The Illinois charter lobby has spent heavily in the Chicago mayoral race. In recent weeks, the charter lobby has run a barrage of ads attacking Brandon Johnson, the City Commissioner who is running against Vallas.
WTTW News reported:
A statewide advocacy organization designed to promote charter schools spent $617,000 to oppose Brandon Johnson’s campaign for mayor of Chicago, records filed with the Illinois State Board of Elections show.
The independent expenditure by the INCS Action Independent Committee, funded by the Illinois Network of Charter Schools, paid for $258,000 in cable television advertisements on March 16 and $359,000 in digital advertising on March 15, records show. Election Day is April 4, and early voting is underway.
Before the first round of voting took place, the INCS Action Independent Committee spent an additional $63,000 to oppose Johnson’s campaign. In addition to their spending on the mayoral race, the committee has spent at least $107,000 to support City Council candidates in runoff elections, according to records.
Vallas has a well-established record as a passionate advocate of privatization. He supports both charter schools and vouchers.
Vallas wiped out public schools in New Orleans. He launched a massive privatization program in Philadelphia, and he left the district with a deficit.
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.
We know that Mayoral candidate Paul Vallas is getting money from Betsy DeVos. Vallas is also getting even larger contributions from hedge fund financiers because Vallas has promised not to raise taxes on them. His opponent Brandon Johnson wants to tax the highest earners to pay for improved education, mental health, and social services.
In the final stretch of Chicago’s closely watched mayoral race, candidate Paul Vallas is attacking his progressive opponent’s plan to fund public schools and infrastructure by taxing the wealthy — including a tax on financial trading that would hit some of Vallas’ top campaign donors.
The revenue plan proposed by Cook County Commissioner Brandon Johnson includes what he calls a “Big Banks Securities and Speculation Tax,” which would levy a $1 or $2 charge on most trades. Johnson’s campaign estimates this financial transaction tax could raise as much as $100 million annually for the city.
Vallas opposed Johnson’s tax plan during a debate last week, arguing that raising taxes “is the absolute wrong approach to take,” and that Chicago’s next mayor should instead focus on reducing spending.
Johnson’s tax proposal would hit financial firms that profit from speculative trades, often conducted at the millisecond level. Executives at six such firms have contributed $1.6 million to Vallas’ bid, according to a Lever review of campaign finance records. That’s nearly 10 percent of Vallas’ total mayoral fundraising haul.
Among the firms that profit from speculative trading is the hedge fund giant Citadel, whose financial dealings were swept up in the 2021 Gamestop controversy. Citadel’s billionaire founder and CEO Ken Griffin, Jr. has been a major funder of right-wing politicians like Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis and former Illinois Gov. Bruce Rauner.
Earlier this month, Griffin endorsed Vallas, telling Bloomberg News, “I really admire my colleagues who have supported Paul Vallas publicly with their voice and with their money.”
Johnson’s financial transaction tax plan mirrors those proposed by progressives at the state and federal levels. Griffin is on record opposing the idea, claiming during a 2021 congressional hearing that a national financial transaction tax would “injure Americans hoping to save for retirement.”
Ten Citadel executives have contributed a total of $762,000 to Vallas, a former Chicago Public Schools chief who helped Wall Street firms extract more than $1 billion in additional interest payments from the school district during his tenure, as The Lever reported last week.
Vallas has additionally received donations from executives at Calamos Investments, the Chicago Trading Company, Cognitive Capital, Consolidated Trading, and DRW — firms that also profit from speculative trades.
Some of the largest U.S. financial exchanges are based in Chicago, including the Chicago Board Options Exchange and the Chicago Mercantile Exchange.
Critics of the proposed financial transaction tax say that it could drive some financial firms out of Chicago. Given the robustconnections between financialization and inequality, and the relatively small number of good jobs created by the financial sector, it’s unclear whether the departure of the industry would be a net negative for the city.
On the other hand, the passage of a financial transaction tax in Chicago or in Illinois could buttress efforts to pass such policies in New York — which had a stock transfer tax for most of the 20th century — and New Jersey.
“Enough of Illinois”
The bestselling 2014 book Flash Boys, authored by Michael Lewis, chronicles the world of high-frequency traders, who make enormous sums of money by running trades at the millisecond level, exploiting minor differences in prices to collect huge profits.
Citadel and its affiliated market making firm, Citadel Securities, have long been players in this arena. A 2013 CNN report showed Citadel employees executing 21 million trades in less than three minutes.
In January, Citadel was fined $10 million by South Korean regulators for violating the country’s securities laws while using its proprietary high-frequency trading algorithm.
Griffin moved Citadel from Chicago to Miami in 2021, telling Bloomberg this month that he’d “had enough of Illinois.” But the firm still maintains a significant presence in the city, and as an active high-frequency trader, the financial transaction tax championed by Johnson could cost Citadel enormously.
On January 23, when Johnson announced his financial transaction tax proposal, polls had begun to show a likely runoff between Johnson and Vallas in a then-crowded field of candidates. In Chicago’s municipal elections, if no candidate garners a majority in the first round of voting, the top two advance to a runoff.
That same day, Citadel executive Gerald Beeson contributed $100,000 to Vallas’ campaign, records show. Two days later, another Citadel executive gave $75,000. After Johnson and Vallas proceeded to a runoff, the cash pump was unleashed, with executives at companies connected to aggressive trading donating another $1 million to Vallas.
“Brandon Johnson wants to improve services like mental health and youth jobs programs by taxing speculative financial trading,” said Saqib Bhatti, co-executive director of the Action Center on Race and the Economy, which backs the transaction tax. “It doesn’t surprise me that executives at firms that specialize in this risky trading would pour money into his opponent’s campaign.”
A Citadel spokesperson told The Lever, “We moved our HQ from Chicago to Miami last year, and with it the bulk of our investment professionals and trading activity takes place outside of Illinois.”
Citadel did not answer questions about the number of employees the firm maintains in Chicago, nor the estimated impact of Johnson’s proposed financial transaction tax on its business. In city election records, all but one of the donations to Vallas from Citadel executives list addresses in Illinois.
The Vallas campaign did not respond to a request for comment.
Protecting Retirees
Griffin, Citadel’s CEO, opposed the idea of a financial transaction tax in a 2021 congressional hearing on the video game retailer Gamestop and other “meme stocks.” Citadel was accused by retail investors of ordering stock trading firm Robinhood to stop executing trades in Gamestop as the stock was rising, threatening Citadel’s short positions.
In the hearing, held over Zoom, progressive Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.) asked Griffin whether his firm’s trading algorithm is programmed to trade ahead of transactions by pension and retirement funds — and whether that increases costs for such funds.
Griffin replied that his firm has “generated exceptional returns for pension plans and for endowments.”
Tlaib noted that as a result of high frequency trading, ordinary investors end up effectively paying a $5 billion tax each year.
“This means that Wall Street firms like yours engaging in high frequency trades are actually making money at the expense of my residents’ retirement funds,” she said, before asking whether Citadel opposed a federal financial transaction tax.
“We firmly believe that a transaction tax will injure Americans hoping to save for retirement,” said Griffin.
Citadel has also been a member of the Coalition to Prevent the Taxing of Retirement Savings, a collection of stock exchanges and trading platforms that banded together in 2020 to defeat a proposed financial transaction tax in New Jersey.
The coalition opposed the idea nationally in 2021 when it was being floated by the Biden administration, telling CNN, “This approach has a long history of unintended consequences that will penalize workers, pensioners, and American families.”
Griffin has a history of spending big to oppose increases on his taxes: In 2020, he spent nearly $54 million to help defeat a constitutional amendment that would have allowed the state of Illinois to establish a progressive income tax, akin to income taxes on the federal level. Last year, ProPublicaestimated that Griffin’s gamble could save him $51 million in taxes annually.
In the 2022 election cycle, Griffin spent nearly $75 million backing federal Republican candidates and committees, according to a Lever review of campaign finance data.
In the same March interview where Griffin praised Vallas, Griffin also endorsed a 2024 presidential run by DeSantis, saying, “I would love to see him run.” Griffin has donated nearly $11 million to DeSantis’ political committee, according to Florida records.
Current polls show a tight race between Vallas and Johnson. Chicago’s runoff election will take place April 4.
Helen Gym is running to be the Mayor of Philadelphia. She is the only progressive in the race. Helen is a friend of mine. I love her courage, her convictions, and her tenacity. She fights for the underdog. She knows that the state of Pennsylvania has shortchanged the students and public schools of Philadelphia for years. She knows the bleak conditions of the public schools. She has tirelessly fought for students, parents, teachers, and communities. She has stood strong against privatization of the schools. She has made enemies in the Establishment, which stood by as the city’s once-proud public schools were allowed to crumble and were closed to make way for charter chains.
The primary elections are May 16.
Helen Gym is my candidate. I have donated to her campaign. I hope you will help her with a contribution of any size—$10, $20, $30, $50, $100 or more. She needs our help!
The story below raises the question of whether Philadelphia can tolerate a mayor who fights for the weakest, most marginalized members of society, or whether it prefers someone as mayor who doesn’t take sides.
It was June 2021 and the Philadelphia City Council member was blocking the doors of the Pennsylvania state Senate alongside activists demanding more funding for public schools.
“Shame on the unjust funding of our school kids!” Gym shouted as police handcuffed her. She was issued a citation, then released.
The day encapsulates the duality of Philadelphians’ impression of Gym. Her supporters saw a champion — a longtime schools advocate who would stop at nothing to call attention to injustice, and someone who has backed up her rhetoric with tangible action.
But her critics saw a performance — a moment ripe to be used in a future campaign. They describe her as a populist, and someone who speaks the language of social justice but hasn’t always lived up to it.
Through three decades in Philadelphia, Gym has evolved from a teacher into a leader of the city’s social justice movement and now a mayoral candidate running as a “tough Philly mom.” The question is whether she’d be a mayor with the elbows-out posture of a longtime activist — and if that’s what the city wants in its next chief executive.
Gym has become a polarizing political figure, in part because she occupies a clear lane as a progressive in the mayoral field. It could also be because she has so often described herself in fighting terms. And fighters have opponents.
She fought the state takeover of Philly schools and fought against planned school closures. As a legislator, she fought for a defense fund for immigrants, fought for legislation to benefit hourly workers, fought for novel legal protections for people facing eviction.
In many cases, her approach worked. She won concessions as an advocate, and while she ruffled plenty of feathers in City Hall, she was a productive lawmaker for seven years on Council.
Asked if her style translates to the Mayor’s office, where she’d lead a workforce and be responsible for keeping a bevy of department heads happy, Gym rejected the notion, saying her vision for the city is larger than keeping people comfortable.
“I’m trying to lead us on a common mission,” she said, “to transform people’s lives.”
Lessons learned, from Ohio to Philly
Gym, 55, lives in Philadelphia’s upscale Logan Square section today, but she grew up in a suburb outside Columbus, Ohio. The daughter of Korean immigrants, Gym was a bookish teenager with little interest in politics.
She studied history and economics at the University of Pennsylvania, but she likes to say she graduated from The Daily Pennsylvanian, the student newspaper. Her first job was at a tiny paper in Mansfield, Ohio, a manufacturing town.
There, she interviewed a steel worker who’d lost his legs in an accident, and she assured him he could “probably find another job.” He explained that he had an eighth-grade education and couldn’t find work that would pay what he and his family were worth.
Gym was mortified.
“I never forgot what he said,” she recalled, “and I never forgot how I felt.”
She returned to Philadelphia in the early 1990s and took a job at a community center in Olney, then became a teacher at James R. Lowell Elementary School in the neighborhood.
Gym felt there was pent-up energy to improve schools in underserved neighborhoods, but not many solutions coming from institutions. She cofounded a news organization to cover education, and after leaving her district job in 1997, fell deeper into community-based work.
She fought against a baseball stadium in Chinatown in 2000 (she’s said she is “skeptical” of the proposal for a Sixers arena in Center City). And as she was raising her children, Gym cofounded Parents United for Public Education, fighting the state’s takeover of Philadelphia schools and advocating against the expansion of for-profit charters.
For years, she lobbied Council, spoke at school board meetings, and took the mayor to task for what she saw as a divestment of public education.
“Our society sometimes is not that patient to young people,” Wei Chen, one of the students, said recently. “They always see the young people as troublemakers. But Helen Gym doesn’t feel that.”
In 2013, when the state-controlled School Reform Commission voted to close some two-dozen schools, Gym rallied hard against it.
“You want Helen to be in the trenches with you when you’re in a fight,” said Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers, who was arrested protesting that plan. “And that’s the kind of mayor you want: Somebody willing to be in the trenches, somebody who can walk the walk with parents and with workers and with kids.”
Gym became one of the district’s staunchest critics — earning her new scrutiny amid the reform movement. Charter school advocates questioned her motives, pointing out that her children attended a charter that Gym cofounded in the early aughts. The school, the Folk Arts-Cultural Treasures charter, was established in Chinatown after the stadium battle and when the district was under state control.
The school wasn’t intended to be “in lieu of public education,” Gym says, but a “supplement.”
“It felt really important to prove that we could build a school that would lift our values,” she said. “Many charter operators open schools they would never imagine sending their own kids to.”
Her critics say her advocacy against expanding the charter-school footprint rang hollow.
David Hardy, the cofounder of Boys’ Latin Charter School who has long opposed Gym’s education positions, said she presents as a “feisty fighter” for families, but has hampered their ability to choose a charter over traditional school.
“She’s created this character, and a lot of people in this town buy into that nonsense,” he said. “They make it seem like they’re for public education, but you don’t see a whole lot of success for poor children in this city.”
‘She will not let up’
With the backing of the city’s teacher’s union, Gym came in fifth in the 2015 Democratic primary for an at-large Council seat — only the top five vote-getters continue on — and became the first Asian American woman on Council.
Gym learned to legislate through the lens of a broader progressive movement, said Wilson Goode Jr., a former Council member and son of the former mayor. He handpicked Gym to succeed him on the board of Local Progress, a national organization for local officials.
He said her leadership flourished after Donald Trump was elected president. Gym rallied thousands at the airport in 2017 to protest his travel ban.
“[Trump’s election] changed the way we view politics, and I think changed people’s expectations of Council people,” Goode said. “She performed well in Council in terms of crafting a legislative agenda, but at the same time rose to a different level of leadership.”
But she turned off some Council colleagues, who have said publicly and privately that Gym could be rigid during negotiations.
William K. Greenlee, a former Democratic Councilmember who served with Gym, described her as rarely veering from her positions, but also capable of compromise.
Greenlee, who is backing Cherelle Parker in the mayor’s race, recalled that Gym revised her 2018 Fair Workweek legislation — which requires predictive scheduling for workers — after business community opposition threatened its passage. It was a sign she could make an agreement.
Where Greenlee said he takes issue with Gym’s campaign is posturing — which he said is espoused mostly by her supporters — that she’s “above the fray.”
“We’re politicians, and I’m sure Helen made agreements on things, or to get things, that’s what we all did,” Greenlee said. “My only problem with that is that I admit that.”
Gym says she worked to win over colleagues of different political persuasions. She said the issues she took on, like unsafe drinking water in schools, may seem popular — but solutions were rarely simple.
“The status quo for Philly politics is that people acknowledge that there are really important issues and they’re popular, and yet nothing ever gets done,” Gym said. “I never accept half-assed ideas to solve really big problems. And if that rubs somebody the wrong way, I think that reflects more on them.”
When Gym ran for reelection in 2019, she proved to be one of the city’s most popular politicians, winning more primary votes than any Council candidate in decades.
That year, she angered Democratic party leadership when she endorsed Kendra Brooks, who ran for Council as a member of the liberal Working Families Party. Gym tweeted that “in a time of corporate Dem shills and keyboard warriors acting as pseudo progressives, Kendra has walked the walk.”
Brooks won, as did Democrat Jamie Gauthier, who beat a West Philadelphia incumbent. The three made up a progressive bloc on Council that was far from a majority, but wielded real influence. They pushed for a program to cut evictions by diverting landlords and tenants to mediation, and advocated for behavioral health providers to respond to mental health calls instead of police.
Toni Damon, the ex-principal at Murrell Dobbins Career and Technical Education High School in North Philly, said Gym’s work went beyond legislation. When Damon had one counselor and one assistant principal serving 500 students, Gym advocated to secure one more of each.
“She came when we needed her,” Damon said. “People say the squeaky wheel gets the oil. She doesn’t back down. She’s persistent. And she will not let up.”
What comes next
On Jan. 30, Gym stood at City Hall and accepted the endorsement of the Working Families Party, saying that together, they’d lift up the people ignored by “career politicians, austerity bureaucrats, and too much of the wealthy and privileged in Philadelphia.”
She wrapped up the news conference, hopped on her bicycle, and rode away.
Hours later, she visited the Union League, the ritzy private club she’d denounced days earlier because it honored Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis. She made the stop in the midst of a well-publicized campaign against the club that was led by Black clergy and officials.
Her attendance at the event, hosted by the General Building Contractors’ Association, drew criticism and questions about authenticity. A group of Black ward leaders said “her blatant hypocrisy draws significant concern.”
She apologized. But some remain deeply bothered. Blondell Reynolds Brown, a former Democratic Council member, said recently it was a poor show of character.
“When people like Helen Gym show you who they are, believe them,” she said.
Gym’s campaign has said it’s “moving forward.” They say she should be evaluated based on her track record and her plans to improve public safety, education, and economic opportunity.
Helen Gym, Mayoral candidate, is walking around Clark Park getting signatures for her petition to be on the ballot in Philadelphia last month.Read moreTyger Williams / Staff Photographer
Her biggest advantage may be that her supporters are loyal. After the Union League flap, there was little sign of a crack in her base. She continued to win endorsements from well-organized groups that say she’d be one of the nation’smost progressive big-city mayors.
And she was defended by the teachers’ union, which sees an opportunity to elect a close ally. They’ve backed winners before — but this would feel like one of them.
Damon said Gym’s critics have overblown the Union League visit, saying: “People who know her know the work that she’s done.”
“You can’t take center stage,” Damon said, “if you weren’t there from the beginning.”
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.
Cassie Creswell and Diane Horwitz wrote the following article for Valerie Strauss’s blog “The Answer Sheet” at the Washington Post. Both residents of Chicago, they are fearful of what Paul Vallas will do to the Chicago Public Schools if he is elected Mayor. They urge Chicagoans to reject his candidacy. The latest poll shows the two candidates tied. Every vote matters.
Valerie Strauss wrote the introduction.
On April 4, Chicago voters will choose a new mayor — and the decision could have a profound effect on the future of the country’s third-largest public school district, which is under mayoral control. The two candidates in the runoff election are Paul Vallas and Brandon Johnson, Democrats who offer vastly different views of public education.
Vallas is a politician and a former education superintendent in Bridgeport, Conn.; at the Recovery School District of Louisiana (most of the schools were in New Orleans); and in Philadelphia and Chicago. Vallas became known as a “turnaround” specialist, meaning he moved into troubled districts and supposedly turned them around.
However, as education historian Larry Cuban wrote: “Whether, indeed, Vallas turned around Chicago, Philadelphia, and New Orleans is contested. Supporters point to more charter schools, fresh faces in the classroom, new buildings, and slowly rising test scores; critics point to abysmal graduation rates for Black and Latino students, enormous budget deficits, and implementation failures.”
Vallas has also unsuccessfully run for several offices, including mayor of Chicago in 2019 and lieutenant governor of Illinois in 2014.
Johnson was a public school teacher in high-poverty areas where school closures and gun violence affected the communities. He then became an organizer for the Chicago Teachers Union and fought to keep neighborhood schools open, expand state funding to district schools and reduce the use of high-stakes standardized tests. He has said he will not cut funding from Chicago public schools if he is elected mayor.In 2018, he was elected commissioner of the 1st District of Cook County, where he led a successful effort to ban housing discriminating against formerly incarcerated people.
The following was written by Cassie Creswell and Diane Horwitz, who are concerned about the privatization of public education. Creswell is a public school parent in Chicago and director of Illinois Families for Public Schools, a nonprofit advocacy group that lobbies for policies that support public education, which it sees as a public good. Horwitz is a graduate of Chicago public schools, a retired educator and a board member of Illinois Families for Public Schools. Both are writing as individuals and are not speaking for the organization.
By Cassie Creswell and Diane Horwitz
In just a week, the future direction of Chicago Public Schools will be decided by voters in a pivotal mayoral election. The two candidates, Paul Vallas, a former CEO of Chicago Public Schools, and Brandon Johnson, a former teacher and teachers union organizer, offer diametrically opposed visions for schools in Chicago, which will remain under mayoral control at least through January 2027.
We see the choice as stark. Will Chicago move in the direction of school privatization, a movement gaining ground in a number of states around the country with the growth of charter schools as well as school funding programs that use public money to fund private and religious education?
Or will there be a commitment to well-resourced neighborhood schools and increased funding that would be used to reduce class size, expand mental health services and bilingual education, and ensure that every school has a nurse and a librarian? Will there be a recognition that the conditions in which many Chicago public school students live — in impoverished and segregated communities marked by violence and disinvestment — must be tackled as part of a broad education improvement agenda?
Johnson’s education platform emphasizes that families should not have to leave their communities or compete to secure a spot in a school that meets their needs and includes a library, music and art program, and small class sizes. He says that neighborhood schools contribute not only to the well-being of students but also to that of the communities in which they are located.
Saying that Chicago public schools are underfunded, he has called for more resources from the state that would be distributed based on the needs of a school’s student population and not solely on enrollment numbers. He has called for creating sustainable community schools with wraparound supports and his education plan integrates proposals for affordable housing, transportation and safety.
Vallas has criticized the operation of Chicago public schools and says he will make schools safer while creating new programs to bring back students who have left the system. He also said he would work to expand alternatives to public schools for families and would change the way schools are funded to “follow the student.”
Vallas has long supported initiatives that critics say are aimed at privatizing public education. He spelled out his vision for the future of Chicago’s school system in a little-noticed op-ed that he wrote for the Chicago Tribune in February 2022, months before declaring his candidacy — and that is what we focus on here. Here are some of his most revealing statements:
Expanding vouchers
Vallas supports expanding Illinois’ existing “Invest in Kids” voucher program, a tax credit scholarship program that offers a 75 percent income tax credit to individuals and businesses that contribute to organizations that pay for private and religious schools. A full 95 percent of participating schools are religious. More than 4,000 Chicago students were funded in this way in the last school year.
Vallas has also floated the idea of using tax increment financing (TIF) dollars to pay for K-12 school vouchers during the current campaign. TIF is a complex, and often misused, public financing initiative designed to fund development through investments and infrastructure in economically struggling communities.
The details of Vallas’ proposal in the Tribune highlight a fiscal initiative that we think is rash. He proposes applying TIF surplus dollars to cover teachers’ pension costs, and then using money that should be earmarked for pensions for vouchers. Vallas says this will allow these diversions of funds to be “legally accomplished.” One of the key concerning legacies of Vallas’ time as the chief executive officer of Chicago Public Schools was years of unpaid pension debt, generated by diverting funds that should have gone to teachers’ pensions into operating costs.
Religious charter schools
In Oklahoma, the Catholic Church recently asked the state to establish a virtual, openly religious charter school. In December 2022, Oklahoma’s outgoing attorney general issued a controversial legal opinion supporting the church’s application, saying that prohibiting religious charter schools violated the First Amendment. It was praised by Oklahoma’s Republican governor and state superintendent.
Ten months earlier, Paul Vallas’ op-ed called for religious contract schools, a type of charter school, to be established in Chicago. He wrote: “Longer term, the city can invite state-recognized parochial and private schools to become ‘contract schools’ in which the district contributes to or covers tuition for students who attend.”
Oklahoma’s new attorney general, a conservative Republican, took office in January and quickly rescinded his predecessor’s opinion, saying it “misuses the concept of religious liberty by employing it as a means to justify state-funded religion.”
Vallas also gave a nod of support to the 2022 Supreme Court Carson v. Makin decision, in which six ultraconservative justices ruled that the state of Maine could not exempt religious institutions from a school voucher program.
An unusual precedent
Vallas justified his vision for charter school expansion on “a long history of contracting out for private educational services. There is precedent.”
He then wrote:
“The Supreme Court’s landmark 1954 decision in Brown v. Board of Education grants the right to equitable educational opportunity. It is a right guaranteed by the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment. Those in power in Chicago have chosen to interpret this right as a mandate that all public financing of education be allocated exclusively to ‘public’ or government-run schools.”
Let it be noted that after Brown v. Board of Education, many communities in Southern states responded by spending public dollars on private schools using voucher schemes — private academies created for White students whose families refused to send them to public schools with Black children and were given public dollars to fund tuition.
It seems to us that Vallas is twisting the import of the Brown v. Board of Education ruling, using it to include the use of public dollars to fund children’s departure from public — or, as he called them, “government- run” — schools. His use of the phrase “government-run schools” mirrors the language used by former president Donald Trump and his education secretary, Betsy DeVos, who framed public education as a government institution essentially holding students hostage.
Private and religious schools that take public funds are not bound by the same anti-discrimination regulations as public schools, leaving them free to discriminate on the basis of disability, LGBTQ+ status, parenting and pregnancy status, English-language learner status and religion itself.
“Dollars follow students”
Vallas ended his op-ed by saying that he supports the “explicit endorsement of a reconstituted system in which parents get to direct the per-pupil public dollars to the school (or education model) of their choosing.”
This is exactly what DeVos has long advocated: “Fund students, not systems.”
DeVos is a leader in the national movement toward the privatization of our public schools, via vouchers, charter schools — which are publicly funded but privately operated — and other often poorly regulated funding programs. Those include education savings accounts and direct financial support for home schooling. The goal: discrediting and dismantling our public schools districts. Vallas was clear about his plans, which would work toward that goal in Chicago. It’s up to the voters now.
The election for mayor in Chicago will be held on April 4. The final will be a runoff between Paul Vallas and Brandon Johnson. Vallas’s supporters point to his long career as a superintendent in various school districts (although he is not and was never an educator). Brandon Johnston was elected as a County Commissioner and worked for the Chicago Teachers Union as a community organizer.
USA Today conducted a poll and found that most Americans think it’s good to be “woke.”
Republican presidential hopefuls are vowing to wage a war on “woke,” but a new USA TODAY/Ipsos Poll finds a majority of Americans are inclined to see the word as a positive attribute, not a negative one.
Fifty-six percent of those surveyed say the term means “to be informed, educated on, and aware of social injustices.” That includes not only three-fourths of Democrats but also more than a third of Republicans.
Overall, 39% say instead that the word reflects what has become the GOP political definition, “to be overly politically correct and police others’ words.” That’s the view of 56% of Republicans.
So, do you want to be informed and aware?
Or do you prefer to be uninformed and asleep?
By the way, I got an email inviting me to attend a speech by Florida Governor Ron DeSantis at the Nassau Coliseum in Long Island. That means he is running. He will talk about “the Florida Vision.” I assume that means banning books, vetting Black history, banning art, crushing academic freedom, silencing all dissent.
I prefer American values, the ones in our Constitution.
Denver Post columnist Krista Kafer worries that crazy people now control the state GOP. The man who was just elected state chairman, Dave Williams, had his name legally changed to add “Let’s Go Brandon” as his middle name.
She writes:
After the Colorado GOP chose former state Rep. Dave Williams as party chair, many sane Republicans wonder if there is a place for them within the Colorado Republican Party. By sane, I mean rational, evidence-based thinkers who get, at a minimum, that Trump lost the 2020 election, vaccines save lives, and Trump’s repellent, mendacious style has hurt Republicans’ standing in a once purple state.
Williams, an election denier and conspiracy theorist, believes Trump won in 2020 sans evidence. He alleged without proof that 5,600 dead people voted in the 2020 Colorado election. Despite 300 years of vaccine science and millions of saved lives, Williams is a proud anti-vaxxer. Upon beating out six contenders for chair (all but one of the conspiracy theorists or tinfoil hat-lite variety), Williams stated, “Our party doesn’t have a brand problem. Our party has a problem with feckless leaders who are ashamed of you,” implying that GOP leaders lost because they were insufficiently Trumpist, an assertion belied by evidence that such candidates fared worse in Colorado and around the country.
Speaking of feckless, Williams tried and failed to have the tacky phrase “Let’s Go Brandon” added to his name on the ballot for the 2022 primary against Rep. Doug Lamborn.
Williams has vowed to be a “wartime leader” leaving many of us to wonder if mainstream Republicans are a battlefield target. Former Minority Leader of the Colorado House of Representatives Mark Waller queried Williams via social media about the future, “I have been called a RINO and told I no longer belong in our Party. I don’t believe the election was stolen, and I believe the events of January 6th were a disgrace to our Country and our Party. I am also a proud Republican who believes in our foundational principles. Please let me know if I have a place in our fractured Party.”
Some Republicans have determined that there is no place for the sane, and they do not want to be associated with the lunatic fringe. Popular center-right KOA radio host Mandy Connell and the former Republican University of Colorado Regent Sue Sharkey are no longer affiliated with the party. They are two of the more than 133 Republicans who changed their voter registration since Williams won, according to an analysis by 9 News reporter Marshall Zelinger.
As I noted in a previous column, Republicans have been lagging behind unaffiliated voters since 2014 and behind Democrats since 2017. Today, Republicans account for 24% of Colorado registered voters. If sane Republicans leave the party, the con artist-crackpot contingent will gain more influence and visibility, prompting the flight of other mainstream Republicans. Unmitigated, this could trap the Colorado GOP in a death spiral just when the party should be rebounding as Trump sinks into ignominious insignificance.
Colorado isn’t alone. In Michigan, the state GOP picked Kristina Karamo for party chair. A rabid conspiratorialist, she has yet to concede her loss in the Michigan secretary of state race. The Kansas and Idaho GOP chose election deniers to chair their state parties. In Arizona, former chief operating officer for Trump’s campaigns, Jeff DeWit, beat out other contenders with the endorsement of uber-Big Lie proponents like failed gubernatorial candidate Kari Lake, state Sen. Wendy Rogers, and the former president. Fortunately, the contagion has not spread to other states.
Mississippi citizens will not be able to organize and vote on issues using ballot initiatives again any time soon after a Mississippi Senate leader allowed legislation that would have revived the option to die on calendar due to multiple concerns—including his fear that voters could use an initiative to repeal the state’s “right-to-work” law, which severely limits labor union organizing in the state.
The House made substantial modifications to the Senate’s bill, though, including removing a provision that said voters would not be able to “amend or repeal the constitutional guarantee that the right of any person to work shall not be denied or abridged on account of membership or nonmembership in any labor union or organization.” They also inserted a prohibition on using ballot initiatives to amend Mississippi’s highly restrictive abortion laws, which polls show most voters oppose.
After the House made its changes, Mississippi Senate Accountability, Efficiency, Transparency Committee Chairman John A. Polk could have sent the bill back to the Senate floor for concurrence or he could have called for a conference between the two chambers to iron out their differences. Instead, the Hattiesburg Republican allowed it to die on deadline Thursday.
Polk told the Mississippi Free Press he did not see a path to an agreement.
“We were so far apart. I don’t think there was any way we would ever get an agreement in conference,” the senator said.
The chairman said it “was disturbing to me” that House lawmakers removed language from the bill that would have prohibited voters from altering Mississippi’s right-to-work law.
“They took that out of the bill we sent, and that was disturbing to me because I’m not sure why they did it,” he said. “Mississippi needs and should be a right-to-work state.”
Democracy is not alive and well in a state that refuses to acknowledge the will of the people but prefers to limit the voice of the public by gerrymandering control of the legislature.
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