoman for Success Academies said: by email that “SUNY is a strong authorizer and has always been fair and supportive of Success, and we know that it will make decisions on the merits of what’s best for students.”
Most of the charter network’s students are poor and black or Hispanic. Supporters praise its high test scores and orderly environment; critics accuse it of draining resources from traditional public schools and using overly harsh discipline. Teachers unions generally oppose charters, which usually aren’t unionized.
Mr. Belluck said that his committee has oversight over individual charter schools, and Mr. Loeb is chairman of the board of the network as a whole, so it is unclear how much direct authority the committee has over his position. The committee has leverage over Success Academy’s future, however, due to its power to approve or deny school applications.
A spokesman for Ms. Stewart-Cousins said after news of the post broke in early August that “in 2017 it is outrageous and offensive that this type of language is used by someone with such wide political influence.”
— Mike Vilensky contributed to this article.
Write to Leslie Brody at leslie.brody@wsj.com
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“Mr. Loeb’s “continued presence there is going to be quite a challenge for us as the authorizer” of these charters, said Mr. Belluck, who called the Facebook post “reprehensible.”
Fortunately, that’s just the kind of “challenge” that SUNY is willing to overcome! I’m sure Joseph Belluck will work very very hard to meet that challenge and overcome it.
After all, Belluck worked very hard to “overcome” the challenge of Eva Moskowitz claiming that the suspension rates as high as 25% for Kindergarten and first graders in some of her schools with almost no white children is due to all those children being violent. Belluck overcame it so well he approved more charters for her!
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Daniel Loeb should be removed from the Board of Success Academy Charter Schools, Inc. (SACS), for reasons beyond his recent racist remark. Despite the sound of its name, SACS is actually not a group of schools. Rather, it is a not-for-profit organization that supplies management support to the Success Academy schools, like scripted lesson plans. The connection between Loeb’s SACS and the Success Academy schools themselves is that the Success Academy schools MUST pay a fee to Loeb’s SACS of over $2,000 per student for its support services.
Many Success Academies are operating at a loss — because of the fees they must pay to Loeb’s organization. (In 2015, roughly 18 schools were running losses. You can see them here, under http://www.newyorkcharters.org/wp-content/uploads/Success-NYC-2014-15-AFR.pdf, pages 17, 18, on the line entitled “change in net assets;” a number inside parentheses indicates a negative number, i.e. a loss.)
And here’s why Loeb should go, on top of his racism: his organization is a not-for-profit, sitting on huge sums of funds. In 2014, Loeb’s SACS reported earning over $17 million in profit, and held assets of close to $50 million. And yet Loeb’s organization still charges each Success Academy school over $2,000 of taxpayer money per student. A not-for-profit that charges fees is not supposed to be earning a hefty profit off of those it is supposed to support. In this case, with such tremendous funds, Loeb should be providing management support for free to the schools. Yet Loeb, the chair of that board, continues this policy of charging hefty fees, an unnecessary policy and one that is forcing too many of the Success Academy into the red.
On top of all this, Loeb’s corporation pays its employees far too handsomely. CEO Eva Moskowitz earns over a half million dollars. And at least 18 employees earn between $150,000 – $405,000.
All of this leads to one conclusion: because of his racism and because of his operating a not-for-profit that unnecessarily charges exorbitant fees to schools, forcing them into loss positions, Loeb has got to go.
Citations and support:
1.SACS: provides management services to Success Academy school, at a rate of 15% of the state-funded per pupil fee.
http://www.newyorkcharters.org/wp-content/uploads/Success-NYC-2014-15-AFR.pdf (page 14, 5A)
In 2014 the per pupil fee was roughly $13,500. http://www.ilchs.org/sites/default/files/2014-15-State-Budget-Overiew-NYCCSC_3_14.pdf
$13,500 x 15% = $2025 per pupil
Profit earned by SACS in 2014 (most recent tax form 990 I could find online):
2014 Form 990, Pt I, line 19 (Revenue less Expenses) : $17,515,122
Click to access 2015-205298861-0ccb5e71-9.pdf
Moskowitz salary:
2014 Form 990, Schedule J, Part II
Click to access 2015-205298861-0ccb5e71-9.pdf
Salary of others, between $150,000 – $405,000
2014 Form 990, Schedule J, Part II
Click to access 2015-205298861-0ccb5e71-9.pdf
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Thank you Lisa, for that information!!
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Call me naive, but I cannot understand how the deformers can hold up their heads without a neck brace.
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Gotta like that one, Yvonne!
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Tangential- The Hoover Institute was represented on NPR this month by its democracy talking points guy, Larry Diamond, who bemoaned the rise of authoritarianism and retreat of democracy. (Has Hoover ever found an American oligarch it didn’t like?)
So, Larry reports to us that the “elimination of countervailing forces in our political system, the judiciary, media, business community, and civil society” is the problem.
The “duh factor”, which I hope the audience filled in, didn’t reach Larry’s pontification. FYI, Master Diamond, a couple of tips- (1) The countervailing force requires money to countervail. Colonialism, which Hoover’s policies create, policies like privatization of education, loss of public pensions, loss of unions, regressive tax structuring, unfettered markets is inextricably linked to authoritarianism. (2) Read about how 1,000,000 Irish were allowed to die of starvation because the notion of free enterprise was so revered. Ya think they were too hungry to countervail?
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The Success Academy lottery was the emotional centerpiece climax of three corporate-ed-reform-funded documentaries: WAITING FOR SUPERMAN, THE LOTTERY, and THE CARTEL, Even the N.Y. Post newspaper created a video of this:
However, what those films and the N.Y. Post left out of all these heart-tugging scenes is something that, later on, commonly happens off-screen …
… “winning” this lottery, or winning any charter school lottery doesn’t really mean jack sh%# when it comes to actually attending the schools.
For example, Success Academy charters schools have tons of empty seats because Success Academy officials. This is due to the fact that they regularly turn away supposed lottery “winners” whom Success Academy officials view as unfit for admission — special ed. kids, second language learners, immigrants, homeless kids, foster care kids, etc. — as those types of children are both more expensive and troublesome to educate, and will have difficulty adhering to Success Academy’s controversial regiment — rigid, militaristic “no excuses” discipline and routines.
Here’s just one such example:
JAYBEE SMALLEY: “My name is Jaybee Smalley. I’m a parent, yes. I have two children with special needs. I have one child who I applied to the Harlem Success Academy through the lottery process to see if she could be… would be accepted.
“When she WAS accepted through the lottery, I reached out to them (Harlem Success Academy) before I attended any sort of a orientation to see if they would be able to accommodate her I.E.P. She has a 12-to-1-to-1 I.E.P. for a year-round program, with four different related services.
“They didn’t respond to me through email at all.. and finally, after the second meeting had come, I called them —- I had a very difficult time getting through to them —- Before I could get the words ’12-to-1-to-1′ out of my mouth, they immediately told me that they would absolutely not be able to accommodate that sort of child in their school.”
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“Waiting for Superman” is Phillip Anshutz’ film. Colo. Sen. Michael Bennett (school privatizer) worked at Anshutz Investments prior to working for the richest 0.1% in D.C.
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Philip Anschutz is a billionaire, a radical rightwing religious zealot, an evangelical, a hater of gays, owns a huge fracking company, and hates public schools.
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The reformers should simply get to close down ALL the public schools. Hire high school graduates to keep the scholars focused on their screens, and turn out 100% graduates who 100% go on to college and 100% get to secure jobs on Wall Street, or become doctors, or lawyers, or Adminimals at more charter schools, so they can prove themselves that charters work. Vouchers? We don’t need no stinking vouchers.
What would they do with the kids who don’t speak English? Special needs? Throw them out when there is no public school to toss them back to? I think not.
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Are there any charter schools that are working?
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Working to do what? They are, in fact, working fabulously for their intended purpose. It’s just that their intended purpose has nothing to do with improving education. Charter schools have many purposes: to line investors’ pockets from the public coffers, to subjugate poor and minority children in a “no excuses” obedience regime, to divide and conquer the citizenry, etc. All of these purposes are working nicely, thank you.
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What do you mean by “working”?
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Contractor schools fleece rather than work, courtesy of the state Republican Parties in places like Ohio.
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The WSJ article:
The head of a group that approves New York charter schools said Monday that it would be “very difficult” for Success Academy Charter Schools to expand if hedge-fund manager Daniel Loeb doesn’t step down from the charter network’s board in light of his recent racial remark.
In a Facebook post this month, Mr. Loeb said state Sen. Andrea Stewart-Cousins, a black Democrat who serves as state Senate minority leader, had done “more damage to people of color than anyone who ever donned a hood” because of her loyalty to unions, according to a screenshot reported in the New York Times.
Mr. Loeb has apologized for the post, which was deleted, and said he regretted the language he used in expressing his “passion for educational choice.”
A chorus of Democratic politicians and others have called for Mr. Loeb to resign from the charter network in recent days. Joseph Belluck, chair of the Charter Schools Committee that oversees charter schools authorized by the State University of New York, ratcheted up the pressure on Monday.
Mr. Loeb’s “continued presence there is going to be quite a challenge for us as the authorizer” of these charters, said Mr. Belluck, who called the Facebook post “reprehensible.”
Representatives for Mr. Loeb declined to respond to Mr. Belluck’s comments Monday.
Success Academies, the city’s largest charter operator, has 46 charters open in New York City and wants to grow to 100 in a decade. Mr. Belluck, a longtime supporter of the high-performing network, heads the committee that decides whether to approve its applications to open new sites, and renew existing ones.
“It would be difficult for me to expand the network of a school that has somebody on the board that holds those views,” Mr. Belluck said. I“I’m trying to signal it would be very difficult going forward if he doesn’t” step down.t was important, he said, to show children that people should be held accountable for racially charged comments, especially in the wake of a white-supremacy rally in Charlottesville, Va., this month.
A spokeswoman for Success Academies said: by email that “SUNY is a strong authorizer and has always been fair and supportive of Success, and we know that it will make decisions on the merits of what’s best for students.”
Most of the charter network’s students are poor and black or Hispanic. Supporters praise its high test scores and orderly environment; critics accuse it of draining resources from traditional public schools and using overly harsh discipline. Teachers unions generally oppose charters, which usually aren’t unionized.
Mr. Belluck said that his committee has oversight over individual charter schools, and Mr. Loeb is chairman of the board of the network as a whole, so it is unclear how much direct authority the committee has over his position. The committee has leverage over Success Academy’s future, however, due to its power to approve or deny school applications.
A spokesman for Ms. Stewart-Cousins said after news of the post broke in early August that “in 2017 it is outrageous and offensive that this type of language is used by someone with such wide political influence.”
— Mike Vilensky contributed to this article.
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Should have read all the comments before posting. Lisa Litvin already posted this.
Thank you, Lisa.
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Thank you, Zorba.
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NYCPSP and I don’t often agree, but s/he is quite right on this one. “Very difficult to expand unless….” is very different from “will not expand until…”. Let’s keep our eyes on the ball and see how long it takes for SUNY to authorize expansion even though Loeb is still around.
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I say let Eva keep him and do whatever she wants. Purge students, skim, spend money marketing, smear public schools. Just one thing. Not a dime of public money, in any form, to this and other private schools. (Other than district sponsored, all charter schools are private) If this racist is purged, it really won’t change the odorous practices of her schools.
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I’m sure the two of them will figure out a way to “work it out”.
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