Blogger MIchael Kohnhaas says that Los Angeles Superintendent Austin Beutner precleared a major policy speech with charter lobbyists. He provides documentation. Critics feared that the charter majority was choosing Beutner to do their bidding.
This post suggests they chose well.
The story about the secret plan was reported by the Los Angeles Times here.
The Plan is to win control of the board, the Mayor’s office, Sue the district, fight the teachers’ union.
Ben Austin’s email to charter supporters is quoted. Austin, you may recall, founded the billionaire funded Parent Revolution. He likes to pawn himself off as a “liberal,” who just happens to love charters and win Walton funding. His Patent Revolution spent millions trying to persuade poor parents to sign petitions to turn their public schools over to charter chains. It was a bust. The Revolution never happened. But Ben has now moved on and has created another AstroTurf group called “The Kids’ New Deal.”
Howard Blume writes:
The overriding issue of the email is how to overcome setbacks at the hands of the teachers union. Leaders of the union had vilified charters in the lead-up to the strike, saying that rapid charter growth was undermining traditional public schools by siphoning away motivated students and their families — and the public funding that travels with them. One day during the walkout was devoted to a march on the local headquarters of the California Charter Schools Assn.
Meanwhile, at the state level, charter supporters had spent big on losing candidates in the 2018 race for governor as well as Tuck’s bid for state superintendent. A central concern was that the growth of charters would be halted or even reversed.
[Ben] Austin asserted in his email: “As Machiavelli says, it’s better to be feared than loved. Right now we are neither.”
Any chance of responses from potus candidates regarding this issue?
Only if those at NEA and otherforums raise questions.
That would be today, in Houston….maybe?
Leading 2020 candidates are at the first-ever #StrongPublicSchools presidential forum in Houston, TX, hosted by the National Education Association. Joe Biden, Elizabeth Warren, Bernie Sanders, Julián Castro and Beto O’Rourke are among the candidates answering questions from America’s educators about the future of public education.
I hope they ask good questions.
Thank you. I watched the first half just now. Good questions from NEA members about teacher pay, school funding, equality and segregation, testing and charters. No questions about the underhanded tactics of charter astroturf groups and people like Ben Austin. Bernie was his usual honest and straightforward self, and discussed his Thurgood Marshall plan. Castro campaigned to Texas more than to teachers, I thought, as he talked about working for Obama. Biden groped Lily a bit and delivered rhetoric about how important teachers are, nothing very specific. Warren knocked it out of the park: end high stakes testing, increase union membership, and pay teachers more by taxing wealth. Klobuchar imitated Warren.
Beto said there’s a place for “public” charter schools. I’m a little confused because Harris said she’s cosponsoring IDEA. Did I miss something? I skipped a couple of the lowest polling candidates. All in all, that was a great event and everyone except Beto did well, especially the NEA, the nation’s largest labor union. Thanks again for noting it so I could watch the video on YouTube. I am glad I did.
And one more thing: Mayor Pete did not attend.
Hahahahaha…. Don’t you just love the internet era? Somebody always seems to get their hands on revealing emails.
Thanks to LA Times for their new “Both Sides Now” reporting policy. Comparing the tenor of recent comment threads to a year ago, it seems to be generating a more lively well-rounded public discussion.
may more and more journalists find that their bread will be buttered if they do NOT let the charter game walk all over everyone
We really should start trying to get state laws that require that any public education committee have representatives from public school teachers as well as a parent representative. Otherwise, the many headed hydra of the charter lobby will dominate any and all policy. As this post demonstrates, the charter lobby’s goal is a hostile takeover of public schools.
Ben Austin(don’t confuse him with Austin Beutner) has a very bad reputation in L.A. going back to the creation of the Parent Trigger law. Few parents and community members will remember him as the law was a ””bust” in the end because it failed to consider that half-way decent charter operators would not want to take a chance on taking over a low performing district school. The reason is simple. They wouldn’t have the same control over enrollment.
The first “successful” parent trigger was in Adelanto at Desert Trails ES. However, the process destroyed a community in the process. And did the charter operator achieve the promised success? Of course not.
Not a surprise that the Ben Austin family scheme on both sides of an issue (final paragraph of the article). A dollar in one pocket spends as easily as a dollar from the other pocket.
So it is definitely a mistake to imagine the parent trigger or Parent Revolution is dead. As BAustin says – it remains state law. And Par Rev has been slowly re-gearing up for some time now. Dir you notice their logo emblazoned on measure EE sponsor lists? You’ll recall the charter industry was weirdly for-EE, presumably because their charters received funds equally. Though I’ve always wondered whether there wasn’t some poison-pill embedded in the legalese like, say, prop 39. I don’t have the skills to cess that out.
Anyway, ParRev has been stirring for some time now. They’ve staffed up big-time. And you’ll see it listed as a bullet-point in Austin’s memo for action.
I always perk up my ears when I hear Adelanto mentioned for that reason. They are much in the news nowadays because there is an immigrant detention center there. It sounds like a very hard-pressed community. There was a swarm of reporters around there at the time of the trigger and a little thereafter. But who’s done the really hard reporting on the sociology of selling snake oil and its preferential sparkle to the poor vs rich?
It is almost impossible to find information about Houston meeting….it was only education, so there are too many serious issues to devote maximum attention to…
✔
@ABC13Miya
Loud crowd at #NEARA19 #StrongPublicSchools Presidential Forum. #abc13 https://abc13.com/5380233/
2:05 PM – Jul 5, 2019
@ABC13Miya
17h17 hours ago
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Bernie & Biden get loud applause so far at #StrongPublicSchools Presidential forum. Castro gets good applause too, but not as loud. Seven more candidates to go. #abc13 https://abc13.com/5380233/
Today, 10 Presidential hopefuls spoke at @NEAtoday #StrongPublicSchools forum. I took the same video of every candidate, to see who got the longest applause. Take a look: I’d say Biden & Harris got the most 👏🏼👏🏼 from educators. #abc13 https://abc13.com/5380233/