Far-right groups sent $11 million to try to crush labor unions in California.
No surprise there. Need to know more about real donors.
Too many billionaires in this country trying to silence voices of working people, especially teachers.
Archives for category: California
I keep seeing articles about elections influenced by out-of-state and out-of-district contributions.
Sometimes, as in Los Altos, California, and in New Orleans, the elections are for local school board.
Sometimes, as in Louisiana, the election is for state school board.
Sometimes, as in Indiana and Idaho, the election is for state superintendent.
Sometimes, the election is a ballot initiative, as in Georgia, which is voting on whether to give the Governor the authority to create a commission to authorize charter schools even if the local school board objects; and in Washington State, where a referendum would create one of the nation’s most expansive charter laws; or in Michigan, where money is pouring in to oppose an initiative to make collective bargaining a right.
In school district after school district, state after state, PAC money is being bundled to promote candidates and issues with the same agenda: anti-union, anti-teacher, anti-public education, pro-privatization.
Some of the names are familiar: Bill Gates (in Washington), Michael Bloomberg (in Louisiana), Alice Walton (in Georgia and Washington), Joel Klein (in New Orleans), the DeVos family (American Federation for Children) in Michigan, Eli Broad (in Louisiana), Michelle Rhee’s StudentsFirst (in Michigan and in many districts). Much of the spending is targeted by Democrats for EducationReform (DFER), the Wall Street hedge fund managers group.
This cannot be sheer coincidence. In most places, the amount of money coming from outside is unprecedented. In Louisiana, the spending on a state board race was a multiple of 12 times what was previously spent.
To the naked eye, this seems to be a concerted effort to orchestrate a privatization of public education.
Big money undermining local control, democracy, and public education.
If you live in one of the battleground states, I urge you to vote to re-elect President Obama.
Though many of us oppose his Race to the Top, please vote for him for other reasons.
We can’t allow a reactionary, backward-looking Republican Party to take charge of this nation’s future. We can’t allow a rightwing administration to shape the Supreme Court.
I urge you to vote for President Obama. Once he is re-elected, we will continue to pressure him to strengthen our nation’s essential public education system. He might hear us. Romney won’t.
If you live in Washington State, vote NO on 1240 and show the billionaires that you won’t let them start the process of privatization.
If you live in Georgia, vote against the ALEC initiative and preserve local control.
If you live in Bridgeport, Connecticut, vote against the Mayor’s attempt to take away your right to elect the school board.
If you live in Los Angeles, vote for Robert Skeels for LAUSD school board.
If you live in Ohio, vote for Maureen Reedy for the legislature.
If you live in Minneapolis, vote for Patty Wycoff for school board.
If you live in Idaho, vote NO on Props 1, 2, 3: Repeal the Luna laws.
If you live in New Jersey, vote for Marie Corfield.
If you are in Perth Amboy, NJ, vote the “New Visions” slate: Nina Perkins Nieves, Benny Salerno, Jeanette Gonzalez and Maria Garcia for Board of Education.
If you live in Pennsylvania, vote for Richard Flarend.
If you live in California, vote yes on 30 to support public education and no on 32, meant to hobble unions.
Wherever you are, support the candidates who believe in democratically controlled public schools.
Wherever you live, oppose privatization and diversion of public funds to private hands.
Strengthen our democracy by supporting public education.
Support the schools whose doors are open to all.
Support the candidates who will fight for equality of educational opportunity.
In an important decision, a California judge ordered a group called “Americans for Responsible Leadership” to release the names of its donors.
The Arizona-based group has poured $11 million into two California ballot issues.
The group is pushing voters in California to defeat a tax increase that would benefit the schools of California.
The other issue would curb the influence of unions.
Let’s see if they comply before the election.
It will be interesting to learn where all that money is coming from to gut the funding of public education and the activities of unions.
This kind of information should have been available long before the election so voters were aware of who was paying to influence their decisions.
School board elections in Oakland, California, are usually low-budget races, as they are in most places.
But this year, a PAC has amassed $185,000 to elect its slate of candidates. The California Charter School Association put up $49,995 and two wealthy individuals added nearly $100,000 more for the slate.
Also on the ballot is a $475 million bond issue. If it passes, the board will determine how it is spent.
Critics worry that the slate will favor charters and a privatization agenda. The head of the PAC says the thought never crossed her mind.
A retired educator in Los Angeles writes:
Los Angeles is the only city in the big 3(New York, Los Angeles, and Chicago) that is not run by a mayor. It almost happened and is still a threat. Several years ago, when Mayor Villaraigosa did not get control of the schools, he threw money and support behind friendly board member candidates. This has been a disaster for Los Angeles children. One of the mayor’s favorites, Yolie Flores Aguilar, presented a plan to put LAUSD schools out to bid. This lead to disruption and more privatization. As a result, funding for traditional schools has been severely cut back with thousands of teachers laid off including librarians and nurses.
Robert Skeels has been a tireless advocate for all the children in LAUSD and if elected, would unseat Monica Garcia, one of the mayor’s favorites. This would end years of gridlock and political cronyism. It is even more important now because the candidates running for mayor next year have not shown independence from Villaraigosa’s failed policies, even though mayoral control in New York and Chicago has been an unmitigated disaster for the educational system in both these cities.
As an example, our mayor successfully pedaled the “Parent Trigger” law at a meeting of mayors from across the country even though the Parent Trigger has NEVER been implemented. It failed miserably in Compton, CA and now, in Adelanto, CA, a recent parent vote to pick a charter under California’s Parent Empowerment Act attracted only 53 voters, even though the school itself serves close to 700 students. And they call this Parent Empowerment?
Robert Skeels has revealed the true nature of the Parent Trigger whose two attempts in California were backed by Parent Revolution, which in turn is backed by the top school privatizers in this country. The tide is turning, with more and more members of the public realizing that there are hidden agendas within the privatization of our public schools. We need more potential board members, like Robert, to come forward and turn the tide all across the country to wrench control out of the hands of those whose only interest is to financially profit off of our public school children.
Two California teachers have created a rap video to exhort peope to vote “yes” on Proposition 30, which raises taxes on incomes over $250,000 to fund education, and to vote “no” on Proposition 32, which is intended to take away automatic contributions by members to their unions, a longtime goal of anti-union activists.
The video describes the “pre-school to prison pipeline.”
Pay now or pay later.
This is becoming an increasingly familiar–and alarming –story. Charter advocates are pouring large amounts of money–more than $200,000–into local school board races, in districts where few are residents. They are targeting candidates who dare to question the expansion of charters.
In Santa Clara County, incumbent Anna Song is under attack by the charter lobby, which is throwing large sums into a campaign to defeat her.
The article in the Mercury News says:
The most aggressive campaign appears to be aimed at Anna Song, who is running for her fourth term on the county Board of Education.
The Santa Clara County Schools Political Action Committee has raised nearly $200,000 from Jan. 1 through Oct. 20, and financed auto-dial calls plus four mailers slamming Song and three supporting her challenger, trustee David Neighbors.
“It’s an outrageous amount of money to take out one school board member,” said Song, who’s running for a seat that represents areas served by the Santa Clara, Milpitas and the Berryessa school districts.
Neighbors, who has benefited from $76,000 worth of PAC mailers and auto-calls for his candidacy and against Song, said about the PAC, “I don’t know much about it.”
Created at the suggestion of the California Charter Schools Association, the PAC is run by Santa Clara County political consultants Jay Rosenthal and Jude Barry.
Through Oct. 20, Neighbors raised $23,539.
The articles goes on to note that this PAC spending dwarfs the usual spending on local school board races:
The PAC is also sending mailers to re-elect Grace Mah, who’s running for the county school board to represent areas within the Palo Alto, Mountain View, Los Altos and Sunnyvale school districts. Her opponent, Dave Cortright, is an outspoken opponent of Bullis Charter School in Los Altos.
The PAC dwarfs spending in county school board elections, where serious candidates typically have spent closer to $30,000. “What they’re doing could be very significant,” said Terry Christensen, professor emeritus at San Jose State and a specialist in state and local politics. Because so little is typically spent in a county school board race he said, “it wouldn’t take much to have an influence.”
Among the big donations to the PACs are $75,000 from the California Charter Schools Association Advocates; $50,000 from Netflix CEO Reed Hastings; $50,000 from Gap heir John J. Fisher; $40,000 from Emerson Collective, the nonprofit run by Steve Jobs’ widow Laurene Powell Jobs; and $10,000 from Rocketship charter schools board member Timothy Ranzetta.
Song had the audacity to vote against opening 20 Rocketship charters in her district, which would drain students and funding from the public schools. This is Rocketship’s answer: go along or get out of the way.
Cortright, who has raised $1,000, dared to oppose the Bullis charter school in Los Altos, which is known as the publicly funded private school for the children of the super-rich.
Jonathan Raymond, superintendent of the Sacramento City school district, has some lessons for New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman.
Friedman recently raved about the success of Race to the Top, claiming that it was preparing students for the high-skill jobs of the new economy.
Raymond says this is wrong. Race to the Top is divisive and subjects schools to derision.
It is top-down, heavy-handed and undermines the collaboration needed to make genuine improvement.
States that promise to comply with Duncan’s heavy handed mandates are “winners” while those making progress without Duncan’s script are losers.
He adds:
Meanwhile, school districts that are making real, tangible strides to increase student learning are left behind in this “race.” In Sacramento City Unified, we are turning around seven low-performing schools (called Priority Schools) through research-proven strategies for raising student achievement. Six of the seven schools have shown dramatic increases in student achievement and dramatic improvements in school culture and climate. These strategies include relevant professional development for principals and teachers; collaborative teacher planning time; data analysis and inquiry; and building strong family and community engagement. With federal funding, we could take this pilot program to scale statewide. California districts could build on each other’s successes and the gains of districts across the country. This is exactly what federal dollars should be spent on.
Yet Race to the Top’s scripted approach effectively discounts these reforms because they do not fit into the neat categories created by the prescriptive program. Moreover, forcing school districts to compete for badly needed resources is like offering a starving man food but only if he agrees to whatever strings may be attached. This is certainly the choice that school districts like ours face in California.
Experienced journalist Tom Toch visited a Rocketship charter school in San Jose, California, and came away impressed.
What impressed him most, however, was not the ubiquitous computer instruction, but the intensity of the human interactions.
He took away a lesson about the importance of parent involvement and support, as well as the intense engagement of teachers.
Conservative commentators see the Rocketship model as a way to reduce the number of teachers and to break the hold of teachers’ unions.
Toch is not so sure.
Rocketship charters are now expanding rapidly into other markets outside California.
What do you think?
Diane Ravitch's blog 