School Board Privatization: Committee for a Better _________ (Your City Here)
Not far from my home, on a vacant lot next to a major highway, I noticed an advertisement for our upcoming local school board elections. The name of the candidate is not familiar to me, but each time I pass the board, I wonder, “Who is funding you?”
The purchasing of local school board races by well-funded, national groups with privatizing interests in the supplanting of community school systems with so-called “choice” (e.g., for-profit charter operations; vouchers, online education companies) is now commonplace nationwide.
One means of bankrolling a state or local school board right into education privatizing hands is for well-funded national groups (including non-profit foundations) to form a political action committee (PAC) hidden behind a local-sounding, grass-rootsy name.
One such ploy has come to my attention, a PAC that takes on the name of a local school district as “Committee for a Better _____” (fill in the blank with the name of a city or county/parish).
In its solicitation of prospective candidates to fund, this PAC requires those receiving a contribution to sign a detailed agreement to advance privatization. Below is the text of such an agreement:
Committee for a Better ______ Education PlatformI pledge to vigorously support the following issues:Implementing all viable options for turning around low-performing ____ schools, including nationally recruiting school principals and issuing RFP’s (requests for proposal) for high-quality charter operators to turn around failing schools.Expanding the magnet school system to eliminate the waiting list for qualified students.Expanding educational options (school choice) of parents through the opening of quality charter schools by pro-actively soliciting charter proposals;School Board Privatization: Committee for a Better _________ (Your City Here) | deutsch29: