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California State Board Votes to Close Two Charter Schools!

By dianeravitch
May 13, 2017 //
76

At a time when Los Angeles is about to choose between a candidate who favors unlimited charter expansion (Nick Melvoin) and an incumbent who wants some accountability for charters, the state board just denied renewal to two L.A. charter schools.

“California’s State Board of Education voted unanimously Thursday to shutter two Los Angeles charter schools run by a nonprofit that is under investigation by the U.S. Department of Education and the inspector general for the Los Angeles Unified School District.

“Some parents and teachers at the schools cried through their testimony at an emotional hearing, which ended with the board declining to renew the charter petitions for the Celerity Dyad Charter School in South Los Angeles and the Celerity Troika Charter School in Eagle Rock. Explaining their vote, board members said they had lost confidence in the Celerity Educational Group, the organization that manages the schools, and expressed growing concerns about its governance structure and finances, as well as the potential for conflicts of interest.

“This seems to be a very troubling failure on the part of the adults who manage these organizations, rather than on the adults in the classrooms,” said board member Ilene Straus.

“The board’s vote comes at a time when charter school advocates are determined to increase the number of such schools in L.A., and it highlights the growing difficulty of regulating them. The state’s teachers union, which has fought against the growth in charter schools, has argued that all control over which charter schools are approved or rejected should rest with local school districts, rather than county or state boards.”

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

Los Angeles: The Scurrilous Smear Campaign Against Steve Zimmer

By dianeravitch
May 13, 2017 //
14

The run-off campaign in District 4 in Los Angeles for School Board has turned into a national issue. The race between Steve Zimmer, president of the Los Angeles school board, and his challenger, Nick Melvoin, has become an epic struggle between supporters of public schools and supporters of privatization.

Zimmer entered teaching through Teach for America but, unlike the typical TFA, he stayed in the classroom in Los Angeles for 17 years.

Blogger “Red Queen in L.A.,” a parent of children in LAUSD, says this is a dirty and disgraceful campaign, and almost all the dirt has come from Nick Melvoin’s camp. Melvoin is running a campaign based on lies, propaganda, and smears. He is smearing not only Zimmer, but public education. He doesn’t deserve to be elected.

Steve Zimmer understands the gravity of his responsibility as president of the school board. He is a man of honesty, candor, and dignity. Melvoin is a puppet of out-of-town billionaires.

She writes:


Negative Ads Undermine Democracy

Mostly, the fourth board district school board race has been one of incessant negativity and lies. Why do we permit this uncivilized behavior? I can tell you in walking my neighborhood I am met with deep weariness, wariness and hostility. This is the legacy of democracy abused. This race has been nothing if not about Big Lies and electoral abuse, and that’s a lesson being bought – and paid for – dearly.

Independent Committee expenditures (IECs, the new normal for “PAC”s) in favor of both candidates have been about the same, averaging $1.8 million dollars at the moment. Each. You read that right. Think of the children. (Think of the printers.)

What is not similar is IC expenditures in opposition to their candidate. Melvoin’s IC devotes half an order of magnitude more in slandering Zimmer than his IC spends to oppose Melvoin.

Thus quite apart from the overall total spent which is obscene, a dramatic distinction between candidates is evident from what’s being spent to smear the other guy. Zimmer’s adherents spent less than one-quarter, 25%, of that average toward denigrating their opposition ($441K). Melvoin’s buddies sunk 140% of that average spent in support of their candidate ($2.4 million) on negative ads.

In fact, the amount Zimmer’s IEC devoted to negative campaigning is so comparatively trivial, the negligible difference between both campaign’s positive expenditures, which is just 6% – this sum ($114K) is 25% of what Zimmer’s camp spent in negativity altogether. His challenger spent 5.5x as much as the incumbent in stuffing our mailboxes with scurrilous lies.

So the current overall total of IECs is $6.4 million, and the electorate has responded with a resounding: “Beat It”.
The blowback to our electoral democracy is fierce. When I try to speak with my own neighbors with whom I have worked side-by-side for over twenty years improving their neighborhood, my neighborhood, everyone’s lives, their doors stay shut and they make clear they are fortressed against hearing anything “political”.

What they have absorbed are buzz words: “bad”, “failing”, “violent”, “drop-out”, “waste”, “fraud”, “scandal” – and on and on and on.

What they have forgotten is that their littlest neighbors, my children, are part of that system being smeared. And I volunteer within that system improving it just like I work to improve our neighborhoods….

That is what is Trumpian about the might of the California Charter Schools Association’s money and their power in this battle for the school board. Intimidation, slander and ultimately electoral paralysis. They strive to overwhelm us with false equivalence such that even the stark consequence of ideological differences so riven as represented by these candidates, is obscured.

Please do not let all this money win your single democratic voice. You must turn out to the polls in order to use it. This is the one and only way to assert Resistance.

VOTE FOR STEVE ZIMMER ON MAY 16:

KEEP OUR PUBLIC SCHOOL SYSTEM PUBLIC

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

L.A. Times Endorses Trump-DeVos Ticket for School Board

By dianeravitch
May 12, 2017 //
39

I was curious to see whether the L.A. Times editorial board would stand up for public education or would join the chorus of privatization and greed.

Would the editorial board be offended that billionaires are swamping the district with millions to promote the privatization candidates?

Would they recall all the stories about charter scandals and corruption that the newspaper has reported? Would they forget about the Celerity charter chain, whose CEO used the school credit cards for resorts, fancy hotels, lavish meals, couture clothing, and chaffer-driven limousines?

Could they possibly endorse the candidates benefitting from the money poured in by the likes of the Walton family and other out-of-town Republicans and rightwing corporate Democrats?

They could and they did.

Maybe I shouldn’t have been surprised that they endorsed the candidates who are best equipped to promote the Trump-DeVos privatization agenda. And I won’t attribute it to the fact that the newspaper accepts $800,000 a year from Eli Broad for its education coverage, the elderly billionaire who has a fetish about stamping out public education. The editorial board has the chutzpah to refer to puppets of the charter industry as “independent thinkers.” If those two fit the L.A. Times’ definition of an “independent thinker,” they must be reading from a script provided by the billionaires who pull their strings.

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

Los Angeles: Outside Money Continues to Pour in to Buy Control of LA School Board for Charter Industry

By dianeravitch
May 12, 2017 //
4

If you live in Los Angeles in one of the districts where there is a run-off, please vote for Steve Zimmer or Imelda Padilla.

Don’t let the billionaires buy control of the public schools. They don’t want to improve them. They want to turn them over to the unregulated, scandal-ridden charter industry.

Don’t be fooled: charters and choice and privatization are the Trump-DeVos agenda!

Howard Blume reports in the Los Angeles Times on the flood of outside money that is flowing into the high-profile run-offs for two crucial seats on the Los Angeles school board. The charter billionaires are dumping millions into the campaign to defeat Steve Zimmer, president of the school board, and into the race between Imelda Padilla and charter supporter Kelly Fitzpatrick Nonez.

The election is May 16. It will determine whether the charter industry can buy control of the nation’s second largest school district.

The owner of Netflix, billionaire Reed Hastings, has gifted $5 million to the California Charter School Association. Hastings memorably told a meeting of CCSA that he looks forward to the day when there are no more elected school boards in the nation. Democracy is a problem for corporate reformers. It is so much easier to just buy up the competition, instead of giving ordinary people a vote that is equal in power to the vote of a billionaire.

Two members of the billionaire Walton family from Arkansas have given to the charter candidates. They are part of America’s wealthiest family, whose riches were gained by paying low wages to their non-union employees.

Teachers unions have supported Zimmer and Padilla, but the unions’ money comes from their hard-working members, not from a family fortune or billionaires with no limits on what they spend.

Outside spending for Melvoin has surpassed $4.25 million; for Zimmer, $2.16 million.

Both charter-backed candidates have raised more money for their own campaigns than their opponents have.

Charters are privately operated public schools that are exempt from some rules that govern traditional campuses. Most are nonunion.

CCSA Advocates can use donations for any political purpose, but the L.A. school board race — the most expensive in the nation — has been its primary project.

Besides having money, Hastings is a desirable donor for the charter side in left-leaning California. He’s been a regular and reliable contributor to Democratic causes and candidates. That’s a valuable attribute given the state’s anti-Trump political climate — because the Trump administration has made increasing the number of charter schools a central goal.

Like Trump’s Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos, Hastings is an ardent, longtime advocate for charters and a major donor to charter causes. (California Gov. Jerry Brown also strongly supports charters, though not as a big-money contributor.)

The teachers union casts donors such as Hastings in the role of outside billionaire trying to buy a local election. Hastings has insisted he simply wants to support meaningful steps to improve public education.

The “outsider” tag also applies to some other donors; some are notably associated with conservative or anti-union politics, or both.

Major CCSA Advocates donors since last September include:

Former Los Angeles Mayor Richard Riordan: $1 million. (Riordan gave another million to a second, allied campaign to defeat Zimmer.)
Conservative GAP co-founder Doris Fisher: $1.05 million
Walmart heir Jim Walton: $500,000
Philanthropist Laurene Powell Jobs (whose late husband, Apple founder Steve Jobs, was assertively anti-union): $250,000
Former New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg: $200,000
Walmart heir Alice Walton: $200,000…

United Teachers Los Angeles ended 2016 with about $366,000 in a political action committee established to support its candidates, according to public filings.The union also had $286,000 in a fund for “issues” messages. That latter fund has been tapped to put out flyers with messages such as, “Thank Steve Zimmer for student recovery day.”

Issues advertising cannot refer to an election or an election date. Nor can it urge voters to vote a certain way. But there’s a clear political benefit for the union-backed candidates.

UTLA also collects an average of $9.50 a month from the 22% of its 32,000 members who have agreed to contribute, totaling about $67,000 a month from January onward, said union political director Oraiu Amoni. This money is split about 60-40 between candidate and issues messages.

And last week, union members voted to borrow $500,000 from their strike fund for such messages. Past debts to the strike fund will not be paid off until 2020, according to Amoni.

UTLA also is spending a smaller but undisclosed amount as part of a “We Are Public Schools” media campaign, which includes billboards with positive messages about public schools. Some feature pictures of Zimmer or Padilla.

Besides the American Federation of Teachers, other unions have kicked in for those candidates — notably the National Education Assn. with $700,000 and the California Teachers Assn. with $250,000.

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

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

By dianeravitch
May 9, 2017 //
7

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

By dianeravitch
May 7, 2017 //
17

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Los Angeles: Karen Wolfe Unravels the Unified Enrollment Scam

By dianeravitch
May 6, 2017 //
31

Karen Wolfe is a parent activist in Los Angeles who fights for public schools against the behemoth that is the California Charter Schools Association and even against the Los Angeles Unified School District.

She recently discovered that the school district was considering spending $24 million to install a Unified Enrollment system. She became curious and began digging. After all, Los Angeles was the district that (almost) committed to spend $1 billion on obsolete iPads loaded with Pearson content.

The decision will be made on Tuesday at a board meeting.

Karen smelled a scam in the making. She was right.

The first thing she learned was that a common enrollment system is being pushed hard by the charter lobby, because it puts public schools and charter schools on an equal footing. The cheerleading for unified enrollment, where students have “one-stop shopping,” was funded by the Walton Family Foundation in New Orleans and Denver, which tells you almost everything you need to know.

The next thing she learned was that in a unified enrollment system, the school makes the choice, not the student. This also works out well for the charters.

Third, the OneApp system (as it is called in New Orleans) increases inequity and segregation.

Karen did research and wrote three posts. You should read all of them. The third post in the series has links to the other two.

Perhaps most alarming, Karen learned that the unified enrollment proposal was being pushed by insiders who were connected to the Broad Foundation and the Walton Foundation.

She writes:

In this post, as promised, we’ll introduce the privatizers who have infiltrated the school district to advance the interests of the charter lobby.

Conspiracy theory? Hardly. This just looks like the new business model. Since the iPad scandal, privatizers have had to find new ways to move their agenda. The scandal made direct corporate lobbying behind the scenes too risky. But there’s no need, if you have managed to plant your sales force inside the school system itself.

The District personnel pitching the Unified Enrollment scheme are not just any LAUSD employees. They are Broad and Walton acolytes, trained and placed in the school system to move the corporate reform agenda forward from the inside.

Peter Greene wrote about these “cyber shenanigans” here.

Just goes to show that you can neither slumber nor sleep when the charter industry is seeking a new angle to legitimize privatization and money.

Great job, Karen!

Categories Accountability, Broad Foundation, Charter Schools, Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, Los Angeles, Privatization, Walton Foundation

L.A.: DeVos Was in Town When She Canceled School Visit

By dianeravitch
May 2, 2017 //
17

According to her press office, Betsy DeVos was supposed to visit the CHIME Institute’s Schwarzenegger charter school in Woodlands Hills in Los Angeles on May 1. But she canceled unexpectedly the day before, citing a schedule conflict.

I assumed she was called to meet with Trump or had a family emergency that kept her in D.C. Those things happen.

But according to the ED website, she was in Los Angeles on May 1.

Here is her schedule:

Monday, May, 1

12:15 p.m.
Secretary DeVos participates in the Lunch with Education Leaders at the Milken Institute Global Conference
Los Angeles, CA
Closed press

2:30 p.m.
Secretary DeVos participates in a conversation moderated by Lowell Milken at the Milken Institute Global Conference
Los Angeles, CA
Please contact the Milken Institute for additional guidance and access

Obviously she preferred to attend a closed door meeting with the billionaire Milkens, who started the failing K12 Inc. cyber charter chain.

Maybe she was afraid of protests. The word about her scheduled visit was spread to Indivisible groups on social media.

http://www.latimes.com/local/education/la-me-betsy-devos-visit-los-angeles-20170428-story.html

Too bad she didn’t visit the school. Its specialty is integrating children with special needs into all classrooms. DeVos had a chance to learn. Although she probably would have taken away confirmation of her prior belief that school choice is best for everyone, and remain unaware that many charters exclude children with disabilities and voucher schools are not required to abide by federal law protecting them.

Categories Betsy DeVos, California, Charter Schools, Education Reform, Los Angeles, Special Education

DeVos Cancels Charter School Visit to Los Angeles! Sad!

By dianeravitch
April 30, 2017 //
35

Only hours after the U.S. Department of Education put out a press release announcing Betsy DeVos’ visit to the Schwarzenegger Charter School, the visit was suddenly canceled.

Wonder why? The L.A. school board election is coming up soon. California doesn’t like Trump or DeVos. Would her appearance create a problem for the pro-charter candidate Nick Melvoin and the California Charter School Association? Did Eli Broad ask her to postpone her visit until after the election to avoid embarrassing the pro-charter forces who call themselves Democrats? This might not have been the right moment to have DeVos appear in Los Angeles lauding the glories of charters.

Here is the latest press release:

From: “U.S. Department of Education” <ed.gov@public.govdelivery.com>
Date: April 30, 2017 at 3:55:39 PM PDT
To:
Subject: UPDATED ADVISORY: U.S. Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos’ Visit to CHIME Institute’s Schwarzenegger Community School
Reply-To: ed.gov@public.govdelivery.com

[US Department of Education]

MEDIA ADVISORY
EVENT DATE: May 1, 2017
Contact: Press Office
(202) 401-1576 or elizabeth.hill@ed.gov

UPDATED ADVISORY: U.S. Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos’ Visit to CHIME Institute’s Schwarzenegger Community School

Due to an unforeseen scheduling conflict, U.S. Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos’ visit to CHIME Institute’s Schwarzenegger Community School has been cancelled.

For more information, please contact Liz Hill, elizabeth.hill@ed.gov

Categories Betsy DeVos, Broad Foundation, Charter Schools, Los Angeles

California: Eli Broad and Betsy DeVos Agree that Charter Schools Trump Local Control

By dianeravitch
April 18, 2017 //
100

On the day before the vote on Betsy DeVos’s nomination, billionaire Eli Broad announced that he opposed her nomination to be Secretary of Education. It was a joke. He knew that his statement was meaningless and that she would be confirmed, but he was pretending to be a Democrat. The reality is that Broad and DeVos are on the same page when it comes to privatization. He is trying to grab control of half the children in Los Angeles for privately-run charter schools, and she approves. No doubt, she wishes California also had vouchers, because in her view, you can never have too much school choice. She and Broad consider local school boards a hindrance to their plans. Results don’t matter either. Nor does segregation. Choice over all.

In response to the unfettered expansion of charters–and to the ongoing financial scandals that crop up in this unregulated sector–several bills were introduced in the legislature to rein in the charters. One of them said that local school districts should make the final decision about whether to authorize new charters. Under current law, if the local school board says no, their decision may be reversed by the county board of education. If the county board of education says no, their decision may be reversed by the state board of education. If the governor is charter-friendly as Jerry Brown is, the state board can be counted on to say yes to almost any charter, no matter how much local opposition there is, and no matter how badly the new charter will damage existing public schools, skimming its students and sucking away resources.

So a bill was written–SB808– to give the local school boards the authority to block new charters that are neither needed nor wanted. The bill was supported by the California Teachers Association. It was opposed by the California Charter School Association, the lobbyists for the billionaires who love privatization.

The bill’s author just pulled it; it will not be introduced to the Senate Education Committee. The bill’s author, Democrat Tony Mendoza, met with charter school supporters last week and had second thoughts.

No doubt, Betsy DeVos is thrilled.

How many millions or billions will Eli Broad and his friends in the CCSA spend before they admit that all they accomplished was to destroy public education?

This will be Eli Broad’s legacy: not his museum; not the buildings where he has carved his name. But his destruction of public education in Los Angeles and across the state of California.

Categories Accountability, Betsy DeVos, Broad Foundation, California, Charter Schools, Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, Los Angeles, Privatization
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