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Monday, October 21, 2019

SACRAMENTO CITY UNIFIED: WHEN BILLIONAIRES BUY YOUR SCHOOL BOARD



SACRAMENTO CITY UNIFIED: WHEN BILLIONAIRES BUY YOUR SCHOOL BOARD
BILLIONAIRE ENDOR$MENT$

2014 Elections

Sacramento City Unified School District Board of Education
  • Area 1 - Jay Hansen
  • Area 2 - Jeff Cuneo
  • Area 6 - Darrel Woo
  • Area 7 - Jessie Ryan
Sacramento County Board of Education
  • Area 1 - Greg Geeting
  • Area 3 - Jacquelyn Levy

2016 Elections

Sacramento City Unified School District
  • Christina Prichett
  • Michael Minnick
  • Jessie Ryan
Sacramento County Board of Education 
  • Trustee Area 4 - Joanne Ahola
  • Trustee Area 5 - Al Brown
  • Trustee Area 6 - Heather Davis
  • Trustee Area 7 - Roy Grimes, Jr.

2018 Elections

Sacramento County Board of Education
  • Trustee Area 3 - Paul Keefer

$ACRAMENTO COUNTY BOARD OF EDUCATION: WHEN BILLIONAIRE$ BUY YOUR $CHOOL BOARD


PETER GREENE: Warren’s K-12 Plan: All In For Public Education

Warren’s K-12 Plan: All In For Public Education

Warren’s K-12 Plan: All In For Public Education

Many (including this writer) have asked over the past months: where is Elizabeth Warren’s K-12 education plan? Beyond her promise to install a former public school teacher as Secretary of Education, what does plan look like? Well, it’s here, and while it’s not perfect, it contains much of what public education supporters have been hoping to hear.
A Great Public Education for Every Student contains many many proposals that are standard promises for candidates these days–fully fund public ed, fight segregation and discrimination, provide “a warm, safe, and nurturing school climate” for students, treat teachers and staff like professionals. These are safe and common propositions, with the devil firmly situated in the details (we’ll get there in a moment). But the next proposal is a bit more aggressive: “Stop the privatization and corruption of our public education system.”
So how exactly does she propose to accomplish these goals. Which devils lurk here?
Funding.
Warren says that public education funding is a mess. Her proposal includes a four-fold increase in Title I spending (the spending that is supposed to help poorer districts get up to speed), thereby one-upping other candidates who have proposed a three-fold increase. She also wants to working with states and various experts about how they handle funding, and while “working with” can cost nothing and accomplish about the same, she also has some ideas for practical leverage, like linking that increased Title I funding to state’s finding better, fuller funding formulas.
Warren wants to spend $100 billion (roughly $1 million per school) on improvement grants, to build on what works as identified–and CONTINUE READING: Warren’s K-12 Plan: All In For Public Education

Seattle Educators Endorse Liza, Molly, & Chandra for School Board – I AM AN EDUCATOR

Seattle Educators Endorse Liza, Molly, & Chandra for School Board – I AM AN EDUCATOR

Seattle Educators Endorse Liza, Molly, & Chandra for School Board

Seattle Educators Endorse Liza, Molly, & Chandra School Board
Both the Seattle Education Association–the union representing some 5,000 educators in Seattle–and the Social Equity Educators–the social justice rank-and-file caucus–have endorsed a bold and committed slate of candidates for the November 5th School board election.
Molly Mitchell, Liza Rankin, and Chandra Hampson, are longtime community education advocates and all have powerful rerecords of being in the struggle against institutional racism and for equitable schools.
I have had powerful conversations with Molly and Chandra about their vision for opposing corporate education reform, combating institutional racism, and fighting for the schools our children deserve.
I have worked closely with Liza Rankin for many years, ever since she launched the groundbreaking initiative during the 2015 Seattle educator strike, “Soup for Teachers.” Soup for Teachers organized parents to deliver food to the picket-lines at every school in Seattle. This was a vital demonstration of parent solidarity with the strike that was crucial to the success of the strike. That strike resulted in the expansion of the racial equity teams into dozens more buildings around Seattle–something Liza believes deeply in.
Since then she has been an unyielding advocate against the abuses of high-stakes standardized testing, school privatization, and a strong ally in the Black Lives Matter at School movement.
We have a real opportunity to advance the struggle for social justice in the schools by electing this slate of educational leaders.
Below is an expert of the Social Equity Educator newsletter that republished the candidate’s statements CONTINUE READING: Seattle Educators Endorse Liza, Molly, & Chandra for School Board – I AM AN EDUCATOR

Pay for Success & the Opioid Crisis: Poor Peoples Economic Human Rights Campaign Radical Social Work Breakfast Presentation – Wrench in the Gears

Pay for Success & the Opioid Crisis: Poor Peoples Economic Human Rights Campaign Radical Social Work Breakfast Presentation – Wrench in the Gears

Pay for Success & the Opioid Crisis: Poor Peoples Economic Human Rights Campaign Radical Social Work Breakfast Presentation


The Poor Peoples Economic Human Rights Campaign hosts a monthly breakfast to discuss radical social work and issues relating to the non-profit industrial complex. Follow us on Facebook here. I was invited to participate this month and wanted to post my presentation on pay for success and the opioid crisis, so the information could be shared more widely. Below is a video matching the voice recording to my slideshare, which can be accessed here.

Select resources mentioned in my presentation:

Blog post on the Connecticut Family Stability Project: here.
“Meet Kathy” community care coordinator video: here.
Saving Maine Schools on Tripp Jones, Mentor Network and New Profit: here.
Scottish Named Person legislation: here.

Elizabeth Warren calls for billions of new dollars to reform pre-K-12 schools and fight privatization. Here’s how she plans to pay for it. - The Washington Post

Elizabeth Warren calls for billions of new dollars to reform pre-K-12 schools and fight privatization. Here’s how she plans to pay for it. - The Washington Post

Elizabeth Warren calls for billions of new dollars to reform pre-K-12 schools and fight privatization. Here’s how she plans to pay for it.


Democratic presidential hopeful Sen. Elizabeth Warren (Mass.) unveiled a broad pre-K-12 education plan Monday that calls for spending hundreds of billions of dollars to improve public schools, eliminating use of test scores for high-stakes decisions and ending federal funding for new charter schools. She wants America’s wealthiest people to pay for it.

Warren, who in some recent polls has topped the other 18 candidates running for the Democratic nomination, would steer U.S. education policy away from that of President Trump and Education Secretary Betsy DeVos, who have said their priority is expanding alternatives to traditional public schools.
“To keep our traditional public school systems strong, we must resist efforts to divert public funds out of traditional public schools,” Warren said in the plan. She pointed to charter schools, which are publicly funded but privately operated (and which Warren once supported), and to DeVos-backed voucher and tuition tax-credit programs that use public money for private and religious school education.
“We should fight back against the privatization, corporatization, and profiteering in our nation’s schools,” she said in her plan, which was applauded by the leaders of the two major teachers unions.
Warren, who has touted dozens of plans for the country, said she would pay for her education vision with a proposed “wealth tax.” It would levy a 2 percent tax on wealth above $50 million and a 3 percent tax on wealth above $1 billion. Some economists and other Democratic candidates have said the tax would not raise as much as Warren said it would and could not pay for everything she plans.
A representative of the Warren campaign said Sunday that Warren would use the wealth tax to pay for the new pre-K-12 education plan as well as for previously announced initiatives to provide universal child care and early learning opportunities, cancel most student debt and offer free tuition at public CONTINUE READING: Elizabeth Warren calls for billions of new dollars to reform pre-K-12 schools and fight privatization. Here’s how she plans to pay for it. - The Washington Post

Denis Smith: The Questions You Should Ask When You Visit a Charter School | Diane Ravitch's blog

Denis Smith: The Questions You Should Ask When You Visit a Charter School | Diane Ravitch's blog

Denis Smith: The Questions You Should Ask When You Visit a Charter School

Bill Phillis reposts here an article by Denis Smith, who offers sound advice about the questions you should ask if you visit a charter school.


Denis Smith on Ron Rice of the National Alliance for Public Charter Schools
In a recent column in the Columbus Dispatch, Ron Rice of the National Alliance for Public Charter Schools opened his piece with this statement. “The early stage of the 2020 presidential campaign has featured a lot of rhetoric about charter schools. Too much of it has been divorced from the reality of what charter schools are. So I have a special request of all the candidates: Go visit a charter school.”
Denis Smith, who used to work in the Ohio Department of Education’s charter school office, thinks that Ohio citizens should take Rice up on his offer to visit and learn more about schools that call themselves public entities but hide their private dimension. He offers suggestions when visiting a charter.
__________
 The recent Op-Ed by Ron Rice Jr. of the National Alliance for Public Charter Schools about the need for candidates to pay attention to charter schools contains an interesting – and inviting – sub-headline:
Cut through the rhetoric and go visit charter schools.
What a wonderful idea! I certainly hope that my fellow citizens will take Mr. Rice up on his request to see what they can find out about these peculiar institutions which are privately managed but publicly funded. If anyone should visit one of these schools, here are some questions visitors should ask to better understand the DNA of charters.
How is the school governed? How are the board members chosen? Since they are not democratically elected by registered voters, like public school board members, whom do they represent? Are the board members American citizens? Do the board members live in the school attendance area? How many other charter school boards might the board members be serving on at the same time?
What about the company that manages the school? Do they own the building in which the school is housed and use operating profits diverted from classroom costs to buy real estate? How much of the school budget is applied to rental costs? Does the management company also own the property where the school is housed? Has the company or school leader populated the board with individuals who may be conflicted with regard to whose interests, rather than the students, come first? 
While we’re at it, folks who might visit charters need to find out about the school leader. A lot of charters use imposing titles such as CEO and Superintendent in their listings. But does the school leader have a professional educator license CONTINUE READING: Denis Smith: The Questions You Should Ask When You Visit a Charter School | Diane Ravitch's blog

Schools Matter: Warren Releases Solid New Education Plan

Schools Matter: Warren Releases Solid New Education Plan

Warren Releases Solid New Education Plan


Spoiler Alert: Unlike in 2016, DFER is not happy!  We shall see what the Dem platform eventually looks like, but if Warren is the candidate, it will look nothing like 2016.
I am going to do several posts on Warren's new education plan, which kicks in the ass anything released so far by the other candidates.  
The first thing I checked out in the new plan was the charter school section.  Among the best news is the promise to eliminate the half-billion federal dollars a year being handed out to corporate charter operators under the Charter Schools Program (CSP).
From The Intercept:
Warren’s new education plan sends a strong signal of how her administration would think about not only charter schools but also other forms of school privatization. 
Her plan calls to end the diversion of tax dollars from traditional public schools through vouchers and voucher-like tax credits. A campaign spokesperson clarified that this means both working to stop the expansion of voucher programs and working towards ending existing ones. 
Biden and Sanders’s plans do not mention vouchers or tuition tax credits, though Sanders told The Washington Post that he would not support using public money in the form of vouchers or tax credits for private or religious school education, which he has a long record of opposing. Biden did not answer the same question when he was asked. 
In her plan, Warren frames her opposition to the 2016 charter school ballot initiative as an example of “fight[ing] back against the privatization, corporatization, and profiteering in our nation’s schools.” 
She pledges to “go further” and now calls for eliminating a federal grant program used to promote new charter schools. She pledges to see if there are any other federal programs that subsidize new charters and would “seek to limit the use of those programs for that purpose.”
Warren pledges to fight to ban for-profit charter schools, which represent CONTINUE READING: Schools Matter: Warren Releases Solid New Education Plan

Philadelphia: School Choice Has Harmed, Not Helped, the City’s Public Schools | Diane Ravitch's blog

Philadelphia: School Choice Has Harmed, Not Helped, the City’s Public Schools | Diane Ravitch's blog

Philadelphia: School Choice Has Harmed, Not Helped, the City’s Public Schools

Back in the early days of school choice advocacy, it was often claimed that school choice would “force” the public schools to compete and they would get better because of the magic of the market.
Now we know that was a selling point, and it was not true.
Deborah Gordon Klehr, executive director of the civil rights group Education Law Center-PA, writes about the negative effects of “school choice” on the public schools of Philadelphia. 
The publics schools in that city have long been severely underfunded, and school choice has stripped them of both students and funding, leaving them even worse off.
Klehr writes:
study of charter schools in Philadelphia published by the Education Law Center earlier this year is a stark reminder that many parents don’t get to choose and that ultimately it may be the school and not the parent doing the choosing. More charters and more slots haven’t cured an ailing school system.
This is not to discount the successes we know exist for students in many city charters. But Philadelphia’s 22-year history of rapid charter expansion coupled with CONTINUE READING: Philadelphia: School Choice Has Harmed, Not Helped, the City’s Public Schools | Diane Ravitch's blog

With A Brooklyn Accent: Action Needed to Address Racial Slurs by Football Players at Utica High School in Ohio

With A Brooklyn Accent: Action Needed to Address Racial Slurs by Football Players at Utica High School in Ohio

Action Needed to Address Racial Slurs by Football Players at Utica High School in Ohio


Brian Radabaugh

Athletic Director
North Folk Schools

Dear Mr Radabaugh

   I was just informed by a parent in your school district that three members of your high school football team used racial slurs against players on another team during a game on Friday October 11. This information was also shared on the page of a national organization to which I belong which is devoted to preventing incidents of this kind and defending targets of racial intimidation and harassment.

    In this polarized political climate, it is vitally important that action be taken against these young men if the accusations against them have been substantiated. Our society is a powder keg, and as educators, we have to be pro active in dealing with incidents of this kind

     I speak from experience as well as from conviction. Three years ago, we had disturbing incidents of this kind at Fordham University, the school at which I teach. The Administration, the student body, and alumni not only moved quickly to punish those responsible, they also put in motion a variety of new initiatives to help prevent such incidents in the future. 

       Incidents like this can poison the atmosphere in your school and your town if left unaddressed,  And they can also affect your school's reputation, as this incident is now being discussed by people  all over thed country

     I strongly recommend that you follow our example at Fordham and put in motion programs to educate your students to the importance of treating all people with respect, and avoiding attacks on people whose race religion or national origin may make them vulnerable

Sincerely


    
--
Dr Mark Naison
Professor of African American Studies and History
Founder and Director, Bronx African American History Project
Dealy Hall Room 640
(917) 836-3014
With A Brooklyn Accent: Action Needed to Address Racial Slurs by Football Players at Utica High School in Ohio

Ongoing Impact of the School Leadership Pipeline Created by Eli Broad’s Superintendents’ Academy | janresseger

Ongoing Impact of the School Leadership Pipeline Created by Eli Broad’s Superintendents’ Academy | janresseger

Ongoing Impact of the School Leadership Pipeline Created by Eli Broad’s Superintendents’ Academy

I think it is hard to discern what history will make of what’s going on right now. And it is especially difficult in the domain of education, because newspapers and their investigative reporting are fading. Education reform has also been dominated by powerful philanthropists and ideologues who operate out of the public eye—in the world of think tanks and training institutes and ideas festivals.
That is why I’m grateful this week for Jeff Bryant’s fine new article about Eli Broad and his Broad Academy for urban school superintendents, which has created a pipeline feeding its graduates into urban school districts and then promoting their careers even when things are not going well.  Bryant tells the story of John Covington, the unsuccessful school superintendent in Kansas City, who, in 2011, moved at Broad’s bidding to run Michigan’s Education Achievement Authority.  After a couple of years, when Covington was fired from the Michigan job, “(H)e was hired with a contract for $300,000 to start a new school reform initiative—for the Broad Foundation.”

If you are a Broadie, Bryant explains, you don’t have to be successful; you just have to be connected: “Covington’s story… sheds light on how decades of a school reform movement, financed by Broad and other philanthropists and embraced by politicians and policymakers of all political stripes, have shaped school leadership nationwide. Charter advocates and funders—such as Broad, Bill Gates, some members of the Walton Family Foundation, John Chubb, and others who fought strongly for schools to adopt the management practices of private businesses—helped put into place a school leadership network whose members are very accomplished in advancing their own careers and the interests of private businesses while they rankle school boards, parents, and teachers… The actions of these leaders are often disruptive to communities, as school board members chafe at having their work undermined, teachers feel increasingly removed from decision making, and local citizens grow anxious at seeing their taxpayer dollars increasingly redirected out of schools and classrooms and into businesses whose products and services are of questionable value.”
Here’s how John Covington’s tenure worked out in Kansas City and Michigan: “During his tenure in Kansas City, Covington generally angered teachers and parents and focused on leadership imperatives more familiar in the business community, such as ‘right-sizing.’  CONTINUE READING: Ongoing Impact of the School Leadership Pipeline Created by Eli Broad’s Superintendents’ Academy | janresseger




Our government spies on Bridgeview because Muslims live there. – Fred Klonsky

Our government spies on Bridgeview because Muslims live there. – Fred Klonsky

OUR GOVERNMENT SPIES ON BRIDGEVIEW BECAUSE MUSLIMS LIVE THERE


Being of a certain age and having been a political activist since before the 60s revolts, when someone tells you that the government, the FBI in particular, is watching you and your entire community, you know to believe them.
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Assia Boundaoui has the proof of a community being watched by our government.
Assia Boundaoui will be a guest on Hitting Left with the Klonsky Brothers this Friday at 11am on Lumpen Radio, 105.5fm in Chicago and streamed on http://www.lumpenradio.com.
It will be podcast after at http://www.hittingleft.libsyn.com
The community being watched is Bridgeview. It is a suburb of Chicago, roughly 15 miles south west of the Loop. Bridgeview has a large Muslim population
Ms Boundaoui has made a film, released in 2018, that documents the FBI surveillance of town of Bridgeview beginning in the pre-9/11 1990s.
My friend Mike Truchon posted this on our Hitting Left Facebook page.
We live near Bridgeview and I will never forget my first post 9/11 encounter will my wonderful Muslim neighbor. He was CONTINUE READING: Our government spies on Bridgeview because Muslims live there. – Fred Klonsky

New report reveals over $100 million per year spent by NYC on charter facilities | Class Size Matters

New report reveals over $100 million per year spent by NYC on charter facilities | Class Size Matters 

New report reveals over $100 million per year spent by NYC on charter facilities



For immediate release: October 21, 2019
Contact: Leonie Haimson, 917-435-9329, leoniehaimson@gmail.com

New report reveals over $100 million per year spent by NYC on charter facilities

Includes payments to help charter schools rent space in buildings owned by their CMOs or related parties
Also: 175 public schools co-located with charters lack $22M in matching funds for facility upgrades

On Monday, October 21, Class Size Matters released a new report revealing how the NYC Department of Education spent more than $377 million on charter school facility costs from FY 2014 to FY 2019.  This amount includes both matching funds for facility upgrades for public schools, co-located with charter schools that spent more than $5000 for this purpose, and on paying the rent for new and expanding charter schools in private space.  Nearly $15 million of this total since FY 2015 was expended  by DOE to help charter schools pay for their space in buildings owned by their Charter Management Organization, affiliated foundation or LLC.
In FY 2019DOE spent about $25 million on matching funds to public schools co-located with charter schools.  Yet between FY 2014 and FY 2019, more than $22 million in charter school expenditures on facility upgrades were not matched in 175 public schools that shared their buildings, in apparent contradiction to a state law passed in 2010, according to spreadsheets provided by DOE.  In FY 2019, only one third of co-located public schools received their full complement of matching funds.
The two schools which experienced the largest shortfalls were both District 75 schools that serve students with serious disabilities: Mickey Mantle School (M811), located in two sites in Harlem, which lacked $1.5 million in matching funds, and P.S 368 (K368), located  in two sites in Brooklyn, which lacked $1.2 million. All four sites are co-located with different branches of Success Academy Charter schools.
Mindy Rosier is the UFT chapter delegate from Mickey Mantle School, which enrolls students with multiple disabilities, including autism, emotional/behavioral difficulties and/or significant language and communication disorders.  As Mindy pointed out, “The $1.5 million in matching funds for facility upgrades would have been incredibly helpful to our school.  Our District 3 site needs new wiring, since the internet is very slow and much of our curriculum is online. Our site in District 4 needs new bathrooms and water fountains, and nine classrooms out of ten badly need repainting.”
The DOE currently holds leases for 12 private buildings that house 15 charter schools, with a cost to the city of $17.1 million in FY 2019 alone.  In addition, there are 88 charter schools that receive a per student “lease subsidy” from the city to help pay for their own private space, which has increased by 72 percent since FY 2017. In 2019, DOE was projected to spend about $83.6 million in lease subsidies for charter schools, with an estimated $50 million of that total reimbursed by the state.
By analyzing audited financial statements, charter school annual reports, and property records, the authors found that the lease payments made by DOE included $14.8 million to eight charter schools housed in buildings owned by related parties of these schools, that is, their own Charter Management Organizations or an affiliated LLC or foundation.
For example, DOE provided lease subsidies of $2.2 million in FY 2019 for two Success Academy charter schools, even though the Success CMO owns the space in the Hudson Yards complex on the west side of Manhattan. In another case, the city paid $461,965 in lease subsidies in FY 2019 towards the rental costs of Beginning with Children II charter school, despite the fact that the Beginning with Children Foundation bought the Brooklyn building for only ten dollars in 2017. More examples are provided in the report.
Carol Burris, Executive Director of the Network for Public Education said: “It is outrageous that the taxpayers of New York City and the state are required to pay $2.2 million a year to house two Success Academy charter schools located in a building that their Charter Management Organization owns. And Success is not alone. This report documents eight charter schools for which taxpayers are footing the bill that are in buildings owned by the charters themselves or affiliated organizations. The Network for Public Education has studied all of the various charter laws and their loopholes.  I have never seen any other that requires the district to cover the costs of private facilities like this one does. One wonders whether this is about educating children or building a real estate empire at taxpayer expense.”
“New York City has more than 500,000 students in overcrowded public-school buildings, as well as class sizes far higher than those in the rest of the state.  Yet we are also the only district obligated to cover the cost of private space for charter schools, or offer them space in public school buildings,”  said Leonie Haimson, one of the co-authors of the report. “The cost to the city of providing space for charter schools has risen sharply over the last five years.  If the current trend continues, the amount spent annually may soon exceed the cost of the payments to finance the construction of new public schools.”
“This is unconscionable! While public schools across the city and state have been fighting for more than $4 billion in funding owed under the Foundation Aid formula, we are handing over public dollars to charters such as Success Academy on a silver platter. Rectifying this budgetary fiasco would help ease overcrowded schools and bring much needed funding to our under-resourced schools and districts,” expressed Senator Robert Jackson from Manhattan and lead plaintiff for Campaign for Fiscal Equity.
Concluded Diane Ravitch, celebrated education historian, “The findings of this report should shock the conscience of the Governor and Legislature.  They should amend the law as soon as possible so that the city is no longer forced to subsidize the acquisition of private space by charter schools, even as our public schools are badly underfunded and overcrowded.”
The report, entitled “Spending by NYC on Charter School Facilities: Diverted Resources, Inequities and Anomalies” is posted here: https://www.classsizematters.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/10/Charter-School-Facility-Costs-10.21.19.pdf