Carl J. Petersen, parent advocate and blogger in Los Angeles, writes here about the long, hard struggle to wrest control of the Los Angeles Unified School District school board from the hands of the billionaires.
Eli Broad, Michael Bloomberg, Reed Hastings and other billionaires have funded the campaigns of charter advocates. The billionaires spent many millions to gain control, only to see one member of their slim majority—Ref Rodriguez— indicted for campaign finance violations. Even after his indictment, however, he refused to step down for nearly a year until after the board had chosen businessman Austin Beutner as superintendent.
But everything changed after the election of Jackie Goldberg, who won Rodriguez’s seat.
Read this great story.
Yay … some good news. I sure hope this country finds it’s mind and soul soon.
Congratulations to new Board President Vladovic and VP Goldberg! Melvoin again finds himself a caucus of one. Dr. Vladovic will likely not forget his dismay at finding out godawful Superintendent Beutner hired private consultants and met in secret with only the Broad Bloc about breaking the district into a portfolio debacle. We need a superintendent who not only, as Carl Peterson precisely and succinctly wrote cares about the district instead of independent charter school contractors, but also who doesn’t keep secrets from the school board and the district. We need a new superintendent now!
There’s a gold mine of emails exposing Nick Melvoin’s shenanigans over at a website run by political gadfly Michael Kohlhaas.
Here’s one where Nick, through the efforts of his chief of staff, is busy with some sleazy, Chicago-politics-style patronage:
http://michaelkohlhaas.org/wp/2019/06/09/larchmont-charter-schools-high-concept-constructivist-educational-programs-help-students-continue-to-grow-and-become-able-to-gain-entrance-to-the-college-and-career-path-of-their-choice-mda/
BACKGROUND ON THE ABOVE: The charter industry & the pro-privatization-via-charters billilonaires funding it pumped in $10 million to get “Icky Sticky Nicky” (Kohlhaas’ nickname for Nick, not mine) elected to the board in 2017, and in return, Nicky has to dance to their tune.
In the email exchange analyzed by Kohlhaas on his blog, one of L.A.’s most prominent charter CEO’s, Amy Held of Larchmont Charters Schools, Inc., calls in the debt Nicky owes to her .. again, in exchange for the big bucks that Held / Larchmont Charter Inc. had two years earlier poured into Nick’s campaign coffers in his successful campaign to take Steve Zimmer’s seat on the LAUSD board.
Before getting into the email exchange, Kohlhaas highlights quotes from Held talking about how this world is a meritocracy, and that Larchmont students must work hard to make it … blah-blah-blah….
This is all a set-up for the email exchange involving Held, and that exposes behavior on Held’s part that directly contradicts Held’s meritocratic claims.
In an email sent to Nick’s Chief of Staff Allison Poldhill, Held wants Nick to create an internship (that had not yet existed) in his LAUSD Board Office, and then give it to the daughter of one of Held’s close family friends because this friend’s daughter “is in community college and trying to figure out career stuff and is interested in potentially working in politics or the field of law.”
Nick’s chief of staff Amy Polhill responds that he’d “love to chat with her.”
Held replies, *”I”ll set it up for Wendy (that’s her name)to come meet with you.”
Three weeks pass with no meeting, so Held follows up in a cheerful tone, but with with the implied questions about where’s the damn internship for my friend’s kid Wendy.
HELD: “Happy New Year Allison! Hope your holidays were happy! Writing to see if we can set up a time for the two of us to grab coffee and catch up and for you to meet Wendy (family friend). Any chance you have any time next week (any time after noon not on Friday would work for Wendy). Also – she lives in Culver City so Westside works, too, if that’s easier. Let me know and thanks again!”
Nick’s chief of staff Poldhill grovels in the next email, saying that no, Held and Wendy don’t have to come downtown, she’ll come out to meet them in Culver City.
Six weeks more pass, and Held’s not happy that Poldhill hasn’t delivered on the internship for Held’s friend’s kid Wendy. Read this email
Click to access 20180219-1713-Amy_Held-Following_up_re_Wendy_interning.pdf
Two more weeks go by, and Poldhill tells Held that she just posted an internship (per the technical legal guidelines for government internships) and that the famous Wendy only needs to apply for it, and do so quickly before anyone else finds out and applies. This fix is in.
On his blog, Kohlhaas calls this the “smoking gun” email.
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KOHLHASS: “This is the smoking gun right here. Surely LAUSD has some kind of requirements that jobs be posted to a wide audience, precisely to prevent nepotism. But of course, nepotism can’t be prevented if people are willing to arrange things via back channels so that it looks like real searches are happening, even if they’re not at all:
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From: “Holdorff, Allison” allison.holdorff@lausd.net
To: Amy Held amy.held@larchmontcharter.org
Subject: Re: Following up re Wendy interning
Date: Fri, 16 Mar 2018 15:05:29 +0000
Amy, we just need Wendy to apply for the internship which has posted.
Allison Holdorff Polhill
Senior Advisor & Director of Community Engagement
Office of LAUSD Board Member Nick Melvoin
w 213-241-6387 | allison.holdorff@lausd.net
c 310-804-8424
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KOHLHAAS: *”And then Held forwards this to (Wendy) Mendoza, Mendoza says she already applied, Held gives her some professional advice, and, finally, an email from a couple months later reveals that Mendoza did in fact get the job(:
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Date: Thu, 24 May 2018 15:54:05 -0700
Subject: Re: Co-located School Leadership Collaboration Summit
From: Amy Held amy.held@larchmontcharter.org
To: “Holdorff, Allison” allison.holdorff@lausd.net
Hi Allison,
Hope you are doing well! Wendy is so excited to be on board working with you all – thank you for making that happen! I know she’ll learn a ton. I saw Nick the other night at the Nat Damon book talk at Lindsay Sturman’s. You guys are doing such great work. I love that you’re doing this summit. I can only make it to the first day but will ensure we’ve got a rep there for the whole time.
Thank you!
Amy
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KOHLHASS:
So there you have it, friends! This is what these privatizing zillionaire minions are doing with the money, the resources, the blood and treasure they extract from the body politic like gold-digging lice. They’re advocating training and education for the lower classes as a way to get into college and to choose careers, but for their friends and family, they’re calling in favors like mad.
And Allison Polhill Holdorff, despite the fact that she’s in a position of public trust, and not meant to be using the resources entrusted to her for anyone’s illicit private gain, is, well, using them for just that.
But then, she’s a senior advisor to the school board’s most notorious pro-privatization member, so probably such behavior is actually a job requirement. And wait till I get more of these damn emails ready for publication! This little story is nothing at all compared to what’s coming.
Curiouser and curiouser. More Melvoin emails to come? I can’t wait.
CORRECTION: Allison Poldhill is actually Nick Melvoin’s “Senior Adviser,” not her “Chief of Staff.”
Nick Melvoin’s “Chief of Staff” is Sarah Angel, who was formerly a higher-up with the California Charter School Association, and is married to Dan Nieman, a TFA alum who a couple years ago ran the Los Angeles satellite branch of TFA’s LEE, which selects former TFA candidates to run for office, trains them, and finances their campaigns.
Oh and here’s a snarky cartoon of Larchmont Charter, Inc’s Amy Held. — from Michael Kohlhaas and his blog, regarding / about his Nick Melvoin patronage piece:
Again, read Kohlhaas’ full article — from which this cartoon was taken — at this link:
http://michaelkohlhaas.org/wp/2019/06/09/larchmont-charter-schools-high-concept-constructivist-educational-programs-help-students-continue-to-grow-and-become-able-to-gain-entrance-to-the-college-and-career-path-of-their-choice-mda/
As we well know, elected school boards are no longer representative of the community when billionaires freely pour millions of dollars into advertising and pay people to go door to door to push charter candidates. It will be interesting to see how these charter supporters will try to regain their former control over the board. As detailed by Ben Austin in the memos that were released. And on top of all this, the recently revealed 50 million dollar charter scam is adding to their already shaky public perception.
I wonder if at some point candidates will see that they might gain votes by going door to door saying clearly, Vote for me, I am against charters and testing.
To whom it may concern:
Regardless to logically believe in stem, religiously believe in God, or just purely believe in humanity, it has been very obviously that good deed will return good deed and evil will follow evil as a matter of time.
I sincerely congratulate to new Board President Vladovic and VP Goldberg! Back2basic
Can Beutner be fired for cause?
He has failed to provide his employer, the school board with a great deal of information about private meetings with and hiring of consultants regarding turning LAUSD into a portfolio district in a reasonably transparent and timely manner. He was hired in the first place with the vote of a former board member guilty of campaign money laundering. I’d call any and all of that just cause if it’s necessary.
Segregation of schools, no matter what the history and present realities of busing are, is more often accomplished through the use of charter schools.
Biden has a lot of comfort and confidence because of serving as Obama’s vice president. There should be some discomfort because of his service during the time Bill Gates and Arne Duncan were the important people regarding national policies of public education. It is time for someone to start emphasizing these important potential differences among the democrats running for president. The use of charter schools as a tool of segregation of those who are easier to teach and test from those who are not as easy…..needs to become a part of what democrats discuss.
Here’s another Kohlhaas piece, which includes an email from Nick Melvoin’s “Senior Advisor” Allison Polhill, where Polhill is upset that UTLA has posted a master list of Los Angeles-based Charter CEOs’ (and CEO equivalents’) and the salaries of other Charter Industry high-up mucky-mucks’ salaries:
http://michaelkohlhaas.org/wp/2019/03/29/the-california-charter-schools-association-is-not-just-an-insidious-privatizing-pro-zillionaire-lobbying-group-they-also-evidently-facebook-stalk-anti-charter-folks-on-social-media-and-then-di/
According the Kohlhaas, the email reveals that the California Charter Schools Association has hired drones who monitor the internet for anti-charter stuff (Hi, guys, if you’re reading this one).
One of these on-line hall monitors, Keith Dell-Aquila, forwards UTLA’s posting of the salaries list to Polhill, who then calls the posting of the list “disconcerting.”— not the list itself, mind you, as she has no problem with those salaries. but rather the fact that the public now has a convenient list of those salaries for reference. She’s implicitly saying that’s not the public’s business to know those salaries, especially in the context of the damning question UTLA poses, accompanying the salaries list (SEE BELOW).
Really? That’s public money, from taxpaying citizens. What’s wrong with the public knowing that so much money is going to these salaries? Are these charter folks embarrassed? If you’ve got nothing to hide, you hide nothing.
This was during the height of the strike, when multiple people in the same charter industry were decrying UTLA’s salary requests, saying:
1) public school teachers are doing a lousy job
2) there’s no money for any raise anyway.
3) public school teachers were already well-paid (pushing a bogus study that says so.)
,
The UTLA charter salaries list posed the reasonable question: (Hey UTLA, there’s this thing called Spell-Check… look into it)
“If theere (sic) is enough money to pay the Superintendent (Beutner) $350,000-a-year, and pay these charter school ‘CEO’s’ THIS amount of money-a-year,
(INSERT LIST)
“then why is there no money for school nurses, librarians, psychologists, and counselors?”
Interesting, but UTLA refrained from posting the names of all these CEO’s. I wouldn’t have had that kind of restraint, but that’s just me.
Finally, here’s a snarky cartoon of CCSA’s on-line hall monitor, Keith Dell-Aquila:
I just have to include’s Keith Dell-Aquila’s frantic alarmist rhetoric in response to the posting of the charter salaries list. It’s hysterical, in more ways than one:
(Really Keith? Charter people are being “targeted”, and this forces the charter leaders to face “a challenging time”? It’s called free speech, ya dumbass! If you’re this group of charter leaders, and you’re afraid the public will turn on you because of your excessive salaries, they maybe you shouldn’t have taken — or been paid — those salaries in the first place. Just sayin’.)
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KOHLHAAS: And man! Keith Della’Aquila is not just upset by the meme. He’s getting ready for bread riots, for the last charter school director being strangled with the guts of the last zillionaire, and so on. These privatizers were really worried that the UTLA strike was the beginning of the freaking revolution. Here’s what El Dude had to say about it, and then turn the page for a transcription of the rest of the conversation, including a really unprofessional comment from Icky Sticky Nicky Melvoin’s senior advisor Allison Holdorff Polhill:
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From: Keith Dell’Aquila KDellAquila@ccsa.org
Date: Friday, January 18, 2019 at 2:16 PM
Cc: Cassy Horton chorton@ccsa.org, Chris Copolillo ccopolillo@ccsa.org, Jason Rudolph jrudolph@ccsa.org, Luis Figueroa lfigueroa@ccsa.org
Subject: Your Organization Featured in Online Posts
Good afternoon, Charter Leaders,
We wanted to let you know that the names of your schools and reported salaries of senior leaders are being circulated in UTLA-aligned online communities (Twitter and Facebook groups). This post does not appear to have been shared widely and does not appear to have been shared by official UTLA accounts or reflected in any media coverage. Still, we want to flag it for you in case it get gains additional traction or if your organizations receive additional attention.
Please let us know if you need any support or if you and your schools have been targeted in any way.
Thank you for continuing to serve LA students and families well during this challenging time.
Keith Dell’Aquila
Director, Regional Advocacy, Greater Los Angeles
213-864-6310 | kdellaaquila@ccsa.org
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Again, the whole thing is here:
http://michaelkohlhaas.org/wp/2019/03/29/the-california-charter-schools-association-is-not-just-an-insidious-privatizing-pro-zillionaire-lobbying-group-they-also-evidently-facebook-stalk-anti-charter-folks-on-social-media-and-then-di/
It is, indeed, nice to hear some really good news for a change!
& LOVE the poster (even if the word there is misspelled)!