Maurice Cunningham is a treasure. He follows the money involved in efforts to privatize public schools in Massachusetts. In this post, he takes issue with the Boston Globe writer Scott Lehigh, who has a sentimental attachment to privately run charter schools.

Leigh mocks the idea that “corporate reformers” are hell-bent on privatization. Such were the “fevered imagines” of charter opponents, he writes.

Cunningham responds:

“As someone who accurately identitied that raging fever I’ll concede that “corporate” reformers may not be the best description. Rather it was the hedge fund plutocrats of the Financial Privatization Cabal who were most responsible for seeking the privatization of public education.”

He then posts the list of campaign contributions—all staggeringly large—made by Families for Excellent Schools to the Massachusetts referendum about charter expansion in 2016 that caused that organization to be fined nearly half a million dollars by state campaign finance officials, banned from the state for five years, and shuttered.

Cunningham writes:

“Why deem the “corporate” reformers the Financial Privatization Cabal? Because most of the money came from hedge fund and other financial services titans. They ardently seek privatization. And as they knew transparency would be the death of their plot, their strategy depended on a secret cabal.”

Before he finished writing, he noticed that the former director of the disgraced FES is now leading the “Massachusetts Parents Union” and has been invited by the state board to represent parents. That’s a good one!

“Just as I was picking up Mr. Lehigh’s column off my twitter feed came tweets that Keri Rodrigues, former state director of now Banned-in-Boston Families for Excellent Schools and present state director of Massachusetts Parents United is invited to represent parents at DESE. I confess I know little of this and won’t say anything about DESE because … read the disclaimer below.

“But as I wrote in Why Massachusetts Parents United?, MPU is a front for the Walton heirs and other plutocrats tied up in the 2016 privatization campaign.

“DESE’s promotion of the MPU state director is consistent with my argument in Why Massachusetts Parents United? in that the invitation confers legitimacy on the organization that may help it attract attention from the press and add members – all useful when it comes time for the Financial Privatization Cabal to offer up a “parents group” to call for more privatization, including charters.”

As readers here know, I usually refer to the Privatization moment as “corporate reformers,” but Cunningham says it is more accurate to call them the “Financial Privatization Cabal.”

What do you think?

His last bit of advice: Follow the money. Dark Money never sleeps. When a parent group pops up and suddenly has a million-dollar budget, look for the source of the funding.