Our indefatigable reader and researcher Laura Chapman reports here on the organization called “School Board Partners,” which we first learned about yesterday. It is another astroturf group, funded by the usual billionaire dilettantes and designed to promote privatization and profit.
She writes:
I have been poking around the “School Board Partners” initiative.
Beware the word “partners” in this initiative. It is charter school, Teach for America, and take over as many school boards as you can so charters can thrive and supply high quality seats in a system free of elected school boards.
So far, there are only two staff, both from Education Cities and four members of a board of directors.
STAFF:
CARRIE MCPHERSON DOUGLASS worked for Education Cities for five years. In May 2017, Carrie was elected to the School Board for Bend-La Pine Schools in Oregon – a district with nearly 20,000 students. She has a BA in education from the University of Portland and holds an MBA from Boston University. She is an alumnus of the Broad Residency and Education Pioneers Fellowship programs. Among other jobs, she led the HR and talent departments at Aspire Public Schools for five years. She is on the board of EdFuel, talent management for education, based in D.C. See also a financial problem with her “relay” activities.
KEVIN LESLIE has several jobs in finance and operations for Education Cities and its two new initiatives: Community Engagement Partners and School Board Partners. He holds a with a bachelor’s degree in economics from the University of California, San Diego, and a master’s degree in library and information science from San Jose State University. He lives in Memphis, TN.
BOARD OF DIRECTORS:
NATHANIEL EASLEY Ph.D., is Founding Chief Executive Officer of Blue School Partners, a 501(c)(3) public charity “focused on increasing the availability of high quality public schools in Denver through quarterback investments in educator/leader talent, high performing schools, and a supportive policy environment.” Prior to joining Blue School Partners, He served as President and Secretary of the Denver Public Schools Board of Education from 2009 to 2013. He is a current member of Denver Mayor Michael Hancock’s Education Compact, the National College Access Network Board, the Colorado Education Initiative Board, and co-chairs the Denver Metropolitan Chamber of Commerce Education Committee. He has served on the board of several charter school in Denver in addition to other activities cited at the website.
CARRIE IRVIN is the CEO and Co-Founder of Charter Board Partners (CBP)a national organization helping public charter schools build ” strategic” boards. She has delivered a TEDx talk about CBP’s work. Carrie chaired the Board of Trustees of the National Child Research Center and currently serves on the Georgetown University Child and Adolescent Mental Health Advisory Council. She is a graduate of Harvard Kennedy School and Brown University, and is a Pahara-Aspen Institute Education Fellow. She lives in the Washington, D.C. area .
THERESA PENA has twice been elected as an at-large representative on the Denver Board of Education. She also served as the Executive Director of the Denver Education Compact, a cradle-to-career initiative launched by Mayor Michael Hancock. She is a board member of the Denver Preschool Program, the Denver Community Health Services and the Colorado Community College System. She has a B.A. in sociology from Pomona College in California and MBA from Cornell University.
CARL ZARAGOZA is Senior Director of Elected Leadership at Leadership for Educational Equity (LEE) LEE prepares and supports Teach for America corps members and alumni as political candidates at every level of government. Carl was elected twice to the Creighton Elementary School District Governing Board in Phoenix and had two terms as President. He is U.S. Army veteran. he taught middle school civics in a Title 1 school in Phoenix. He has BA in Political Science and is studying for an Executive MBA at Arizona State University. He is a Pahara-Aspen Education Fellow, and member of the Aspen Global Leadership Network.
There is a strategy for School Board Partners. It is described in a paper titled FROM TOKENISM TO PARTNERSHIP by Charles McDonald. This short publication includes one chart that shows the intended strategy for privatizing the governance of schools in the manner of Mind Trust’s operation in Indianapolis..
Click to access 1cjmq5paf_935717.pdf
The author of this paper, Charles McDonald, is Executive Director for Community Engagement Partners (an initiative of Education Cities). His bio says that he “served as Senior Managing Director, External Affairs for Teach For America – South Carolina for four years. He also served as Program Manager for Education Pioneers’ Greater Boston Analyst and Graduate School Fellowship programs for two years….. He is a member of the 2016 Pahara NextGen Network cohort and is currently a member of the Pahara NextGen Alumni Advisory. He has a BA in Political Science from the University of Minnesota Twin Cities. He lives in Columbus, OH.
McDonald credits help on the paper to” leaders at Donnell-Kay Foundation, Leadership For Educational Equity, Memphis Education Fund, MN Comeback, The Mind Trust, SchoolSmartKC, and United Parents and Students.
The new organizayion builds on the failures of education in Memphis, in Indianapolis, in Minnesota and many more cities enticed into faux partnerships with existing public schools.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
A quick Google search shows that Carrie Douglass is involved in a big, undoubtedly expensive legal wrangle with her in-laws over money in Oregon, so starting an operation to bring in megabucks from the billionaires seems like a canny move and will help cover those legal expenses.
Thanks for the direction to the lawsuit news, “Bend Mayoral Candidate Accuses Family Members of Fraud” (The Bulletin- 8-11-2018)
Hmm, it sounds like these people will be the “partners” of school boards the same way Tony Soprano became partners with legitimate businesses he was involved with, known in mob parlance as a “bust out.”
They are the same type of “partner” as the spider is to the fly….”Come in to my web, ” said the spider to the fly.
Or the female black widow is the male, whom she eats after mating.
the spider metaphor works extremely well for Easley: if I remember right, he was voted into a school board seat in Denver for espousing one thing, then turned a full 180 degrees and sold out his constituents the minute they gave him power
School Board “Partners” are policy parasites consisting of mostly elite profit seekers. Their goal is to infiltrate local school boards in order to hasten privatization. These profiteers intend to influence local school boards to accept and pursue privatization. The corporate-billionaire profiteers are frustrated by the slow march and numerous failures of privatization. Working with other like minded groups like Education Cities, they intend to accelerate the hostile takeover of public schools. If they succeed in the cities, they will go after suburban and rural schools. These people will not stop as long as we have policy that incentivizes their assault. They want to smash the “$6 billion dollar piggy bank of public education.”
I believe the goal is JUST to reap money from the billionaires by coming up with yet another nonprofit operation with a professed new goal that will snooker them. I don’t even think they care that much about achieving their professed goals, since it’s pretty obvious those goals aren’t succeeding. It’s like what kind of fake operation can we start now to get some more bounteous funding out of them? Oh, here’s an idea. Start writing the grant proposals.
So right. They don’t e e t to accomplish anything. Just more Reformer grifters snookering gullible billionaires.
And we hope they don’t do a lot of harm in the process. Making a great show out of networking a bunch of sleazy school board members probably won’t have a lot of impact, if that’s any consolation.
My hope is that their effort to persuade fellow board members to relinquish their schools to Broad, the Koch brothers, and the Waltons is as “successful” as the absurd Parent Trigger, which was a complete flop.
Unions used to be accused of feather nesting, but it’s these anti-union outfits that epitomize the practice.
$600 Billion. A great prize for the grifters and the ignoble.
Diane We owe a great thanks to Laura Chapman for her work here. It’s like discovering a cancer so that it can be treated before it can kill the host.
The cancer-to-host metaphor is quite apt because, in this case, the “host” is the vision and vibrancy of nothing-less-than a truly democratic political order. The cancer, then, is the distorted vision of capitalism encroaching on that democratic vision by credentialed people who apparently don’t understand the damage they are doing, or who don’t care or, worse, who are people of mean and predatory intentions born of closed minds and corroded hearts.
For all of their credentials, sadly, these men and women miss that one insight: that the relationship between education and The People who make up a democracy must remain intimate and, importantly, hold complete self-awareness in the dynamism of its development of human potential–unfettered by “new” ideas, with all their bells and whistles that ring in oh-so-destructive ideas. CBK
These elite graduates are being trained to monetize everything and blow up and disrupt anything in their way. Unfettered capitalism will consume the common good unless the people that care about our collective public assets, institutions and a democratic future for all stand up and defend them.
These brilliant types have been responsible for the biggest disasters of the past half century, from wars to Wall Street.
The irony is that, despite their big heads, many of them are actually idiots.
You hit the nail on the head, retired teacher:
I am in awe of Laura’s research abilities.
She knows more about the billionaires than they know about themselves.
Im just glad she is on our side because if she were on theirs, we would not stand a chance.
The only thing that saves us is that people like Gates lose track of their own devious plots.
Exactly right, CBK.
Laura Chapman is a truth teller and a champion of democracy.
We do indeed need to thank. Laura Chapman.
Thank you, LAURA CHAPMAN. Kudos!
When Laura posts, I pay attention. It always shows real diligence in research. Thanks so much, Laura
Today, Education Dive (Allie Gross) posted an article about a Chalkbeat FOIA request focused on School Board Partners.
It’s about money, for sure. But it’s also about control of the curriculum by those who think freedom of thought, civics, and students’ political awareness are democratic propaganda.
The Koch’s are a good example of interest in building curricula with “conservative” (ha!) foundations where they “donate” entire departments of economics at universities who have them already.
But like Betsy, they think, because they pay allot of money, they can choose instructors and control what is taught. George Mason University in Virginia is one example of the tangles the Koch’s have had with the administration and the students who, thankfully, are aware of their interests and their power.
Betsy is more about religious zealotry than capitalist-political propaganda, but its not necessarily about money-only. It’s about contempt for the poor whom, BTW, they help keep that way, about controlling the curricula and choosing instructors, and about building an oligarchy. CBK
Along with the GMU students, UnKochMyCampus.org deserves credit for exposing the Koch’s puppetry at the PUBLIC George Mason University.
UnKoch’s paper, “Advancing White Supremacy through Academic Strategy” is worth reading.
Carrie Irvin from Pahara funded by Gates and founded by Kim Smith, who founded other Gates-funded organizations, Bellwether, TFA and New Schools Venture Fund. Smith said in an interview in Philanthropy Roundtable that the goal of charters was “….brands on a large scale.”
Carl Zaragoza from Pahara
Charles McDonald from Pahara
Nate Easley from Pahara.
The photo of the “leader” who is paired with an article about the launch of Gates’ new “Education Quarterback Organization in Denver” is Nate Easley.
Partners in Denver’s Blue School…Gates, Walton, Arnold
What a surprise.
In Denver, Gates often refers to the Gates Family Foundation created with money from Gates Rubber Company and not to be confused with Bill Gates ….although they traffic in the same failed education ventures.
…and, the deformers try to claim the movement isn’t a monolith of the richest 0.1%.
Diane is right. Cut the pipeline of money and, the common good will flourish. Better yet, redirect the concentrated wealth away from those who plot to drive labor into poverty and submission.
If the money stopped, the faux movement would collapse