Teachers and parents have listed Nick Melvoin on Yelp as a business, and they are rating him. Nick is one of the leading charter advocates on the LAUSD school board. He was elected because of millions from the charter lobby and its billionaire allies.
https://www.yelp.com/biz/nick-melvoin-lausd-board-member-los-angeles
His ratings are terrible. If he were a teacher, he would be fired.
The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette reports that Trump’s large crowd of union workers at a Shell plant in Pennsylvania were given an ultimatum: attend the rally or lose a day of pay.
The choice for thousands of union workers at Royal Dutch Shell’s petrochemical plant in Beaver County was clear Tuesday: Either stand in a giant hall waiting for President Donald Trump to speak or take the day off with no pay.
“Your attendance is not mandatory,” said the rules that one contractor relayed to employees, summarizing points from a memo that Shell sent to union leaders a day ahead of the visit to the $6 billion construction site. But only those who showed up at 7 a.m., scanned their ID cards, and prepared to stand for hours — through lunch but without lunch — would be paid.
“NO SCAN, NO PAY,” a supervisor for that contractor wrote.
Workers who did not show lost $700.
The contractor’s talking points, preparing his workers for the event read:
“No yelling, shouting, protesting or anything viewed as resistance will be tolerated at the event. An underlying theme of the event is to promote good will from the unions. Your building trades leaders and jobs stewards have agreed to this.”
The unions went along with it.
The president also called out union leadership, which Shell had requested to be in attendance.
“I’m going to speak to some of your union leaders to say, ‘I hope you’re going to support Trump.’ OK?” he said. “And if they don’t, vote them the hell out of office because they’re not doing their job.”
More than a dozen unions work at the Shell site, the largest construction project in the state.
Do you want to understand why Pennsylvania’s charter school law needs to be reformed?
Let Steven Singer explain.
Singer teaches in Pennsylvania. In this post, he describes the dangers that privatization poses to his school district.
I work in a little suburban school district just outside of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, that is slowly being destroyed by privatization.
Steel Valley Schools have a proud history.
We’re located (in part) in Homestead – the home of the historic steel strike of 1892.
But today it isn’t private security agents and industrial business magnates against whom we’re struggling.
It’s charter schools, voucher schools and the pro-corporate policies that enable them to pocket tax dollars meant to educate kids and then blame us for the shortfall.
Our middle school-high school complex is located at the top of a hill. At the bottom of the hill in our most impoverished neighborhood sits one of the Propel network of charter schools.
Our district is so poor we can’t even afford to bus our kids to school. So Propel tempts kids who don’t feel like making the long walk to our door.
Institutions like Propel are publicly funded but privately operated. That means they take our tax dollars but don’t have to be as accountable, transparent or sensible in how they spend them.
And like McDonalds, KFC or Walmart, they take in a lot of money.
Just three years ago, the Propel franchise siphoned away $3.5 million from our district annually. This year, they took $5 million, and next year they’re projected to get away with $6 million. That’s about 16% of our entire $37 million yearly budget.
Do we have a mass exodus of children from Steel Valley to the neighboring charter schools?
No.
Enrollment at Propel has stayed constant at about 260-270 students a year since 2015-16. It’s only the amount of money that we have to pay them that has increased.
The state funding formula is a mess. It gives charter schools almost the same amount per regular education student that my district spends but doesn’t require that all of that money actually be used to educate these children.
If you’re a charter school operator and you want to increase your salary, you can do that. Just make sure to cut student services an equal amount.
Want to buy a piece of property and pay yourself to lease it? Fine. Just take another slice of student funding.
Want to grab a handful of cash and put it in your briefcase, stuff it down your pants, hide it in your shoes? Go right ahead! It’s not like anyone’s actually looking over your shoulder. It’s not like your documents are routinely audited or you have to explain yourself at monthly school board meetings – all of which authentic public schools like mine have to do or else.
Read the rest of the post.
Pennsylvania’s largest charter school is the Chester Community Charter School. It is owned by Philadelphia lawyer Vehan Gureghian, who is a major donor to the Republican Party in the State. He was the biggest contributor to former Republican Governor Tom Corbett. What is surprising about his political donations is how little it takes to win the affection of the party in power. The Chester Community Charter School enrolls most of the elementary students in its district and even draws students from Philadelphia, despite the fact that it is a low-performing school on state tests. As you will see in one of the articles below, CCCS received a charter renewal through 2026, an extension not given to any other charter in the state.
The Keystone State Education Coalition posted this list of his political contributions.
Blogger commentary: In an effort to gain a better understanding of the dynamics in Harrisburg, from time to time over the years we have published “Follow the Money” charts using data from the PA Department of State’s Campaign Finance Reporting website:
https://www.campaignfinanceonline.pa.gov/Pages/CFReportSearch.aspx
We’ll leave it up to our readers to draw their own conclusions regarding how such contributions may or may not influence policymakers as they go about the people’s business in Harrisburg.
The chart below lists over $470,000 in campaign contributions made by Mr. and Mrs. Gureghian for PA state offices from 2013 through 2019.
Highlights include $205,000 to the House Republican Campaign Committee, $37,000 to the Senate Republican Campaign Committee, $30,000 to House Speaker Mike Turzai, $82,000 to Senate Majority Leader Jake Corman’s Build PA PAC, $85,000 to Senate President Pro Tempore Joe Scarnati and$16,000 to House Majority Leader Bryan Cutler.
While school district budgets, check registers and salaries are public information, charter school management companies like Gureghian’s CSMI are not required to provide any details on how they spend taxpayers dollars. CSMI runs Chester Community Charter School, the state’s largest brick and mortar charter. CSMI’s founder and CEO is Vahan H. Gureghian of Gladwyne, a lawyer, entrepreneur and major Republican donor –the largest individual contributor to former Gov. Tom Corbett. And though CSMI’s books are not public – the for-profit firm has never disclosed its profits and won’t discuss its management fee – running the school appears to be a lucrative business. State records show that Gureghian’s company collected nearly $17 million in taxpayer funds just in 2014-15, when only 2,900 students were enrolled.”
Over the years, Gureghian has spent well over $1 million on political contributions in Pennsylvania.
“As previously reported by the (Palm Beach) Daily News, the buyers in this week’s sale are Philadelphia attorney and businessman Vahan Gureghian and his attorney wife, Danielle. Two weeks ago, they sold their never-lived-in oceanfront mansion on 2 acres at 1071 N. Ocean Blvd. for more than $40 million. That 35,992-square-foot mansion had been on the market for about four years. ….Vahan Gureghian is involved in a number of businesses, he said, including management and consulting in the charter-school industry through a company he founded, CSMI Education Management. His wife provides legal counsel for his business ventures, he said.”
Exclusive: Palm Beach mansion lost by developer in bankruptcy sells for $30.275M
Palm Beach Daily news By Darrell Hofheinz July 12 Posted at 5:46 PM Updated at 6:32 PM
Mortgage-holder sells former home of Robert V. Matthews to couple who just sold a Palm Beach mansion for more than $40 million. As developer Robert V. Matthews awaits sentencing on felony conspiracy and money-laundering charges in Connecticut, the Palm Beach seaside mansion he completed in 2006 has changed hands for a recorded $30.275 million. The deed recorded today shows the house at 101 Casa Bendita was sold by Singer Island Tower Suite LLC, which took title in April via a bankruptcy judge’s order in Matthews’ Chapter 11 case. The seller is identified in court documents as an “assignee” of a Deutsche Bank affiliate owed $31 million from a mortgage it held on the property. Matthews moved out of the mansion with his wife, Mia, shortly after the bankruptcy court’s March 31 order. Matthews developed the long-troubled, never-finished — and since-sold — Palm House hotel-condominium at 160 Royal Palm Way, which is a focus of his federal criminal case in Connecticut. The six-bedroom, two-story residence on Casa Bendita has 15,849 square feet of living space, inside and out, on nearly an acre. With about 188 feet of beachfront, the property lies about a three-quarters of a mile north of Royal Palm way.
Following data is from the Pennsylvania Department of State Campaign Finance website: http://www.campaignfinance.state.pa.us/ContributionSearch.aspx
Selected State Level Campaign Contributions by Vahan Gureghian 2013 – 2019
| Recipient | Date | Amount |
| TURZAI, MIKE FRIENDS OF | 9/5/2013 | $10,000.00 |
| HOUSE REP CAMPAIGN COM 2004, INC | 3/18/2014 | $75,000.00 |
| HOUSE REP CAMPAIGN COM 2004, INC | 9/16/2014 | $27,500.00 |
| HOUSE REP CAMPAIGN COM 2004, INC | 10/31/2014 | $25,000.00 |
| TURZAI, MIKE LEADERSHIP FUND | 10/4/2014 | $10,000.00 |
| SENATE REP CAMPAIGN COM | 4/14/2015 | $25,000.00 |
| SENATE REP CAMPAIGN COM | 3/10/2015 | $12,727.91 |
| SCARNATI, JOSEPH FRIENDS OF | 10/31/2016 | $25,000.00 |
| SCARNATI, JOSEPH FRIENDS OF | 10/31/2016 | $25,000.00 |
| BUILD PA PAC | 6/15/2016 | $10,000.00 |
| CORMAN, JAKE FRIENDS OF | 10/26/2016 | $10,000.00 |
| SCARNATI, JOSEPH FRIENDS OF | 11/9/2017 | $10,000.00 |
| BUILD PA PAC | 6/22/2017 | $10,000.00 |
| CORMAN, JAKE FRIENDS OF | 10/16/2017 | $2,500.00 |
| FUND FOR A BETTER PENNSYLVANIA | 6/8/2017 | $5,000.00 |
| HOUSE REP CAMPAIGN COM 2004, INC | 8/29/2017 | $2,750.00 |
| HOUSE REP CAMPAIGN COM 2004, INC | 11/2/2017 | $3,000.00 |
| HOUSE REP CAMPAIGN COM 2004, INC | 11/2/2017 | $2,000.00 |
| CUTLER, BRYAN FRIENDS OF | 6/15/2018 | $5,000.00 |
| SCARNATI, JOSEPH FRIENDS OF | 10/31/2018 | $25,000.00 |
| TURZAI, MIKE FRIENDS OF | 9/12/2018 | $10,000.00 |
| BUILD PA PAC | 6/4/2018 | $25,000.00 |
| BUILD PA PAC | 7/25/2018 | $25,000.00 |
| BUILD PA PAC | 10/17/2018 | $10,000.00 |
| HOUSE REP CAMPAIGN COM 2004, INC | 4/24/2018 | $5,000.00 |
| HOUSE REP CAMPAIGN COM 2004, INC | 5/1/2018 | $20,000.00 |
| HOUSE REP CAMPAIGN COM 2004, INC | 7/20/2018 | $10,000.00 |
| HOUSE REP CAMPAIGN COM 2004, INC | 9/18/2018 | $10,000.00 |
| HOUSE REP CAMPAIGN COM 2004, INC | 10/26/2018 | $25,000.00 |
| SAYLOR, STAN CITIZENS FOR | 5/29/2018 | $5,000.00 |
| BUILD PA PAC | 3/29/2019 | $2,000.00 |
| CUTLER, BRYAN FRIENDS OF | 4/3/2019 | $1,000.00 |
| CUTLER, BRYAN FRIENDS OF | 5/28/2019 | $10,000.00 |
| $478,477.91 |
Mansion of embattled Palm Beach developer sells for $30M (Photos)
By Brian Bandell – Senior Reporter, South Florida Business Journal Jul 15, 2019, 12:31pm EDT Updated Jul 15, 2019, 12:44pm EDT
Philadelphia businessman Vahan H. Gureghian paid $30.275 million for the Palm Beach mansion that belonged to embattled Palm Beach developer Robert V. Matthews. Singer Island Tower Suite LLC, part of DB Private Wealth Mortgage, sold the nearly 16,000-square-foot home at 101 Casa Bendita to Gureghian. The lender seized the home in April under orders of U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Matthew’s personal Chapter 11 filing. DB Private Wealth Mortgage, part of Deutsche Bank, had a $27.4 million loan on the property. The bank provided a $25.67 million mortgage to Gureghian to help him buy the property. Matthews built the oceanfront home on the 0.88-acre site in 2006. The mansion has six bedrooms, eight bathrooms, two half bathrooms and a pool. Gureghian, the founder and CEO of CSMI, which invests in the charter school industry, can immediately occupy the home.
“The decision means staff and parents at the state’s largest bricks-and-mortar charter – already slated to receive more than $55 million in taxpayer funds this school year – won’t have to worry about its fate for nearly a decade, even if its test scores continue to fall far short of state benchmarks. It also guarantees that CSMI LLC, a for-profit education management company that operates the K-8 school with 4,200 students, will receive millions of dollars in revenue for nine more years. Chester Community’s extension comes as school districts across the commonwealth and nation are wrestling with the growth of charter schools, more privatization in education and the impact on traditional public schools. It also renews lingering questions about the intersection of politics, government and schools.
Reprise Dec. 2017: How Chester Community Charter School got a 9-year deal
Inquirer by Martha Woodall, Posted: December 22, 2017
For years, charter school proponents have been trying to change Pennsylvania law so that operating agreement renewals could be extended from five years to 10. They haven’t succeeded in Harrisburg. But that didn’t deter Chester Community Charter School. One year into Chester Community’s latest five-year agreement, Peter R. Barsz, the court-appointed receiver who oversees the financially distressed Chester Upland School District and wields nearly all the powers of a school board, took the unprecedented step of extending the Delaware County school’s term for five more years to 2026. Barsz contends that the move was designed to protect Chester High School: In return, Chester Community, which already enrolls about 70 percent of the primary grade students in the struggling district, agreed not to open a high school.
“The Pennsylvania Department of Education is questioning the Chester Upland School District’s decision to renew its operating agreement with the state’s largest brick-and-mortar charter school through 2026 while the school was just one year into its current five-year term.”
Reprise April 2018: Judge, state question quick renewal for Chester charter school
Inquirer by Maddie Hanna, Posted: April 20, 2018
The Pennsylvania Department of Education is questioning the Chester Upland School District’s decision to renew its operating agreement with the state’s largest brick-and-mortar charter school through 2026 while the school was just one year into its current five-year term. “If charters are going to be renewed right out of the chute, … they’ve already been approved before they’ve even performed,” said James Flandreau, a lawyer for the department, at hearings this week ordered by a Delaware County Court judge. “Certainly, one year is way too early to evaluate any charter’s performance.” Kevin Kent, a lawyer for Chester Community Charter School, said the court-appointed receiver and school district could reevaluate the charter school at any point. “Nothing’s been compromised,” he said. Peter Barsz, the receiver for the financially distressed district, testified on Thursday that he had reviewed audits and school performance records and had support from the district’s school board before approving the renewal request last year that allowed the charter school to operate through 2026.
Three years ago, the Pennsylvania Auditor General Eugene DePasquale declared that the state’s charter law was the worst in the nation. The scandals and frauds were frequent, and many public school districts teetered on the brink of bankruptcy. But Republican Governor Tom Corbett and the Republican Legislature had no interest in reforming the charter law. A major charter owner was the single biggest contributor to Corbett’s re-election campaign and leader of his education transition team.
Democrat Josh Shapiro is now the state’s Attorney General, and the current Democratic Governor Tom Wolf announced that he intends to issue executive orders and propose legislation to reform the charter law to require accountability and transparency.
Unfortunately, the Legislature is still controlled by charter-friendly Republicans, who betray the families who elected them, whose children go to public schools.
Gov. Wolf announced a plan on Tuesday to improve financial accountability and academics among Pennsylvania’s charter schools, focusing on cyber charters and charter management companies, through executive actions and new legislation.
“Charter schools, like traditional public schools, should be high quality and they should be held accountable,” Wolf said. “But the laws currently don’t allow us to hold charter schools and their operators to the same standards as traditional public schools.”
Wolf called the state’s charter law “irresponsible” and “flawed.” He described the original intent of the law as “creating new and innovative educational opportunities” and said that some charter schools are doing this and doing it well.
“Unfortunately, this is not the case for all charter schools, especially among cyber charter schools,” he said.
On average, Pennsylvania charter schools have not improved student test scores in reading compared to public schools and have done worse in math, according to a study from Stanford University cited by Wolf. It also found that the academic situation was worse among the state’s cyber charters, which dramatically underperform compared to public schools.
The charter lobby was outraged! How dare the governor demand accountability! They think they should be unregulated and unaccountable. Their spokesperson said the governor’s efforts were nothing less than a “ blatant attack” on the charter industry. Never mind that the founder of the state’s biggest cyber charter is serving jail time for tax evasion on $8 million that were spent on personal luxuries. Never mind that the state’s cyber charters have never met academic standards.
Why reform failure and fraud?
Texas Public Radio describes Betsy Devos’s audacious plan to overwhelm San Antonio with charters created by two corporate chains: IDEA and KIPP.
Some of the new charters will open in middle-class areas with good public schools.
Apparently, DeVos just wants to torpedo public schools in a major Texas city.
Camille Phillips of TPR reports:
San Antonio’s largest charter school network is gearing up for a fast-paced expansion over the next three years. IDEA Public Schools plans to add 15 schools in Bexar County by 2022, doubling its local enrollment to nearly 24,000 students.
It is part of an ambitious larger plan by the Rio Grande Valley-based charter network plan to add 120 schools in Texas, Louisiana and Florida by 2024. IDEA has gotten a big boost to help make that plan happen: four federal grants in five years worth more than $211 million combined.
This year, the U.S. Department of Education awarded IDEA its largest grant yet: $117 million to expand classrooms and launch new charter schools.
“We cast a vision for our growth plan, and then it has to be paid for somehow. So this just gives us confidence that what we envision in terms of growth will actually become a reality,” IDEA regional director Rolando Posada said.
When Posada came to San Antonio seven years ago, he said he made it his goal to have an IDEA school less than 10 minutes away from every family.
“We realized that this was one of the biggest cities in the country with one of the biggest needs. And so my vision was to put a school everywhere on the map of the city of San Antonio,” he said….
Several of IDEA’s new schools will likely be located in the Northside school district, one of the region’s wealthier and higher performing districts.
Northside Superintendent Brian Woods said he finds it interesting that charter schools are no longer limiting themselves to areas where the traditional public schools are struggling.
“If you have an area that’s being served extremely well, why would you need to introduce a duplicative service?” Woods asked.
DeVos gave KIPP $88 million, and it too plans to expand its presence in Texas.
Mark Larson, chief external officer for KIPP Texas, said KIPP is creating a growth plan to determine where to expand next in the state, but “a sizeable chunk” of the $88 million awarded to the national KIPP Foundation is reserved for Texas.
“We have full intention to continue to grow and continue to grow in the San Antonio market,” Larson said.
DeVos gave $15 million to another charter network to open new schools in Texas.
One of our readers, who identifies herself as Chiara, recently explained why charters rely on federal funding to expand.
She says they know they would never be funded by popular vote as public schools are. The purpose of the federal funding is not only to help charter schools (like KIPP, funded by billionaires like the Waltons), but to bypass democracy.
She wrote:
“The second of 20 San Antonio IDEA Public School campuses is headed to the South Side and and is scheduled to open in fall 2019.
”The new campus — which has yet to be named — will be built on an eight-acre plot of land on the corner of South Flores Street and West Harding Boulevard.”
If IDEA had to go to the public and ask for facilities financing to build and operate each of 20 new public schools, the public would reject all or some of the new schools, because they would (rightfully) ask why they’re replicating a system they already have. There would be a long public debate on public investment. They would have to scale back plans or scrap them completely.
Charters know this, so they use federal and private financing. If they used local facilities funding they would have to get the consent of the public.
When ed reformers say they want local facilities funding remember that if they had local facilities funding the approval process would have to go thru the public, and the public would object to funding 20 new school buildings that replicate schools they already have. That would make it impossible to plunk down 20 new charter schools.
Clifford Wallace and Leigh Wallace, a father-daughter team of professional educators, lambaste state officials for their relentless attacks on the state’s public school teachers.
They begin:
Leadership matters. It has the potential to influence student outcomes. Clearly, there is a lack of leadership in Frankfort. Kentucky State Education Commissioner Wayne Lewis is taking pages from the flawed and unsuccessful playbooks of his neoliberal, pro-privatization counterparts in Louisiana, Indiana, Ohio, and Wisconsin. From no longer requiring master’s degrees for teachers to maintain certification to promoting privatized for profit “charter schools” as the panacea to save the “failing public schools” – our “commissioner” is helping dismantle our public schools – and the teaching profession – in Kentucky.
Lewis continues to disparage professionally prepared – and experienced – educators through diminishing the significance of the complex work they do on a daily basis, insulting their commitment and expertise, threatening their pensions, and cutting programs and budgets. Recently, in addition to painting a negative narrative around our public schools and the professionals that work in them, he proposed a “pay for performance” incentive for Kentucky Public School teachers as a means to motivate them to “work harder” and ensure every student has access to a “quality public school.” While this may sound promising on the surface – especially if you have not read the numerous studies conducted by scholars on this practice over the past 30+ years – it is a failed solution.
A judge in Arkansas rejected the effort by Walmart (owned by the richest family in the nation, the Waltons) reduce their property taxes.
Max Brantley of the Arkansas Times writes:
County Judge Barry Hyde, sitting as the county court in considering appeals of appraisals of property for tax purposes, held that Walmart had failed to meet the burden of proof to reduce the assessor’s valuation of the property, and thus its tax bill in the county by about $4.5 million. The reduction would mostly be felt by public school districts, but city and county governments, libraries and Arkansas Children’s Hospital as well.
Walmart is attempting this theory all across the country. Its “dark store” theory is that its stores, even though currently immensely profitable, would have far less value for any other purpose if vacant and have also been negatively affected by Internet competition.
This is an interesting theory. If my house were vacant, it would havelessvalue so I should have my property taxes reduced even if my house is not vacant.
Why does the Walton Family want to reduce their taxes? They increase their wealth by $4 million an hour!
Why do they think it just to cut public school funding and other public services solely to enrich them?
Taxes are the price we pay for civilization. Clearly the mega billionaire Walton Family believes that civilization is not necessary so long as they can find people to work for them at low wages and can hire an army to protect them.
A few years ago, billionaire Laurene Powell Jobs pledged $100 million to launch 10 super new innovative schools, which she dubbed XQ schools. Each would get $10 million to show their stuff. She surrounded herself with veterans of the failed Race to the Top, like Arne Duncan and Russlyn Ali. What could possibly go wrong?
I reported last week that two of the 10 had failed.
The XQ school in Somerville, Massachusetts, was rejected when town officials realized that the cost of running a new school for 160 students would cause budget cuts to existing schools.
Leonie Haimson pointed out that a third had failed, in Oakland.
More on the Somerville story here (not behind any paywall): https://hechingerreport.org/anatomy-of-a-failure-how-an-xq-super-school-flopped/The XQ Institute also awarded $10M to start a Summit Learning HS in Oakland that never opened. https://www.sfgate.com/education/article/Backers-abandon-10-million-Super-School-project-11176992.phpThat means 3/10 of the awardees of their Super School prize have already failed. https://www.edsurge.com/news/2016-09-14-xq-institute-announces-ten-winners-of-super-schools-competition.
Stay tuned.
Bloomberg BusinessWeek posts this story about the rapidly escalating wealth divide: The Walton Family is the richest in the world. Its wealth grows by $4 million every hour of every day.
Twenty-five families in the world control $1.4 trillion.
In the magazine’s annual ranking of the world’s richest families, the Waltons are #1.
The numbers are mind-boggling: $70,000 per minute, $4 million per hour, $100 million per day.
That’s how quickly the fortune of the Waltons, the clan behind Walmart Inc., has been growing since last year’s Bloomberg ranking of the world’s richest families.
At that rate, their wealth would’ve expanded about $23,000 since you began reading this. A new Walmart associate in the U.S. would’ve made about 6 cents in that time, on the way to an $11 hourly minimum.
Even in this era of extreme wealth and brutal inequality, the contrast is jarring. The heirs of Sam Walton, Walmart’s notoriously frugal founder, are amassing wealth on a near-unprecedented scale — and they’re hardly alone.
The Walton fortune has swelled by $39 billion, to $191 billion, since topping the June 2018 ranking of the world’s richest families.
As educators know, the Waltons use a small part of their vast fortune to undermine public education and replace public schools with privately managed charter schools.
The least you can do is to avoid Walmart. Boycott Walmart. It may only cost them a few pennies, but do it.
In addition to their nefarious role as the single biggest founder of charters in the U.S., they are the biggest retailer of guns. Just another reason to boycott Walmart.
FYI, the founder of Walmart—Sam Walton—was a graduate of public schools. He graduated from David H. Hickman High School in Columbia, Missouri.
