Our Students In Jail. Read Their Letters. Demand Their Release! - Lily's Blackboard

Our Students In Jail. Read Their Letters. Demand Their Release! - Lily's Blackboard:

Our Students In Jail. Read Their Letters. Demand Their Release!

From Yefri Sorto Hernández

 Wildin Acosta, Yefri Sorto Hernández and Pedro Salmerón were detained by agents of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) on their way to school. Their teachers, school staff, friends and families are calling for their release. In their own words they share what it is like to be behind bars.

I am Pedro Arturo Salmerón Salmerón. I live in Charlotte, North Carolina and I am a student of Vance High School.

I find myself detained in a detention facility called CCA Stewart Detention Center and it is one of the worst detention [centers] in the country, because of the treatment and environment of detention.

The way of life in the detention center is inadequate and really uncomfortable. The food on many occasions is bad and recreation is really insufficient.

At the detention center, one can see disappointment and despair of continued detention on the faces of the detained. The administration of this place is bad and the superiors do not improve the quality of it.

My dream always is to make it as a musician. For this, I have dedicated the majority of my life to it, the long and hard study of it, so that I know how to play multiple instruments.

In addition, I have studied many other topic areas such as information, astronomy, medicine, engineering and literature. These are the studies that at times I have wanted to study professionally and at times I would feel proud of.

For me, the United States of America represents a grand nation and for me, it is a one of the best economically, safety-wise, efficiency-wise and intellectually. The opportunities here are big and here one is able to achieve in the areas that you want, and in contrast to my country of origin, the U.S. represents my future and the family.

The city of Charlotte, North Carolina where I live is for me, my home. And the tranquility of this place is very gratifying. The people are nice and there are many places to discover. The environment is soothing and the work is abundant. The city is my place and [the place] of my family.

My only request is to be free and to be able to live in Charlotte, North Carolina. I do not want to be deported to my country. I have already suffered from these aggressive criminals and lost family members because of them. These are only some of my fears of returning.

Please, I need to be free, I am not a bad person, I don’t deserve to be here incarcerated. I need assistance to leave because like I said before, I am not able to return and my future is here. I ask for compassion, because I consider myself a humble person of good deeds and thoughts.

Hello everyone:

I want to ask for your help to see if they are able to release me so that I can leave and fight my case outside [of jail] because the conditions that one finds here are very difficult. Especially for me who has never been imprisoned, it is very hard because here there is nothing good to do, other than think about my family, [about if] they are good or what they will do, waiting for when I can go back to embrace them again.

There are very sad moments for one. Even the tears come when I remember that I have been separated from my parents for 15 years and now that we have been reunited, they want us to go back to being separated. This is a very hard blow for my family and me. Only God knows how much I have cried in this place.

There are days that my mind is not on this planet, my mind goes flying. I do not remember anything and amongst everything, there is the same thought that I do not want to be deported. I do not want to know anything about my country or my life for these moment put me in a really bad place in my mind. The only thing I see is how the days pass and I am unable to be with my parents and moreover waiting for that special day when I can return to them and feel the love of my parents.

Her brother Yefri was detained by @ICEgov waiting for the school bus, he loves soccer, she misses him. #freenc6 pic.twitter.com/2M61DX5tzT

— Lily Eskelsen García (@Lily_NEA) April 20, 2016

My mind cannot rest day and night thinking about the place that I am in. There are days that I pass just lying down because I feel depressed until my friends tell me that I should not be worried and that I should get up. But this is difficult. They tell me that I could become crazy from all this thinking about my family. But I cannot stop asking  Continue Reading: Our Students In Jail. Read Their Letters. Demand Their Release! - Lily's Blackboard:

Update: Gulen Harmony charter school network accused of bias and self-dealing Dallas Morning News

Texas charter school network accused of bias and self-dealing | | Dallas Morning News:

Texas charter school network accused of bias and self-dealing

Update Turkey Follows Through with Complaint Against Harmony | The Texas Tribune http://bit.ly/1s7Zl23

Harmony Public Schools, Texas’ largest charter school network, is known for its math and science prowess. Now it’s under fire for allegations of discrimination, self-dealing, misspending – and ties to Turkish immigrants.

A law firm hired by the Republic of Turkey is asking the Texas Education Agency to investigate Harmony, which was founded in 2000 by Turkish nationals. Harmony runs 46 schools across the state, including a dozen in the Dallas area.

The firm, Amsterdam & Partners, filed a 32-page complaint today with the state that details “some very concerning issues and some apparent illegal or improper conduct related to these school operators,” said John Martin, senior counsel for the firm.

Among the allegations: Harmony hires under-qualified Turkish teachers and steers business to companies run by Turkish nationals, including some former Harmony employees.

Soner Tarim, Harmony’s superintendent, called the complaint “ridiculous and baseless.” He said it’s a politically motivated attack by Turkey’s president, whom most Turks living in the U.S. don’t support.

“We’re going to continue to serve our students and parents, and nothing will distract us from that,” Tarim said.

More to come.Texas charter school network accused of bias and self-dealing | | Dallas Morning News:

 Big Education Ape: Republic of Turkey Targets Houston-Based Charter School | The Texas Tribune http://bit.ly/1U3I7Jk

Big Education Ape: Every parent and community member should see the Killing Ed film | Parents Across America http://bit.ly/1U2Ph0m

Big Education Ape: TBFURMAN: The Manufactured Federal Blindness Toward The Gulen-Linked Charter Schools http://bit.ly/1SXx0Fm

How the Supreme Court Upheld Education Funding Inequity

EdBuild | Arbitrary:

Power in Numbers - Arbitrary Funding

How the Supreme Court Upheld Education Funding Inequity

In this third installment of Power in Numbers, EdBuild finds that similar school districts across the country spend radically different amounts on their students, even when differences in local costs are taken into account, revealing systemic and unjustifiable inequities in the way we fund our schools.

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In the late 1960’s, parents from Edgewood, an urban school district within the city of San Antonio, brought suit against the state and seven school districts, claiming that the Texas system of funding schools was unconstitutional. Their main claim was that the state’s reliance on local property taxes to fund schools favored more affluent communities, giving them more resources for their schools. While they recognized the state’s attempt to partially compensate for the inequalities with state funding, they argued that since low-income districts still ended up with less money, they were substantially disadvantaged, and the system should be struck down as a violation of the United States Constitution’s guarantee of equal protection under the law.

The case, San Antonio v. Rodriguez, made it to the Supreme Court, and in 1973, the Court ruled that Texas' education finance system did not violate the U.S. Constitution. It based its ruling on two tenets—first, that low-income communities are not a protected class, unlike racial or religious minorities, and second, that education is not a fundamental right under the United States Constitution. Without these two protections, as long as a state's funding scheme has a “legitimate” or “rational basis,” the U.S. Supreme Court could not strike it down, even if it clearly disadvantaged struggling communities[1].

With its ruling in San Antonio, the Supreme Court forfeited any responsibility to level the playing field for poor students, and left their fates to 51 state definitions of “equity” and “opportunity”. Today, there are no federal criteria for what constitutes an education, leaving each state to set its own standards and requirements. In some states, education systems must be “thorough and efficient.” In others, they must be “uniform and general.” Still others expect schools to prepare each child to participate in democracy. These different standards create a system in which your home state and community dictate the level of education to which you are entitled.

The map below shows just what that means. It shows the amount by which school funding in every school district in America differs from $11,866, the average per-pupil revenue in all districts in the nation. These numbers are adjusted for local variations in the cost of living, so they are directly comparable across states and across the country. As you can see at a glance, there is huge variation in the resources that each district has available for their students - the poorest districts, in fact, receive 21% less funding than the wealthiest ones do.

School Districts, Difference from National Average

As Justice Marshall predicted in his dissent to the San Antonio v Rodriguez ruling, while school funding systems might discriminate between districts rather than students, "the impact of that discrimination falls directly upon the children whose educational opportunity is dependent upon where they happen to live." To be sure, we at EdBuild believe that there should be differences in the amount of money spent on education in different communities, but this variation should be based on levels of student need, not on the happenstance of location. Education spending today is wildly inconsistent, even between districts serving similar student populations.

In the data presented below, we highlight the 200 largest districts (based on their student enrollment) to reveal large and systemic inequities in the way we fund schools across the country[2]. We have sorted these districts into fourteen peer groups based on their demographics and budget constraints so that it’s easy to compare spending levels in similar districts. Just like the variation among state education budgets, the disparities in the budgets of comparable school districts demonstrates the arbitrariness of education funding in America. As we see again and again in districts around the country, education funding levels are determined by local wealth and state will—not by student need or any legitimate education considerations. 

Peer Group 2, for instance, consists of eight school districts, all middle-income with more than 50,000 students and very high rates of students who qualify for free or reduced-price lunch under the National School Lunch program. They educate some of the highest-need students in the country, and yet all have revenues well below the EdBuild | Arbitrary:

Feds: New $1.3M tutoring scam uncovered at Detroit schools

Feds: New $1.3M tutoring scam uncovered at Detroit schools:

Feds: New $1.3M tutoring scam uncovered at Detroit schools

Another corruption case has surfaced for the troubled Detroit Public Schools, this one involving a former grants administrator who is charged with pocketing nearly $1.3 million that was supposed to be used for tutoring services for kids.

Carolyn Starkey-Darden, 69, the former director of grant development at DPS, is charged by federal prosecutors with billing DPS $1.275 million over seven years for never-delivered tutoring services through companies she created. She did this, court records show, by submitting phony documents to the district that included doctored test scores, forged attendance records and parental signatures and fake individual learning plans -- all of which went on forms that were required by DPS before payment could be made.

To bolster this claim, federal investigators cited some of Starkey-Darden's emails, which are included in court documents. "I put in some fake scores for a few kids at Denby, just to get their plans approved. When and if we get real ones ... just replace what I put in," Starkey-Darden wrote in a 2008 email to an employee at a tutoring firm owned by her husband.

DETROIT PUBLIC SCHOOLS SCANDAL

DPS vendor who lived like king faces 7 years in prison

Detroit Public Schools principal: I spent kickbacks on jewelry, perfume

Corruption schemes ran deep at Detroit Public Schools

2 more Detroit principals plead guilty to cheating kids for gift cards

Third principal admits bribery: 'I got caught up in it'

DPS official admits cheating special ed kids out of supplies

DPS administrator cuts deal in $324K kickback scheme

Vendor in DPS corruption case lived like a king

DPS principal pleads guilty in scam: 'I fell out of grace of God'

Head of Detroit school that got $500K Ellen gift among those charged

Rochelle Riley: Weeding out crooks is first step to remaking DPS

Ellen's $500K gift to Detroit school still a go despite corruption

Feds: 12 Detroit principals stole $1M in kickback scheme

So far, the government has seized nearly $1-million from Starkey-Darden.

"Detroit students were cheated twice by this scheme. Students that needed tutoring never received it, and money that could have been spent on other resources was paid to Ms. Starkey-Darden as part of her fraud scheme,”  Detroit's FBI chief David Gelios said.

The criminal charges against Starkey-Darden come two months after 14 individuals, including 12 DPS principals, were charged with helping a vendor bill DPS $2.7 million for school supplies that were rarely delivered in exchange for kickbacks.

According to the U.S. Attorney's office, Starkey-Darden, a 38-year employee with DPS, ran her scheme between 2005 and 2012 through several companies she created. One of them was Grants 'N Such, an educational consulting firm for public or private schools.  Court documents show that Darden formed Grants 'N Such on July 20, 2005 -- three months before she retired -- but  she continued to do business with DPS through five companies with the help of her husband and daughter --  neither of whom have been charged.

Darden's lawyer, Gerald Evelyn, was not available for comment.

• Weak control in DPS: For years, officials at DPS missed red flags tied to Shy
• 'I just got caught up in it': Corruption schemes ran deep at DPS

DPS Transition Manager Steven Rhodes, a former federal judge who oversaw Detroit's historic bankruptcy, expressed frustration with the new charges.

"The alleged thievery perpetrated by this individual is inexcusable and represents a clear violation of the public trust that has robbed our students and staff of nearly $1.8 million in resources that should have been used for instruction in our classrooms," Rhodes said. "Everyone invested in the future of Detroit Public Schools should be outraged by the unlawful actions allegedly committed by this individual."

Rhodes said he would continue working with the U.S Attorney's office and Feds: New $1.3M tutoring scam uncovered at Detroit schools:

Big Education Ape: SES IS A MESS: 
 Tutor center scammed $2M in federal funds |  http://bit.ly/1L714f6

What you need to read (and do) - Network For Public Education

What you need to read (and do) - Network For Public Education:

What you need to read (and do) 

There are two important stories that speak to the length to which “reformers” will go to suppress the voices of those who oppose corporate reforms.

The first was the intimidation of a Teachers College professor, Celia Oyler, by PARCC after she posted a column by an anonymous teacher critiquing the 4th grade PARCC exam. You can read a complete account of what occurred here.

Professor Oyler received a warning letter from the CEO of PARCC, Laura Slover, which threatened her with legal action. Slover claimed it violated their copyright, and demanded that she also disclose the name of the teacher who wrote the column and remove the post.

NPE Board member, Leonie Haimson, had her tweet of Olyer’s column deleted by Twitter. She reprinted the original post on her blog, along with the excerpts of the 4th grade exam, and urged other bloggers to do the same as “an act of collective disobedience to the reigning testocracy.”  The Education Bloggers Network, a collection of more than 200 grassroots bloggers, managed by Jonathan Pelto, joined the effort.

Readers can find related blogs and stories in Slate, USA Today, the Progressive, Washington Post Answer Sheet, and posts by Anthony Cody,Julian Vasquez Heilig, Peter Greene, Mercedes Schneider, Daniel Katz, and our President, Diane Ravitch.

The second was an attempt by Campbell Brown and Peter Cunningham to intimidate Diane Ravitch, Carol Burris, and to a lesser extent, Tom Loveless of Brookings because they asked Brown to correct her false claim that two thirds of our nation’s children were below grade level in reading and in mathematics.

Attempts to persuade Ms. Brown to correct the false information led to an exchange on Twitter.  Brown later took down most of her tweets, claiming she had been unfairly attacked and began likening Diane to Donald Trump. You can read more about why Brown’s error is so problematic and one more unfair attempt to disparage our schools here in the Washington Post Answersheet. You can read Diane’s reaction to Brown’s refusal to correct the record here.

NPE needs your help in the fight to raise public awareness on these issues and more. We made progress this year but we have a long way to go.

Here 5 things we at NPE need you to do.

Follow us on Twitter @Network4PublicEd https://twitter.com/Network4pubEd and retweet what we share.

Like us on Facebook https://www.facebook.com/networkforpubliced/ so that our postings appear on your page.

Post some of the links to the stories above on your Facebook page to help educate friends and family.

Ask 5 friends to join us as supporter by signing up. http://networkforpubliceducation.org/become-a-member/

Make a tax deductible contribution to help us carry on our work. http://networkforpubliceducation.org/about-npe/donate/

It is our job to ensure that we help our nation understand why public schools are a pillar of our democracy and must be saved.

And be sure to join us when we march on Washington in July.

Thanks for all you do,

Carol What you need to read (and do) - Network For Public Education:

Newark charter school fires half of its teachers |

Newark charter school fires half of its teachers |:

Newark charter school fires half of its teachers

Newark’s Marion P. Thomas charter school has terminated the jobs of  half of its teaching staff–just months after it raised salaries in a move supposedly designed to retain its best instructors.

“They said they wanted to keep their best teachers but what they really wanted to do is use the raises as a way of recruiting new teachers to replace those they are laying off,” said Maria Parelis, the president of the union representing instructional staff at the school.

Marion P. Thomas is one of the few charter schools where a union, an affiliate of the New Jersey Education Association (NJEA), represents teachers.

According to Edward Stevens, an NJEA representative, Marion P. Thomas administrators sent termination letters to 37 of the schools 79 teaching staff members.

That represented 20 non-tenured teachers whose contracts were not renewed and 17 pre-K teachers whose jobs were eliminated whether or not they had tenure.

“This is churning,” said Stevens. “They are getting rid of people before they achieve tenure.”

Under the state’s new tenure law, charter school teachers do not receive tenure Newark charter school fires half of its teachers |:

In Today’s Game: Can You Spot The FOIA Violation? – Exceptional Delaware

In Today’s Game: Can You Spot The FOIA Violation? – Exceptional Delaware:

In Today’s Game: Can You Spot The FOIA Violation?

 Gateway Lab School, a Delaware charter school that serves a very high population of students with disabilities, held a special board meeting on April 4th, 2016.  The purpose of the meeting was to discuss a due process mediation.  Can you spot the Delaware FOIA violation?  It’s easy if you try!

Oops! That’s a big one! I’ve already filed the FOIA complaint to the Attorney General’s office. As a gentle reminder to all school boards in Delaware: you can discuss student related matters in executive session if it pertains to an issue, but you can’t vote on it in executive session. You need to come out of executive session and vote on it then. Now you can’t, and shouldn’t, say this is for x student’s due process mediation situation. But I would suggest giving a number for all action items at a board meeting. Many boards do this already. You can just say, as an example, “In the matter of 16-322, may I have a motion to vote on this action item?”, or something along those lines. It wasn’t that long ago that Brandywine School District’s board had the same issue which is causing issues for the district now as part of a lawsuit.

As well, I have also requested an opinion from the same office about public comment at public meetings. I have noticed some Delaware charter schools ask public comment to be submitted up to two weeks in advance before a board meeting. I don’t think that is in the spirit of the law. Any member of the public should have unfettered access to a public meeting and have the ability to give public comment without having to give advance notice.

Sorry Gateway! Don’t mean to call you out but if all of your board members have not received the full training on these matters I would definitely get on that!In Today’s Game: Can You Spot The FOIA Violation? – Exceptional Delaware:

Big Education Ape: Delaware Public Schools: You Have Until Thursday To Get Rid Of Your Data Walls Or I Start Filin... http://bit.ly/1WMvvg0

Big Education Ape: “The Data Walls Must Come Down”: My Email To All Delaware Superintendents & Charter Chiefs – Ex... http://bit.ly/1WMw0GE

Big Education Ape: New Legislation Uses “Cyber Attack Threat” To Shield Delaware’s Student Data Mining Tactics – E... http://bit.ly/1WMvLvo

What data is that website or online vendor collecting? There’s an app for that. – Missouri Education Watchdog

What data is that website or online vendor collecting? There’s an app for that. – Missouri Education Watchdog:

What data is that website or online vendor collecting? There’s an app for that.

 For most of us, “data” is invisible. We can’t see the bits of data being collected and shared and tracked about us when we are online. We can’t see who is collecting this data, or who is watching what we do when we are online. How can you know if a school’s online vendor or company is complying with their data privacy policy or your school’s  contract?   There’s an app  (or two) for that. 

Disclaimer: Neither the author or MEW are promoting the use of these apps, neither has any ties to said privacy apps. We do not stand to make money from telling you about these apps.  There may be other apps or similar products available. This is merely a public service, so that you, the public, can be more informed and perhaps take what you find to your school board or legislator as evidence of online data collected and shared.

Lightbeam (Free.  Anyone can use.)

Lightbeam will create a record of events for every site you visit

and every third party site that is stored locally on your browser.

.

 Think of Lightbeam as showing third party vendors who may have been contracted to analyze or package your data.

.

Step by step Lightbeam  instructions, via Graphite on the Common Sense privacy and security website:

* Install Firefox browser if you haven’t already done so

* Disable all ad blockers and other defensive protections that we use when browsing the web. These tools are great when we’re working online, but can actually block issues we need to see when testing.

* Install Lightbeam for Firefox* Run through the steps to prepare Firefox for testing Lightbeam

 .

With the above preparations in place:

1. Login to a website you would like to test, (ie: We logged in to an educational website using a student account. We could see what third parties are accessing / using data from this student account.) Lightbeam will record all calls to any third party trackers.

2. Once logged onto the website/application you are testing, navigate to any pages where a person can add information and/or connect to an What data is that website or online vendor collecting? There’s an app for that. – Missouri Education Watchdog:

Reading About Education in the Press: Consider the Source and Demand Documentation | janresseger

Reading About Education in the Press: Consider the Source and Demand Documentation | janresseger:
Reading About Education in the Press: Consider the Source and Demand Documentation

At the end of last week a friend forwarded a column that had appeared in his local paper.  It is short, pithy, and readable.  Unfortunately, although it begins with some facts that are perfectly accurate about the public schools, its author quickly twists her argument, neglects the truth and reflects the bias of her employer.  The article is written by Vicki Alger, a research fellow atThe Independent Institute.  It was circulated by the Tribune News Service, affiliated with theSeattle Times, Chicago Tribune, Los Angeles Times, Miami Herald, Dallas Morning News, Kansas City Star, and Philadelphia Inquirer.  It is just the sort of little column that an editor might pick up to fill a space left on the opinion pages.

Alger begins by noting that scores on the National Assessment of Education Progress have been pretty flat for decades now. She is correct that today’s school reforms have failed to raise achievement. However, she quickly jumps to the assumption that, because test scores have not risen, increased spending on education—up, she says, by 140 percent between 1971 and 2012— has failed. There is a very important omission here: she neglects to mention that in 1975, Congress passed the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act that brought vastly increased spending on education for students with special needs.  Here is what Richard Rothstein of the Economic Policy Institute explained in his 1995 book, Where’s the Money Gone?: “A detailed examination of expenditures in nine typical U.S. school districts shows that the share of expenditures going to regular education dropped from 80% to 59% between 1967 and 1991, while the share going to special education climbed from 4% to 17%. Of the net new money spent on education in 1991, only 26% went to improve regular education, while about 38% went to special education for severely handicapped and learning-disabled children. Per pupil expenditures for regular education grew by only 28% during this quarter century—an average annual rate of about 1%.”

Alger then sets up several straw men: “We were promised that illiteracy would be eliminated by 1984.  We were promised that high school graduation rates would reach 90 percent by the year 2000 and that American students would be global leaders in math and science.  And we were promised that by 2014 all students would be proficient in reading and math. None of this has happened.”

So… concludes, Alger, because we have not arrived at utopia, we must get rid of the U.S. Department of Education and put parents in charge through school choice. “Research shows Reading About Education in the Press: Consider the Source and Demand Documentation | janresseger:

Campbell Brown’s Bizarre NAEP Response in the Washington Post | deutsch29

Campbell Brown’s Bizarre NAEP Response in the Washington Post | deutsch29:
Campbell Brown’s Bizarre NAEP Response in the Washington Post

On May 23, 2016, former principal and Network for Public Education (NPE) executive director Carol Burris published this Washington Post article in response to former news anchor and education privatization proponent Campbell Brown’s May 16, 2016, statement, “Two out of three eighth graders in this country cannot read or do math at grade level. We are not preparing our kids for what the future holds.” This statement was part of a Slate interview in which Brown was offering advice to the next president.

In her Washington Post piece, Burris supports the assertion that one should not take the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) “proficient” rating to mean “at grade level”– which is what Brown does in her Slate statement.

The NAEP website clearly notes that NAEP achievement levels are still considered to be in “trial status” and “should continue to be interpreted and used with caution.”

What is more to the point is that comparison research exists in which NAEP achievement levels were examined in conjunction with international testing. As Burris reports:

[Former teacher and Harvard professor who is an expert on school reform and student achievement, Tom] Loveless, who has written extensively about NAEP, said the following in his email correspondence with me:

 “The cut point on NAEP is much too high [to be considered grade level].

In a 2007 study, researcher Gary Phillips projected where scores on the TIMSS, a series of international math and science given to kids around the world, would land on the NAEP scale.  He estimated that 27 percent of Singapore’s 8th graders would fail to meet the NAEP proficient cut score in math.  At the time, Singapore was the highest scoring country in the world.  Japan — not exactly a weak math country–would see only 57 percent meet proficiency; 43 percent would “fail.” You can read more about that study on pp. 10-13 of the 2007 Brookings Report authored by Loveless that you can findhere.

The above certainly provides context for interpreting NAEP proficiency.

Let me add to it.

The NAEP website includes trends in NAEP results by achievement level. Since Campbell Brown’s Bizarre NAEP Response in the Washington Post | deutsch29:

Schools Matter: WikiLeaks reveals: Hillary Clinton plotted corporate charter school colonialism for Haiti

Schools Matter: WikiLeaks reveals: Hillary Clinton plotted corporate charter school colonialism for Haiti:

WikiLeaks reveals: Hillary Clinton plotted corporate charter school colonialism for Haiti

“Worse, Clinton’s “boarding school” socialization and structure idea sounds more like assimilation than education. Shocking and scarily reminiscent of other U.S. ventures in segregating classes of “other” people. Native Americans were also thought to be in need of “education” to work differently in groups and to be in need of structure.”— Daun Kauffman

WikiLeaks released the Hillary Clinton Email Archive mid-March 2016. Many users were searching for terms like hedge fund manager, Goldman Sachs, or, as the example in the WikiLeaks boolean tutorial: "syria libya will show results…" I decided to search for familiar phases of the neoliberal corporate education reform camp. I struck pay-dirt on my first try with "charter schools." Note my excitement on the day of discovery

In one thread Clinton and her cabal talk about a colonial project to remake earthquake stricken Haiti's education system using disaster capitalism, much in the way author Naomi Klein describes what happened in New Orleans:

In sharp contrast to the glacial pace with which the levees were repaired and the electricity grid brought back online, the auctioning-off of New Orleans' school system took place with military speed and precision. Within 19 months, with most of the city's poor residents still in exile, New Orleans' public school system had been almost completely replaced by privately run charter schools.

Before getting to the content of the email, it's important to contextualize the Clinton's relationship with the island nation. When not facilitating the orchestration of coups in Latin America, bombing the Near East and Africa into the stone age, or providing full-throated support for apartheid states, Clinton is meddling in Haiti. Lots of good pieces on the Clintons and Haiti in publications like Counterpunch and Black Agenda Report, but this excerpt from an essay by Shadowproof's Roqayah Chamseddine is an excellent summary:

In 2010, Hillary Clinton visited Haiti as part of a public relations stunt that allowed her to see firsthand the devastation wrought by the earthquake that killed at least 100,000. This performance was primarily meant to demonstrate solidarity and show the international community that the United States would be there to help in reconstruction efforts. Yet, her visit came less than a year after the U.S. State Department, then led by Clinton, had pressured the government of Haiti into denying laborers a wage increase of $0.62.

Dan Caughlin and Kim Ives of Haïti Liberté reported the U.S. Embassy in Haiti aggressively pressured “factory owners [in Haiti] contracted by Levi’s, Hanes, and Fruit of the Loom to block a paltry minimum wage increase for Haitian assembly zone workers, the lowest paid in the hemisphere.” In statements reminiscent of the Clinton campaign’s recent charges against Sanders, Deputy Chief of Mission David E. Lindwall called the proposed $5 minimum wage for Haitian assembly zone workers one which “did not take economic reality into account” but that was meant to appeal to the “unemployed and underpaid masses.”

Haiti has long been a kind of pet project for the Clintons, and they’ve often spoken of “falling in love with Haiti” during their honeymoon. But the love isn’t mutual by any means, and Haitians across the U.S. have made this increasingly clear by way of protests spotlighting the catastrophe the Clintons have left behind. Dahoud Andre, a radio host who has organized protests in New York, is quoted by the New York Times as saying that “a vote for Hillary Clinton means further corruption, further death and destruction for our people.”

Since the email I'll be discussing is accessible here, and is somewhat long, I will not reproduce it in its entirety. Rather, I'll draws excerpts from sections and discuss them. Secretary Clinton forwarded the email in question to one of her assistants, Lauren Jiloty. It was written by neoliberal corporate education reform cheerleader David Domenici in response to Clinton's wanting suggestions on how to capitalize on the Haitian disaster. Charter school profiteer Domenici has no background in Schools Matter: WikiLeaks reveals: Hillary Clinton plotted corporate charter school colonialism for Haiti: