Tracy Abbott Cook, a parent in District 4 represented by Nick Melvoin, testified to the LAUSD board and asked it to investigate him based on the emails leaked to Michael Kohlhaas. The emails showed that Melvoin had collaborated with opposing counsel from the California Charter School Association. Ms. Cook believes this is a violation of Melvoin’s obligation to the voters who elected him and to his ethical responsibility as a lawyer. Melvoin has two masters, she says, because his campaign was heavily funded by the charter industry.
Vigilant parents like Ms. Cook are keeping the heat on board members who favor charter schools over public schools. As voters, they expect their elected board members to represent public schools, not the California Charter School Association.
Please watch: This is what the Resistance looks like.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
How can ed reformers continue to claim they “don’t care” whether schools are district or charter when they exclusively advocate on behalf of children in charter schools?
Read the emails. It’s as if public schools, and public school students, don’t exist.
Why is this unacceptable for people who work for the district but acceptable for charter lobbyists? Why are public school supporters ordered to support charters and there’s no reciprocal effort from charter/voucher supporters?
How is that fair to public school students? They just happen to attend ideologically incorrect schools, so therefore deserve no advocates in government? That’s ridiculous and public school parents SHOULDN”T accept it.
She’s permitted to ask who on that board advocates on behalf of her child’s school. That’s allowed. I know they disdain “district” schools and seek to replace them but since NONE of them RAN on that they have a duty to do the work they were hired to do, and that includes the students in “government schools”. Where’s the special back channel for public school students? They’re just taken for granted? That’s not what he said when he was getting elected and he wouldn’t have gotten elected if he had revealed that.
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Maybe we should be thanking Nick Melvoin for finally putting an end to the debate about where his loyalties lie. While it was already obvious during this campaign for school board which was funded by millions from CCSA(CA Charter School Association), he would always profess to support ALL children. Now we have massive amounts of evidence that questions that support. The emails have also included references to the former board member felon Ref Rodriguez, present board member Monica Garcia and Melvoin’s chief of staff, Sarah Angel. Ms. Angel’s past includes a stint as the Los Angeles representative of CCSA. One of her jobs was to speak at board meetings in support of charters that were being denied, regardless of the evidence against them.
If Melvoin is sanctioned or put on some kind of suspension, he will have to face the likelihood of a downturn in his plans for the future along with his staff. He had already lost tremendous credibility during last January’s LAUSD teacher strike, but now he will be operating with the knowledge that these email revelations will continue to put a very troubling spotlight on his apparent unethical behavior as an elected steward of public dollars.
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Thanks ‘educator’ for adding your local activist comments which are right on target. Our new group of muckrakers is doing an admirable job, but it is we old timers who recall the history of the district. So glad you mention and clarify the position of Ms. Angel…and I have posted on FB for some weeks now her long time CCSA and LAUSD affiliation with Mr. Cole-Guttierrez who was strangely hired away from CCSA during the failed Deasy era by the then BoE of LAUSD (with Monica Garcia as cheer leader and Vladovic as Prez) to be THE oversight person of charter schools for the district. It was a bizarre hire at the time letting the charter fox guard the hen house…and he often stood with Angel at the podium in our Board room as she presented info and testimony on charters. NOT at all strange however that Angel now works as legal assistant to Broad’s fave charterizer to whose election campaign he and his billionaire buddies donated mulit millions of dollars, Nick Melvoin. Oh what a tangled web we weave…yup.
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It’s about freakin’ time!
Perhaps this will get the L.A. Times, local NPR, and other media covering L.A. education beat to write about the latest Kohlhaas releases. (To be fair, Blume at the L.A. Times did cover the earlier Kohlhaas bombshell releases … but has mysteriously stopped reporting on the latest, and much more damaging releases.
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Melvoin is going down. Love seeing this knowledgeable and actively concerned parent putting on the pressure. Thank you! Keep it coming, Los Angeles!
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Nick Melvoin is a phony, and a liar.
Just before January’s strike, this lying sack of sh#% went in front of the parents of Playa Del Rey Elementary students — a mostly upscale white and politically progressive set of parents, at a school that is high-achieving — and when asked about his pro-charter position, told them his goal was to work so hard funding and supporting Playa Del Rey Elementary and the rest of LAUSD’s public schools so that no more charters will ever be needed to be opened in LAUSD.
( 0:45 – )
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QDmojsw-Y8Q&t=155s
( 0:45 – )
“My goal in running (for the LAUSD school board) is to improve our (existing public) district schools and so that we’ll never need to open another charter school in LAUSD EVER.”
MEANWHILE, in the Kohlhaas documents release, you see Melvoin DOING THE EXACT OPPOSITE OF THIS.
He attended a meeting with the major players in the charter school privatization industry, where the agreed-upon plan was to make LAUSD a 100% charter school district by 2030, and is shown strategizing with the charter industry in how to make this a reality — starve, rank, & flip
Like a puppet, you see Melvoin promising this group of privatizers that HE’LL DO THE EXACT OPPOSITE OF WHAT HE JUST PROMISED THE PARENTS AND PLAYA DEL REY.
(He obviously had no idea that this would be leaked, as on each page, it’s clearly marked in ALL CAP’s … “CONFIDENTIAL: DO NOT SHARE”)
You see Melvoin in the recorded minutes of the behind-the-scenes meeting plotting with the charter school industry on how to starve public schools, concoct some cockamamie system of how to rank public schools, and then, based on that bogus ranking system, use the results to flip those public schools — closing them and then turning over the land, buildings, and multi-million-dollar budges over to charter management.
TO ANY LAUSD PARENTS AND L.A. CITIZENS WHO LOVE YOUR PUBLIC SCHOOLS WHO ARE NOW READING THIS:
The public Melvoin at Playa Del Rey Elementary blathering his supposed desire to protect public schools is the FAKE Melvoin.
The private Melvoin in the secret charter school industry meetings strategizing on how to wipe out all LAUSD public schools by 2030, the Melvoin exposed in the Kohlhaas documents dump is the REAL Melvoin.
At every public visit to a school that Melvoin makes, teachers and parents should shove the Kohlhaas documents in his face, and call him out on his lies, and being a liar.
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His claim that many of those who voted for him were people who felt the public schools weren’t meeting their needs is questionable. A large part of his constituncy is comprised of people who are in the Palisades Charter Comples, which includes Palisades High. These people have little understanding of the larger issues and are convinced that any limitations of charter schools will put Palisades Charter High at risk for losing its charter. This is highly unlikely. Palisades is in a unique situation of being the only high school for miles around, and was an conversion charter (existing public school which applied for the permission to independently manage its own budgets). The constituency turns a blind eye to the abuses perpetrated by the charter industry because the only model they are aware of is the one in Pacific Palisades.
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I agree. And Palisades “Charter” High School is totally different from a typical charter. Most charters are about excluding students. But Pali doesn’t exclude any of the students who live in the zone — they can all attend and most do. It is their “zoned” high school and treated as such. The “charter” part means that the teachers themselves have more say in their school (something most teachers would approve of) and that they take at-risk students from out of the zone which makes them more diverse than if they only taught the students in the zone.
No student from the zone is excluded – thus it is a typical public school that way, where kids can’t be “counseled out” when they live in the zone because it is their zoned school. But students from outside the zone are included. That isn’t what most charters are.
The parents don’t understand this. Honestly, I think some pro-public school parents should band together and start a typical charter high school in Pacific Palisades that gave priority to students zoned for Pali and only taught advanced classes or used some other means in which they did everything to pull out the most academic and/or affluent students from Pali High and leave the rest behind. That would make the parents realize exactly what it is they are supporting. Suddenly they would have less money and disproportionately many more students who cost more. While the new competing charter high school only taught the students they wanted to teach and sent the rest back to Pali.
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Well-stated, NYC! There is also an overlapping constituency that voted for Nick because they know him and his parents, and have attended the same private schools and synagogue. “Vote for my friend’s kid.” His election is a potent example of how privilege works.
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