OP-ED | Don’t Let Foundation Money Be A Trojan Horse
Sarah Darer Littman: The Gates Foundation as a Trojan Horse, Disabling Democracy
Sarah Darer Littman, who writes about education issues in Connecticut, tells a shocking story here of power and money. The Hartford, Connecticut, schools are under mayoral control; the mayor appoints 5 of 9 members of the board of education. The other four are elected by the public. But the Board is bound by its bylaws to act as a whole. The five are not supposed to hold secret meetings to make p
by Sarah Darer Littman | Sep 19, 2014 11:00am
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Posted to: Education, Opinion
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Posted to: Education, Opinion
SARAH DARER LITTMAN
Then this week I read the Hartford Courant report on the discovery that computers and equipment are missingfrom the Jumoke Academy at Milner, and realized that despite all I’ve written previously, it’s time for this Cassandra to revisit the Trojan Horse story.
Last year, Hartford received a “gift” in the form of a grant from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. Hartford is a city where the Board of Education is under mayoral control — a situation the corporate education reformers in this state (and many forces from outside the state) tried extremely hard and spent a lot of money to try to replicate, unsuccessfully, in Bridgeport in 2012
This means that Mayor Pedro Segarra appoints five members of the Hartford Board of Education, and four are elected by the people of Hartford. However, according to its bylaws, the Board is meant to act as a whole.
But that’s not what happened in the case of the $5 million grant announced back in December 2012.
On June 29, 2012, staff members of the Gates Foundation came to Hartford for a meeting. According to a memo former Hartford Schools Superintendent Christina Kishimoto sent to the Board on October 12, 2012 — which was the first time the wider board knew of the meeting — “Participants included Board of Education Chair Matthew Poland, Mayor Segarra, Hartford Public Schools, Achievement First and Jumoke Academy senior staff members, Hartford Foundation for Public Giving, Connecticut Council for Education Reform, ConnCAN, and other corporate, community and philanthropic partners.”
The grant was paid through the Hartford Foundation for Public Giving, which receives 3 percent of the total ($150,000) for serving as fiscal agent. $150,000. Just think of all the Donors Choose literacy programs in Hartford that money would fund, saving teachers the indignity of having to beg donations for sets of classroom books.
But that’s not the worst part about the Gates grant. What’s really disturbing is that by funneling a grant through another foundation, a private foundation was able to impose public policy behind closed doors, and what’s more, impose policy that required taxpayer money — all without transparency or accountability.
I had to file a Freedom of Information request in order to get a copy of the paperwork on the Gates grant and what I received was only the partial information, because as Connecticut taxpayers will have learned from the Jumoke/FUSE fiasco, while charter schools consistently argue they are “public” when it comes to accepting money from the state, they are quick to claim that they are private institutions when it comes to transparency and accountability.
But what is clear from the grant paperwork is that Hartford Public Schools committed to giving more schools to Achievement First and Jumoke Academy/Fuse, a commitment made by just some members of the Board of Education in applying for the grant, which appears to be a clear abrogation of the bylaws. Further, as a result of the commitment made by those board members, financial costs would accrue to Hartford Public Schools that were not covered by the grant — for example, the technology to administer the NWEA map tests, something I wrote about back in December 2012, just after the grant was announced.
One of the Gates Foundation grant’s four initiatives was to “Build the district’s capacity to retain quality school leaders through the transformation of low-performing schools, replicating Jumoke Academy’s successful model of a holistic education approach.”
I wrote to the Gates Foundation this week asking them what due diligence they did on Jumoke and how a foundation with the legal and accounting resources that surely must be available to them could have missed the kind of financial improprieties that were going on at the charter school management organization that managed the school. They did not comment prior to deadline.
Family Urban School of Excellence (FUSE) — the charter school organization that oversaw Jumoke Academy and Hartford’s Milner Elementary School — no longer manages any Connecticut schools and is the subject of an FBI investigation. It’s also the subject of a state Education Department investigation. Those investigations were prompted after Michael Sharpe, the charter school management group’s CEO, resigned following news reports revealing his criminal past. Sharpe also admitted to a Hartford Courant reporter that he had lied about his education credentials.
I’m also curious as to how the familiar alphabet soup of edreform organizations who were involved in the private meeting in June 2012, and who consistently showed up at Board of Education meetings supporting charter takeovers by Sharpe and FUSE, were so surprised by that organization’s financial and ethical improprieties. Aren’t CT News Junkie | OP-ED | Don’t Let Foundation Money Be A Trojan Horse:
