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EXPOSE: Hedge Clippers Expose Billionaires’ Attempt to Buy Control of Los Angeles Public Schools

By dianeravitch
May 9, 2017 //
7

Hedge Clippers, a group of political activists who work to reveal the unprincipled use of hedge fund money to influence politics and education, have posted the names of the billionaires (and millionaires) who have sunk large sums into the Los Angeles school board race in hopes of electing their favorites, Nick Melvoin and Kelly Fitzpatrick-Gonez.

Many of their financial backers are major Republican donors and allies of Trump and DeVos.

The California Charter School Association (CCSA), directly and through its network of entities, has been the biggest spender in the 2017 election for Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD) school board members to represent Districts 4 and 6, having spent over $4 million to-date. Nearly all of CCSA’s political campaign funding comes from millionaires and billionaires. Out-of-town billionaires make up the bulk of this funding.

Between July 2016 – December 2016, out-of-town billionaires like Doris Fisher, Co-Founder of The Gap, Alice Walton, heiress to the WalMart fortune, and Michael Bloomberg, New York financier and former Mayor, all made big political contributions to the California Charter School Association Advocates (CCSAA) Independent Expenditure Committee.

The combined net worth of these three out-of-town billionaires is $125.5 BILLION. Doris Fisher lives in San Francisco, Alice Walton lives in Bentonville, Arkansas and Michael Bloomberg lives in New York City.

Additionally, numerous contributors to the CCSAA political fund are Trump supporters, a position that puts them out-of-sync with the majority of Los Angeles voters.

Alice Walton and the WalMart family, for example, donated to the Super PAC that worked to elect Trump, donated to Mike Pence, Jeff Sessions, and to the Alliance for School Choice, an organization that Trump’s Education Secretary Betsy DeVos helped to lead. Richard Riordan, who gave $1 milion to CCSAA to then launch an independent expenditure committee working to elect Melvoin and Gonez, is a Trump supporter and donor. [i] Many other CCSAA donors are as well.

CCSA has poured money into these school board races directly through its Independent Expenditure Committee, [ii] and has also acting as a pass through for three other independent expenditure committees that are involved in the race.

CCSAA sponsors and funds[iii] the deceptively named Parent Teacher Alliance (PTA), also a big electoral spender.

The PTA, CCSAA helps fund[iv] the Students for Education Reform (SFER) Action Network, which also spent money on this election.

LA Students for Change Opposing Steve Zimmer for School Board 2017 is funded by a $1,000,000 donation[v] from former LA Mayor Richard Riordan that was received through CCSAA

According to available filings,[vi] CCSAA and the groups it funds have provided almost all the independent electoral spending on behalf of Nick Melvoin and Kelly Gonez in the hotly contested District 4 and 6 races.

To see the footnotes and the specific contributions attributed to donors, as well as their political affiliations, read the link.

It is shocking to see the combination of rightwing Republicans and Democrats-in-name-only who have gathered behind Melvoin solely to advance the cause of privatizing public school students and funding.

The only way to stop them is to be informed, inform your friends and neighbors, and if you live in the contested districts in Los Angeles, get out and vote for Steve Zimmer and Imelda Padilla. Bring your friends and neighbors out to vote. Stop the hijacking of the LAUSD.

Categories Billionaires, Charter Schools, Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, Los Angeles, Privatization

California: How the Charter School Association Bought Power and Democrats with $$$

By dianeravitch
May 7, 2017 //
57

Ten percent of the children in California attend privately-managed charter schools. But that small number of students has the most powerful and richest lobby in the state, funded by billionaires.

The overwhelming majority of charters are non-union, which appeals to the Walton family, the richest family in America, with a net worth of $130 billion or more, produced by their non-union Walmart stores. It appeals to billionaire Eli Broad, who never saw a charter he didn’t like. It appeals to billionaire NETFLIX founder Reed Hastings, who wants to eliminate the nation’s school boards.

The charter lobby gives large sums to individual candidates, both Democrats and Republicans. Their major adversary, the California Teachers Association, spends most of its lobbying money on issues, not individual candidates. When there is more funding, both charter schools and public schools benefit.

The charter lobby uses its influence to increase its power and its numbers. It wants more: more money, more schools, more students. It wants less accountability, less regulation, less transparency, and less oversight.

In the past, the charter lobby relied on Republicans to sponsor its bills. Because of its spending, it now has Democrats on board too.

“Though the union gave nearly $29.5 million in political contributions in 2015 and 2016, most of it supported measures on the November 2016 ballot, and only $4.3 million of that went toward candidates and other committees. Conversely, the charter association spent more than $17 million in those years to help finance the campaigns of 137 local and state candidates, plus an additional $340,000 on various local and state measures.

“The teachers union instead focused most of its financial fire power on ballot initiatives, having spent roughly $21 million in 2015 and 2016 to support Proposition 55 – the successful measure that sustained past increases on income taxes to raise funds for schools – and an additional $1.7 million in 2016 on Proposition 58, which largely overrode restrictions on bilingual education in public schools.

“The charter school association committed just $4,678 to Proposition 55’s passing in 2016, state records indicate. Charter schools are also major beneficiaries of the revenues generated by Prop. 55’s passage…

“And while in past years the association partnered with Republicans to craft legislation, this year’s slate of sponsored bills was drafted entirely by Democrats. “That’s a big change for us,” Rand Martin, a lobbyist for the charter school association, told the March conference.”

Categories Accountability, Billionaires, California, Charter Schools, Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, Privatization

Sen. Bernie Sanders Endorses Steve Zimmer and Imelda Padilla for L.A. School Board!!

By dianeravitch
May 7, 2017 //
17

Senator Bernie Sanders endorsed Steve Zimmer and Imelda Padilla for the Los Angeles school board. The election will be held May 16.

““Billionaires should not make a profit off of public school children. That’s why I’m supporting Steve Zimmer and Imelda Padilla for the Los Angeles School Board. They will fight against the Trump/DeVos agenda to destabilize and undermine public schools,” said Sen. Bernie Sanders in a statement.”

Zimmer’s opponent Nick Melvoin is supported by billionaires who hope to privatize public schools in Los Angeles.

Zimmer is committed to fighting the Trump-DeVos agenda of charters and vouchers. His opponent is not.

I recommend that citizens of Los Angeles vote for Zimmer and Padilla. They will fight for public schools and the common good.

The Network for Public Education has endorsed both Zimmer and Padilla.

Send a message to Donald Trump and Betsy DeVos! No privatization! No corporate control! No vouchers! The public schools belong to the people, not the billionaires!

Categories Betsy DeVos, Billionaires, California, Charter Schools, Corporate Reform, Education Industry, Los Angeles, Privatization

Can Schools Cure Poverty?

By dianeravitch
May 4, 2017 //
29

Jennifer Berkshire posted this interview with economist Harvey Kantor in response to a column in the New York Times by David Leonhardt suggesting that schools were the best way to address poverty.

Leonhardt wrote that education “is the most powerful force for accelerating economic growth, reducing poverty and lifting middle-class living standards.” He then goes on to argue that vouchers don’t work, but charters do. This runs contrary to Roland Fryer and Will Dobbie’s study of charters in Texas, where they found that attendance in charter schools had no effect on future earnings.

What Kantor has to say is crucial in this discussion.

Kantor says what I have come to believe is bedrock truth. Poverty should be addressed by reducing poverty. No matter how high the standards, no matter how many tests, no matter how swell the curriculum is, those are not cures for homelessness, joblessness, and lack of access to decent medical care. This realization explains why I changed my mind about the best way to reform schools. It is not by turning schools over to the free market but by seeing them as part of a web of social supports for families and children.

Here is part of a fascinating discussion:

One of the consequences of making education so central to social policy has been that we’ve ended up taking the pressure off of the state for the kinds of policies that would be more effective at addressing poverty and economic inequality. Instead we’re asking education to do things it can’t possibly do. The result has been increasing support for the kinds of market-oriented policies that make inequality worse.

If we really want to address issues of inequality and economic insecurity, there are a lot of other policies that we have to pursue besides or at least in addition to education policies, and that part of the debate has been totally lost. Raising the minimum wage, or providing a guaranteed income, which the last time we talked seriously about that was in the late 1960’s, increasing workers’ bargaining power, making tax policies more progressive—things like that are going to be much more effective at addressing inequality and economic security than education policies. That argument is often taken to mean, *schools can’t do anything unless we address poverty first.* But that’s not what we were trying to say.

Berkshire: But isn’t part of the attraction of today’s education reform movement, that it holds out the tantalizing possibility that we can correct the effects of poverty without having to do anything about, well, poverty?

Kantor: That’s right. What’s interesting about our our contemporary period is that we’re now saying schools can respond to problems of achievement and we don’t need to address any of these larger structural issues. When you think about these larger questions—what causes economic inequality? What causes economic insecurity? How are resources distributed? Who has access to what?—they’ve been put off to the side. We’re not doing anything to address these questions at all.

Please read the entire discussion. It is very important in understanding the attack on schools and the fruitlessness of corporate reform, which ignores the causes of poor student achievement.

It will help you understand why billionaires and right-wingers love corporate reform. It enables policymakers to forget about the necessity of social policy that affects the conditions in which many families live.

Categories Accountability, Betsy DeVos, Billionaires, Charter Schools, Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, Poverty, Privatization, School Choice, Vouchers

Washington State: Where Billionaires Get Richer, and Schools Get Shafted

By dianeravitch
April 17, 2017 //
31

This is an astonishing article about the battle for fair funding of public education in Washington State, where billionaires pay a lower tax rate than working stiffs. The article appeared almost two years ago, but it remains relevant today.

“Despite its image as the cutting-edge land of Microsoft, Boeing, Amazon, Starbucks, and many other corporate icons, the state ranks near last place nationally in education categories such as per-pupil funding, class size, and college attendance.”

A valiant lawyer, Thomas Ahearne, took on the case more than a decade ago and found Stephanie McCleary, a mother with two young children, who was willing to step up and be the public face of the struggle. The state’s courts have ruled in favor of McCleary, but the legislature has failed to raise taxes on the wealthiest or to come up with a plan to fund the schools equitably.

Bill Gates, the most famous billionaire in Washington State, has exerted his energy to push through charter schools, not to fund all schools better. As compared to tax reform, charter schools are a bargain.

“Washington has long cited a paucity of tax revenues for such failings. Yet, at the same time, it gives away more money in corporate tax breaks than any other state aside from New York, which has nearly three times the population. It is the result of what some call a “war between the states” to lure companies with treasury-draining giveaways — a trend so strong that this state’s governor likened it in an interview to corporate “extortion.” politicians would rather give corporate tax breaks than fund the schools in their district. They forget that good public schools attract corporate talent.

Here is a major reason that Washington state is not funding its schools: tax breaks for corporations that threaten to leave the state. Boeing threatened to leave, and the governor and legislature gave Boeing a deal in 2013 that “provided Boeing with $8.7 billion in tax breaks through 2040, the largest ever granted to any company by a state. The deal was meant to ensure that Boeing built its new 777X plane in Washington. In recent months, however, Boeing has transferred 3,500 jobs to other states and plans for at least 2,000 more to be moved, reviving concerns about the tax deal.”

Washington is a blue state with a Democratic Governor, Jay Inslee, but it must take care not to offend the billionaires.

“The billions for Boeing were given as the state struggled with the broader issue of tax inequities. Washington has the nation’s most unequal tax structure, according to a report by the nonpartisan Institute on Taxation & Economic Policy. The state’s poorest 20 percent of residents pay 16.8 percent of their income in state and local taxes, while the wealthiest 1 percent pays just 2.4 percent.

“We have the most regressive tax system in the United States by a long shot,” Inslee said. That “has exacerbated income inequality, [and] it has been much more difficult to find a source that would adequately fund education,,,.”

“The state’s agricultural, timber, and mining industries paid even less than high-tech – a combined $14.6 million. And the aerospace industry, which includes Boeing, paid $72 million in the Business and Occupation Tax.”

How can a state fund education when its richest industries pay meager taxes?

Almost three years ago, the state’s highest court fined the state $100,000 per day for every day it does not adopt an acceptable plan. The money is accruing in a bank account, and the state has failed to comply.

Meanwhile the billionaires of Washington state enjoy their low taxes, complaining about the public schools, and plugging for a handful of charter schools. This allows them to call themselves “reformers” while they profit from the underfunding of the state’s public schools.

Categories Billionaires, Charter Schools, Education Industry, Privatization, Washington State

Who is the Walton Family Foundation Funding?

By dianeravitch
April 13, 2017 //
42

It is very instructive to scan the long list of organizations that are funded by the Walton Family Foundation. Some will surprise you. Some will not. Here is what we know about this foundation. The Walton Family (beneficiaries of Walmart) is the richest family in America. There are many billionaires in the family. Like Betsy DeVos, they don’t like public education. They don’t like regulation. They love the free market. They don’t like unions. Individual family members have spent millions on political campaigns to support charters and vouchers. The Foundation also supports charters and school choice.

In 2015, the Walton Family Foundation spent $179 million on K-12 education grants. They are in the midst of a pledge to spend $1 billion to open more charters, and they have targeted certain cities for their beneficence (Atlanta, Boston, Camden, Denver, Houston, Indianapolis, Los Angeles, Memphis, New Orleans, New York, Oakland, San Antonio and Washington, D.C.) Their goal is to undermine public education by creating a competitive marketplace of choices. They and DeVos are on the same page.

I suggest you scan the list to see which organizations have their hand out for funding from one of the nation’s most anti-public school, anti-union, rightwing foundations.

Here are a few of their grantees:

Black Alliance for Education Options (BAEO), run by Howard Fuller to spread the gospel of school choice: $2.78 million

Brookings Institution (no doubt, to buy the annual report that grades cities on school choice): $242,000

California Charter Schools Association: $5 million

Center for American Progress (theoretically a “centrist Democratic” think tank): $500,000

Charter Fund, Inc. (never heard of this one): $14 million

Chiefs for Change (Jeb Bush’s group): $500,000

College Board (to push Common Core?): $225,000

Colorado League of Charter Schools: $1,050,000

Editorial Projects in Education (Education Week): $70,000

Education Reform Now: $4.2 million

Education Trust, Inc. (supposed a “left-leaning advocacy group”): $359,000

Education Writers Association: $175,000

Educators for Excellence (anti-union teachers, usually from TFA): $925,000

Families for Excellent Schools (hedge fund managers who lobby for charter schools in New York City and Massachusetts): $6.4 million

Foundation for Excellence in Education (Jeb Bush’s organization): $3 million

High Tech High Graduate School of Education (this one stumped me; how can a high school run a graduate school of education?): $780,000

KIPP Foundation: $6.9 million

Leadership for Education Equity Foundation (this is TFA’s political organization that trains TFA to run for office): $5 million

Massachusetts Charter Public School Association (this funding preceded the referendum where the citizens of Massachusetts voted “no mas” to new charters): $850,000

National Public Radio: $1.1 million

National Urban League: $300,000

Pahara Institute: $832,000

Parent Revolution: $500,000

Relay Graduate School of Education (that pseudo-grad school with no professors, just charter teachers): $1 million

Schools That Can Milwaukee (Tough luck, the Working Families Party just swept the school board): $1.6 million

StudentsFirst Institute: $2.8 million

Teach for America (to supply scabs): $8 million

The New York Times: $350,000

Thomas B. Fordham Institute: $700,000

Urban Institute (supposedly an independent think tank in D.C.): $350,000

To be fair, in another part of the grants report, called Special Projects, the Walton Family Foundation donated $112,404 to the Bentonville Public Schools and $25,000 to the Bentonville Public Schools Foundation, in the town where the Waltons are located. Compare that to the $179 million for charters and choice, and you get the picture of what matters most.

Categories Billionaires, Black Alliance for Educational Options, Charter Schools, Chiefs for Change, Common Core, Corporate Reform, Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, KIPP Charter Schools, Massachusetts, Media, Privatization, School Choice, StudentsFirst, Teach for America, Walton Foundation

Gayle Green: Corporate School Reform and the Cynical Manipulation of the English Language

By dianeravitch
April 11, 2017 //
22

Gayle Green is a professor of English at Scripps College. She is writing a book about the corporate reform in higher education.

In this article, she describes how corporate reformers have taken guidance from Orwell’s “1984” in their deliberate distortion of language to mask reality.

She writes:

“In this post-truth age that’s done away with facts, George Orwell’s 1984 has soared to the top of the charts. But in the world of public education, it’s been 1984 for quite some time. And we didn’t even need the clumsy apparatus of a totalitarian dictatorship to bring it about. All we needed was some slick PR and smiley corporate faces and a media ready to spit back the buzzwords they’d been fed – failing public schools, no excuses, accountability, choice, access for every child, closing the achievement gap – repeating them so often that they passed for truth.”

In the current dystopian world of public education, the new Secretary of Education is the leading enemy of the nation’s public schools.

DeVos should be no surprise. She is the culmination of nearly two decades of creeping privatization.

“But DeVos should come as no surprise: she is the culmination of the way things have long been headed. No Child Left Behind, signed into law in January 2002, brought to us by George W. Bush and the moneyed interests he represented, arrived in clouds of rhetoric about “access” and “civil rights.” It announced itself as “an act to close the achievement gap with accountability, choice, flexibility, so that no child is left behind.” But this was never about reform or access or leveling the playing field: it was about opening up public education as a market, siphoning off tax dollars to charters and for-profit vendors, shifting public funds from a system that had public oversight and control to private interests. Education was a rich, untapped market with billions of federal dollars there for the taking. Schools, panicked at having their survival based on standardized test scores, invested heavily in testing technology. Multinational testing corporations, publishing companies, ed-tech ventures rushed in with their wares: software for administering tests, test preps, pre-tests, post-tests, tests scoring, lesson plans, teaching modules, assessment devices; entire new industries sprang into being….

“It’s been quite a feat, transforming teachers, who were once our friends and allies, to the enemy. A real sleight of hand, getting the public to trust those altruistic billionaires over those greedy, opportunistic teachers. Trust a billionaire to have the public’s interest at heart – that spin worked so well it landed us with Trump. But in the world of 1984, two plus two equals five: “Not merely the validity of experience, but the very existence of external reality, was tacitly denied by [the Party’s] philosophy.”

Put kids in front of computers, increase screen time, increase class size – and call it personalized. Depersonalized might be a better word – or perhaps personalised, for Pearsons, the multibillion-dollar transnational corporation that’s siphoned off untold billions of federal money. When teachers protested that students from disadvantaged backgrounds tend not to test well, having not had the benefit of tutors and test-prep programs, GWB said they were making “excuses,” showing “the soft bigotry of low expectations.” Yet it’s painfully clear that using test scores to determine the survival of schools only further disadvantages the disadvantaged, and, far from leveling the playing field, tilts it even more. “No excuses” became a mantra of corporate reformers, an excuse for shutting down public schools and moving in with charters, an excuse to ignore poverty and blame teachers for conditions that make teaching impossible – conditions assured by inequities that billionaire reformers have themselves brought about.”

Hundreds of schools have been closed. Thousands of teachers drummed out of their profession. Philadelphia’s Rescue Plan devastated the public schools. Arne Duncan’s Renaissance 2010 came and went with more public schools closed, more children sent to privately managed charter schools. “Choice, choice, choice,” the corporate reformers say, but neglect to mention that the schools make the choices, not the families. The one choice that is off the table is the neighborhood school.

“The confounding of language at its most basic level reduces us to a state of civic catatonia: we can’t think about these issues, let alone discuss them or act against them, when they’ve been so obfuscated, when words have been so twisted.”

The deliberate distortion of language has enabled a corporate coup, the selling out of public education to billionaires and entrepreneurs.

This is an article you can send to your friends who want a short summary of one of the biggest scam of our lifetimes.

Categories Accountability, Betsy DeVos, Billionaires, Charter Schools, Corporate Reform, Corporate Reformers, Democracy, Education Industry, Fraud, Hoax, Privatization, School Choice, Testing

Fred LeBrun: Charters Schools Are “a Costly Distraction”

By dianeravitch
April 9, 2017 //
8

Fred LeBrun writes a column for the Albany Times-Union on politics. He is one of the most insightful journalists in the nation on the subject of education.

The New York state budget was late this year because of disagreement over a tax break for real estate developers, whether to raise the minimum age for criminal responsibility from 16 to 18, and how much money to throw to charter schools. The State Senate will vote on the budget deal tonight. The Republicans and Governor Cuomo are in love with the charter school lobby, despite the fact that charters in the state capitol of Albany–where the Legislature meets–have been a terrible disappointment. They can see the evidence before their eyes that charters open with grandiose promises and close without a whimper. That doesn’t matter.

LeBrun writes:

In the tentative budget deal announced Friday night, all three made it through. No great surprise there. Charters were enriched by about $50 million, according to the governor. Hardly enough to call it a budget deal breaker, though. Raise the Age will be done in steps, and that’s an excellent outcome. Kudos to the governor. Real estate moguls are smiling.

But what is amusing to consider is that two out of three issues, if you want to call them that, supposedly holding up budget passage have a commonality. Reviving the expired 421-a real estate development tax credit, which admittedly drives growth and affordable housing, is also an unabashed windfall to real estate developers, who themselves are among the most generous political donors to our governor and legislature. The political donors benefit directly from the legislation.

It’s not the charter schools I referenced above that hold the power, and certainly not the 122,000 or so young New Yorkers who attend them, predominantly in New York City. It’s the relative few billionaire hedge fund investors in charters looking for the return on their investment who would have the ability to hold up our budget until they get theirs. Because they in turn have become generous contributors to the governor and the Republican Senate. Again, the political donors benefit directly from the actions the governor and senators take on their behalf.

I can hear the charter crowd screaming that they are also public schools, because it says so in the legislation creating them. That’s a lot of hooey, as Albanians certainly well know. They are private schools masquerading as public schools. And until the day comes, if ever, that you the taxpayer vote on the boards running charters funded in your school district, and yearly vote where every dollar is to be spent, as happens across the state with real public schools, then charters are bogus public schools.

At its peak, Albany taxpayers, without representation on charter school boards or budgets, were shelling out $30 million a year on these bogus public schools. Yet please show me how the charter movement benefited public education in Albany appropriate to the extra money spent.

Charters are under the protection of certain politicians. Why is simple enough, and has not much to do with “ideological” considerations. Just follow the money.

In the last election cycle, according to New York State United Teachers, the state’s powerful teacher’s union, the governor and Senate majority received $4.5 million from the charter school-oriented political action committee, New Yorkers for a Balanced Albany, and more than $11 million since 2014. That’s private dollar contributions to politicians in exchange for directing taxpayer dollars their way.

And as investments go, you can’t beat it. New York taxpayers shell out $2 billion a year to these private charter school investors.

Republican Senate Majority Leader John Flanagan’s one-house revenue bill this year featured a half-billion dollars a year more for charters. Now, granted, there was no real expectation this bill would pass, but it does reveal intentions and a wish list. Flanagan wanted to reward charter contributors. So did the governor, whose “compromise” over charter funding was to throw an additional windfall at charters without lifting a tuition freeze that would lead to an even greater windfall. All of it is money that ought to be going to traditional, chronically underfunded public schools.

Enriching charters schools is not the direction a progressive state like New York should be following, no matter what new pressures in Washington suggest. The developing community school movement, a holistic approach to fighting under performing public schools primarily in impoverished urban districts, is a far more likely candidate. There’s only so much money for public education, and we as a state have to decide where we want to invest. Charters are nothing but an expensive distraction.

The last time state legislators got a pay raise was during Republican Gov. George Pataki’s first term. The raise was in exchange for welcoming charter schools to New York.

That was a black day that has haunted us since. What started as supposedly an “experiment,” that began as an annoyance, has graduated to a genuine irritation. Now charters are unquestionably imbedded across the country in our secondary education system and we have to learn to live with it. Do they have a place? Of course. But let those who want them pay for them, but not with my money.

Categories Accountability, Billionaires, Charter Schools, Funding, New York

The Network for Public Education Endorses Steve Zimmer for Re-Election in Los Angeles

By dianeravitch
March 31, 2017 //
9

The Network for Public Education enthusiastically endorses Steve Zimmer for Re-Election to the board of the public schools of Los Angeles.

In the primary, he received nearly half of all the votes, barely missing the majority he needed to avoid a run-off.

His opponent is funded by the Billionaire Boys Club. They are pouring millions into the race in an effort to gain control of the school board and enact Eli Broad’s nefarious plan to put half the children of Los Angeles into privately run charters.

Once again, the billionaires from across the nation are gathering to privatize public education.

Steve Zimmer is their number one target.

He needs your help. Volunteer if you can. Send money if you can.

If 100,000 of us from across the nation each sent him $25, it would make a huge difference. I just sent my second contribution to his campaign.

Categories Billionaires, Education Reform, Los Angeles

Network for Public Education Action Fund Endorses Steve Zimmer for Re-Election to LAUSD Board

By dianeravitch
March 29, 2017 //
10

The billionaires are circling the Los Angeles public schools again, trying to gain control of the school board so they can shift half the students into privately managed charter schools that are free to pick the students they want and kick out the ones they don’t want.

They have targeted Steve Zimmer, the current president of the Los Angeles Unified School District, as a barrier to their insidious plans.

The Network for Public Education Action Fund enthusiastically endorses Steve Zimmer for re-election. He came in first in the primaries with nearly 48% of the vote against several competitors. Now, he is running against the runner-up, who has been funded by the privatizers of the California Charter School Association.

If you live in District 4 in Los Angeles, please volunteer to help Steve. If you don’t, please send him a contribution so he can get his message out.

School board elections are notorious for low turnout. Help Steve reach parents and concerned citizens.

Stop the billionaire putsch!

Categories Billionaires, Charter Schools, Los Angeles, Networkfor Public Education Action Fund, NPE Action Fund
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