Bush, the Florida BOE, and Leadership Post-Bennett
Today’s Florida Board of Education emergency meeting was suitably somber. While voting unanimously to appoint Pam Stewart as the interim commissioner a solid decision - this takeaway stood out. Consider this from Kathleen McGrory’s post in the Buzz: During the conference call Friday, board member Kathleen Shanahan called for the creation of a “select committee” of lawmakers, superintendents and ot
What the Bush Foundation’s Spin to Defend Tony Bennett Tells Us About Them
Patricia Levesque, the woman who heads both of Jeb Bush’s foundations, set the tone for the defense of Tony Bennett when the grade fixing story broke Sunday night when she said “they fixed a problem to be accurate and fair — any accusation otherwise is false and politically motived.”
The world knows this now to be patently false. Bennett’s emails, a virtual paper trail, show that his main focus was on one school, Christel House Charter School, which happened to belong to the major donor to his campaign. Perhaps Levesque hadn’t seen the emails yet and was going on what she’d been told by Bennett’s people. I’d imagine Levesque was notified before Tony LoBianco’s investigative piece was published. Her first instinct was to protect the brand and accuse the story of being politically motivated. Never mind that her response was just that.
But what if she had seen the emails when she played the “political motivated” card? One might conclude she’s being delusional. She has after all, invested a lot into the school grade accountability movement. I don’t think for a minute that a savvy, experienced operator
