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Texas: Republicans Who Support Public Schools Win Big Victories

By dianeravitch
March 2, 2022 //
11

Pastors for Texas Children have worked with a bipartisan coalition to support public schools and stop privatization. Rural Republicans have been an important part of the coalition that has repeatedly stopped voucher legislation and slowed charters.

Big Night for Pro-Texas Public School Legislative Candidates

GOP Candidates Again Rebuke Extremist Insurgents Financed By Ultra-Right-Wing Billionaires

Candidates that support Texas public schools celebrated significant victories in the Republican primary last night. On the eve of Texas Independence Day, these incumbents declared their independence from the deep pockets of right-wing extremists that are trying to destroy your neighborhood schools. We congratulate those candidates: Stan Lambert, Ken King, David Spiller, Gary VanDeaver, Travis Clardy, Reggie Smith, Ernest Bailes, Giovanni Capriglione.

“Yesterday’s primary elections proved decisively, in the reelection of pro-public education incumbents, that Texans overwhelmingly support their neighborhood and community public schools – and oppose the privatization of them through vouchers and charters,” said Reverend Charles Foster Johnson, founder and Executive Director of Pastors for Children. “These House seats cannot be bought by a couple of right-wing billionaires, no matter how many millions they put up.”

Pastors For Children will continue the fight in the upcoming May runoffs and launch an unprecedented pro-public education campaign for the November General Election.

Pastors For Children stands firm for the belief that there is a moral obligation before God to educate every school kid in Texas. We are also strong proponents of Article 7 in the Texas Constitution, which mandates the State Legislature to support and maintain a free public school system. It is the only way for the Texas economy to continue to outpace the rest of the country.

Pastors For Children is a 501c4 that engages parents, teachers, and all Texans to fight for Texas neighborhood public schools through their votes in the ballot box.

PO Box 471155, Fort Worth, Texas, 76147

Categories Charter Schools, Democracy, Education Industry, Resistance, Separation of church and state, Support for public schools, Supporting public schools, Texas, Vouchers

Heather Cox Richardson on the Ukraine Conflict

By dianeravitch
March 2, 2022 //
50

Historian Heather Cox Richardson has interesting insights on the Russian invasion of Ukraine. The overwhelming resistance to Putin is remarkable, and Putin has turned to carpet-bombing cities and devastating civilian areas. Despite Russian efforts to convince the Russian public that the war “to liberate Ukraine from fascists” is going well, she points to the growing number of anti-war protests in Russia.

She writes:

In Ukraine, Russian troops escalated their bombing of cities, including Kyiv, Kharkiv, Odesa, and Mariupol, in what Ukraine president Volodymyr Zelensky called a campaign of terror to break the will of the Ukrainians. Tonight (in U.S. time), airborne troops assaulted Kharviv, which is a city of about 1.5 million, and a forty-mile-long convoy of tanks and trucks is within 17 miles of Kyiv, although a shortage of gas means they’ll move very slowly.

About 660,000 refugees have fled the country.

But the war is not going well for Putin, either, as international sanctions are devastating the Russian economy and the invasion is going far more slowly than he had apparently hoped. The ruble has plummeted in value, and the Kremlin is trying to stave off a crisis in the stock market by refusing to open it. Both Exxon and the shipping giant Maersk have announced they are joining BP in cutting ties to Russia, Apple has announced it will not sell products in Russia, and the Swiss-based company building Nord Stream 2 today said it was considering filing for insolvency.

Ukraine’s military claimed it today destroyed a large Russian military convoy of up to 800 vehicles, and Ukrainian authorities claim to have stopped a plot to assassinate Zelensky and to have executed the assassins. The death toll for Russian troops will further undermine Putin’s military push. Russians are leaving dead soldiers where they lie, likely to avoid the spectacle of body bags coming home. It appears at least some of the invaders had no idea they were going to Ukraine, and some have allegedly been knocking holes in their vehicles’ gas tanks to enable them to stay out of the fight. Morale is low.

Associated Press correspondent Francesca Ebel reports from Russia: “Life in Russia is deteriorating extremely rapidly. So many of my friends are packing up & leaving the country. Their cards are blocking. Huge lines for ATMs etc. Rumours that borders will close soon. ‘What have we done? How did we not stop him earlier?’ said a friend to me y[ester]day.” The Guardian’s Moscow correspondent, Andrew Roth, agreed. “Something has definitely shifted here in the last two days.”

According to the BBC, a local government body in Moscow’s Gagarinsky District called the war a “disaster” that is impoverishing the country, and demanded the withdrawal of troops from Ukraine. Another, similar, body said the invasion was “insane” and “unjustified” and warned, “Our economy is going to hell.”

Putin clearly did not expect the European Union, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), and the U.S. and other allies and partners around the world, including the United Kingdom, Canada, Japan, Korea, Australia, New Zealand, and others, to work together to stand against his aggression. Even traditionally neutral Switzerland is on board. The insistence of the U.S. on exposing Putin’s moves ahead of time, building a united opposition, and warning of false flag operations to justify an invasion meant that the anti-authoritarian world is working together now to stop the Russian advance. Today, Taiwan announced it sent more than 27 tons of medical supplies to Ukraine, claiming its own membership in the “democratic camp” in the international community.

This extraordinary international cooperation is a tribute to President Joe Biden, who has made defense of democracy at home and abroad the centerpiece of his presidency. Biden, Secretary of State Antony Blinken, and State Department officials have been calling, meeting, listening, and building alliances with allies since they took office, and by last Thanksgiving they were making a concerted push to bring the world together in anticipation of Putin’s aggression.

Their early warnings have rehabilitated the image of U.S. intelligence, badly damaged during the Trump years, when the president and his loyalists attacked U.S. intelligence and accepted the word of autocrats, including Putin.

It has also been a diplomatic triumph, but in his State of the Union address tonight, Biden quite correctly put it second to the “fearlessness,…courage,…and determination” of the Ukrainians who are resisting the Russian troops.

The rest of her post is about Biden’s State of the Union address. You will not be surprised to learn that the President was heckled by Congress members Marjorie Taylor Greene and Lauren Boebert. Boebert’s the gun-carrying Member of Congress from Colorado.

Categories Democracy, Freedom, International

Heather Cox Richardson: The War in Ukraine Has Changed the World

By dianeravitch
February 28, 2022 //
29

Heather Cox Richardson is an American historian who writes about current events from a deeply informed historical perspective. In today’s post, she reflects on how the Russian invasion of Ukraine has changed the world. I remembered, as I read it, that Trump asked for only one change in the 2016 Republican platform: the omission of a boilerplate pledge to send military aid to Ukraine if it was threatened. Those who noticed wondered if the change reflected Paul Manafort’s decade as a well-paid lobbyist for the pro-Russian president of Ukraine, Viktor Yanukovych. Manafort’s multimillion-dollar gig ended when a months-long popular protest persuaded Yanukovych to resign and flee to Moscow.

Richardson writes:

Southern novelist William Faulkner’s famous line saying “The past is never dead. It’s not even past,” is usually interpreted as a reflection on how the evils of our history continue to shape the present. But Faulkner also argued, equally accurately, that the past is “not even past” because what happens in the present changes the way we remember the past.

Russia’s attack on Ukraine and the defiant and heroic response of the people of Ukraine to that new invasion are changing the way we remember the past.

Less than a week ago, Russian president Vladimir Putin launched an assault on Ukraine, and with his large military force, rebuilt after the military’s poor showing in its 2008 invasion of Georgia, it seemed to most observers that such an attack would be quick and deadly. He seemed unstoppable. For all that his position at home has been weakening for a while now as a slow economy and the political opposition of people like Alexei Navalny have turned people against him, his global influence seemed to be growing. That he believed an attack on Ukraine would be quick and successful was clear today when a number of Russian state media outlets published an essay, obviously written before the invasion, announcing Russia’s victory in Ukraine, saying ominously that “Putin solved the Ukrainian question forever…. Ukraine has returned to Russia.”

But Ukrainians changed the story line. While the war is still underway and deadly, and while Russia continues to escalate its attacks, no matter what happens the world will never go back to where it was a week ago. Suddenly, autocracy, rather than democracy, appears to be on the ropes.

In that new story, countries are organizing against Putin’s aggression and the authoritarianism behind it. Leaders of the world’s major economies, including Japan, South Korea, Australia, and Singapore, though not China, are working together to deny Putin’s access to the world’s financial markets.

As countries work together, international sanctions appear to be having an effect: a Russian bank this morning offered to exchange rubles for dollars at a rate of 171:1. Before the announcement that Europe and the U.S. would target Russia’s central bank, the rate was 83:1. Monday morning, Moscow time, the ruble plunged 30%. As Russia’s economy descends into chaos, investors are jumping out: today BP, Russia’s largest foreign investor, announced it is abandoning its investment in the Russian oil company Rosneft and pulling out of the country, at a loss of what is estimated to be about $25 billion.

The European Union has suddenly taken on a large military role in the world, announcing it would supply fighter jets to Ukraine. Sweden, which is a member of the E.U., will also send military aid to Ukraine. And German chancellor Olaf Scholz announced that Germany, which has tended to underfund its military, would commit 100 billion euros, which is about $112.7 billion, to support its armed forces. The E.U. has also prohibited all Russian planes from its airspace, including Russian-chartered private jets.

Michael McFaul, a former U.S. ambassador to Russia, tweeted: “Russian elites fear Putin. But they no longer respect him. He has ruined their lives—damaged their fortunes, damaged the future of their kids, and may now have turned society away from them. They were living just fine until a week ago. Now, their lives will never be the same.”

Global power is different this week than last. Anti-authoritarian nations are pushing back on Russia and the techniques Putin has used to gain outsized influence. Today the E.U. banned media outlets operated by the Russian state. The White House and our allies also announced a new “transatlantic task force that will identify and freeze the assets of sanctioned individuals and companies—Russian officials and elites close to the Russian government, as well as their families, and their enablers.”

That word “enablers” seems an important one, for since 2016 there have been plenty of apologists for Putin here in the U.S. And yet now, with the weight of popular opinion shifting toward a defense of democracy, Republicans who previously cozied up to Putin are suddenly stating their support for Ukraine and trying to suggest that Putin has gotten out of line only because he sees Biden as weak. Under Trump, they say, Putin never would have invaded Ukraine, and they are praising Trump for providing aid to Ukraine in 2019.

They are hoping that their present support for Ukraine and democracy makes us forget their past support for Putin, even as former president Trump continues to call him “smart.” And yet, Republicans changed their party’s 2016 platform to favor Russia over Ukraine; accepted Trump’s abrupt withdrawal of U.S. troops from northern Syria in October 2019, giving Russia a strategic foothold in the Middle East; and looked the other way when Trump withheld $391 million to help Ukraine resist Russian invasion until newly elected Ukraine president Volodymyr Zelensky agreed to help rig the 2020 U.S. presidential election. (Trump did release the money after the story of the “perfect phone call” came out, but the U.S. Government Accountability Office, which investigated the withholding of funds, concluded that holding back the money at all was illegal.)

But rather than making us forget Republicans’ enabling of Putin’s expansion, the new story in which democracy has the upper hand might have the opposite effect. Now that people can clearly see exactly the man Republicans have supported, they will want to know why our leaders, who have taken an oath to our democratic Constitution, were willing to throw in their lot with a foreign autocrat. The answer to that question might well force us to rethink a lot of what we thought we knew about the last several years.

In today’s America, the past certainly is not past.

—

Categories Accountability, Biden, Democracy, International

Tennessee Charter Scandals: Tweets by Amy Frogge

By dianeravitch
February 24, 2022 //
6

Amy Frogge was elected twice to the Nashville Metro school board. She is a lawyer, a public school parent, and executive director of Pastors for Tennessee Children.

As a board member, Amy quickly learned about the big money behind charter schools, especially when she was outspent 5-1 when she ran for office. Tennessee received a grant of $500 million from Arne Duncan’s Race to the Top competition and spent $100 on its “Achievement School District.” The ASD gathered the state’s lowest scoring schools into a new district and handed them over to charter operators. The leader of the ASD promised that within five years, the schools at the bottom would be in the top quarter of schools across the state. The ASD was a complete failure. None of the lowest performing schools reached that goal and remained at the bottom.

Amy Frogge posted the following thread on Twitter about the charter scandals in Tennessee.

Tennessee is considering opening 100 new charter schools, removing ALL local control of charter approvals, and giving charter schools free access to public school buildings. Last week, I shared charters’ dismal performance rates. Now let’s consider 10 horror stories:

1. Memphis Academy of Health Sciences closed after 3 leaders were indicted for stealing $400k for personal use- for Vegas trips, a hot tub, NBA tickets, auto repair, etc. 750 students were displaced.

2. The Executive Director of Legacy Leadership Academy was charged w/2 counts of theft and 3 counts of forgery after the comptroller found she inflated amounts on phony invoices to steal $4595 from the school.

3. New Vision Academy in Nashville shut down after state and federal investigation into financial irregularities and failure to comply with federal laws re: EL students and special needs students. Its leaders- a husband/wife team- earned $563k per year to oversee a school serving only 150 students. New Vision also violated the fire code by cramming too many kids into classrooms.

4. Knowledge Academies in Nashville failed to pay teachers, used uncertified teachers, lost hundreds of thousands in an online phishing scheme, changed grades and transcripts, understaffed the school, forced poor kids to buy expensive uniforms, failed to properly serve. special needs and EL students, ran for-profit businesses out of the school, posted terrible academic results, and more. After $ went missing, its CEO/founder disappeared. Nashville shut it down and THE STATE FORCED IT BACK OPEN. It’s now operating w/a $7.9 million deficit.

5. Two KIPP charter schools in Memphis abruptly closed without notice or community discussion, displacing about 650 students.

6. Gateway University Charter School in Memphis shut down after it falsified grades, used uncertified teachers, gave credits for a geometry class that didn’t exist, and pulled children out of class to clean school bathrooms, classrooms, and hallways. (!)

7. Southwest Early Charter School in Memphis closed after using uncertified teachers, failing to serve special needs students, losing its partnership with a community college and having “no institutional control,”according to the district.

8. Rocketship in Nashville forced open a brand new ASD school, even though its school was in the bottom 3% of schools statewide. (The ASD is supposed to bring up low-performing schools, not open new ones.) This new school closed after only one month. Rocketship, based in CA, is amassing millions in TN tax dollars through substantial management fees, facilities fees and “growth” fees. It also accessed a nearly $8 million tax-free bond for facilities through a back room deal.

9. Drexel Preparatory Academy in Nashville closed after using unlicensed teachers, a carbon monoxide leak that impacted students, and ongoing poor performance.

10. Boys Preparatory Academy in Nashville shut down after only 2 years after district officials found flaws in its special education services, manipulation of enrollment data and “other troubling patterns.” – And this is just a sampling. THERE’S MORE.

Charter schools are unregulated, and there is essentially zero oversight into their use of public tax dollars. Meanwhile, only 5 TN charter schools (out of over 100) has a success rate over 20%, according to the state Report Card.

Wake up, Tennessee! It’s a scam.

Ask our senators to vote no on SB2168. Please contact: Sen. Akbari @SenAkbari; Sen. Mike Bell; Sen. Rusty Crowe @RustyCroweTN; Sen. Farrell Haile; Sen. Joey Hensley @joey_senator; Sen. Brian Kelsey @BrianKelsey; Sen. Jon Lundberg; Sen. Bill Powers; Sen. Dawn White @VoteDawn @MarkWhiteTN

BONUS: A friend reminded me of perhaps the most egregious charter scandal in Nashville- Nashville Global Academy. It was poorly planned from the start and delivered students home after midnight on the first day of school. Then it forgot a student on a bus, leaving the child on the bus parked offsite all day. An investigation of the school revealed poor communication, a non-workable transportation plan, inadequate board oversight, poor administration of exceptional education, failure to meet accepted standards of fiscal management & accounting practices, failure to administer required state assessments, failure to pay teachers, etc. The school misappropriated funds to the tune of $149k and failed to pay food services ($35k), gas charges ($14k), bus leases (over $23k) and employee benefits ($200k). It also failed to reconcile Charter Startup Program Grant funds totaling $81k. It collapsed nearly $500k in debt, leaving the district, teachers and vendors holding the bag. Guess who paid? Us- the taxpayers (not once, but twice).

My comment: Despite this long record of failure and fraud, Tennessee Governor Bill Lee and the Legislature want more charter schools! Gov. Lee has invited conservative Hillsdale College of Michigan to open 50-100 Christian-themed charters. Who knew that Republicans despise local control? Why would they want to outsource Tennessee public education to a Michigan college?

Categories Charter Schools, Corruption, Democracy, Education Industry, Failure, Fraud, Tennessee

Texas: Pastors Fight for Public Schools Against Heartless Privatizers

By dianeravitch
February 23, 2022 //
8

The well-organized Pastors for Texas Children is engaged in rhetorical battles with the well-funded privatizers. Whether by Tweet, in the media, or on the lecture platform, Pastor Charles Foster Johnson and his colleagues lead the battle on behalf of public schools, taking on the rich and powerful and their political lackeys.

After Congressman Chip Roy attacked Pastors for Texas children and classroom teachers on Twitter, Pastor Johnson responded forcefully:

On Twitter, the group responded to Congressman Roy: “Congressman @chiproytx, your repeated lies about our [public school] teachers & the pastors who support them, are shameful, embarrassing, and shockingly immoral. You may mock them and us with your political lies against these servants. But you cannot mock God.”

Pastors For Texas Children, a Fort Worth-based organization, says it is an independent organization that advocates for public schools…

Last week, Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, accused “left-wing educators” of showing children “explicit pornography” in schools.

Cruz would not cite specific examples, according to Business Insider, “but instead pointed to books that have made parents angry at school board meetings in general.”

“Take a look at some of the portions from books that parents are going to school boards and reading out loud; this is what my child is being taught,'” the senator told the on-line publication.

Rev. Johnson said it’s all a political smokescreen to create chaos.

“If CRT (critical race theory) is a problem, if pornography is a problem, you guys have been in charge in Texas for 27-years,” Johnson said. “Are you just now discovering it? Are you producing it? What if we were to go all over the state and say that you were pornographers? You’re more responsible than our public school teachers. Obviously, we’re not going to do that, but you get the point.”

“We’re in this program of sheer destructive chaos,” he added. “That’s their only agenda. The only agenda. And that is wrong.”

Teachers are an easy target, Johnson continued, because the far-right knows that educators are too busy in the classroom to push back. Many school districts also drew the ire of Texas Republican leaders during COVID-19 when some – even in conservative areas – refused to ban masks like the governor ordered.

In an op-ed last week for Baptist News Global, publisher Mark Wingfield argued that “it’s time to stop the insanity that is killing public education.”

“It is disgusting, dismaying and disheartening to see the continued attack on public education from conservative evangelical Christians and people who pretend to be evangelical Christians but couldn’t find John 3:16 in the Bible if you asked them,” Wingfield wrote. “It is time to stop being shocked at this behavior and stand up against it.”

You see why I admire, respect and love Pastors for Texas Children? They are fearless, wise, and animated by a sense of mission.

Categories Accountability, Courage, Democracy, Education Industry, Supporting public schools, Texas

Watch Nancy MacLean and Me Discuss the Rightwing Attacks on Public Schools

By dianeravitch
February 20, 2022 //
55

On February 3, Duke University historian Nancy MacLean and I held a Zoom conversation called “Public Education in Chains,” about the nefarious conspiracy to undermine and privatize our public schools. The discussion was sponsored by Public Funds Public Schools and the Network for Public Education.

Dr. MacLean is the author of many books, including the brilliant Democracy in Chains: The DeepHistory of the Radical Right’s Stealth Plan for America.

We discussed the historical origins of the movement, calling out the privatizers as a combination of libertarians, anti-government ideologues, the radical right, segregationists, and rightwing evangelicals, funded by billionaires who hate taxes, public institutions, and unions. Their movement threatens not only public schools but our democracy.

Categories Billionaires, Charter Schools, Democracy, Education Industry, Privatization, School Choice, Vouchers

NYC: Parents Leaders Demand an End to Mayoral Control of the Schools

By dianeravitch
February 16, 2022 //
31

As soon as he was elected NYC mayor in 2003, Michael Bloomberg asked the Legislature to give him full control of the schools. The Legislature, wowed by the billionaire mayor with a reputation for business acumen, gave him what he wanted. He promptly renamed the Board of Education, and turned it into the Department of Education, no longer an independent agency but a branch of city government, like the Fire Department or the Department of Sanitation. It’s previous governing board, called the Board of Education for more than 150 years, was dubbed the Panel on Educational Priorities. The PEP had a majority appointed by the mayor, who served at his pleasure. He could fire them at will. Bloomberg used his power to reorganize the entire school system four times, to close scores of schools, especially large high schools, to open hundreds of small schools and charter schools.

The old Board of Education had a public relations department of three people, whose main job was to write press releases. Under Bloomberg’s control, more than 20 people joined the PR department, and they existed to glorify and exalt every action or decision by the mayor and his chancellor.

This authoritarian structure has remained in place for almost 20 years. No mayor wants to give up control of the schools. The schools continue to be plagued with problems, not surprisingly. Mayoral control solved nothing, despite years of extravagant (and illusory) claims about a “New York City miracle.” Academics wrote books about the glories of mayoral control, now forgotten. The “miracle” faded away.

Parent leaders wrote a demand to restore democratic governance, which appeared in the Gotham Gazette.

Categories Accountability, Bloomberg, Michael, Democracy, Education Industry, New York City, Parents

MAGA Activist Plans to Open Chain of “Patriotic” Schools

By dianeravitch
February 9, 2022 //
41

Charlie Kirk is a pro-Trump activist with a huge following and an organization called “Turning Points USA.” He plans to open a chain of private schools to teach America-First ideology. This is a frightening turn of events. Partisan schools that indoctrinate students.

His plans were temporarily stymied when one of his key contractors backed out after learning that he was the client. But he is forging ahead, with a projection that he will collect $40 million annually in revenue by indoctrinating children into his world view.

Turning Point USA, the youth group led by pro-Trump activist Charlie Kirk, sought to entice investors last year with a new foray in the culture wars: an academy aimed at students failed by schools “poisoning our youth with anti-American ideas.”

A company in the early stages of realizing Kirk’s vision was anticipating millions in revenue from Turning Point Academy — part of an effort to market K-12 curriculum to families seeking an “America-first education.”

A document circulated within StrongMind, an education firm in Arizona where programmers had begun work on the project, noted plans to open the online academy by the fall of 2022 and assessed its “potential to generate over $40MM in gross revenue at full capacity (10K students).”

The firm’s plans disintegrated last week amid a Washington Post investigation and backlash from StrongMind employees concerned about the prospect of Turning Point-directed lesson plans. A key subcontractor tapped to prepare course material also backed out after learning that Kirk’s group was the ultimate client. The 28-year-old activist, who boasts 1.7 million Twitter followers, has championed former president Donald Trump’s baseless claim that widespread fraud cost him reelection and has scorned demands for racial justice that followed the 2020 murder of a Black man at the hands of the Minneapolis police, calling George Floyd a “scumbag.”

Kirk still intends to open the academy, though with other partners, said a spokesman, Andrew Kolvet, who called the agreement with StrongMind “nonbinding and nonexclusive.”

The early blueprint for Turning Point Academy — laid out in detail for the first time in documents and chat logs reviewed by The Post — points to the growing market for education and media serving families disgruntled with public schools, a flash point in many communities and a key issue on the campaign trail. The quest to raise revenue by allowing families to bypass traditional schools and buy curriculum more aligned with their political worldview worried some experts and watchdogs.

“This sounds like a very slippery slope,” said Carole Basile, dean of Arizona State University’s Mary Lou Fulton Teachers College. “It depends on what the curriculum actually looks like, but to move in the direction of letting partisan identity decide what is being taught, that feels new and worrying…

Turning Point USA, founded by Kirk in 2012, rose to prominence by maintaining a “professor watchlist” promising to unmask liberal instructors. The nonprofit prospered under Trump’s presidency, raising more than $80 million from undisclosed donors, according to its four most recent tax filings. It announced its intentions to launch an academy last year, in the midst of an inflamed debate over how much schools should focus on racial inequity.

Categories Democracy, Education Industry, Privatization, Propaganda, Trump

Oakland Parent: Stop the Privatization! We Don’t Want It!

By dianeravitch
February 8, 2022 //
4

Oakland parent Jane Nylund tells the story of creeping privatization in her city. The Oakland School Board will vote tonight on whether to close another 10 schools. To understand the background, read this article.

She writes:

Lest we all forget, from six years ago, here was the plan: 50% of our kids into charter schools. https://capitalandmain.com/oaklands-charter-school-tipping-point-0531 And now, it looks like that plan is coming to fruition. You are following the privatization playbook to the letter.

When the well-paid accountants arrive and show a slide comparing OUSD to other districts of similar enrollments/SES, and make the simplistic assumption that OUSD has too many schools compared to the others and that we have to be just the same, here’s what you are really saying.

Lesson 1) High poverty children don’t deserve smaller schools and class sizes, anywhere in the state of California, unless it’s a charter.

Lesson 2) It isn’t acceptable for a high-needs district to appear to have it “better” than the others with smaller schools. Smaller schools are meant for wealthy people.

Lesson 3) Because we don’t have the political will to invest in the other comparison districts, we need to continue to disinvest in Oakland instead, thus creating “equity” at the bottom. Nothing new, we’ve been doing that for years. See Lesson #1.

Lesson 4) It’s okay to let Bill Gates experiment with small schools for our kids, until he becomes bored and pulls funding.

Here is the equivalent of that purported “savings” that really isn’t:

1) Recent HQ pay for two years. OUSD used to have 14 positions at $200K+; in 2020 they had 47.2) Lease at 1000 Broadway3) Cost of a new school site kitchen

So, by closing all these schools, OUSD can now have the cost equivalent of a kitchen. Maybe.
Turn this entire idea on its head. The continued austerity measures for high-poverty districts like Oakland are a clear message to these families that they don’t deserve a mix of schools, like, say, San Francisco.

Have you ever looked at the school mix in San Francisco, our neighbor across the bay? You should. I recently noted that they have a mix of 122 schools, give or take. They have 14% charter enrollment, and several comprehensive high schools. They also support a mix of much smaller schools from 100-500 kids each, of all types. They don’t use an “ideal” size. That doesn’t exist, and research bears that out, no matter how many presentations and how many consultants you pay to come up with an “ideal” number. So, if you are arguing that Oakland has too many schools, then you need to head over to SF and advise their board to also close schools. Oh, that’s right, they have wealthy families there. Don’t want to rock the boat. See Lesson #2

The accountants never look at San Francisco as a comparison district because of socio-economics, but SF still comes in at 57% FRPL. Clearly, San Francisco does something we don’t, even as elite San Franciscans are trying to shut down their elected school board. The obvious answer is that San Francisco is not a top-heavy, privatized, portfolio district.

No one in OUSD, FCMAT*, or local and state government has ever answered the obvious question: find me a comparison district in California, the same as ours, that has all the community services/pay/benefits/supports/enrichment as a result of having 40-50 schools. This nonsensical premise is what you are trying to sell us. What is a model district that you can reference that has successfully achieved and implemented this accounting miracle? Stockton, Sacramento, Long Beach? Where?

Answer: none of the above. You can’t find any high-needs district that has all of this because it supports a magical number of 40-50 schools. So you are asking us to just go along to get along with Stockton, Sacramento, and Long Beach, and many others. All that “savings” simply evaporates, along with enrollment, and the status quo remains. It is truly mind-blowing that you are promising community schools to magically appear, when there is no other district model in the state that supports this idea that you can close dozens of schools, and expect tax dollars to rain down upon school sites. The consultants will be falling all over themselves to be first in line for the money grab. It would be laughable if it wasn’t such a tragedy.

Go back to my point #1 in case you forgot about the entire argument about why this exercise isn’t about children. It isn’t about savings. It isn’t about more money for school sites. It isn’t about teacher pay. It’s about not having the guts to stand up to bullies like FCMAT and their state overlords.

It’s about taking the easy way out because of a “belief” system. It’s neat and tidy, and pencils out nicely. But once you put down those pencils, the disaster you have created for our communities will be irreparable and will change the fabric of the Oakland community forever. But John Fisher doesn’t care. The chaos will make it that much easier for the luxury A’s stadium to go in. But you already knew that.

*FCMAT=Fiscal Crisis Management and Assistance Team

Categories Accountability, Billionaires, Broad Foundation, California, Charter Schools, Class size, Closing schools, Corporate Reform, Democracy, Education Industry, Oakland

Tom Ultican: Oakland Parents and Educators Outraged by Threat of More School Closings

By dianeravitch
February 8, 2022 //
13

Tom Ultican, retired teacher of physics and mathematics, has been keeping a close watch on the machinations of the privatization movement. He writes here about Oakland, which has suffered two decades of indignities at the hands of corporate reformers. The district was taken over by the state because it had a deficit in 2003. The state gave Eli Broad a free hand in picking its superintendents, who proceeded to open charter schools, close public schools, and drive the district deeper into debt. In time, the state restored Oakland’s elected school board, but kept it under the control of outside monitors who demanded more school closures.

Tultican supplies the background for the Oakland disaster.

He writes:

The map of charter schools in Oakland and proposed school closings shows that both are all in the minority dominated flats (the low lying area between the bay and the hills). With all of these closings, residents in the flats may no longer have a traditional public school serving their community.

Much of this can be laid at the door step of the six billionaire “education reformers” living across the bay – Reed Hastings (Netflix), Arthur Rock (Intel), Carrie Walton Penner (Walmart), Laurene Powell Jobs (Apple), Mark Zuckerberg (Facebook) and Doris Fisher (The Gap).

Reed Hastings established America’s first charter management organization (CMO) in Oakland. There are now six Aspire charter schools serving Oakland families.

Arthur Rock, Doris Fisher and Carrie Walton Penner have been investing in Teach For America (TFA) and charter school growth in Oakland. Mark Zuckerberg and Laurene Powell Jobs have been pushing education technology as well as TFA and charter schools.

Along with these billionaires, New Yorker Michael Bloomberg and Tulsa billionaire Stacey Schusterman have joined in the spending to sway Oakland’s school board elections.

Oakland’s own T. Gary Rogers established a foundation before he died that continues to be central to the local school privatization agenda. It significantly supports and directs privatization efforts by GO public education and Education78. The City Fund created by Reed Hastings and John (Enron) Arnold recently gave GO and Education78 a total of $5 million (EIN 82-4938743).

This brief outline of the money being spent to privatize schools in Oakland would be woefully incomplete if Eli Broad was not mentioned. Although his direct spending to advance privatization in Oakland has been relatively modest, the four Superintendents and many administrative staff members that he trained and got placed in Oakland are central to OUSD being the most privatized district in California. A key training manual developed at the Broad Center was the “School Closure Guide.”

“Black Hole Mike” Hutchinson observed,

“A lot of these policies were first tried out in Oakland. If you go back and look at the Eli Broad handbook on school closures, a lot of the source information that they used for that report is from Oakland.”

The billionaire spending has resulted in 39 charter schools operating in Oakland today. Nine were authorized by the county, one by the state of California and 29 by OUSD. Using data from the California Department of Education, it can be shown that 31% of the publicly supported k-12 students in Oakland attend privatized charter schools.

It is disturbing that 22 of the 39 schools have a student body made up by more than 90% Hispanic and Black students. Overall 67% of Oakland’s charter school children are Hispanic or Black but only 50% of the residents of Oakland are Hispanic or Black. The privatization agenda has driven school segregation in Oakland to new heights.

The other divisive agenda is gentrification. Ken Epstein is a longtime observer of OUSD and a bay area pundit. He observed,

“Many school advocates view these school closures as a land grab of public property by privatizers. Others see this is a way to force Black and Latino families out of Oakland, making education inaccessible for them by closing the schools in the neighborhoods where they live.”

If a well financed developer could gain control of the flats, the profit possibilities are immense. These concerns are further fed when OUSD board President Gary Yee tells a Skyline High School parent that the school should be closed because the property is too valuable to be used for public education.

Categories Accountability, Billionaires, Broad Foundation, Budget Cuts, Charter Schools, Closing schools, Democracy, Education Industry, Oakland
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