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Pennsylvania: Urban Superintendents Call for Charter Reform, End to Unfunded Mandates

By dianeravitch
April 4, 2023 //
8

The superintendents in 29 districts near Philadelphia joined to call for charter funding reform and an end to unfunded mandates.

With a new governor, state budget hearings underway and a court ruling on their side, superintendents from 29 urban school districts held press conferences Tuesday to call attention to the need for charter reform, inequities and school safety in urban schools.

Five Philadelphia-area superintendents spoke at Upper Darby High School as part of the caucus of Pennsylvania League of Urban Schools press conference, to call attention to the need for charter reform and funding inequities that are dramatically impacting children who attend urban schools.

The 29 districts teach over 300,000 students in the state.

Christopher Dormer, superintendent of Norristown Area School District and president of the PLUS caucus, said superintendents were speaking for students who have been underfunded and underserved for far too long.

Putting a face to one of those students, Dormer spoke about first grader Estefania, one of 140 students identified as an English learner. Her school has only three English language development teachers to help in 25 classrooms.

Dormer said his district has more than 1,550 English learners, a population that has grown by 104% in the past 10 years. The district has 31 professional staff members, with 50 students for each certified teacher.

Dormer said the district has been funded in an unconstitutional manner and districts like his have had to make difficult financial choices over the past 20 years. He said those choices have led to cutting staff, curtailing programs and raising local property taxes just to survive.

Dormer noted that when districts do receive funding outcomes are different. Over the past two years, his district has received $8 million in additional funding through the program Level Up.

“This has allowed us to significantly reverse the trend of cutting positions over the decade,” Dormer said. “Just these past two years we’ve added back 60 new staff positions … to reduce class size at all levels and we were able to hire reading specialists for the first time to serve our elementary schools.”

His district has seen an increase in reading proficiency thanks to the increased funding, but it is still shortchanged by $10 million a year.

Dormer also took aim at charter school funding and noted that more than 92% of the 500 school boards statewide have adopted resolutions supporting reform to Pennsylvania’s charter school law.

“If that doesn’t say bipartisan support, I don’t know what does,” Dormer said. “This isn’t about choice, this isn’t about competition, and this is about a charter funding formula that boosts the payment of cyber charter tuition and special education tuition significantly above the real costs that are incurred by charter and cyber charter schools to provide educational and specialized services.”

Unfunded mandates

Dr. Dan McGarry, Upper Darby superintendent agreed, saying forced cuts and reduction of public education, an increase in unfunded mandates along with the rise and expansion of cyber charter schools significantly altered public education in the state beginning in the mid-2000s.

McGarry said at one point districts were reimbursed by the state for the tuition cost of charter schools but that was changed. He said that the cost is over $8 million in Upper Darby to the budget and the district sends out $11 million to charter schools.

The overwhelming majority of students in Pennsylvania are enrolled in public schools, but the legislature lavishes funding on charters and Cybercharters.

Either the legislators don’t care about the future of their state or they got big campaign donations from the billionaire charter funders or Cybercharter lobbyists.

Categories Accountability, Administrators, superintendents, Budget Cuts, Charter Schools, Disruption, Education Industry, English Language Learners, Funding, Pennsylvania, Virtual Charter Schools

Win or Lose, Know This About Paul Vallas

By dianeravitch
April 3, 2023 //
37

This article by three scholars—Pauline Lipman, Camika Royal, and Adrienne Dixson—closes the book on Paul Vallas’ record in education. It was published in Truthout.

Vallas’s solution for struggling schools was a corporate-style, top-down accountability system of high-stakes tests, test-prep teaching and punishment for failure — an experiment on Chicago’s Black and Brown children that set the stage for national education policy under George W. Bush. Schools that failed to meet test score targets were put on a warning list, on probation, or reconstituted by Vallas’s central office.

Counter to research consensus, based on their scores on a single test, tens of thousands of students were sent to summer school, held back a grade for as long as three years, prevented from 8th grade graduation, or assigned to remedial transition high schools where a pared-down curriculum of math, English and world studies revolved around intensive test preparation.

It was typical for schools, particularly in Black communities, to spend up to one quarter of the school year drilling for tests in reading and math. Music and art were cancelled and social studies began in May — after testing. Engaging, culturally relevant classes were turned into test prep. In some schools, Test Best and Test Ready booklets were the curriculum for weeks. CPS Office of Accountability staff told me that when Vallas left in 2001, 59 schools — mostly Black — were using mandated Direct Instruction, in which teachers read scripts and students respond with scripted answers. Not surprisingly, under this regime test scores went up. However, a 1999 National Research Council assessment expert “concluded that Chicago’s regular year and summer school curricula were so closely geared to the [standardized test] that it was impossible to distinguish real subject mastery from mastery of skills and knowledge useful for passing this particular test.”

Turning schools into test prep factories — and punishing and publicly shaming “failing” schools, students, teachers and parents in Black communities — took a toll. Some of the most dedicated and revered teachers left the system. For example, in one Black elementary school Lipman worked with, from 1997-2000, 26 of 37 teachers left, to be replaced by a succession of inexperienced teachers and interns. An award-winning teacher at the school explained that they couldn’t live with the ethical crisis of Vallas’s policies; for both teachers and students “it’s like a hammer just knocking them down.” A 2000 University of Chicago study reported nearly one-third of eighth graders retained in 1997 dropped out by fall 1999. In 2000, Parents United for Responsible Education won a civil rights complaint against CPS under Vallas for adverse discriminatory impact of the retention policy on Black and Latinx students. Expulsions, particularly of Black students, also surged, as documented in a 2001 Chicago Reporter article titled “Alternative education: Segregation or solution?”

When test scores flattened in 2001, Vallas left. But the system he set up of ranking and sorting schools based on an inappropriate use of standardized tests, and disregarding the historical disinvestment and racism schools had suffered, laid the foundation for almost 200 school closings and turn-arounds and the education market that followed. These school closings, 90 percent predominantly Black, devastated Black communities in particular. Vallas’s electoral campaign focuses on fighting crime, but the disruptions from the school closings that were a major factor in the destabilization of Black communities can be traced back to Vallas’s reign at CPS.

Please open the link and read the full article.

If Vallas should win, the students and teachers of Chicago will endure the failed policies of the past two decades.

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Chicago, Closing schools, Corporate Reform, Cruelty, Curriculum, Discipline, Disruption, Education Industry, Failure, Race, School Choice, Standardized Testing, Vallas, Paul

Jan Resseger: Consumerism Is Destroying the Commons

By dianeravitch
April 2, 2023 //
9

Jan Resseger spent her waking years as a warrior for social justice in her church. Now she writes a brilliant and thoughtful blog.

Her recent post made me reflect on the fact that groups like “Moms for Liberty” and “Parents Defending Education” create turmoil and chaos over the issue of the day (masking, vaccines, school closings, trans kids, books about race or gender identity), then use the issues and conflict they created to demand vouchers to send their kids to schools with like-minded parents.

These Astroturf groups are funded handsomely by the Walton Family Foundation, Charles Koch, Betsy DeVos, and other billionaires to act as shock troops for their paymasters.

Jan Resseger wrote recently:

I cannot even keep track of all the press coverage I have seen in the past couple of weeks about school privatization proposals under discussion in the state legislatures. And in almost all of the articles I read, the move to privatize schools is accompanied by descriptions of culture war fights about book banning, interference with curricular standards, and elimination of programs that encourage “diversity, equity, and inclusion” in public schools and public universities. I have a stack of very recent articles about Florida, Ohio, Virginia, Texas, Missouri, Iowa, Kansas, Nebraska, and New Hampshire, and I am sure I have missed others.

What is the cause of today’s attack on public schools and the kind of programming that many of us believe is essential to help our children live well in our diverse society?

In her Washington Post piece about a battle between two parent groups, Concerned Taxpayersand Support Education, in Mentor, Ohio——Hannah Natanson blames COVID for the controversy: COVID Changed Parents’ View of Schools—and Ignited the Education Culture Wars.

And in a powerful report from the Network for Public Education, Merchants of Deception, political scientist Maurice Cunningham identifies the role of Astroturf parents’ groups that present themselves as though they are a spontaneous welling up of parent outrage. Even though financial support for these groups is untraceable dark money, here is how Cunningham tracks evidence that these supposedly local groups are well connected from place to place and supported by powerful, far-right political interests: “First we should watch for groups that have “grown at a pace that only a corporation’s monetary resources could manage.” Then we should identify the group’s allies to “get a better idea of the real powers behind” the organization. Additionally: “We’ll use another tool to draw telling inferences about these fronts: identification of their key vendors, such as law firms, pollsters, and public relations firms, which we’ll see are often instruments of conservative… networks… Another recurring clue… is the ‘creation story.’ A new non-profit group bursts forth with some version of claiming that two or three moms began talking over what they see as problems in schools and resolve to start a nonprofit to take on the teachers’ unions, administration, or school board. By some form of miracle, they almost immediately receive hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of dollars in funding from billionaires. Next, they find themselves gaining favorable coverage on right-wing media—Daily Caller, Breitbart, and Fox News…. ”

Of course both the disruption COVID thrust upon our communities and the use of parents by far-right groups trying to ban “WOKE” policies represent what many of us have been watching in the past couple of years. But on a deeper level, it is not a coincidence that the outrageous school board disruptions and the attempts by the far right to scrub the textbooks, and the legislatures considering parents’ bill of rights legislation also seem to be happening in places where slate lawmakers are also pushing vouchers, and not merely the old-fashioned tuition vouchers for private schools, but the new Education Savings Account universal programs to provide wider parental “freedom” and lack of oversight of the public dollars being diverted to these plans. These new vouchers are being designed to give parents the ultimate latitude in school choice—homeschooling and micro-schools where parents put their vouchers together to pay for a teacher for several families. Lack of regulation is a key ingredient in most of these plans. In every case the worldview underneath the proposals involves extreme individualism along with marketplace consumerism.

In her new book, The Teachers: A Year Inside America’s Most Vulnerable, Important Profession, Alexandra Robbins describes parents who view themselves and their children as the customers teachers must please: “At a candidate forum during the COVID pandemic, a Maryland school board member called students the ‘customers in our school system,’ as if teachers existed to satisfy students rather than to educate them… On a broader level, the student-as-customer attitude has contributed to a growing politicized movement pushing for parents to have authority over what is taught in schools.” (pp. 66-67) Believing your child is the client who must be pleased by services rendered is a very different conception of the parent-teacher relationship than believing that the teacher is a professional whose expertise and cooperation you can and should consult for guidance about your child’s education.

Please open the link and read the remainder of this very important post.

Categories Accountability, Betsy DeVos, Billionaires, Corruption, Curriculum, Dark Money, Democracy, Disruption, Education Industry, Extremism, Fake, For-Profit, Fraud, Hoax, Koch Brothers, Privatization, School Choice, Segregation, Teachers, Vouchers, Walton Foundation

Omaha: High School Students Walk Out to Protest Hate Laws

By dianeravitch
April 1, 2023 //
32

Yesterday, hundreds of Omaha high school students walked out to protest the anti-trans legislation moving through the Nebraska legislature. The youth are our hope for a better future, one where hate is stigmatized.

As many as several hundred students at Omaha’s Central High School braved dropping temperatures Friday and walked out of class to protest two pending bills in the Nebraska Legislature.

Armed with bright, colorful signs and a microphone, students used speeches and poetry to protest Legislative Bills 574 and 575, which focus on transgender youths. Both bills were introduced by State Sen. Kathleen Kauth of Omaha.

The Central students were joined by others, including parents, young children and community members, to hear a number of student activists talk about the potential impact of the bills.

Several students said the legislation would prevent transgender youths from accessing lifesaving medical care and limit how they participate in sports or the bathrooms they can use.

“I am a human being. I am not defined by my gender,” said Harley Lawton, a junior at Central High. “They are trying to take away our rights. They are trying to define us as what they first saw us as, not what we became, not what we decide to be.”

Categories Courage, Cruelty, Disruption, Gender, Nebraska, Students

Ohio: Private School Choice Is Wrecking Public Schools

By dianeravitch
April 1, 2023 //
18

Maureen Reedy is a former Ohio Teacher of the Year and Upper Arlington City School District Teacher of the Year, retired after a 30-year career as a public-school teacher. She wrote this article for the Columbus Dispatch.

The “public” must be put back into public education in Ohio.

Instead of pushing current legislation like Senate Bill 11 that could take one billion dollars from public schools to fund private and religious school vouchers, Ohio’s lawmakers need uphold Ohio’s constitutional promise to keep public tax dollars out of private schools.

We Ohioans love our public schools.

Most of us attended neighborhood public schools, which continue to be the schools of choice for our children and grandchildren. Our public schools are community hubs that educate over 90% (1.7 million) of Ohio’s children; students come together from all backgrounds to learn and build understanding and acceptance of others.

Public education in Ohio is a 172-year-old promise, created on the constitutional belief that public schools are the fundamental foundation for the public good; a necessary tool to build an educated democracy and sustainable futures for our children in these challenging times.

Why then, are Ohio lawmakers churning out private school voucher legislation that takes hundreds of millions of public-school tax dollars per year from our neighborhood schools to pay for private and religious school education?

School vouchers violate the Ohio Constitution. That is why over 210 public school districts have filed the “Vouchers Hurt Ohio” lawsuit challenging EdChoice Vouchers for their unconstitutional use of state school funds for private school tuition.

Public dollars should not fund private and religious school tuition.

Ohio’s constitution has some of the strongest language in the country specifying that state funds are for public (common) schools only.

“The General Assembly … will secure a thorough and efficient system of common schools throughout the state; but no religious or other sect, or sects, shall ever have any exclusive right to, or control of, any part of the school funds of this state,” Article VI, Section 2 of the Ohio Constitution reads.

Just as Ohio’s founders intended, there is not one single word in the Ohio Constitution that allows the use of state dollars for private and religious school tuition.

Ohio’s first attempt at school vouchers began as a temporary pilot in 2006, and is now a refund and rebate school privatization program that reimburses families who never intended to send their children to public schools.

Runaway train must be stopped

Private school vouchers have ballooned out of control, initially taking away $42 million of public-school funding in 2008 and expanding to $350 million in 2022.

Senate Bill 11 has been introduced to make every child in Ohio eligible for a private EdChoice school voucher, which could immediately take a billion dollars out of the finite supply of state school funds for over 90% of Ohio’s children whose families choose public schools.

When we let vouchers siphon funds from our public schools, our kids do not have the resources they need to succeed, and that hurts us all. EdChoice Vouchers for private schools means more school levies and higher property taxes. State funding for private schools is not only unconstitutional, it is unsustainable for Ohio taxpayers.

This brings us full circle to the crucial choice for the future of public education in Ohio. Public schools open their doors to children of all ability levels; welcoming students from diverse religions, cultures and nationalities.

Overall, Ohio’s public schools continue to outperform private voucher schools.

Public schools mirror the rising challenges of society today. Teachers are not just teaching, but also taking care of rising numbers of children in crises with mental and physical health challenges, which prevent them from learning. Instead of divesting in public education, Ohio needs to re-invest in our public schools.

Let’s face it. The only way to stop this runaway school voucher train is through a lawsuit.

Thousands of Ohio citizens have tried to get legislators to put the brakes on EdChoice vouchers and fulfill their oath to the state’s constitution: state school funding is solely for Ohio’s public-school districts.

The majority of Ohio’s legislators continue to steer our children and families in the wrong direction.

Vouchers hurt Ohio. The numbers are growing.

The movement is strong.

Maureen Reedy is a founding member of Public Education Partners, the largest nonprofit, all-volunteer Public Education advocacy group in Ohio.

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Competition, Democracy, Disruption, Education Industry, Education Reform, Extremism, Ohio, Privatization, School Choice, Vouchers

Join a Protest Against Ron DeSantis’ Attacks on Education!

By dianeravitch
March 31, 2023 //
21

MEDIA ADVISORY:

Tomorrow, on Saturday, parents and community members from the Alliance to Reclaim Our Schools (AROS) and HEAL Together, alongside organizations from Florida and Pennslyvania, will hold a press conference opposing Governor Ron DeSantis’ harmful policies attacking our children’s freedom to learn. The press conference will take place opposite the site of DeSantis’ keynote speech at the Pennsylvania Leadership Conference. Florida advocates will speak at the press conference to warn that DeSantis’ policies are bringing chaos to Florida families.

The full media advisory is below. Feel free to reach out to the media contact: Moira Kaleida | 412-760-0030 | moira@reclaimourschools.org



FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: March 31, 2023


**MEDIA ADVISORY**PARENTS, COMMUNITY FROM PA & FL STAND UP AGAINST DESANTIS ATTACKS ON EDUCATION AND OUR COMMUNITIES— PRESS CONFERENCE AND ACTION


Harrisburg, PA – Saturday, April 1, 2023, parents and community members from the Alliance to Reclaim Our Schools (AROS) and HEAL Together, alongside Moms Rising, Red Wine & Blue, 412 Justice and Common Purpose (West Palm Beach, FL), and parents and community members from Florida to Pennsylvania will hold a press conference opposing Governor DeSantis’ harmful policies attacking our children’s freedom to learn.

The press conference will take place opposite the site of DeSantis’ keynote speech at the Pennsylvania Leadership Conference.

Concerned parents and community members will speak in response to the attacks on public education, including the passage of classroom censorship laws, the voucher bill which is a $5 billion giveaway to rich families, and the ban on life-saving education and healthcare for LGBTQIA+ youth.

Florida advocates will speak at the press conference to warn that these policies are bringing chaos to Florida families.


Education justice groups will be holding rallies also on April 1 in Miami, Orlando, Pinellas County and other sites throughout Florida to protest DeSantis’ anti-Black and anti-LGBTQ policies that have had a devastating impact on Florida’s children.

Pennsylvanians have voted against these policies in the past, and through solidarity with Floridians, Pennsylvanians have an opportunity to oppose DeSantis’ divisive tactics in order to ensure that all children have the freedom to learn and build a better future.

WHAT: Press conference with Pennsylvanians and Floridians to oppose Governor Ron DeSantis’ harmful policies attacking our children, our schools and our educational freedom after DeSantis’ keynote speech at the Pennsylvania Leadership Conference.


WHEN: April 1, 2023. Press Conference begins at 1 PM EST.


WHERE: In front of Harrisburg Academy (10 Erford Rd, Wormleysburg, PA 17043). The press conference location is across the street from Penn Harris Hotel (1150 Camp Hill Bypass, Camp Hill, PA 17011) where the Pennsylvania Leadership conference takes place.


WHO: Alliance to Reclaim Our Schools (AROS), with HEAL Together, Moms Rising, Red Wine & Blue, Common Purpose, 412 Justice, and parents, educators, and community members.


For on-site interviews, contact: Moira Kaleida | 412-760-0030 | moira@reclaimourschools.org

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The Alliance to Reclaim Our Schools (AROS) is a coalition of parent, youth, community and labor organizations fighting to reclaim the promise of public education as our nation’s gateway to a strong democracy and racial and economic justice. AROS is uniting parents, youth, teachers and unions to drive the transformation of public education, shift the public debate and build a national movement for equity and opportunity for all.

HEAL (Honest Education Action & Leadership) Together is building a movement of students, educators, and parents in school districts across the United States who believe that an honest, accurate and fully funded public education is the foundation for a just, multiracial democracy.

Categories Academic Freedom, Accountability, Censorship, Civil Rights, Democracy, DeSantis, Disruption, Education Industry, Extremism, Gender, Privatization, Racism, Vouchers

Who Is Putting Up the Big Money Behind Vouchers?

By dianeravitch
March 31, 2023 //
14

Inside Philanthropy reported on the major funding behind the push for vouchers.

Vouchers are not popular.

There have been nearly two dozen state referenda about vouchers. Vouchers have always lost, usually by large margins.

State legislatures have ignored the voice of the people and passed voucher legislation despite the public vote against them. Vouchers were rejected in Utah in 2007. Vouchers were rejected in Florida in 2012. Vouchers were rejected in Arizona in 2018. Yet the legislators in these states passed sweeping voucher laws, benefitting home schoolers and students already attending private schools.

Why?

There is a lot of money behind the voucher “movement.” The only thing moving in this “movement” is millions of dollars from rightwing billionaires into the pockets of Republican politicians.

All the usual rightwing suspects are pumping big money into the push for vouchers. Betsy DeVos, Charles Koch, the Bradley Foundation.

Connie Matthiessen of Inside Philanthropy writes:

Who is funding the push for school vouchers?

Dark money and disclosure rules make it difficult to pinpoint the funders that support vouchers or how much they are spending on these efforts. But what we do know is that a lot of the typical channels of conservative-leaning philanthropy are funding the organizations that support vouchers.

One reason it’s so hard to track is that a lot of that money is going through donor-advised funds, which don’t have to identify which individual DAF holders are making specific grants. The conservative DAF DonorsTrust, for example, and its affiliated Donors Capital Fund have been moving money to groups that support vouchers. As my colleague Philip Rojc reported in 2021, “Since its founding, DonorsTrust has given out over $1.5 billion. In addition to the sheer volume of money, a large proportion of DonorsTrust’s grantees operate in the policy arena, magnifying the impact of this funding on the public sphere.” It also raked in over $1 billion that year, according to Politico.

DonorsTrust grantees include voucher advocates like the Heritage Foundation, the American Federation for Children, which was created by Trump administration Education Secretary Betsy Devos, as well as the conservative Independent Women’s Forum. The Cardinal Institute, which is supporting education savings accounts in West Virginia, is also a grantee.

We do know some of the non-DAF funders that are supporting the voucher movement, and a few names come up repeatedly. One of these philanthropies is the Milwaukee-based Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation, a long-running conservative funder that has had a major influence in Wisconsin politics and also helped bankroll efforts to discredit the 2020 election results, as Jane Mayer reported in The New Yorker….

The Bradley Foundation funds the Wisconsin Center for Law and Liberty, which supports education vouchers through its Bradley Impact Fund, a donor-advised fund. The Bradley Impact Fund includes among its grantees the Badger Institute, a conservative Wisconsin think tank that is advocating for the expansion of the privatization of the state’s public education system, as the Wisconsin Examiner reported. According to its 2021 grants list, the foundation has also supported Ohio-based Buckeye Institute and the Goldwater Institute in Arizona, which are both pushing voucher-type movements in their respective states.

DeVos herself is another major voucher backer, and has supported efforts in her home state of Michigan and beyond. She is involved with a number of organizations, including the American Federation for Children, which she chaired and helped found. That organization and its affiliates — the American Federation for Children Action Fund (a 527 group that supports candidates) and the 501(c)(3) American Federation for Children Growth Fund — have promoted education vouchers for years, including in Washington, D.C., as the Washington Post reported in 2017. More recently, it backed efforts to push ESA legislation in Idaho, according to a report in the Idaho Capital Sun (Republican state legislators just rejected a voucher bill there). The organization has also been active in privatization efforts in Texas, according to the Texas Monthly; and in Nebraska, the Nebraska Examiner reports that DeVos and her husband provided most of the dollars identified as funding from the American Federation for Children.

DeVos has worked hard to influence education policy in her home state of Michigan, with some success, but so far, has failed to establish a voucher program there. Most recently, in November, voters overwhelmingly opposed a school voucher plan she helped fund, as Chalkbeat reported. Devos and her family gave $6.3 million in support of the ballot proposal.

The State Policy Network also played a role in the pro-voucher campaign in Idaho, according to the Idaho Capitol Sun report. That organization, which oversees a coalition of state-based conservative think tanks, is backed by the Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation and Charles Koch, according to a report by Documented, and has also received funding from DonorsTrust and Donors Capital Fund, according to Jane Mayer’s reporting. In an opinion piece for Washington Examiner, Chantal Lovell, the State Policy Network’s director of policy advancement, credited her group for expansion of education savings accounts across the country.

A number of organizations that Charles Koch has funded over the years have played a role in the voucher movement. The American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), a membership organization of right-leaning state legislators, promotes education vouchers, for example. ALEC has received support from Charles Koch, Donors Trust and the Bradley Foundation. ALEC-affiliated state legislators have spearheaded the voucher movement in Texas, according to the Texas Monthly. The libertarian Cato Institute, which Charles Koch helped create, according to Mayer, supports a form of school voucher called Scholarship Tax Credits.

Open the link and read the article to learn who else is funding the voucher putsch. You may surprised, as I was, to learn that the Gates Foundation gave $1 million to the Reason Foundation, a libertarian organization that supports vouchers and opposes public schools.

Categories Accountability, Betsy DeVos, Billionaires, Corruption, Dark Money, Democracy, Disruption, Education Industry, Elections, Funding, Gates Foundation, Bill Gates, Politics, Privatization, School Choice, Vouchers

Mickey Mouse Humiliates Ron DeSantis

By dianeravitch
March 30, 2023 //
40

When the Disney Corporation criticized Ron DeSantis’s “Don’t Say Gay” bill, the Governor struck back by taking control of Disney’s special district and creating a board (appointed by him) to oversee Disney. The board consisted of rightwing extremists and DeSantis campaign donors. DeSantis boasted about his ability to punish and subjugate the state’s largest employer and its economic engine. It was easy to imagine the extremist DeSantis board censoring Disney attractions and shows to make sure nothing happened that was “woke.”

But wait!

While DeSantis was boasting, the Magic Kingdom was making a deal to elude his grasp.

CNN reported here on Disney’s quiet escape from DeSantis’ clutches:

(CNN)The battle between Disney and Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis may not be over yet.

The new board handpicked by the Republican governor to oversee Disney’s special taxing district said Wednesday it is considering legal action over a multi-decade agreement reached between the entertainment giant and the outgoing board in the days before the state’s hostile takeover last month.

Under the agreement — quietly approved on February 8 as Florida lawmakers met in special session to hand DeSantis control of the Reedy Creek Improvement District — Disney would maintain control over much of its vast footprint in Central Florida for 30 years and, in some cases, the board can’t take significant action without first getting approval from the company.

“This essentially makes Disney the government,” board member Ron Peri said during Wednesday’s meeting, according to video posted by an Orlando television station. “This board loses, for practical purposes, the majority of its ability to do anything beyond maintaining the roads and maintaining basic infrastructure.”

The episode is the latest twist in a yearlong saga between Disney and DeSantis, who has battled the company as he tries to tally conservative victories ahead of a likely bid for the 2024 GOP nomination.

The board on Wednesday retained “multiple financial and legal firms to conduct audits and investigate Disney’s past behavior,” DeSantis spokeswoman Taryn Fenske said. According to meeting documents, the board was entering into agreements with four firms to provide counsel on the matter.

“The Executive Office of the Governor is aware of Disney’s last-ditch efforts to execute contracts just before ratifying the new law that transfers rights and authorities from the former Reedy Creek Improvement District to Disney,” Fenske said. “An initial review suggests these agreements may have significant legal infirmities that would render the contracts void as a matter of law.”

In a statement to CNN, Disney stood by its actions.

“All agreements signed between Disney and the District were appropriate, and were discussed and approved in open, noticed public forums in compliance with Florida’s Government in the Sunshine law,” the company said. Documents for the February 8 meeting show it was noticed in the Orlando Sentinel as required by law.

Multiple board members did not immediately respond to request for comment. The Sentinel first reported on Wednesday’s vote to hire legal counsel.

According to a statement Wednesday night from the district’s acting counsel and its newly obtained legal counsel, the agreement gave Disney development rights throughout the district and “not just on Disney’s property,” requires the district to borrow and spend on projects that benefit the company, and gives Disney veto authority over any public project in the district.

“The lack of consideration, the delegation of legislative authority to a private corporation, restriction of the Board’s ability to make legislative decisions, and giving away public rights without compensation for a private purpose, among other issues, warrant the new Board’s actions and direction to evaluate these overreaching documents and determine how best the new Board can protect the public’s interest in compliance with Florida Law,” the statement from Fishback Dominick LLP, Cooper & Kirk PLLC, Lawson Huck Gonzalez PLLC, Waugh Grant PLLC and Nardella & Nardella PLLC said.

The spat between Disney and the governor stems from the company’s opposition to a Florida law that prohibits the instruction of sexual orientation and gender identity through third grade and only in an “age appropriate” manner in older grades. In March of last year, as outrage against the legislation spread nationwide, Disney released a statement vowing to help get the law repealed or struck down by the courts.

DeSantis and Florida GOP lawmakers retaliated by eliminating the Reedy Creek Improvement District, the special taxing authority that effectively gave Disney control of the land in and around its sprawling Orlando-area theme parks. But Republicans in control of the state legislature changed course this year and voted instead to fire the board overseeing the district and gave DeSantis power to name all five replacements. It also renamed Reedy Creek as the Central Florida Tourism Oversight District and eliminated some of its powers.

DeSantis stacked the board with political allies, including Tampa lawyer Martin Garcia, a prominent GOP donor; Bridget Ziegler, the wife of the new chairman of the Republican Party of Florida; and Peri, a former pastor who once suggested tap water could be making people gay.

The controversy is central to DeSantis’ political narrative of a leader who is unafraid to battle corporate giants, even one as iconic and vital to Florida as Disney. It is a saga that is featured prominently in his new book and one he often shares at events across the country as he lays the groundwork for a likely national campaign.

At last month’s signing ceremony for the bill that gave him control of Reedy Creek’s board, DeSantis declared, “The corporate kingdom finally comes to an end.”

“There’s a new sheriff in town,” he added.

However, it may be a while before the new power structure has control, if Disney gets its way. One agreement signed by the outgoing board — which restricts the new board from using any of Disney’s “fanciful characters” — is valid until “21 years after the death of the last survivor of the descendants of King Charles III, king of England,” according to a copy of the deal included in the February 8 meeting packet.

“President Trump wrote ‘Art of the Deal’ and brokered Middle East peace,” said Taylor Budowich, spokesman for the Trump-aligned Make America Great Again PAC. “Ron DeSantis just got out-negotiated by Mickey Mouse.”

The stealth move by Disney prompted allies of DeSantis’ chief political rival, former President Donald Trump, to suggest the governor had been out-maneuvered.

DeSantis’ political operation insisted the governor’s appointees were holding Disney accountable.

“Governor DeSantis’ new board would not, and will not, allow Disney to give THEMSELVES unprecedented power over land (some of which isn’t even theirs!) for 30+ years,” Christina Pushaw, of DeSantis’ rapid response team, wrote on Twitter.

Sorry, Christina, DeSantis should stick to bullying minorities and pick on someone his own size. The Mouse just beat the Mouth.

The BBC scrutinized the new Disney agreement and found that it includes a “royal clause.”

The declaration is valid until “21 years after the death of the last survivor of the descendants of King Charles III, king of England”, according to the document.

Such so-called royal lives clauses have been inserted into legal documentation since the late 17th Century, and they are still found in some contracts in the UK, though rarely in the US.

The 151-page Florida agreement also states that no “fanciful characters” owned by Disney, including Mickey Mouse, can be used by the board. The use of the name Disney is also banned.

Categories Accountability, Creativity, DeSantis, Disruption, Economy, Extremism, Fascism, Florida, Freedom, Freedom of Speech, Gender

Steven Singer: I Am a Charter School Abolitionist

By dianeravitch
March 30, 2023 //
32

Steven Singer, a teacher in Pennsylvania, explains here why he thinks charter schools should be abolished. They drain resources from the public schools. They are free to choose the students they want and exclude those they don’t want. They don’t produce better results than public schools. They close at alarming rates. They have been the source of many scandals. Some operate for profit.

Why do we need charter schools, he asks? We don’t.

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Disruption, Education Industry, Failure, For-Profit, Supporting public schools

Breaking News! Betsy DeVos’ Super PAC Is Funding Paul Vallas

By dianeravitch
March 29, 2023 //
12

MEDIA RELEASE


FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE Wednesday March 29, 2023


Contact: Cassie Creswell, Illinois Families for Public Schools,773-916-7794


BETSY DEVOS’ SUPER PAC SPENDING THOUSANDS TO ELECT PAUL VALLAS MAYOR OF CHICAGO


VALLAS’ EDUCATION PLATFORM PULLED FROM DEVOS’ PRIVATIZATION PLAYBOOK

CHICAGO – Last week ex-President Trump’s former Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos made a $59,000 independent expenditure in support of mayoral candidate Paul Vallas’ campaign from a Super PAC she funds, the Illinois Federation for Children PAC.

The Illinois Federation for Children PAC was established in March 2022 and has received $465,000 in total from DeVos’ American Federation for Children Action Fund, a national 527 PAC. The Illinois Federation PAC’s chair, Nathan Hoffman, was a registered contract lobbyist in Springfield for the American Federation for Children until January this year.

Although DeVos has not endorsed Vallas, Vallas’ education plans for Chicago’s school system are directly aligned with DeVos agenda of school privatization, one she supported as Secretary of Education and promotes through her national network of advocacy organizations and PACs: defunding and dismantling public school systems and redirecting public funds via programs like vouchers for private schools.

In a little-noticed February 2022 op-ed in the Chicago Tribune, Vallas laid out a radical plan for privatizing Chicago Public Schools (CPS). In addition to supporting Illinois’ existing Invest in Kids tax credit scholarship voucher program, which already diverts millions to pay for vouchers for more than 4000 Chicago children, Vallas would create a city-funded voucher program and pay for it with funds from the CPS operating budget earmarked for teacher pensions. The pension payments would then instead be covered by surplus Tax Increment Financing dollars.

In that same op-ed, Vallas also proposes allowing religious private schools to become district-funded charter (or “contract”) schools, a policy so extreme that it was recently rejected by the conservative Republican attorney general of Oklahoma as “state-funded religion.”

Vallas also voices his support for “a reconstituted system in which parents get to direct the per-pupil public dollars to the school (or education model) of their choosing.” More recently, Vallas told WBEZ that “money should follow the students” and “we should be running districts of schools, not school districts.” The education platform on Vallas’ website calls for “dismantling the central administration” of CPS. These are exactly the policies that DeVos and American Federation for Children are advocating: funding students not systems and that dollars must follow students.
In June 2022, Vallas appeared on a panel with keynote speaker Corey DeAngelis, senior fellow at American Federation for Children. The panel, organized by extremist anti-LGBTQ+ parent group, Awake Illinois. Vallas later denounced Awake Illinois, but did not dissociate himself from DeAngelis or American Federation for Children.

Secretary DeVos’ education agenda was harmful to public schools on a national scale. Chicago voters should know that DeVos supports Vallas’ candidacy and that there is no daylight between DeVos and Vallas’ education policies.


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Categories Accountability, Betsy DeVos, Budget Cuts, Charter Schools, Chicago, Closing schools, Disruption, Education Industry, Elections, Extremism, Funding, Privatization, Vallas, Paul, Vouchers
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