Robert Skeels was a public education advocate in Los Angeles who decided to become a lawyer to fight the powerful corporate charter industry. After receiving his BA in classical civilizations at UCLA, Skeels spent years as an activist, inspired by Paulo Freire, then earned his law degree in 2018. This is the only instance to my knowledge where a charter critic decided that he had to get a law degree to fight the charter industry.
As a part-time associate at a law firm in Los Angeles, he has won two cases against the powerful and well-funded charter industry.
My first win against a corporate charter school was a year ago as third chair in a suit to overturn a wrongful expulsion of a student of color. The Partnerships to Uplift Communities (“PUC”) charter chain (of convicted felon Ref Rodriguez fame) violated that student’s due process rights. Violated isn’t a strong enough word for what they did. PUC unilaterally changed the charges at the appeals hearing and branded the child as a terrorist in his permanent record. Under the tutelage of the brilliant partners at the law firm I was a part-timer at the time (I am currently transitioning to full time there), plus sage advice from @DrPrestonGreen, we built a strong case.
Skeels’ second victory came just days ago, when he defended the blogger known as Michael Kohlhaas in his pursuit of the records of a charter chain. Kohlhaas exposes the dirty secrets of government, businesses, and other powerful forces in Los Angeles. In one of his important exposes, he revealed that Nick Melvoin, who represents the charter industry on the Los Angeles school board, had shared the board’s legal strategies with the California Charter Schools Association while in litigation with them.
Skeels writes:
This latest case was a charter trying to hide all its dirty secrets by not complying with the CPRA [the open records law]. The scandal-ridden The Accelerated Schools (“TAS”) charter chain’s leaders absconded when the community started pushing back and started asking questions about union busting.
Michael Kohlhaas dot org sent sent TAS several CPRA requests in 2018, which they ignored (unlawfully). A year later, I filed the petition for writ of mandate for them. Some ten months later TAS sent some records, but claimed “blanket exemptions” on a bunch of other ones.…
An infamous law firm that only represents lucrative, privately managed charter school corporations staked out the position that any communications with the charter school industry’s trade association — the CCSA — was subject to a range of exemptions under the CPRA.
I suppose I can’t blame them. The charter industry — long used to unaccountably spending tax dollars in total secrecy — fought tooth and nail the imposition of the CPRA and Brown Act added by Ed. Code § 47604.1(b)(2)(A). When the law took effect January 2020, charter school corporations were already looking for ways to skirt the law. At the firm I’m a junior associate at, we use the CPRA for pre-discovery work against charter corporations. Michael Kohlhaas dot org, on the other hand, has used it to expose some of the ugliest, scandalous conduct by an industry already infamous for scandal. Uncovering the vile Nick Melvoin’s sharing Los Angeles Unified School District’s (“LAUSD”) confidential legal strategies with their party-opponent in a lawsuit (the CCSA) was a blockbuster revelation enabled by the CPRA.
The judge in the case ruled that the charter chain was not entitled to the blanket exemption from disclosure for its records.
Skeels wrote: “Let the corporate charter school industry know that they aren’t going to be able to hide their dark secrets anymore.”
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Any state that invites unregulated charter schools in is asking for trouble. It is not just the questionable education. The charter lobby acts like any other crooked corporation. They bribe their way to the top. Once they get a taste of public funds, they expand to get a larger cut of the public pie. They are backed by wealthy individuals with bundles of dark money. With all their politicking they become so entrenched that it is difficult for states and communities to gain control of their budgets. Charter schools in many states have staked a claim to institutionalized entitlement. They are like leeches on the neck of public schools. They will drain them dry if given the opportunity. Kudos to Robert Skeels for holding private charters to account for their lawless behavior in California. We need more lawyers like Skeels that will challenge their entitled, bad behavior.
I keep waiting for some brilliant legal mind to challenge the whole racist, separate and unequal schooling imposed on mostly black and brown students in segregated charter schools. It is outrageous that public money is funding segregated schools in this country. So-called choice is not “empowerment.” It is social engineering, or, to borrow a phrase, a caste machine.
yes, eugenics as reason for separating populations in action
Robert Skeels is a hero for public education and for accountability from the charter industrial complex. In a way, David versus Goliath.These names that the charter schools/chains (cited above) adopt for themselves are so phony and self-serving: The Accelerated Schools, The Partnerships to Uplift Communities. Hey, let’s start a charter school and call it The Miracle Schools of the Universe or Best Damn Schools on Earth or Education Utopia Wonderfulness or Atomic Astrophysical Rocket Propelled Isaac Newton Schools, etc, ad nauseam.
Skeels is a hero and so is Kohlhaas. Kohlhaas shines sunshine laws on the dark charter industry. The charter industry is dirty. It’s filthy. It needs a bath, followed by another bath. The CCSA should take former president’s advice and inject bleach. Seriously, though, it needs to clean itself up. Kohlhaas and Skeels are like first responders rushing to the scenes of crimes, cleaning and dressing the wounds to public schools, using forensics tools to track down the perpetrators and bring them to justice. I hope Nick Melvoin pays for his crimes. I still cannot believe he got away with conspiracy, during a lawsuit, against the school district for which he was employed. Melvoin is filthy scum.
The biggest PR win enabling the well-documented fraud, waste, and abuse in charter schools was labeling these largely segregated and unaccountable schools “PUBLIC charter schools.” The charter school industry has exploited that “brand” and also used it to market these schools as if they are “saving children from our failing public schools.”
Great story but I am seeing lots of media ignore charter scandals. Here in NY, there was a $2.4 million judgment just handed down against Success Academy for discrimination against high need students.
With hundreds or thousands of families in that same situation, you would think there would be some basic reporting, but no dice even after we brought it to the attention of ed beat reporters on Twitter.
Jake,
You are right. The mainstream media seldom report charter scandals. They do in other cities, but not in NYC. The New York Times has a pro-charter bias.
I can’t recall Eliza Shapiro writing any stories in the NYT that would hurt the pro-charter narrative (she covers education in NYC so a judgement against Success Academy is right in her beat). My recollection is that her charter stories always present the pro-charter narrative and purport to be fair and balanced by including a quote by someone she carefully identifies as having an association with the teachers union or similarly anti-charter organization. She leaves it up to the imagination of the readers to guess whether the charter criticism she always presents as coming from an extremely biased person is true and never bothers to include the evidence supporting those who criticize charters.
What is sad is that Eliza Shapiro seems incapable of doing real analysis of statistics and she seems entirely dependent on pro-charter sources to “charter-splain” to her what pro-charter “studies” mean. She has no idea how to ask the kinds of questions that any science reporter would be fired for not asking if NYT science reporters wrote about the “miracle” of hydroxychloroquine the way that Eliza Shapiro writes about the miracle of Success Academy and other charters favored by right wing billionaires. The huge success of charters is always presented as fact.
If NYT science reporters were like Eliza Shapiro, they would have written endless articles about the miracle of hydroxychloroquine (and those news stories would always include testimonials from delighted patients who tout that their recovery was entirely due to taking hydroxychloroquine.) Would those science reporters be like Eliza Shapiro and get angry at their critics and insist that their reporting was fair and balanced because their fawning article about hydroxychloroquine also included a quote from someone they identified as rabidly opposed to hydroxychloroquine that questioned those results?
It’s a shame because Eliza Shapiro used to write for Capitol New York and Politico and she seemed far less vested in simply accepting pro-charter propaganda as if it were the truth. Why did she do a 180? The damage her reporting has done — the legitimacy she has given to false narratives that have helped undermine public education and hurt so many children, will live on long after she is promoted to some other beat. The parents who don’t push that false pro-charter narrative seem to be completely invisible to her.
I oppose charters because they are dishonest and promote themselves based on lies. That’s also why I would object if the NYT science reporters starting writing about hydroxychloroquine as if it it was a miracle cure, based on the same type of overhyped and extremely questionable studies that their education reporters accept as gospel when it comes to charters. Science reporters (usually) understand how to analyze studies like those flawed studies that hyped hydroxychloroquine — no good science reporter would simply accept the analysis of those who are hyping that miracle cure. When something sounds too good to be true in science, that’s when real journalists look the most closely at the results, and looking closely does not mean asking people who have a vested interest in promoting this “cure” to tell them what the study means. It means going to critics and listening closely to see what they are critical of and going back to the study’s promoters to ask follow up questions to see if the people doing the study can answer them.
I’m guessing if a good science journalist had the education beat instead of Shapiro, there would be a lot more questions about attrition instead of hyping results as if attrition didn’t matter. Would any science reporter be as incurious as Eliza Shapiro about why so many parents who jumped through hoops to get their child the best education possible would then “change their mind” and pull their child from a school that was successful with 99% of their students? I doubt it.
Pro-charter folks can’t seem to make a good argument to support charters without misleading the public. It is not Eliza Shapiro’s job to give their false narrative legitimacy– it is her job as a reporter to call out their dishonest hype so that this country can come to real solutions about how to make public education better that are based on the truth.
We don’t need more charters. But maybe we need more public schools that act like the charters that Eliza Shapiro believes are miracle workers that simply dump kids they don’t want to teach. Of course, that would necessitate a real discussion about what to do with the rest of the students. And there is something truly racist about reporting that pushes the false narrative that those kids just need harsher no excuses discipline to thrive. Frequent suspensions of 5 and 6 year olds? Eliza Shapiro doesn’t report on it, presumably because she accepts it as normal. I wish she’d ask herself if she would accept it as normal if those 5 and 6 year old students too frequently identified by Success Academy as violent were white and middle class. I doubt it.
I also doubt she’d accept a white middle class public school that flunked disproportionate numbers of their youngest students each year. Eliza Shapiro should act like a non-racist reporter and start questioning the false narrative that the kids who win Success Academy lotteries are far more likely to be violent and far more likely to be academically deficient than the children in regular public schools. If she didn’t believe that ugly characterization, she would have long ago questioned the need for 5 and 6 year old students at Success Academy to be so frequently suspended, harshly punished, and why so many of their students are forced to repeat grades. She would have long ago asked questions about why a charter supposedly offering an education guaranteed to turn kids into high performing scholars would lose so many students.
Thank you Professor Ravitch. I was both surprised and humbled to see this write up. It’s been a long road, but I feel I’m finally making some impactful litigation against the charter school industry. The aim is to help students at both privately managed charters and at public schools.
One minor correction. I earned my law degree and passed the bar exam in 2018. I was subsequently sworn in as an attorney in 2019.
Robert,
Thank you for devoting yourself to fighting for the public sector. We have a flock of vultures picking over the meat and bones of free public schools, and you are a hero.
While googling your name to check facts (sorry I got some wrong), I saw the magnificent piece you wrote about Alexander Russo. Thank you.
Skeels wrote: “Let the corporate charter school industry know that they aren’t going to be able to hide their dark secrets anymore.”
He should have added “in California” after the word “anymore”.
This was a lovely thing to read about today