Billy Townsend digs into the burgeoning scandal surrounding Governor DeSantis and state commissioner of education Richard Corcoran.
The Tampa Bay Tribune-Miami Herald reported that the two top officials tried to steer a multi-million dollar contract to a firm led by a friend of Corcoran. (The link is in Billy’s post).
Townsend notes that the top lobbyist for the Florida charter school association participated in their meetings. This is the same man that DeSantis kicked out of his campaign in 2018 for his “disgusting” and “racist” remarks.
Why would the top lobbyist for charter schools be known for vile, racist remarks?
Diane Ravitch's blog 
There is plenty of muck to rake in DeSantis’ Florida swamp. Nevertheless, my Florida Sinclair “news” station reports none of it. They are too busy inserting new propaganda pieces into the nightly news.
There is no doubt that the whole DeSantis machine is corrupt. It is unsurprising that he would appoint a former convicted witness tamperer a leading position in the corrupt Florida charter school domain. DeSantis should not even be governor with his ties to racist people and organizations. In an election Democrats do not need to fabricate or insinuate anything about DeSantis’ character. They simply need to share with the rest of the country who DeSantis really is. Democrats must fight to keep him out of the White House.https://www.miaminewtimes.com/news/eight-times-ron-desantis-did-racist-stuff-by-accident-10687534
Flint schools have indefinitely extended “remote learning.” So it’s unclear when Flint students will next see the inside of a classroom. Flint schools were closed for most of last school year.
The district is 75% black.
Contrast the amount the school system has to hire substitute teachers/staff and to buy air filtration systems and other Covid-precaution apparatus with the amount a wealthy school district has.
Contrast the availability of medical care. Contrast the access to healthy food (weight as a contributing factor to Covid infection), contrast health factors related to poverty, etc.
Flerp,
Have you actually asked Flint families what they want, or do you as a white person believe that your anti-mask mandate policy is what their school should adopt?
“Community members are holding a protest Dec. 31 to oppose the reopening of Genesee County schools due to the Omicron variant of COVID-19.
Genesee County schools are scheduled to reopen on Jan. 3, 2022, without a mask mandate in place.
On Dec. 31, Bishop Chris Martin will join local parents, staff, and students of Genesee County school districts at Cathedral of Faith Church to protest reopening, and call on government leaders to reinstate various safety measures.”
There is so much hypocrisy with a private school parent who opposes mask mandates and demands all schools be open, who claim that they speak for the children.
We are supposed to believe that anti-maskers like flerp care about the children of Flint and Bishop Chris Martin and the parents who want more safety measures do not.
That top charter school lobbyist (thug) was even criticized by Trump! From the linked politico article, quote: “In 2016, Rubio’s campaign tried to keep Arza away from the candidate because he was considered toxic. President Donald Trump in a Florida TV ad singled out Arza for “lobbing racial slurs and being convicted of witness tampering.”” end quote That would be like a dung beetle criticizing a chimpanzee for fecal flinging.
Why would a lobbyist for charter schools,
known for vile, racist remarks, continue
to participate?
Perhaps the age old “problems won’t be
solved with the same “strategy” that
has yet to solve them” is off the
“radar” of activists thinking they
“are more than doing their jobs…”
If at first you DON’T
succeed,WHY keep doing the same
thing, over and over again, and
expect a different result???
If not now, when will it be time
to try “something” new?
the similar attitude that’s left unsaid in the other camp of charter supporters-
A review of the DFER-posted 2017 letter, “50 Educational and Civil Rights Leaders…”, addressed to the D.C. State Board of Ed. with Seth Andrew as a signee (refer to the recent Diane Ravitch post about the Democracy Prep school experience), leads me to conclude that children of color have expected and unexpected enemies.
There’s a parallel, women who work for the conservative cause of 2nd class citizenship for women.
The demographic, white men, being on top of the pecking order, don’t engage in societal bigotry that has no precedent.
I follow one of the FL Democratic candidates for governor as well as the child of a Giuliani associate turned Democrat on Twitter. They have large followings and seem to play the Twitter game very well. Despite their daily antagonistic Tweets toward DeSantis, you know how much I’ve seen them Tweet about this topic?
crickets….nothing…
When I did a Twitter search to make sure I didn’t possibly miss something, I even saw a Tweet by Billy Townsend asking one of them for input. Unless they did it by DM, again, crickets…
On the local/state and federal levels, Democrats are really dropping the ball on education-related topics.
I was going to write what I know DeSantis’s platform will be leading into November, but readers of this blog already know what that entails.
One has now spoken!!
You ask: “Why would the top lobbyist for charter schools be known for vile, racist remarks?” For starters, charter schools are an ugly outgrowth of the racist call for “school choice” that was a fundamental element of the resegregationist strategy in response to the 1954 Brown v. Board of Education school desegregation ruling by the Supreme Court. The racial resegregation of America’s school systems by the private charter school industry is so blatant and illegal that both the NAACP and ACLU have called for a stop to the formation of any more charter schools. The Civil Rights Project at UCLA summed it up, stating that charter schools are “a civil rights failure.”