This is an enlightening article for those in California who don’t know the difference between Tony Thurmond and Marshall Tuck, who are running for State Superintendent of Public Instruction.

Simply put, Tony Thurmond has the overwhelming support of the state Democratic party and the state’s teachers, while Tuck is the candidate of the billionaires who want to privatize the state’s public schools.

Tony Butka explains who Tony Thurmond is:

The reason we Angelenos know not of Mr. Thurmond is that he is a Bay Area kind of guy. Born in Fort Ord with a Detroit military father and a Panamanian immigrant mother who became a teacher, he was mostly raised by his single mom in San Jose.

As an ex social worker myself, I like the fact that he was a social worker, the real deal kind with a MSW (Masters in Social Work) degree, working for non-profit agencies who dealt with young people — for example dealing with providing services to foster youth and job training for at-risk youth in the East Bay. That’s the real deal.

Before he got into the Assembly, he paid his dues on the Richmond City Council, and worked as liaison with the West Contra Costa County USD. He got directly involved in education as a member of the West Contra Costa County School Board from 2008-12. For those who know anything about the Bay Area, these are not country club schools. They are a very good learning experience for something like the LAUSD.

Anyhow, starting in 2014 Tony was elected to the California Assembly in AD15, where he has served two terms. Without being too effusive, Tony helped in the legislature to get funding for:

– keeping kids in school and out of the criminal justice system;

– helping fund foster kids being able to go to college;

– getting increased funding for early education programs;

– working to shift funding from the criminal justice system to early education and afterschool programs.

He then describes Marshall Tuck’s record, which you can read if you open the link.

He doesn’t dig into the obscene amount of money that is pouring into Tuck’s campaign, which has already raised three to four times more than Thurmond’s campaign. $4 million in new contributions just last week. Is the office for sale? The billionaire are used to buying whatever they want.

He concludes:

I am frankly worried that the lack of name recognition in Southern California will hurt Tony Thurmond, and that would be a shame. This is really a race between two totally different views of education: one view champions educating our kids wherever they live and no matter their economic/social class. That’s Tony Thurmond.

The other vision is a semi-photogenic front from the billionaire boys club of Eli Broad and the like. If you think they actually give a rat’s ass about our children, particularly in the LAUSD, you don’t know how they got to be billionaires. Wanna bet their kids go to LAUSD or the equivalent? Oh sure. That’s who Marshall Tuck is, zillions of dollars in backing or not.

We know two things for certain about the Charter School crowd. First, they’re all about siphoning money (ADA, or average daily attendance money to you and me) out of the publicly financed school system, leaving all the mandatory bureaucratic overhead of a school system to be funded out of what’s left after their take, as the School Boards try to educate the bulk of the children out of quickly dwindling funds.

The second thing we know for sure is that the Charter School folks simply don’t care if a lot of the Charter schools are run by crooks and are subject to bankruptcy and/or indictments during the school year, leaving their students on the street with nowhere to go.

He reminds readers that the charter school lobby kept charter school founder Ref Rodriguez on the Los Angeles school board just long enough to vote entrepreneur Austin Beutner into the superintendency, then resigned and was convicted of multiple felonies.

This crowd of unethical privatization-pushers should not be allowed to choose the state’s next education leader.

He doesn’t dig into the obscene amount of money that is pouring into Tuck’s campaign, which has already raised three to four times more than Thurmond’s campaign. $4 million in new contributions just last week. Is the office for sale? The billionaire are used to buying whatever they want. Only voters can stop them now.