Most of the time, scandals come and go and no one remembers them after a day or two. But sometimes scandals cause a seismic reaction. Think Harvey Weinstein. Powerful men have sexually assaulted women in their employ and hoping to be in their employ or just in their proximity for as long as anyone can remember. Despite a number of high profile scandals, the larger phenomenon is ignored. Many people assumed Trump’s gloating about his sexual assaults would doom his campaign but it didn’t. Bill O’Reilly had to leave FOX news, but that passed. The Harvey story has gotten more attention and more outrage than any of the others.
Could the Ref Rodriguez corruption scandal awaken the public to the systemic problem of giving public money to private corporations and individuals without regular oversight and accountability? Could this be the Big One that tarnishes the privatization movement?
Nonprofit Quarterly writes:
“Something is rotten in the world of Los Angeles school board politics.
“Partnerships to Uplift Communities (PUC) charter school network founder and L.A. Unified School District Board member (and, until recently, board president) Refugio Rodriguez faces three felony charges, 25 misdemeanor charges, and conflict-of-interest allegations for laundering money in his school board campaigns in 2014 and 2015. Charges were filed last month by the city’s ethics commission.
“It might seem unusual that a charter school founder (and recent employee) would head the school board for a major city’s public K-12 system, but this was no accident. Rodriguez was part of a slate, “one of four board members who came into power with the strong backing of charter school supporters and who now make up a majority of the seven-member body.” As Rachel Cohen writes for The Intercept, Rodriguez “was backed by the well-heeled charter school movement, which spent more than $2 million to help elect him. This past spring, education reform advocates won three more seats, giving the board a slim pro-charter majority for the first time ever. Rodriguez was then elected board president in July.” After the ethics charges were filed, Rodriguez stepped down as board president, but remains a school board member.
“Then this past Monday, the other shoe dropped and a second investigation was launched. As another Los Angeles Times article explains, “Officials at PUC Schools, a local charter school network, have filed a complaint with the state Fair Political Practices Commission.”
The filing alleges that Rodriguez, who co-founded PUC, ordered the transfer of about $265,000 from PUC to a nonprofit that appeared to be under his control. An additional $20,000 went to a private company in which he might have owned a stake.
““PUC”, according to the Los Angeles Times, “operates 17 schools in Los Angeles and one in Rochester, N.Y. It is a nonprofit that operates under its own board, with L.A. Unified authorizing its local schools individually.”
“Last Friday, PUC accepted the resignation of Rodriguez’s cousin “senior manager Elizabeth Tinajero Melendrez. In PUC records reviewed by the Times, Melendrez is listed as the person who requested eight of the checks Rodriguez authorized, adding up to nearly $188,000.”
“As NPQ has reported previously, conflicts of interest, or even the appearances of them, put the entire organization at risk of losing its credibility. Jacqueline Elliott, the cofounder of PUC, has distanced herself from the scandal in the media, perhaps hoping to maintain the reputation of the charter network with funders. (Elliott is not under any investigation.)
“A large and complicated web of money and influence has been woven under the feet of Los Angeles’ education leaders. Untangling it will certainly cost the district time and credibility, especially since, as noted above, the balance of the school board recently shifted toward charter school supporters, who strongly supported Rodriguez and who now occupy four of the seven board seats.“
NPQ ends hopefully on the note that “Big money and scandal are not, obviously, necessary or even frequent companions to large charter networks.“
As we have seen time and again, “big money” is indeed a necessary and frequent companion of large charter networks. Whether scandal follows depends on the extent to which there is public oversight of public money.
Given the fact that the charter industry controls the school board in Los Angeles, don’t expect LAUSD to clean its own house. Expect it to join the coverup, even if Ref is thrown off the island as a necessary sacrifice.
Will the public wake up to the waste of their tax dollars? Will this scandal be the one that ignites outrage? Should the public pay $1 Million a year for visas for Turkish teachers? Should the public pay charter CEOs over half s Million a year? Should the public pay for executives at virtual charters who collect millions a year in compensation? Should the public turn a blind eye to the millions from hedge fund managers and other financiers and rightwing foundations that want to privatize public education?
When the editorial boards of the nation’s most powerful newspapers—the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times— consistently defend private and unaccountable charters and support privatization, it makes you wonder how big a scandal is necessary before they wake up and defend the public interest? Do they know they are supporting the agenda of ALEC and Betsy DeVos? Do they care?
I recall Prof. Gordon Lafer at an NPE session last weekend clearly stating that parents have no real voice at a charter. If something goes wrong, the only real option is for that parent to remove their child from the school. In contrast, in Los Angeles, public schools have many layers of authority, starting with school based committees run by elected parent/teacher representatives. Then there is the principal, then the elected school board members, then the local district offices and finally the district board of education.
Compare that to charter schools. It should be no surprise that the high attrition rate in charters is related to the unwillingness and/or inability of charters to deal with student and parent concerns and complaints. But, the charters don’t want these children anyway.
Now is a good time to revisit this as it proves that charters serve a select group of students and parents. This needs to be front and center in the discussion along side the charges against Rodriguez. It’s double-whammy.
The FRAUDS are getting BOLDER. OMG.
I’m afraid it isn’t going to harm Los Angeles charters, though. If the public hears that there’s problems with the school board they’ll attribute those problems to public schools.
That’s what happened with the IPad debacle. That was an ed reform initiative and the only people who got punished were the public school advocates on the board.
No one ordinary member of the public will make the distinction between the public school district and the board members. Ed reformers will probably run on it next time, as proof elected boards don’t work.
I’m afraid public schools will be the big losers here, as per usual.
One thing that’s utterly perverse about the privatization folks is that the I-pad purchase debacle was, from DAY ONE, a school privatization project, promoted by former Supe Deasy, Monica Garcia, and their fellow corporate ed. reformers.
When this blew up in to a money-losing disaster and the public got wind of it … the privatization industry THEN PINNED THE I-PAD DEBACLE ON anti-privatization board members Bennett Kayser and Steve Zimmer —- during their school board elections — WHEN ZIMMER AND KAYSER opposed the I-pad purchase.
They lie, they lie, they lie … Find out how the public feels — anger at the I-paid fiasco that the privatizing board members and their allies were behind — AND THEN BLAME IT ON THEIR OPPONENTS, who where actually innocent.
Jack, Zimmer may not have initiated the iPad boondoggle but he voted for the iPads and advocated for Deasy’s plan to reappropriate a whopping 14% of LAUSD’s $7 Billion budget for the Common Core Technology Project. Many of his constituents including me urged him for a year to withdraw his support. He said we were manufacturing a crisis.
UTLA Adult Education activist Robert Yorgason and I took a measure to the Venice Neighborhood Council to urge LAUSD to cancel the contract. Steve showed up and admitted that he had made a mistake. He was right to change course.
He didn’t deserve to be accused of spearheading the project, but his year-long advocacy for the deal was a miscalculated effort to fend off Deasy’s army and was bound to be used against him in the next election.
Well, this particular scandal was uncovered by LATimes “PUC’s senior managers said they uncovered the transfers — made in a series of checks — while responding to questions and requests from The Times in compliance with the state’s Public Records Act”– & the article focuses on charter school misdeeds, as do all the reader comments on the article. While a subsequent editorial speaks only in terms of LAUSD, the paper published two opinion pieces in the following days pointing out Rodriguez’ board position taints the whole charter sys, & charters’ failure to police themselves. Seems like the public has a fighting chance to get a clue.
How big a scandal before the public wakes up to the damage now and in the past of charter schools, maybe never until funds are depleted and we still have failed school systems. Historically, charters support the dominate thinking of the public that believes in segregated schools and inequality. These principles are embedded in our society like racism. Public schools have been maligned for a while, integration of schools have been resisted forever for a number of reasons. The charter movement appeals to certain people in society, separate schools, profit making from the public dime and a co opted political system addicted to campaign funds. I guess i’m Saying the change has to be systemic to really be effective and if it ever happens, what better place than Los Angeles where it is the strongest.
As for Rodriquez and the la school board, lausd, State dept of education, federal ed dept, they all are part of the problem , they all get their piece of the pie, it works for them from a profit point of view. The students of lausd, get screwed, as usual.
Everyone has to watch Robert Skeels’ lecture earlier this month about the Ref Rodriguez scandal:
What most or many people don’t know is that Robert knew everything and all the facts about Ref’s corruption way back three years ago, and was, to no avail, screaming his head off about it in the lead up (2014-2015) leading up to Rodriguez’ defeat of Bennett Kayser in spring 2015.
The media, the supposed watchdog for our democracy, REFUSED TO REPORT ON ANY OF THIS. Skeels claimed that the corporate media—allied with and under pressure from billionaire school privatization proponents—blocked any coverage of Rodriguez’ corruption so as to facilitate Rodriguez’ election and Kayser’s defeat:
x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x
( 11:44 – )
( 11:44 – )
SKEELS: “You see, we went to the places like L.A. Times, we went to KPCC, we went to … we even went to Jamie Alter Lynton’s L.A. School Report, and we handed them all of it.
“‘ ‘Here’s all the links, all the documentation… if you want a smoking, red-hot story, here’s all you need,’ and none of them would touch it.
“And I think again, this kind of shows the power that the forces … behind they privatization of public education.. how much sway they actually DO have.”*
x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x
While on the one hand you can argue about the media finally sharing Skeels’ orignal expose is a case of “better late than never,”, on the other hand, the fact that it is “late” is the key factor in Rodriguez’ defeat of Bennett Kayser, without which Kayser would have prevailed.
On a side note, neither Kayser nor anyone on his staff profited one damn penny while in office, unlike during Rodriguez’s tenure at PUC. For example, while CEO of PUC Charter School, Rodriguez okayed giving a multi-million-dollar food contract to a business owned by the husband of one of Rodriguez’ fellow officers at PUC.
While we’re at it, re-visit Steve Zimmer’s epic speech in spring 2015 condemning Rodriguez evil, billionaire-funded campaign against Bennett Kayser — which included TV commercials ridiculing Kayser’s Parkinson’s disease — and the toxic school privatization agenda of Rodriguez’ backers:
(This speech like poetry, and its power is also what drew $12 million dollars from the billionaires to defeat Steve last spring, from school privatization billionaires such as Eli Broad, Reed Hastings, Eli Broad, the Walton family, etc.)
– – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – –
– – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – –
STEVE ZIMMER:
“This (election) is NOT just about Board District 5.
This is about the ENTIRE CONTROL and FUTURE of LAUSD.
“This is about CONTROL. Make NO mistake about it.
The control of the (LAUSD) school board hangs in the balance.
“And listen … you don’t have to applaud on this line,
but you can.
— (CROWD LAUGHS)
“I have a lot of dear friends in the room,
and sometimes we have disagreed,
and sometimes we look at an issue,
we see it from a different lens,
and sometimes there are painful moments.
“That’s true for me.
That’s been true for Jackie (Goldberg) in her service.
That’s been true for Bennett.
“But the difference between the people
who believe that it’s ALL of us TOGETHER—
—that it’s ALL of us working together,
that… that… that our employees,
that our teachers are our greatest partners.
“NOT our enemies,
NOT … NOT… litigants to be challenged in court,
NOT … NOT…. people to be blamed for
the crisis that is facing our children,
but the VERY PEOPLE who can
lift our children out of this crisis.
“Even if we disagree on some issues,
the difference between
the folks like Bennett Kayser,
the folks like Jackie Goldberg,
Jeff Horton before her…
“ … the folks… the folks who have tried
to fight the fight over the years that
I am proud to associate myself with.
“The difference between THAT and…
“And what the folks who are
trying to destroy Bennett Kayser—
NOT BEAT Bennett Kayser—DESTROY him
AS A PERSON, not just as a political figure, but
DESTROY him as a person.
“The difference between…
we who believe that it’s ALL OF US together.
“and …
“those who believe that it’s ‘us against them’…
“It’s NIGHT and DAY.
“We CANNOT let them
take control of the school board
because if they take control of the school board,
they’ll have control of who becomes the
next Superintendent of this district.
“They’ll have control over the budget.
They’ll have control over the policies.
They‘ll have control over the schools.
“And it took us too long for us to realize it—
Bennett realized it WAY before I did,
and I give him credit for it EVERY day—
“What John Deasy tried to do to this school district.
“He tried to bring public education DOWN.
And the MISIS crisis was NO accident.
That is… that WAS INTENTIONAL, because
if you read their websites,
if you read what they’re trying to do…
“ ‘Stability’ is an ugly word.
“ ‘Disruption’ is what it is about.
“But WE know
WE the teachers
WE the principals
WE the school workers
WE KNOW
WE THE PARENTS
WE KNOW that disruption causes
REAL collateral damage
to REAL children EVERY DAY!
“And Bennett and I have been
about trying to re-STABILIZE and
re-HUMANIZE our schools.
“And at the end of the day,
we are about an ALL-kids agenda—
ALL kids, NOT SOME kids.
“And if you go to a door, and if you’re on a phone.
and people say,
“ ‘Why should I care?‘
“ ‘Why should I vote?’
“PUBLIC education is about
EVERY CHILD that comes to the
schoolhouse door—those who are the most gifted,
and those who have the most DIFFICULT
of challenges that are facing them.
“What makes public education PUBLIC education is
that it’s EVERY child that comes to the schoolhouse door,
and no one, NO ONE—NOT ME, NOT anyone else—
has been a better champion of that than Bennett Kayser.
“That said…
the MOST reprehensible,
the most DISGUSTING thing that they have done
is to somehow challenge—that while
Bennett has struggled, and continues to struggle
valiantly, publicly, VICTORIOUSLY
against Parkinson’s disease,
they have SOMEHOW THOUGHT that it is okay
to suggest… to suggest that somehow,
because of this struggle, he is incapable of serving.
“Every … ANY one of us could go to a neurologist
some time over the next year,
and come out with that diagnosis—ANY ONE of us.
“And thank God we have Bennett Kayser to
show us that this is NOT a death sentence,
that it’s NOT a way of having to fade into
the background,
that you can serve with pride,
with integrity,
with intelligence
with capability.
“And DAMN THEM, DAMN THEM
for questioning that!
Damn them for questioning that!
“Don’t let that win!
“Because I’ve known Bennett for over 20 years,
but in our private conversations…
what he now knows is that there is a new
empathy for what our children with
the most challenges face.
“THERE IS NO ONE MORE APPROPRIATE
to serve on the Board of Education.
than someone who INTIMATELY
and PERSONALLY understands those challenges
because he will NEVER turn way from them.
“So these next three weeks, Bennett…
these next three weeks…
they are about you, but they are also about
the future of public education
in this country, and in this city.
“We will NOT let this stand, Bennett,
and we WILL stand by you.
“But the last thing I want to say, Bennett, is….
“Thank you for your courage, for enduring this
on behalf of all of us, and most especially
on behalf of all the children who need you
the most.
“Thank you, Bennett!”
Reblogged this on Crazy Normal – the Classroom Exposé and commented:
Will the public wake up to the waste of their tax dollars? Do they know they are supporting the agenda of ALEC and Betsy DeVos? Do they care?
And let’s not forget that one year ago Gov Jerry Brown vetoed AB709. “The bill would have held California’s 1,200 charter schools to state laws governing open meetings, open records and conflict of interest laws — just as are traditional public schools.”
Yeah, and all the media claiming better late than never is bull crap. Late enables the whole charade to be accomplished and uncovering all the corruption can take years after real damage has been done. As with trump and his billionaire minions in the cabinet and congress, this damage must be addressed now!
Because the corporate education supporters share so much kinship with Republican education and economic policy, the fissures will begin to tear the Democratic Party in two. It will happen with Diane Feinstein Senate race and it will be very evident in the California gubernatorial race.
These California Democrats believe that because they support all the right social issues that they can claim the Progressive mantle–all the while advocating racist and classist economic and education positions.
This isn’t going to fly.
While the corporate Democrats all the way from the very top of California politics to the micro level of the LAUSD school board have the bankroll, ultimately, they will have to face the fact that their education and economic positions mostly support white people of means. It will take a lot of gall to tell working class and people of color that they are “working for them”.
The Democrat battle in California will mirror the Ptrogressive vs. Corporate fight that is being held all throughout the country–ours looks to be very divisive and bloody.
But it is a fight that has to happen.
But will the progressives be on the side of corporate education reform or not?
Remember all those leading progressives who stood up for the NAACP and endorsed their moratorium on charter schools to help it gain traction and give it a lot of publicity? Remember how hard the progressives worked to support that?
Oh, that’s right, they were completely MIA. As they continue to be to this day.
Many faux progressives love charters. They are embarrassed they are now partnering with DeVos but the still love semi-Privatization.
This is the crux.
Remember that dark money PAC that bought Ref Rodriguez’s seat by running the deceptive and cruel ads mocking Bennett Kayser? One of it’s key donors, John Scully, was key to launching Gavin Newsom’s run for governor of California. The California teachers union just endorsed him today. Very disappointing.
http://www.latimes.com/local/education/la-me-charter-donations-20151202-story,amp.html
Big money and scandal are
notobviously, necessary or even frequent companions to large charter networks.“Fixed.