Exclusive: Bankruptcy Is a “Huge Opportunity” to Privatize Schools Says EdBuild
The school privatization movement has long sought to consign public schools and locally elected school boards to the dust heap of history to usher in a brave new world of “free market” schools instead of free and universal public education.
One big reason for this obsession?
There’s at least half a trillion dollars a year up for grabs for corporations that want to line their coffers with taxpayer money. K-12 education, Rupert Murdoch explained in a press release a few years ago, is a “$500 billion sector in the U.S. alone that is waiting to be transformed.”
But the transition to for-profit education has been too slow for some advocates who have some new and rather drastic ideas on how to pick up the pace, according to information obtained by the Center for Media and Democracy/PRWatch.
"Bankruptcy Might Be the Thing that Leads to the Next Education Revolution"
In a year which marks the 10th anniversary of Hurricane Katrina, school “reform” advocates gathered in New Orleans under the aegis of billionaire Betsy DeVos’s American Federation for Children (AFC).
Held at the luxurious Hyatt Regency Hotel in the Business District—far from the wards devastated by Katrina—the AFC Policy Summit was a celebration of New Orleans’ school privatization spree in the aftermath of the disaster took the lives of 2,000 Americans and destroyed entire neighborhoods.
But in the absence of a new hurricane that would sweep away public schools, a man-made calamity might do the trick. Such was the argument of Rebecca Sibilia, who is the CEO of a new non-profit education group: Edbuild.
“When you think about bankruptcy … this is like a, this is a huge opportunity for school districts. And this is something that Ed Build is going to focus on. Like bankruptcy is not a problem for kids; bankruptcy is a problem for the people governing the system, right? So, when a school district goes bankrupt all of their legacy debt can be eliminated. And when we are answering questions that Andy [Smarrick] and Mike [McShane] put forward, like how are we going to pay for the buildings, how are we going to bring in new, umm, operators when there is pension debt? Like if we can eliminate that in an entire urban system, then we can throw all the cards up in the air, and redistribute everything with all new models. And so, you’ve heard it first: bankruptcy might be, like, the thing that leads to the next education revolution,” Sibilia explained."
Here's a video of Sibilia's joyful response to the idea that bankruptcy is a "huge opportunity."
"A Naked Power Grab"
“This sounds like an attempt at a naked power grab,” Saqib Bhatti an expert in municipal finance with the Roosevelt Institute told the Center for Media and Democracy. Bhatti explained how bankruptcy could potentially lead to the kind of public-to-private “redistribution” Sibilia has in mind.
“Once you’ve cleared any hurdle the state has set up and file for Chapter 9 bankruptcy, the case goes before a federal judge who reviews the bankruptcy plan the municipality has submitted. The judge can only accept it or reject it, and is
- See more at: http://www.prwatch.org/node/12932#.dpuf
