Basketball Star Kevin Johnson was Mayor of Sacramento. He married Michele Rhee, ex-face of the privatization movement. Before their marriage, Johnson founded St. Hope Academy charter schools in Sacramento.
What has St.Hope got to do with Tony Thurmond’s Task Force on the fiscal impact of charters?
One member of the task force, Margaret Fortune, was the superintendent of St. Hope Academy. A graduate of Berkeley, she has stellar academic credentials. Nothing on her resume, however, refers to experience as a teacher or a principal. She is now board chair of the California Charter Schools Association, the powerful lobby for charter schools.
Another member of the task force is Ed Manansala, who is Superintendent of the El Dorado County Office, which runs a SELPA, providing special education services for students in charter schools. El Dorado County’s SELPA offers low prices and competes for students with disabilities in districts hundreds of miles away. How they are able to provide services to students in distant and far-flung districts is not clear.
A reader sent this additional information.
“Ed Manansala used to work at Sac Charter HS as a Principal of one of the small schools (School of Business), when Margaret Fortune was Superintendent of St. HOPE public schools. When she resigned to take over The Fortune School (her Dad’s teacher prep program), Ed became Superintendent of St. HOPE before moving back into the public sector as El Dorado County Superintendent. “
I googled and indeed Ed Manansala was principal and superintendent of Kevin Johnson’s St. Hope Academy Charter High School in Sacramento before he became County Superintendent in El Dorado.
This past fall of 2018, the principal of St. Hope resigned to support student protests. She blasted the school leadership for “a history of neglect.”
So, yes, indeed, a majority of the members of the task force that is supposed to scrutinize the fiscal impact of charters on public schools have direct connections to the charter industry.
The membership of the task force does not inspire confidence in its judgment or independence.
The question remains: Why did Tony Thurmond and Gavin Newsom give a majority of the seats on this task force to people directly connected to the charter industry, which enrolls only 10% of the students in the state? This is especially curious since the same charter industry spent many millions trying to defeat both Thurmond and Newsom.
Another Question: Did they think no one would notice?
Diane Ravitch's blog 
This seems to be a classic case of “follow the money.” Something smells to high heaven.
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Thank you for shedding needed light on this situation! The rank smell of it carries all across our country! Education should not be ‘for profit’!
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The media has always turned a blind eye to the real problems in the education reform industry and how one hand feeds the other and the kids they claim to care about are always the least important (see how quickly the leaders of the reform movement and the charter CEOs who do their bidding throw those kids under the bus when they realize that they aren’t cheap enough or good enough to stay in their charter schools).
Tony Thurmond ran as someone who would do real oversight, and I hope he is questioned by the media and met with protesting parents holding signs saying “you lied to us” and “you sold out the public school students – why?”. Thurmond needs to provide an answer as to why he would intentionally stack a board with education reform cheerleaders — no excuses for him.
And thank you to you and everyone else who is shedding light on all that is wrong with this.
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Neusom’s chief of staff, Ann O’Leary, formerly of Gates-funded CAP, spoke at PPIC this month. The most recent PPIC higher ed paper was written by a guy (graduate of the neoliberal Harvard Kennedy School of Government) who “helped implement testing and accountability for the California Dept. of Ed.”
His paper recommends centralization of higher ed., “We favor an independent council that is empowered to provide leadership in pursuing the state’s higher education goals”.
Let me guess how many billionaire representatives will be on the “independent council”.
Democracy has got to fight the scourge of billionaire funded foundations every step of the way with everything its got.
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Amen. I’m afraid I’m really going to lose my cool (David Obey style 😉) if, when I try to explain Linda’s last sentence to people, I continue to get responses like, “But they’re doing so much good in (fighting disease in Africa/funding medical research/making our museums better/etc),” as they dismiss what the billionaires are doing to students, teachers, and the civic health of communities everywhere.
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Greg-
I won’t allow myself to falter in the fight because of those like you at this blog, who also strive to stop oligarchy.
Gates’ well-crafted PR has painted him as a hero. For some, finding out the image is false represents too much loss of faith for them to accept. I’ve encountered the same resistance to the truth that you have.
People are attracted to the notion of a savior which the Gates family relies on.
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it is depressingly (overwhelmingly) hard to get an “I Love Gates” person to see anything deeper than the surface propaganda; in a weird way it reminds me of Trump saying that he could shoot someone in public and his supporters would still be there for him
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The “charter club” is sick.
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It’s important to note that West Virginia teachers had to and did go on strike twice. If California politicians are not done enabling the corporate charter epidemic, we are not done chanting and drum beating, tens of thousands strong, while striking, in front of California city and state halls. This is not an oligarchy. We have the numbers. Don’t tread on us.
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You are right. In order to counterbalance the cash behind privatization, California teachers will have to use their numbers to get attention through protests. It is the only way the media and the public will get to see the other side of the issue. Both Newsom and Thurmond are new in their positions. They will not want bad publicity. Teachers should organize and protest the “kangaroo” committee organized by the state and demand representation. As the saying goes, “If you don’t have a seat at the table, you’re probably on the menu.”
BTW, I spent most of the late ’70s and early ’80s walking on picket lines before and after work for various strikes in my county, including my own school district. It worked for MLK.
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CTA is too complacent. Until recently, their website was giving As and Bs to legislators who backed charter schools, and had previously voted against charter financial transparency.
CTA spends so much time and money wooing the Democrats, and fails to hold them accountable, lest the Democrats turn on us even more. It’s a sick and abusive relationship.
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what was most exciting in watching the second W. Virginia action was that it was called statewide — imagine CA finding that same power
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https://www.cde.ca.gov/nr/el/le/ I found this website rather horrifying, much talk of “accountability” and “testing.” Boy have they swallowed the koolaid.
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It’s more that they are benefitting from doing what the billionaire puppet masters want than that they drank the Koolaid.
The Dr. Keith Benson open letter linked on Feb. 16th, at the blog explains.
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