The St. Louis Post-Dispatch reported that the PAC called American Federation for Children, started by Betsy DeVos, is supporting pro-charter Republican candidates in Missouri. We frequently get comments from charter advocates who insist that charters are progressive but it is hard to sustain that idea when the money to expand them comes from plutocrats like DeVos and the Waltons.
JEFFERSON CITY — A political action committee supporting state Sen. Andrew Koenig accepted $50,000 last week from a Washington, D.C., group that supports expanding charter schools, according to state ethics commission records.
Including the contribution to Koenig, the American Federation for Children, formerly chaired by U.S. Education Secretary Betsy DeVos, has poured $670,000 into Missouri races this year after legislators have continued to block efforts to allow more charter school options in the state.
By comparison, the group spent $200,000 in Missouri in all of 2018, the year of the last general election.
While proponents view charters as innovative alternatives to public schools, critics say the operations drain money from local districts. The issue is one of the most hotly contested in the Legislature, with a coalition of Republicans and Democrats scuttling recent expansion efforts.
Koenig is locked in a tight reelection race against state Rep. Deb Lavender, D-Kirkwood, in a legislative district that includes all or parts of Ballwin, Chesterfield, Kirkwood, Sunset Hills, Valley Park and other municipalities.
The 15th Senate District also includes some of the highest-rated public school districts in the state, covering all or parts of the Kirkwood, Lindbergh, Valley Park, Rockwood, Parkway, Mehlville and Hancock Place school districts.
Currently, charter schools only operate in St. Louis and Kansas City. A proposal this year would have allowed the schools to operate in any charter county — St. Louis, Jefferson, St. Charles and Jackson counties — or in any city with more than 30,000 residents.
Can someone tell my why this isn’t a huge conflict of interest? You are a member of the presidential cabinet, you should not be allow to lobby at the same time.
DeVos has regularly violated the Hatch Act, which prohibits Cabinet members from electioneering. Why doesn’t anyone enforce that? Bill Barr? I don’t think so.
That’s right…the rules are only for everyone else.
This is just another solid example demonstrating the lack of ethics and, I dare say, morals of individuals like DeVos and Trump. Yes, conflict of interest raises it ugly head in this case and it does with so many things that DeVos is involved with now and in the past.
November cannot get here soon enough and then DeVos will be out of office but she will not be gone. DeVos will still keep trying to destroy public education. She has nothing else in life to amuse her excepts yachts and airplanes.
if anything positive can come from DeVos’s destructive reign as Sec Of Ed, may it be that her name now precedes her in a very negative way
I second moeone2015’s assessment: this is what moral and ethical squalor look like.