Big $$ Expected to Flow to 2015 Louisiana BESE Campaign
Reflecting on the 2011 BESE campaign in which I ran for the first time against my current opponent Atty. James Garvey, I found this report and thought it worth sharing with Louisiana voters.
Taxpayers should ask themselves which of the candidates this year will be most likely to continue squandering million$ to Teach For America run by BESE member Kira Irange-Jones for non certified instructors; New Schools For New Orleans whose former director now serves on the New Orleans School Board; RSD school contractors and engineers like BESE member James Guillot's company; charter schools like the recently closed Jefferson Community School whose founding member and chairman, BESE member James Garvey, contracted with Jefferson a Parish Schools to provide $85,000 per student for the 10 students enrolled at the time; BESE member Holly Boffy who has steadfastly promoted Common Core while employed as a full time "consultant" to the Council of Chief State School Officers with Supt. John White as governing board member making him her boss instead of vice versa. Then there is BESE president Chas Roemer whose sister, Caroline Roemer Shirley is Exec Director of the Louisiana Association of Public Charter Schools.
Watch candidates' financial disclosures and campaign reports leading up to the October 24 election.
Why Do Some of America's Wealthiest Individuals Have Fingers in Louisiana's Education System?
Taxpayers should ask themselves which of the candidates this year will be most likely to continue squandering million$ to Teach For America run by BESE member Kira Irange-Jones for non certified instructors; New Schools For New Orleans whose former director now serves on the New Orleans School Board; RSD school contractors and engineers like BESE member James Guillot's company; charter schools like the recently closed Jefferson Community School whose founding member and chairman, BESE member James Garvey, contracted with Jefferson a Parish Schools to provide $85,000 per student for the 10 students enrolled at the time; BESE member Holly Boffy who has steadfastly promoted Common Core while employed as a full time "consultant" to the Council of Chief State School Officers with Supt. John White as governing board member making him her boss instead of vice versa. Then there is BESE president Chas Roemer whose sister, Caroline Roemer Shirley is Exec Director of the Louisiana Association of Public Charter Schools.
Watch candidates' financial disclosures and campaign reports leading up to the October 24 election.
Why Do Some of America's Wealthiest Individuals Have Fingers in Louisiana's Education System?
Matthew Cunningham-Cook | October 17, 2012
Last fall, a coterie of extremely wealthy billionaires, among them New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg, turned the races for unpaid positions on the Louisiana Board of Elementary and Secondary Education (BESE) into some of the most expensive [1] in the state’s history. Seven pro-education “reform” candidates for the BESE outraised eight candidates endorsed by the teacher’s unions by $2,386,768 to $199,878, a ratio of nearly twelve to one. In just one of these races, the executive director of Teach for America Greater New Orleans-Louisiana Delta, Kira Orange Jones, outspent attorney Louella Givens, who was endorsed by the state’s main teacher’s unions, by more than thirty-four to one: $472,382 to $13,815.
To support Orange Jones’s campaign against Givens, Eli Broad, billionaire head of the education reform organization the Broad Foundation and a major trainer and placer of school superintendents, chipped in $5,000. Reed Hastings of Netflix kicked in the same. Houston energy hedge fund billionaire John Arnold and his wife Laura gave a total of $10,000, as did Walmart heiress Carrie Walton Penner and her husband Geaux Teacher!: Big $$ Expected to Flow to 2015 Louisiana BESE Campaign:
FLIP THE
LOUISIANA BOARD OF ELEMENTARY AND SECONDARY EDUCATION
( BESE)
( BESE)
