Cathy Frye continues her revelations about her three years working as communications director for a Walton-funded organization deceptively named the Arkansas Public Schools Resource Center (APSRC). As is by now universally known, the Walton family supports charters and vouchers, not public schools. As is less well known, privatizers create organizations with misleading names to fool the suckers. As she explained in part 1, 85% of the rural public school districts in the state of Arkansas pay good money to belong to an organization that does not serve their interests.
She writes:
APSRC uses Constant Contact to email its members. Recipients are divided into various groupings. Some emails are sent only to open-enrollment charter schools. Others only to traditional districts. And still others to anyone and everyone.
This is where things get dicey.
You see, APSRC Executive Director Scott Smith is but one of three Arkansas Walton stepchildren vying for the attention of wealthy absentee parents.
You’ve got Smith representing APSRC, which purports to represent and serve both traditional public school districts and open-enrollment charters.
Next up is Gary Newton of Arkansas Learns, who happens to be the nephew of Arkansas State Board of Education Chairman Diane Zook.
And then we have The Reform Alliance, which currently uses a voucher program to “help” special-education students, foster kids, etc… attend private schools – many of which are faith-based – and to give up any rights they have under the IDEA Act. (Individuals with Disabilities Education Act)
All three organizations lobby state lawmakers on behalf of the Waltons. All three are at all times pursuing often contradictory/opposing passages of legislation. All three are always, always at odds with one another.
The 2017 General Assembly proved to be a challenge for me. If I wrote about private-school-voucher bills, Smith fretted. I found that interesting. I mean, if APSRC truly represents and supports public schools, you’d think he would be right up front testifying before lawmakers with other membership organizations – the Arkansas Association of Educational Administrators, for example. Or maybe the Arkansas School Board Association.
And you would think that I would be able to freely report on such bills, testimony and reactions.
Nope. Because – horrors! – I might offend Arkansas Learns and/or The Reform Alliance. In other words, I might have angered the generous benefactor of all three competing nonprofits – the Walton Family Foundation.
Three “competing” organizations all serving one master: the Waltons.
Then she discovered a curious fact. The Waltons were funneling their money to the APSRC through a university.
It was around that time (2017) when I started to question why Southern Arkansas University had been deemed the public entity that would provide APSRC with HR services. SAU also kept track of our leave time and managed our benefits and retirement plans.
I would later learn that the SAU Foundation is the recipient of Walton grant funds intended for APSRC. SAU is charged with disseminating the money and administering HR services for APSRC staff.
When I started working for APSRC, I was given the same (presumably) packet handed to new university employees.
So why funnel funding through state university foundations? Remember, from 2008 until 2012, the University of Central Arkansas served as APSRC’s Walton-funding dispensary.
Why so devious? Why so much obfuscation?
My hunch is that the Waltons know that what they are selling would be rejected by the public if it had honest labeling. The Waltons really don’t understand that most people like their public schools and don’t want to go to a privately-run charter where they have no voice or to a religious school, and they don’t want to split up their community into competing factions. They want to cheer for the same basketball team and have a senior class that represents the whole community, not a bunch of little schools that open and close on a whim.
I am looking forward to more insider reports from Cathy Frye.