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Nashville: Stand for Children, Charter Candidates Face Massive Fines for Campaign Spending

By dianeravitch
October 5, 2016 //
5

The pro-charter political group called Stand for Children and four pro-charter candidates face potential fines up to $685,000.

“The Tennessee Registry of Election Finance on Tuesday sent a show cause letter to Stand for Children and candidates Miranda Christy, Thom Druffel, Jane Grimes Meneely and Jackson Miller.

“The violations relate to the candidates coordinating with Stand for Children and its two political action committees to find campaign workers. The coordination, first reported by The Tennessean, stemmed from an email between Stand for Children’s political director, Dan O’Donnell, and the executive director of the Martha O’Bryan Center, a nonprofit group that operates two charter schools.

“I am appalled at the money that was put into this race,” said school board member Jill Speering, who easily defeated Grimes Meneely despite being dramatically outraised. “It’s going to be interesting to see what the findings are and what kind of action is taken.”

“According to the ethics bureau’s board of directors, that coordination caused the four candidates to eclipse campaign contribution limits. Each campaign is subject to a fine equal to 115 percent of the difference between the contribution cap of $7,600 and the amount of the unreported political help provided by Stand for Children. That comes out to about $70,000 in potential fines per campaign, and Stand for Children’s political action committee is subject to the same potential fine for each infraction.

“The campaigns also are subject to $10,000 fines for incorrectly reporting contributions in their disclosure reports. According to the letter, each candidate reported incorrect figures on the second quarter and the pre-primary disclosures, which means each is subject to up to $20,000 in total fines. In total, the two Stand for Children political groups and the four candidates could face up to $685,164.38 in fines. A hearing is set for Oct. 12.”

Categories Charter Schools, Nashville, Stand for Children

T.C. Weber: Was Nashville the Victim of a Hoax?

By dianeravitch
September 22, 2016 //
22

T.C. Weber is the parent of children in the Metro Nashville public schools. He is a strong supporter of public schools and a strong opponent of privatization. He reported on the battle against charter schools on his blog “Dad Gone Wild,” which ended in a sharp electoral rebuke to the privatization groups like Stand for Children.

But now he turns his attention back to his children’s public schools, and he worries because their schools are underfunded. His children’s elementary school does not have a playground.

The Nashville public schools have a new leader, Dr. Shawn Joseph. Weber filed a FOIA request and learned that Dr. Joseph has added new top administrative posts and has raised the salaries for the top layer of administrators. His pick for his chief of staff was an administrator who has worked to promote charter schools in other states. The board room of the schools was remodeled. Each of the administrators gets an expensive staff car. What’s going on? Was the school board the victim of a clever trick? Is it turning its electoral victory into a real-world loss?

Weber writes:

We recently hired a brand new director of schools, Dr. Shawn Joseph, from Prince George’s County in Maryland, at a salary of $285k per year. A significant raise from the previous director’s salary. We all clapped ourselves on the back because he didn’t seem to be a reformer. But everything is not that simple. I recently put in a FOIA request for what has been spent since Dr. Joseph came to Nashville, and I found some pretty appalling things happening. Maybe the public and the school board have been too busy with other things to notice. But we ought to be asking questions, even if it’s unpleasant. Just because someone does some things that are okay, it doesn’t mean everything is okay.

Once Joseph began his tenure here, he proceeded to hire 4 “Chiefs,” 3 from out of state, at an annual salary of $185k each along with the use of a car. In order to attract a few other desirable hires, the pay schedule for Executive Officers was raised to $155k and there are 8 at that designation. If I’m reading the previous salary schedule correctly, EO’s should max out at $110k per year. To put things in context, the previous Number 2 person in the district, responsible for creating an academy model that has won national accolades, earned only $154k a year until he left the district in April. Just 5 months later and there are now 12 people making over that amount. Perhaps the district pay schedule was way out of line, but that is a significant difference, and if so, I’m not sure that it’s one that should be rectified in one year. Especially when teachers have been asked to be patient for so long.

After he reviews the new salary schedule for administrators and the fact that each of them gets a Chevy Tahoe (which cost about the same as a teacher’s salary for the year), he adds:

Much has been written about the outside money that tried to buy this year’s school board race. In fact, last week the Election Commission announced that there was enough evidence to warrant an investigation into Stand For Children and the candidates they supported in the election. Dr. Joseph’s response was to hire Jana Carlisle as the new Chief of Staff. She is from New York City and knows virtually nothing about Metro Schools. She worked to enact the charter school laws that were recently ruled unconstitutional in Washington by utilizing a flood of outside money – the very same tactics that were employed in Nashville. Despite voters and parents clearly saying they were against the policies that organizations like Stand for Children support, Dr. Joseph ignored those voices and offered Carlisle $185k per year, a car, and money to relocate from NYC to Nashville. Dr. Joseph argues that she is extremely smart. I’d argue that there are a lot of smart people in Nashville who don’t have ties to dark money.

Now I ask: what’s the difference between a charter school’s board of directors that ignores the community and a Director of Schools who does the same? We argue often about the manner that charter schools lock out the voices of those who they serve. How many times have we heard it argued that with an elected board, a parent who has concerns has a venue to voice those concerns? But if a community makes its opinion known and a school board director chooses to ignore it, what’s the difference? I don’t know that there is a bigger expression of a community’s voice than the results of an election. So if nobody’s listening to our voices, we’ve got a problem.

Nashville, you have a problem.

Categories Accountability, Administrators, superintendents, Charter Schools, Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, Funding, Nashville

Donald Cohen: The Connection Between the Election in Nashville and the Referendum in Massachusetts

By dianeravitch
September 10, 2016 //
6

Donald Cohen is a specialist in the study of privatization. He reports regularly on his online site “In the Public Interest.”

This article appeared on Huffington Post.

He points out that pro-charter forces based in Wall Street spend more than $2 million on ads during the Olympics that were beamed to viewers in Massachusetts.
The purpose of the ads was to promote Question 2, the expansion of privately managed charters in Massachusetts.

The ads are deceptive, pretending that the vote is about improving public schools when it is about diverting funding from public schools to charters.

Cohen notes that the surprising victory of public school supporters in Nashville should give hope to their peers in Massachusetts. The same corporate forces backed a pro-charter slate in Nashville and lost, despite an overwhelming advantage in funding.

Supporters of public schools in Massachusetts, keep up your organizing and tell the public the facts about Question 2 to combat the propaganda on television. #NoOn2

Categories Charter Schools, Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, Fraud, Hoax, Massachusetts, Nashville, Privatization

Nashville: Reformers Slip a Ringer into Chief of Staff Job

By dianeravitch
August 31, 2016 //
11

T.C. Weber, who blogs as Dad Gone Wild, writes about the latest problem in Nashville.

The pro-public school/anti-charter forces won a resounding victory at the elections recently. Their candidates won handily.

But then the new superintendent of schools stunned everyone by hiring as his chief of staff a woman who had been actively involved in the charter movement in Washington state and elsewhere. She scrubbed the charter stuff off her resume, but the Internet is forever, and she couldn’t hide her long history as a supporter of the very policies that Nashville voters had just decisively rejected.

Jana Carlisle was executive director of the Partnership for Learning, which advocated for charters in Washington State, even though voters had rejected them three times. The initiative was finally passed, by less than 1%, in 2012, after Bill Gates and his fellow billionaires poured nearly $20 million into their campaign, a sum that overwhelmed the League of Women Voters, PTAs, teachers’ unions, and the NAACP. Carlisle made a statement about implementation of the charter law soon after its passage. The statement (which I copied on my cellphone) has now been removed from the Internet. Here it is:

PFL: Testimony to state board on charter schools, accountability

On November 8, 2012, Jana Carlisle, executive director of the Partnership for Learning, testified at the State Board of Education’s meeting in Vancouver on public charter school implementation and the state’s new Accountability Index.

Her comments are as follows:

“Good Afternoon. My name is Dr. Jana Carlisle and I’m here representing the Washington Roundtable’s education foundation, the Partnership for Learning.

I’m here today to reinforce the importance of the State Board of Education’s role in providing guidance and oversight to local school boards wishing to become charter school authorizers, as well as to the smooth and quality functioning of the state’s public charter school application, approval, and annual review processes. The founding member organizations of the Washington Coalition for Public Charter Schools include the League of Education Voters, Stand for Children, Democrats for Education Reform, and the Partnership and Roundtable. Our groups are committed to supporting effective implementation of and leadership for public charter schools in Washington state. To do so, we are interested in collaborating with the State Board and its staff, the Commission, and a broad base of stakeholders that include parents, students, educators, and elected and agency leaders. As is the case with the SBE, our implementation conversations have already commenced. We are eager to work closely with you and the SBE staff during the coming months and years to ensure that the intent of the initiative – which includes giving priority to opening public charter schools that serve at-risk student populations or students from low-performing public schools – is realized.

Today you have also talked about what to include in the Accountability Index. The WRT and Partnership for Learning strongly believe that a performance-based accountability system is absolutely essential to ensure our state’s implementation of a 21st Century education system and to secure support for adequately funding basic education. We believe that Washington’s accountability system must include: 1) transparent and accessible district and school report cards that include scale scores and status updates on meeting the outcomes delineated below; 2) a statewide growth-based accountability index that establishes key school performance indicators, targets, and the line between success and failure; and 3) statewide capacity and authority for incenting and rewarding school innovation; for establishing timelines for progress to occur; and for supporting, intervening in, and taking over struggling schools.

We believe that a 21st Century statewide education system – and thus the index’s indicator – in Washington will result in the following:

1. Closing student achievement gaps among students in K-12 mathematics, English Language Arts, science, and social studies – based on actual performance and growth measures.
2. Increasing overall academic achievement for all student groups for K-12 mathematics, English Language Arts, science, and social studies – based on actual performance and growth measures.
3. Increasing the overall graduation rate of high school students – documented in terms of four- and five-year rates – and the college and career readiness graduation rate.
4. Reducing remedial rates in two-year colleges and in four-year universities.
5. Increasing four-year post-secondary participation within one year of students’ high school graduation.
6. Increasing two-year post-secondary participation within one year of students’ high school graduation.
7. Increasing two- and four-year post-secondary graduation rates.
8. Increasing participation rate in post-secondary STEM programs (this includes workforce training, industry certification, and/or credit bearing two- and four-year postsecondary coursework).”

© PARTNERSHIP FOR LEARNING | 520 PIKE STREET, SUITE 1212 SEATTLE, WA 98101
INFO@PARTNERSHIP4LEARNING.ORG | P: (206) 625.9655 | F: (206) 447.0502 | PRIVACY POLICY AND TERMS

You can also read about the work of the Partnership on the website of the rightwing PIE Network.

Look, if someone wants to work for the charter movement, that’s fine, that’s their right. But they shouldn’t apply to work in a district that rejects charters while scrubbing their resume to hide their sympathies. That’s not honest.

Categories Charter Schools, Gates Foundation, Bill Gates, Nashville, Washington State

Nashville: Blogger Dad Interviews Amy Frogge on Her Upset Victory Over Big $$$$

By dianeravitch
August 21, 2016 //
5

T.C. Weber blogs in Nashville (and around the world) as “Dad Gone Wild.” He is a parent of children in the Nashville public schools, and he is as bewildered as everyone else by the movement to hand public schools over to private interests. He is equally appalled by the amount of money that has been spent to defeat school board members who support public education and oppose privatization.

In this post, he interviews Amy Frogge, a public school parent, lawyer, and school board member who just won re-election despite being outspent.

Amy describes why she decided to run for the Metro Nashville school board, how she won her first election despite her opponent having a 5-1 advantage in campaign funds, and how she won again, despite the money from groups like “Stand for Children,” which supports school privatization. When she first became involved, she knew nothing about the battle against privatization, she just wanted to help.

The Nashville story should be told in every state and every district. It is a valiant story of parents and friends of public education banding together to defeat the deceptive advertising and campaign funding by privatizers and corporate interests.

Whenever anyone feels down about the amount of money pouring into the state or the district to privatize public schools, think of Nashville, pick yourself up, and keep fighting.

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, Nashville, Privatization, Resistance

Jeff Bryant: The New Populism is Driving the Uprising Against Charter Schools

By dianeravitch
August 13, 2016 //
12

Jeff Bryant writes for the Educational Opportunity Network, where he describes here the new uprising against privately managed charter schools. He says that local grassroots groups and voters are rebelling against the influence of billionaires and hedge fund managers who fund the charter schools.

He offers examples of this uprising:

*the recent decision by the NAACP annual conference to call for a moratorium on new charter schools;

*the endorsement of the NAACP decision by the Movement for Black Lives, a group affiliated with Black Lives Matter;

*the support of the moratorium by Journey for Justice, an organization of civil rights activists;

*the resounding defeat of the charter school candidates in Nashville.

Jeff says that the response of the charter industry has been either outrage or silence:

The way pro-charter advocates have responded to these…events is telling.

Regarding the civil rights groups’ calls for a charter moratorium, the pro-charter response has been a hissy-fit driven by fiery rhetoric and few facts.

Shaffar Jeffries, president of Democrats for Education Reform, a Washington D.C. based charter advocacy financed by hedge funds, issued a statement declaring the NAACP resolution a “disservice to communities of color.”

In a nationally televised newscast, Steve Perry, founder and operator of a charter school chain, lashed out at Hilary Shelton, the bureau director of the Washington, DC, chapter of the NAACP, for being a sell out to the teachers’ unions and for abandoning children of color.

The contention that the NAACP has sold out to teachers’ unions holds little water since that organization has been a recipient of generous donations from pro-charter advocates as well. And any argument that curbing charters is a de facto blow to black and brown school kids is more a rhetorical trope than a factual counter to the evidence NAACP cites, showing where charters undermine communities of color.

Regarding the defeat of big money-backed pro-charter candidates in Nashville, the usual outlets for charter industry advocacy – Democrats for Education Reform and the media outlets Education Post and The 74 – have been totally silent.

These responses are telling because the charter industry has heretofore been such masterful communicators.

Advocates for these schools have long understood most people don’t understand what the schools are. Even when presidential candidates in the recent Democratic Party primary ventured to express an opinion about charters, they horribly botched it.

So for years, the powerful charter school industry has been filling the void of understanding about charters with clever language meant to define what these schools are and what their purpose is.

The schools, we’ve been told, are “public,” even though they really aren’t. They’re supposed to outperform traditional public schools, but that turns out not to be true either. Even when the charter industry has tried to cut the data even finer to prove some charters outperform public schools, the claims turn out to be grossly over-stated.

We’ve also been told charter schools are a “civil rights cause.” Now it turns out that’s not quite the case either.

As the public comes to realize who is behind charter schools and that they will diminish the funding of neighborhood public schools, the charter narrative loses its luster.

The next big trial of the phony “charter narrative” will be in Massachusetts this November, where billionaires and conservative Republicans are behind an effort to expand the number of charters allowed—twelve a year for every year into the future. And they are selling their proposal by claiming it is intended to “improve public education” and pretending that privately managed charters are “public schools.” Will the people of Massachusetts fall for it?

Categories Charter Schools, Civil Rights, Corporate Reformers, Democrats for Education Reform, Education Industry, Massachusetts, Nashville, Privatization

The Nashville Miracle!

By dianeravitch
August 8, 2016 //
1

T.C. Weber is the father of public school students in Nashville. He blogs as “Dad Gone Wild.” He is a strong advocate for public schools.

In this great post, he describes the apprehension and the excitement of the recent school board election, which pitted Stand for Children against public school parents in Nashville.

Stand for Children pumped $200,000 into the election in hopes of defeating the incumbent members who support public schools.

SFC had the money, but it didn’t have the votes. SFC got its tail kicked by the people of Nashville.

Or, as T.C. Weber says, the people of Nashville said to SFC, as only Southerners can, “Bless Your Heart.”

He writes:

This summer, Nashville has been embroiled in a bitter school board race that lined up the charter school supporters against the incumbent board members who are skeptical of charters. Five seats on the MNPS school board were up for grabs, with incumbents – and ardent public school supporters – in four of them. But District 5 was up for grabs because incumbent Elissa Kim chose not to run again. Two main candidates quickly emerged, with Miranda Christy falling into the charter supporter camp and Christiane Buggs more closely aligned with the incumbents running for re-election. Adding fuel to the fire was national education reform advocacy group Stand For Children, who flooded the race with cash.

The race this summer was absolutely insane. Like you-can’t-make-this-stuff-up insane. You had SFC flooding people’s mailboxes daily with opposition fliers, some even arriving the day after the election. You had a challenger in one race who probably should have been more forthcoming about his questionable past. There was the apparent coordinating between Stand For Children and a well-respected non-profit organization, not to mention an email that showed charter school leaders working to get school board members elected who were sympathetic to their issues. The local teachers union mistakenly sent out mailers that gave the impression that Buggs was an incumbent. The most vocal of the incumbents, who was endorsed by the local paper, became the recipient of a hit piece by that same newspaper four days before the election – a piece that revealed no new information and left out the fact that several of its sources were on the opposition’s payroll. Luckily, the local alternative newspaper rose to the challenge and pointed out the omissions. Two days before the election, a parent, along with Tennessee Citizen Action filed a petition for an investigation into potential campaign finance violations by Stand For Children.

On the eve of the election, I was filled with trepidation, praying that SFC wouldn’t be able to buy more than two seats on the board. Then the craziest thing happened: the voters cast their votes, and they saw through all the distractions to send a loud and clear repudiation of SFC and their cohorts. Jill Speering won with over 60% of the vote. Amy Frogge won with over 60% of the vote. Christiane Buggs won with over 50% of the vote in a four-person race. These are not close margins. The only race that was close was Will Pinkston’s race. He won by 36 votes, but considering all that he faced in the week leading up to race, it was amazing he was even standing. SFC had only one victory in this school board race when Sharon Gentry won, though she was not a beneficiary of their financial generosity, having received only $6k that came with their endorsement. But her challenger, Janette Carter, still managed to amass 3,200 votes out of roughly 8,000, with many of those votes coming from the congregations of local AME churches. Not a good sign for Gentry.

The results are a clear reaffirmation of the issues public education advocates across the city have been working on for the last several years. What makes things even more special is that this wasn’t a victory by one small group of advocates in one district. No, this was a true grassroots collection of city-wide advocates focusing not just on their district races but on all races. Over the last several months, through social media, these separate individuals from different pockets of the city reached out to each other and banded together across the city for the cause of public education. No one had the luxury of drawing a paycheck from a foundation. The work on these winning campaigns was all done by volunteers.

Let Nashville stand as a national warning to corporate reform: Hands off our public schools! The public paid for them, the public pays for them, and you can’t take them away.

An informed public will not give away its public schools to corporate charter chains, entrepreneurs, and non-educators seeking fame and fortune.

As T.C. Weber put it:

Today is a good day. Not just for Nashville, but for everybody throughout the country who believes in public education. What has happened in Nashville is proof that the conversation about what is needed in public education is changing. People are recognizing that the policies of the reform crowd are not good for kids. We need to seize on this momentum to drive home policies that are good for kids, like equitable funding for our schools, increased daily recess time, decreased emphasis on testing, empowering teachers, and more. Reformers like to point to Nashville as a “model” for their success stories. This election now provides a model on how to fight back and win against corporate reform.

We need to remember, though, that these victories are hollow if we just celebrate the political wins and then don’t show up to put in the work in at our schools. Nobody believes that our schools are currently the best that they can be, nor do we deny that for years they have come up short for many children of color. By recognizing those facts and using the support we’ve created, we can finally address those shortcomings in a meaningful manner. It would be a great tragedy if we as citizens failed to grasp this opportunity.

On election day, I heard a story about a mom who watched the conversation unfold this summer and as a result, felt empowered enough to pull her child from a perceived high-performing school in order to enroll her in their neighborhood school. Another neighborhood leader was so inspired by the election results that she is planning to commit to recruiting young families to support their neighborhood school. We need more of those stories, and if we keep working together and remembering what’s important, we will hear them. It really feels like a new day is dawning. And Stand for Children… as they not-so-nicely say here in the South, bless your heart.

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, Nashville, Privatization, Stand for Children

Amy Frogge, Nashville Hero, Won Re-Election with “An Army of Moms”

By dianeravitch
August 6, 2016 //
8

Amy Frogge is a member of the Metro Nashville School board. She is a lawyer and a parent of children in the Nashville public schools. When she was first elected four years ago, the charter industry spent $125,000 in an effort to defeat her. At the time, she was running as a concerned parent who thought there was too much testing, and she was unaware of the battles behind the scene between privatizers and supporters of public schools. She was outspent 5-1, and yet she won. For the past four years, she has been an intrepid supporter of public schools and has helped to repel the rapacious charter movement. For her courage and dedication to children, she is on the honor roll of this blog.

In the election this past week, the “reformers” spent $150,000 to taker her out, and she won again, overwhelmingly.

She was attacked by the local newspaper and by mailers that smeared and defamed her. There were even “push polls,” in which voters were falsely told that Amy defended child molesters and pornographers. Amy has never had criminal clients, and she is not currently practicing law (her husband was a public defender). Other pro-public school candidates were targets of similar smear tactics. It was an amazingly dirty campaign, funded by the usual corporate types, which funneled their money through Stand for Children.

The people of Nashville gave a sound thrashing to Stand for Children and its dirty politics and dark money.

How did Amy do it? She mobilized parents to work as volunteers in her campaign. Stand for Children dubbed them “an army of moms.” Great name!

To see a picture of Amy and some of her “Army of Moms,” look at her Facebook page.

I made an error in reporting the Nashville election results. One of Stand’s pro-charter candidates, incumbent Sharon Gentry, was re-elected. However, another pro-charter incumbent, Elissa Kim, stepped down and her seat was won by former teacher Christiane Buggs. (Kim was until recently head of recruitment for TFA nationwide.) Buggs will be an ally of the pro-public school members. There are nine board members. Only three are strongly pro-charter.

A great night for Nashville public schools, and a great lesson about how parents can beat Dark Money.

Categories Nashville, Parents, Resistance, Stand for Children

VICTORY in Nashville! Pro-Charter Candidates Defeated, Despite “Reformer” $$$

By dianeravitch
August 5, 2016 //
22

Great news from Nashville!

All four incumbents on the Metro Nashville school board won re-election. They were opposed by well-funded charter advocates.

The corporate reform group Stand for Children funneled $200,000 into the Nashville contest to try to defeat the pro-public school incumbents.

Across Tennessee, the corporate reform candidates fared poorly, despite SFC’s $700,000 of dark money.

“More than $750,000 buys plenty of campaign mailers and advertisements. But it doesn’t necessarily buy election wins.

“Stand For Children, an education advocacy organization, found that out the hard way Thursday night. After spending a small fortune, all four candidates it backed in the Metro Nashville school board election and a handful of state GOP primary challengers lost their races.

“I think Nashville has become a model of how you defeat an obscene amount of dark money in local school board elections. At the end of the day, there’s a certain sanctity between public school parents and their locally elected school board. And it’s not for sale to the highest bidder,” said Jamie Hollin, a former Metro councilman and political operative.

“Noting he’s a proud public school parent, Hollin added, “I am particularly proud to put the nail in the coffin of the charter school movement in Nashville.”

“Stand for Children, which advocates for charter schools as well as prekindergarten programming and other education issues, financially supported 10 school board or statehouse candidates in the primary, specifically spending more than $200,000 on school board races. Only one who faced an incumbent won: Sam Whitson easily defeated embattled Rep. Jeremy Durham, who had suspended his re-election campaign after an attorney general investigation detailed allegations of inappropriate sexual conduct by Durham against 22 women.

“Metro school board incumbents Will Pinkston, Amy Frogge and Jill Speering defeated their Stand for Children-backed opponents, Jackson Miller, Thom Druffel and Jane Grimes Meneely, respectively. Only the Pinkston-Miller race was close, with Pinkston winning by 36 votes. Miranda Christy, the Stand for Children-supported candidate in the race to replace retiring board member Elisa Kim, lost by more than 30 percentage points to newcomer Christina Buggs.”

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Corporate Reformers, Nashville, Privatization, Stand for Children

Tennessee Civic Group Seeks Investigation of “Stand for Children” as Conduit for Dark Money

By dianeravitch
August 5, 2016 //
18

The local press in Nashville reported recently that the pro-privatization political outfit called “Stand for Children” had amassed a war chest of $200,000 to fund the campaigns of charter advocates for the Metro Nashville school board. Across the state of Tennessee, the Oregon-based SFC was spending $700,000 in state and local races, apparently to assure Continued Republican dominance of the state.

Yesterday a liberal advocacy group and a Metro Nasville parent asked for an investigation of the ties between SFC and the candidates it supports:

“Consumer rights group Tennessee Citizen Action and a Metro Schools parent plan to file a petition requesting an investigation into potential campaign finance violations involving Stand for Children after questions emerged over whether the group illegally coordinated with pro-charter school candidates.”

SFC is now a money-laundering operation for the plutocrats who hope to eliminate public schools. The hedge fund managers, billionaires, and equity investors are pouring money into key school board races across the country, hoping to undermine democracy–since locals who are committed to public schools are vastly outspent–and to promote privatization.

Categories Charter Schools, Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, Education Reform, Nashville, Privatization, Stand for Children, Tennessee
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