Steve Barr– Who Ditched His New Orleans School Renovation Commitment– Wants to Become Mayor of Los Angeles | deutsch29

Steve Barr– Who Ditched His New Orleans School Renovation Commitment– Wants to Become Mayor of Los Angeles | deutsch29:

Steve Barr– Who Ditched His New Orleans School Renovation Commitment– Wants to Become Mayor of Los Angeles

The Los Angeles Times reports that Green Dot charter schools founder Steve Barr plans to run for mayor of Los Angeles in 2017.

The Times considers Barr a long shot– unless current Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti lands a position with Hillary Clinton (assuming Clinton is elected president in 2016).

Barr is a greaseball. I wrote about him in my first book, Chronicle of Echoes, for his assisting Ben Austin in launching Parent Revolution, the astroturf group that manufactures faux-grass roots discontent enabling so-called parent takeover of schools so that said schools might be turned over to charter operation.

Barr also was supposed to manage and renovate a New Orleans school, McDonogh Senior High, and after two years of doing nothing, Barr bailed on the project. No big deal to him, of course, since New Orleans is 1,900 miles from Los Angeles, and any bad press from bailing on a New Orleans school did not touch is Los Angeles-based life.

Below are both my Barr excerpt from Chronicle of Echoes as well as a brief recap of Barr’s shafting the McDonogh Senior High community by bailing on his long-distance commitment to New Orleans.

From Chronicle of Echoes (pages 328-329). (For end note references, see the excerpt as published in the book):

Although promoted to be adopted as ALEC model legislation, the parent trigger originated in California with a group called the Los Angeles Parents Union, whose web address is parentrevolution.com, and whose leader is Ben Austin.  Austin was already in the privatization business associated with Green Dot Charter Schools. In January 2010, the parent trigger barely passed the California legislature (by one vote in each branch) in an effort to garner Race to the Top money. However, the positioning of the Los Angeles Parent Union/Parent Revolution was happening in the years prior to passage of California’s parent trigger legislation.

Before being connected with PR, Austin was associated with Green Dot charters. Indeed, via Green Dot, Austin takes credit for “transforming” Locke High School, “the worst school in Los Angeles into a college preparatory model of reform.” In 2006, Eli Broad announced that he would invest $10.5 million in Steve Barr’s Green Dot Education Project. Sadly, Locke High School became a casuatly to Barr’s amply-funded “experiment.” Austin was able to benefit from Locke’s undoing. In 2007, Austin was paid $95,000 by Green Dot for “consulting” If a “model of reform” involves dividing a school into several smaller schools, closing and reopening these smaller schools multiple times, and finally putting some but not all back together into one school again, all inside of five years, the yes, Locke is a “model of reform.” Teacher and 

Steve Barr– Who Ditched His New Orleans School Renovation Commitment– Wants to Become Mayor of Los Angeles | deutsch29: