Teachers and parents have listed Nick Melvoin on Yelp as a business, and they are rating him. Nick is one of the leading charter advocates on the LAUSD school board. He was elected because of millions from the charter lobby and its billionaire allies.
https://www.yelp.com/biz/nick-melvoin-lausd-board-member-los-angeles
His ratings are terrible. If he were a teacher, he would be fired.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
The biggest fish, Bill Gates, Walton Heirs and Charles and David Koch, pay people in a community to betray their neighbors by enabling the theft of the common good.
I went to Melvoin and got food poisoning. Nick Melvoin is filthy. Then there were those emails showing secret side deals being done with shady vendors. Who knows where that crap has been! Stay away from Nick!
I don’t think it’s too early to demand that he and Kelly Gomez resign. If nothing else, the proposed rating system(School Performance Framework) that they are champions of, did the exact opposite from what they expected. It’s obvious that they were under the impression that a school rating system would be welcomed by the community and thus elevate them to the status of “education heroes”. But, they forgot that the community did not support them during the strike, and instead sided with schools and teachers. But, blinded by ambition, they are doubling down on these failed policies that have historically been slammed at every turn. I am guessing that the likes of Broad and his CCSA minions have made it clear that they want this School Performance Framework(SPF) to pass if they expect to get financial support in the future.
Betsy DeVos gives Nick Melvoin five stars. DeVos loves Melvoin.
There is now one absolutely rave review from “Adam S” from Torrance, California, which has nothing to do with the neighborhoods that Nick M. represents and isn’t even part of Los Angeles at all. And “Adam S” gives Nick 5 stars and insists “There is nobody that cares more and works harder than Nick.”
I suspect that this is Nick Melvoin’s attempt to get some friends or relatives to post dishonest raves about him when they are not parents in LAUSD public schools. Why would this guy from Torrance, California suddenly decide that he needed to post what amounts to a press release about Nick when he clearly doesn’t have any kids in LAUSD schools (including charters).
I think Nick Melvoin believes that parents in Pacific Palisades are total fools as he certainly treats them like fools with his most rabid “fans” from Torrance posting these kinds of fake posts. I think Melvoin’s greed and willingness to do whatever the rich billionaires want will catch up to him.
The parents of Pacific Palisades are not as stupid as Nick Melvoin seems to believe they are. His “fans” in Torrance may adore Nick, but I believe that parents will eventually see him as the right wing toadie that he is.
Who is Adam S in Torrance, California who adores Nick with all his heart and knows him so well that he knows exactly how many hours he puts in his volunteer work?
I think a reporter should investigate. Is Nick trying to fool the parents he represents?
My guess is that Nick’s lawyers are going to sue, or threaten to sue YELP to remove those unflattering comments, and he’ll very likely succeed in that goal.
Therefore, before that happens, I’m transferring some of them here:
(also, BELOW IS the link to Nick’s YELP page, so feel free to add your own two cents)
https://www.yelp.com/biz/nick-melvoin-lausd-board-member-los-angeles?utm_source=ishare
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Yelp needs negative stars, I give him -100 out of 10. There are allegations supported by leaked emails that highlight his desire to promote Charter Schools over LAUSD schools. How can a Board Member paid by the District exchange emails with the Charters Administration outlining a strategy to destroy LAUSD?
Nick Melvoin’s track record is questionable and it’s about time the Board starts an investigation about his dealings with charter schools.
It is common knowledge that charters “bought” his seat at the table, Nick’s ethics and integrity have been questioned multiple times all over social media.
We need him to answer all questions about his leaked emails and the conduct of interests he faces supporting charters and privatizers when he’s paid to support LAUSD schools.
If he’s a lawyer, shouldn’t he be disbarred already?
#MelvoinResign
#ChartersPuppet
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I wish I could give him a higher rating because he is my elected Board Member, but he hasn’t done anything to help the children! He continues to make blanket statements such as, “Kids First!” – which sounds nice and positive, but what does, “Kids First,” mean to him? It seems to mean giving himself a 174% pay raise so he and other LAUSD school board members have annual salaries higher than California state law makers including the Assembly Speaker and Senate President.
In New York City, which also has a large school district, their school board members are volunteers and they do not receive any pay. Melvion, with only 2 years of teaching experience voted to be paid $125, 000/year. LAUSD teachers who have 30 years of teaching experience will never get paid that amount, but Melvion feels he deserves that. The public didn’t vote for his pay increase – he did, along with other LAUSD board members. Teachers are paid much less and Melvoin continues to believe teachers should be paid less. Who matters more to a student? A board member that spouts rhetoric or a teacher who goes above and beyond for them five days a week?
What have LAUSD students received for this huge pay increase? A superintendent that isn’t qualified. Melvion voted for a superintendent that has no experience in education in a closed door session. This same superintendent sent his children to a private school. Wait, Melvion has never been a public school student himself so I guess two years of teaching in a public school made him qualified to guide over 650, 000 LAUSD students? Who were the people that funded his election? CCSA. No amount of photos of him with children of diverse backgrounds will have him understand what it means to grow up low income.
Melvoin also touted how he visited all of the schools in his district. Yes, he literally stepped foot inside the schools in his district but did he help the students? Nope. I wish he had. I wish he really did put kids first. LAUSD would be better for it, the kids would be better for it, but instead, we have a lot of money wasted on new water fountains in charter schools.
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I am not sure how to rate a sell out. A school board member intent on undermining teachers, school staff and principals. So profit oriented that he pushed hard for a business manager as superintendent rather than an educator. I give him a “D” for dumb.
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If it were possible to give negative stars, I would. Nick Melvoin worked for two years as a Teacher For America Volunteer. He was placed in a Middle School and used this experience to pad his law school application. After completing law school, he ran a dishonest campaign for School Board. Nick Melvoin’s campaign was funded by the California Charter School Association. He remains a charter puppet. He voted to give himself a raise and he supports charter interests at every opportunity. He engages in dishonest and immoral practices and colludes with CCSA to create policies that benefit charter schools at the expense of neighborhood public schools and the students they represent. Nick Melvoin is supported by Astro-turf organizations, fake non-profits, like Speak Up and Parent Revolution.
Nick Melvoin was part of the School Board that forced the UTLA Teachers Strike of 2019. A competent and reasonable School Board member would have negotiated with the Teachers Union. Instead, Nick Melvoin helped LAUSD leadership to amass a $1,800,000,000 reserve. He was also sort of the Board Majority that approved Austin Beutner as Superintendent.
Nick Melvoin has not created or implemented a single policy that benefits LAUSD students as a whole or improves instruction. He should be recalled or replaced at the first possible opportunity.
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F rating by far one of the worst board members in LAUSD history! I wish I could give him – 0 stars but can’t on Yelp! He’s a corporate charter school shill that should resign immediately! Unethical and doesn’t look out for the best interest of LAUSD students!
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The prime example of a bought and paid for politician. He failed in the classroom and now he’s failing his entire district by trying to destroy neighborhood schools!
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Mr. Melvoin has been invited numerous times to come out to visit our school during special events like our annual Día de Los Muertos but unlike our previous Board Member, he has never shown up. Our previous Board Member used to hold a special ceremony and reception for the Biliteracy Seal recipients and families from the Bilingual Schools in our area. Mr. Melvoin did not continue with this important tradition that recognized the hard work and dedication of his students. It seems like Mr. Melvoin’s lack of experience in the classroom with the student shows in the decisions he has taken. This is why I’m giving him one star.
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Nick Melvoin is a shill bought and paid for by the shady California Charter School Association. He is out to decimate public education by diverting tax payer dollars toward unregulated charters and his privatizing buddies.
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Sell out to public education!!! He doesn’t care about the students only about $$$$$! He’s bought by the charter industry!
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Is in the pocket of charter schools. Caters to charters over the real public schools he is supposed to represent.
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If he’s smiling in a a picture with Antonio Villaraigosa, then he must be a low-down, piece of trash because we all know birds of a feather flock together.
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This is a post on Twitter:
@tultican: A new ranking system for L.A. schools? Board to consider 1-to-5 scale – TFA boy Melvoin pushes heritage foundation ideology like Jeb in Florida. It’s all about privatizing public schools.
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I’d give 0 stars if it was an option. Sadly this man only cares about his pocketbook and how his lobbying will benefit him. He doesn’t care one ounce about children or the schools he is supposed to represent.
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Pro-charter crony of Eli Broad. No thanks. Vote him out.
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Sellout and in the pocket of chárter schools. Definitely a FAIL rating as a school board member. FAILED TO serve our district, students and families.
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I won’t give him any stars. He gave himself and the board a big raise, and the Paraprofessionals were suppose to get a raise this past July and they didn’t. They can’t use their full vaction time because the board gave them furlough days.And now there is a hiring freeze again. SMH. I couldn’t post without a star rate.
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Devoid of any backbone. Sold out public schools. Make sure to vote him out. He dies not care about students.
Thanks for making it easy for blog readers (34,000,000 views) to read about Melvoin.
Political speech is protected. If I was adding comment and subtracting stars at Yelp for Melvoin I, personally, wouldn’t lose sleep.
A theoretical Melvoin Inc., operating as a business generating revenue might attract attention. But, Mr. Melvoin’s financial situation as described, in Yelp comments, comes from the elected board upon which he sits.
It seems more likely to me that the tech tyrants, a collective, would address perceived threats from public condemnations by deleting opportunity for political disparagement on the sites they govern.
No need to hire attorneys. He’ll just inform Yelp it’s not a business and they’ll take it down. That’s if he cares; he’s tone deaf to the public. The thing about rating schools and businesses is that ratings are just unscientific opinions. Whether the opinions of app users, survey participants, algorithm programmers, or beauty pageant judges, ratings are all bathed in personal prejudices. The irony of Yelping Melvoin is the beauty of this form of protest. Further revealed is the stupidity of school ratings. We will fight this scheme, not letting it happen quietly, and “when we fight, we win!”
Go for it, LCT!
A-F rating is both dumb and malevolent.
I don’t think Melvoin is “tone deaf” because there are some posts (two of them have the same wording of “5 plus” stars) that are clearly from people who are not LA public school parents and yet insist Melvoin is wonderful. Someone is trying to get Nick’s abysmal rating higher.
LCT, what I really wish parents would do is put Nick on the spot as to whether he believes private school teachers at Harvard-Westlake, Crossroads, Brentwood, etc. should also be rated this way and if not, can he please explain why he does not believe that the teachers at Harvard Westlake should be held entirely judged by whether a student gets a high score on their SAT or a mediocre score when he keeps insisting that teachers are completely responsible for their students performance on standardized tests.
I’d love to see Nick trying to tell the parents at Harvard Westlake that his own “research” has determined that the only way to judge which teachers at Harvard Westlake are the superior ones is to rank the Harvard Westlake teachers from best to worst based on the average SAT scores of the students they taught that year.
The Senior Director and Superintendent of Catholic Schools Archdiocese of Los Angeles is a Fellow (2018) of the Gates-funded Pahara Institute. Citizens should take note of that and review the bio’s of the other Fellows.
Pahara’s founder was also a creator of New Schools Venture Fund and TFA.
(BTW- Leonard Leo of the Federalist Society gets credit for the conservative judges like Kavanaugh. Leo is Catholic. Paul Weyrich, the founder of the Koch’s ALEC and the religious right was also Catholic. His training manual which describes parallel schools is posted at Theocracy Watch.)
The Koch linked Manhattan Institute posted an article, July 3, 2018, “Catholic Schools and Truth Decay”, which elucidates the forced school sacrifice by a minority community (New Orleans’ disaster capitalism). If the result is a gain for Catholic schools, I concluded anti-tax libertarians think it’s good riddance to the schools of the common good.
Those who know me know I believe charters are, a scam! However, when I look at Sommerville Mass. where a new innovative school was devised, similar to the one I implemented in Milwaukee as a full public school, with union, it was refused by the Board of Education. The “Powerhouse Studios” had a $10,000,000 grant to start up and they were still refused.
Unless this organization as well as every public school supporting organization strongly supports innovation, public schools will perish!
I unashamedly mention my book, “Stop Politically Driven Education” that justifies a full frontal approach to systemic change in the education system.
Promote change or leave innovation to the charters. And we know what that looks like!
The local officials were enthusiastic about the Powerhouse plan in Somerville until they realized that there was no source of ongoing funding for the new school. That meant they would have to cut the budget, cut after school programs, cut teachers, so that 3% of kids could go to the new school.
The district was very supportive but in the end not willing to cut the budget for 97%.
Until you can figure out the finances, dropping in a new school won’t work.
caplee68
The PR campaign that inveighs “innovation” is driven by two goals, profit-taking and democracy’s destruction.
The Stanford Social INNOVATION Review is its poster child. Stanford is a think tank and its Review selectively edits public input.
Bad actors employ the word, innovation, as a hammer. The French Revolution had its, “let them eat cake”. Today’s elites have the forced dehumanization they tag with the lie, innovation.
An extrapolation of Federal Reserve data shows the wealthiest 10% will, in 33 years have 100% of the nation’s wealth. Silicon Valley’s “innovation” will accelerate the time line. And while the billionaires may force Main Street into bankruptcy via elimination of their schools, the rich and their minions, with justice, will be the ones to “perish”.
Ginger G describes Melvoin in a way that can apply to many charter supporters who are put on school boards. I love her creative style! “Think of Nick as the Boss Man of Walmart sitting on the board of Target, making up slogans like “clothes first.” (Geez… who can argue with needing clothes?)But really, he’s on the board to make sure people no longer shop at Target (i.e. stop shipping inventory to the stores) until they go out of business.“
Your example-
That’s what it looks like to me when DeVos descends on a city to force charters (San Antonio) and the school district’s superintendent is a Broadie, former hire of Arne Duncan and a Fellow of the Gates-funded Pahara Institute.