Blogger T.C.Weber, aka “Dad Gone Wild,” thinks there is something amiss in Tennessee. The State Commissioner of education Penny Schwinn is holding down two full-time jobs. He thinks that is odd. Does anyone else? She founded a charter school in California, where she is still listed as executive director. Interesting. Superwoman?
He writes:
Capital Collegiate Academy was founded back in 2011 by one Penny Schwinn. In the past, I’ve talked about Schwinn’s tenure with the St. Hope Foundation, the charter network founded by Michelle Rhee’s husband and former Mayor of Sacramento Kevin Johnson. I think it’s a safe assumption that in opening her own school, Schwinn benefited from her relationship with Johnson. It worth noting that Penny’s husband Paul, also worked for the St. Hope Foundation. Stick around, you’ll notice a pattern here.
Returning to Sacramento and opening a charter school was a self-professed dream of Schwinn’s. Per an article in a journal produced by the California Charter School Association, “Her goal was to return to her home town and start a charter school in an under-served community. Her vision was to provide strong standards and high expectations for all students.” Schwinn would assume the role of principal of the school that first year, before 9 months later she would assume a seat on the local school board followed 14 months later by becoming Assistant Superintendent of Sacramento City Unified School District, overseeing the very school she founded.
You may remember back in the Spring when Schwinn tweeted out for principal day how much she loved being a principal. Well, who wouldn’t love to be a principal for a school that only housed 60 Kindergarten students? Per their website, “Capitol Collegiate follows a slow growth model, which means we add an additional grade level each year. Our founding scholars started Kindergarten in 2011 and will graduate from 8th grade in 2020. CCA currently serves students in Transitional Kindergarten (TK) through 8th Grade.”
If you look at state achievement scores, that initial class of 2011 seems to be doing quite well. Last year, as 7th graders, 58.2% performed at or above expectations in ELA and 47.06% did the same in Math. I’d say that qualifies for celebration.
The only caveat that I would add is to point out that a class that started out having 60 students held 22 students last year and is now down to 15. So a little math will tell you that out those 22 students, 13 are on grade level or above and 9 are underperforming. That’s not quite as much cause for celebration. With such a small class, I don’t think it’s unreasonable to expect higher achievement levels.
Right now, I wouldn’t blame you for thinking, “This all very interesting, but Penny lit out of there on a fast train nearly a decade ago. What’s all of this have to do with today?”
Ah, but the question is, did Ms. Schwinn truly depart Capital Collegiate Academy? You might be surprised to find out that the Commissioner is still an active board member of the charter school, a seat she has held since inception.
“How does she do it”, you might ask, “Surely there are expectations about attending board meetings.”
Rest assured that when Ms. Schwinn can’t make it in person, she participates via teleconference from 710 James Robertson Parkway, Nashville, Tennessee. In case you don’t recognize that address, it’s where her office, supplied by Tennessee taxpayers, is located.
Here’s where things get even more interesting. You see Penny wasn’t just a board member, she was also the Executive Director of the school from 2015 – 2019. Currently, the organization doesn’t appear to have an executive director. Though I hear Paul’s doing nothing…never mind, I’m sure they’ve already thought of that.
While serving as CCA’s executive director, Penny was serving as an associate superintendent in both Delaware and Texas, and in 2019 she became the Commissioner of Education for Tennessee. You wouldn’t be remiss in thinking, “There is no way she could have done both jobs simultaneously”. But she did, and was paid a pretty penny – pun intended – for it.
Lotta ching, huh?
So now you might be thinking that Ms. Schwinn cut some kind of deal, and arranged a ceremonial position due to her status as a “founder” in order to receive payment long after she split to explore greener pastures. A fair assumption, unfortunately not an assumption not backed up by documentation from the Capitol Collegiate Academy charter application where the duties of the Executive Director are extensive and clearly spelled out.
That seems like a lot of work to be doing from the East Coast while also serving as Delaware’s Chief accountability officer. I know the irony, right?
If this has you scratching your head in puzzlement, don’t consider yourself alone. In 2015, CCA was up for renewal and the SCUSD School Board had some questions themselves. They list a number of promises the school made that they’d failed to keep. Also noting that “the current Executive director fills her role as a part-time position. She is employed as an education official, in another capacity, on the East Coast of the United States. Clearly, they were as perplexed as we are.
Somebody should have pointed out to board members that the school’s IRS filings have Schwinn down as working a 40-hour week. Quite the go-getter this one is. And Mr. Schwinn, what was he up to in Delaware. He was hired as the Director of Leadership Development for the Delaware Leadership Project, which is funded by the Delaware DOE, Rodel, and Vision. Seeing the pattern yet?
There’s more.
Ms. Schwinn works for a pro-voucher chum of Betsy DeVos. Curiously Republican legislators wonder about her multiple jobs but Democratic legislators don’t. Read on to understand this puzzling situation.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
“ICYMI: Charters were quicker to provide instruction & regular contact during closures, reports say. But that’s also how they ‘keep the kids,’ one expert explains”
Reports prepared by people who work full time promoting charter schools, and no comparison reports where public schools were examined by interviewing the people who work in them were prepared.
Public school people are not permitted to speak. Only the information they post publicly is examined. OTOH, charter schools are given intense analysis where they self-report exclusively positive results.
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selective spotlighting
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Deformers are like a crime family with branches all over the country. They are opportunists looking for easy, profitable targets. Their network is a perfect example of self-dealing cronyism. Swinn is a serial grifter that follows the money, and Democrats have nothing to say about Swinn’s double dipping appointments. Armed with her fake credentials as “a Gates-funded, TFA trained, Charter School promoter, Swinn is working the system,”
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The destroy public education mobsters must be having trouble finding enough liars, frauds, and conmen to fill all of their disruptive positions for Schwinn to have so many positions spread across the country from the west to the east coast.
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Yeah, Lloyd, I can see ad “Conmen and conwomen wanted urgently in education. Taking on multiple positions simultaneously is possible, even encouraged. Pay and power are unlimited.”
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Why Schools are Opening Remotely: Safety
Many families are understandably frustrated that our local schools are choosing to begin the school year remotely, with no students in the building. Their children have been isolated for months, and caregivers, especially those who must work, have had to balance child care and supervising their children’s remote education with their own work and other responsibilities. Many educators are also caregivers who are also caught in the middle of conflicting demands for their time and attention and would like nothing better than to begin the school year in buildings, with their students. The children, too, miss their friends and teachers. So if everyone would like for schools to open, what’s the problem?
The COVID-19 virus spreads mainly from person to person, mainly through respiratory droplets produced when an infected person coughs, sneezes, or even just talks. These droplets can land in the mouths or noses of people who are nearby or possibly be inhaled into the lungs. Spread is far more likely when people are in close contact with one another (within about 6 feet) and when they are spending long periods of time together. And people are often contagious before they know they are sick.
This is why schools are particularly reluctant to open in-person. Students and teachers would be inside a building for six hours each day, in close contact. There is simply no way to guarantee safety under these conditions. Our schools simply do not have the building upgrades nor the personnel budgets to create safe conditions. Consider:
• Eleven or twelve at most can fit into a typical classroom while maintaining six-foot distance between students. This means roughly twice as many classroom spaces and teachers will be needed. Where will they come from?
• Spacing requirements for busses mean that only one third of the usual load of students can be on a bus. School districts do not have three times the number of busses they had last year, with drivers for them as well.
• Significant upgrades to many buildings are needed especially in terms of ventilation systems to ensure safety. Since the virus is primarily spread through the air, how air circulates, how it is ventilated to the outside, and how hundreds of students sitting for hours within a closed space can stay safe is a major challenge.
• The changes needed to make schools safe are costly in terms of time, materials, and personnel. There is not enough money available to make those changes.
It is important to remember that the schools are not at fault for this crisis and how it is differentially impacting families.
• Schools did not cause the virus. There are more cases and deaths in the US than anywhere else, and those numbers continue to rise, but public health experts say it would be even worse had our schools not closed last spring to contain the spread.
• The schools did not choose to underfund themselves for the past several years, nor for keeping “level funding” for the current year in the face of the extraordinary need for more spending to meet this crisis. Schools are at the mercy of their school committees, local and national political forces, and economic realities.
• Schools do not set the protocols for opening public spaces safely. When the State says no more than ten people in an indoor space, or mandates a six-foot distance between people, schools are morally and legally obligated to follow those guidelines. When the CDC says it’s not safe to spend fifteen minutes in a store that has more than one person every 200 square feet, how can it be safe to spend five or six hours with hundreds of others in a building at six times that density?
• Schools did not create the long-time crushing inequality and racism that have caused greater devastation from Covid among communities of color and among the poorest communities. The virus has simply made it more visible and harder to ignore.
• Our schools depend upon tax dollars. But schools are not responsible for tax laws and policies that allow the very rich to hide their money overseas or in other shelters such that they pay little or no taxes.
It is crucial that schools and our community work together to keep our children and educators safe while providing the best education possible under the circumstances. And to work to make change in our tax structure and economy so that our schools get the funding they need to truly serve our children.
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We in Tennessee are proud to match the flakiness of Betsy DeVos in education.
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