Friday, August 28, 2026

THE GREAT CALIFORNIA SCHOOL SELL-OFF: A Witty Guide to How the Golden State Is Auctioning Off Its Kids' Future — One Charter School at a Time

THE GREAT CALIFORNIA SCHOOL SELL-OFF

A Witty Guide to How the Golden State Is Auctioning Off Its Kids' Future — One Charter School at a Time

: A Witty Guide to How the Golden State Is Auctioning Off Its Kids' Future — One Charter School at a Time

August 27, 2026 | A Big Education Ape Special Report

Welcome to California, the fourth-largest economy on the planet — a state that can build a $100 billion high-speed rail to nowhere, subsidize a thousand tech unicorns, and produce more billionaires per square mile than anywhere outside a Bond villain convention. And yet, somehow, somehow, we can't find the money to send sixth graders to Camp Sacramento. Let that one marinate on your avocado toast for a moment.

This is the story of how California's public schools — once the envy of the nation, the ladder that lifted generations from poverty into the middle class — became the hottest real estate in the billionaire portfolio. It's a story with two parties, zero heroes, and approximately ten thousand consultants billing $300 an hour to explain why your kid's classroom doesn't have enough pencils.

Buckle up. This ride is free — unlike the charter school down the street.

🕰️ ACT ONE: BACK IN THE DAY, WHEN THE PARTIES KNEW THEIR LANES

Once upon a time in California, the political script was refreshingly simple. Republicans were the darlings of the billionaire class — the ones who believed the free market could solve everything, including, apparently, the education of seven-year-olds. Democrats, meanwhile, were the champions of public schools, teachers' unions, and the radical notion that every kid deserved a decent education regardless of their parents' zip code.

Those were the days. Simple. Clean. Almost wholesome.

Then something happened. The billionaires discovered that public education — with its $100+ billion annual budget, its captive audience of 5.8 million students, and its delightfully underpaid workforce — was, in the parlance of Silicon Valley, a massive market opportunity.

And faster than you can say "disruption," the Democrats discovered that billionaire money spends just as well as Republican billionaire money. Possibly better, because it comes with a TED Talk and a nonprofit wrapper.

ACT TWO: THE GREAT PARTY SWAP — OR, HOW EVERYONE LEARNED TO LOVE THE CHARTER

Here's where the plot twist arrives, dressed in a fleece vest and carrying a term sheet.

The Republicans — never ones to miss a privatization bandwagon — pivoted to vouchers. Why mess around with the charter school middle game when you can just hand parents a government check and tell them to shop? It's the free market in its purest, most ideologically satisfying form. Never mind that the evidence for vouchers improving educational outcomes is roughly as robust as the evidence that crystals cure cancer.

The Democrats — and this is the part that requires a moment of genuine silence — became the primary benefactors of the billionaire charter school industrial complex. The California Charter Schools Association (CCSA), funded lavishly by tech moguls and hedge fund managers who have never set foot in a Title I school, found its warmest welcome not in the GOP, but in the Democratic establishment.

The result? Both parties are now enthusiastically pro-privatization. They just use different branding.

Republicans call it "school choice."
Democrats call it "innovation" and "accountability."
The kids call it "why did my school close?"

Meanwhile, the billionaire TechBros — having already disrupted taxis, hotels, and human connection — have figured out which side butters their avocado toast. Both sides. Simultaneously. Because when you have that kind of money, you don't pick a team. You own the league.

ACT THREE: SACRAMENTO — WHERE THE SAUSAGE GETS MADE (AND THE KIDS GET SERVED THE SCRAPS)

Here in Sacramento, the privatization drama plays out at three levels simultaneously — state, county, and community — like a particularly dysfunctional layer cake where the frosting is Super PAC money and the filling is broken promises.

The State Level: AB 181 and the Education Czar Cometh

Governor Gavin Newsom — a man of such exquisite political timing that he can sign a bill stripping democratic accountability from public education and simultaneously pitch himself as the working-class champion, all before his morning green juice — signed Assembly Bill 181 on July 10, 2026.

The bill's effect? Starting January 15, 2027, California's independently elected State Superintendent of Public Instruction — the one statewide education official you actually get to vote for — will be stripped of day-to-day control over the California Department of Education. In its place: a Governor-appointed Education Commissioner, answerable to exactly one person.

The bill was tucked into a budget trailer bill. Drafted and passed in days. Current State Superintendent Tony Thurmond was excluded from the process entirely.

Democracy, apparently, moves fast when billionaires are impatient.

The primary cheerleader for AB 181? A group called Children Now, led by Ted Lempert — which markets itself under the warm, fuzzy banner of "children's advocacy." Crack open their IRS Form 990 disclosures, however, and you'll find a very familiar roster of Silicon Valley donors whose primary interest in children appears to be their Average Daily Attendance funding.

The County Level: Dave Gordon and the Fiscal Veto

Enter Sacramento County Superintendent Dave Gordon and the Sacramento County Office of Education (SCOE) — the regional financial watchdog operating under Assembly Bill 1200, California's 1991 framework for preventing school district insolvency.

Sacramento City Unified School District (SCUSD) is staring down a structural deficit of $170 million to $220 million-plus. To avoid state receivership — a process that would strip the elected school board of all power for potentially 20 years — the district struck a deal with its teachers' union to tap roughly $67 million to $98 million from its retiree health benefits trust fund (OPEB trust) to cover immediate operational costs.

SCOE said: No.

Gordon's argument is technically sound: raiding a retiree health trust to pay operating expenses is like eating your retirement savings to cover your Netflix bill. It delays the reckoning, costs more in the long run, and leaves future retirees holding an empty bag.

The district's argument is also technically sound: decades of Prop 13-era underfunding, compounded by medical inflation running at double-digit annual rates, have left them with no good options — only less-bad ones.

State Superintendent Thurmond then did something remarkable: he formally denied SCUSD's appeal to overturn SCOE's rejection — and simultaneously issued a public endorsement of the district's strategy and threatened to bypass SCOE entirely and have the California Department of Education take direct oversight.

In other words: he ruled against the district legally, cheered for them publicly, and threatened to override the county watchdog that he himself had just sided with.

This is what governance looks like when politics and fiscal reality are playing different sports in the same stadium.

County superintendents statewide are now appealing to the legislature to clarify that state officials cannot override AB 1200 county oversight short of an actual emergency loan and formal receivership. Because if the state can just waltz past county fiscal watchdogs whenever it's politically convenient, the entire 35-year framework of California school district fiscal oversight becomes decorative.

The Community Level: Camp Sacramento and the Cruelest Cut

And then there's this.

Sacramento City Unified just cancelled funding for the sixth-grade trip to Camp Sacramento.

Camp Sacramento. A tradition stretching back decades. The trip where kids from Sacramento's urban neighborhoods — many of whom have never left the city — get to sleep under the stars in the Sierra Nevada, learn about ecosystems, and discover that the world is bigger than their block.

Gone. Cancelled. A line item eliminated in a spreadsheet somewhere between "administrative overhead" and "consultant fees."

The kids don't get a Super PAC. The kids don't get a lobbyist. The kids don't get a seat at the table where these decisions are made. They get the bill.

Meanwhile, the state officials, county administrators, and legislators making these decisions will continue to receive their ration of billionaire privatizer Super PAC money — and will probably get re-elected to take another swing at dismantling California's public schools.

THE PRIVATIZATION SCORECARD: WHO'S WINNING, WHO'S LOSING

Here's the honest ledger of California's education privatization experiment, circa 2026:

Player	What They Get	What Kids Get
Billionaire TechBros	Tax write-offs, market access, political influence	A charter school that may or may not still exist in 5 years
Democratic establishment	Super PAC funding, "reform" credibility, presidential optics	An appointed Education Czar they didn't vote for
Republican establishment	Voucher talking points, donor enthusiasm	A check to spend at a private school with no accountability
County oversight bodies	Statutory authority, fiscal credibility	The thankless job of saying "no" while everyone yells at them
Teachers & unions	Contract protections (for now)	A retiree health trust being raided to pay the electric bill
Sacramento 6th graders	Nothing	No Camp Sacramento

THE ROOT CAUSE NOBODY WANTS TO TALK ABOUT

Here's the inconvenient truth buried beneath all the governance theater:

California's school funding crisis is, at its core, a Proposition 13 hangover that has never been fully treated.

Before 1978, California ranked near the top of the nation in per-pupil education spending. Prop 13 capped property taxes, slashed local school revenue by nearly 60% almost overnight, and shifted funding responsibility to a state general fund that is — by design — volatile, cyclical, and perpetually insufficient.

The Local Control Funding Formula (LCFF), launched in 2013, was a genuine improvement. Per-pupil spending rose substantially. But LCFF funding tracks Average Daily Attendance — meaning that as urban districts lose enrollment (to charters, to demographic shifts, to families leaving the state), they lose revenue faster than they can reduce fixed costs like heating, staffing, and — yes — retiree healthcare obligations negotiated in better times.

The districts facing insolvency today are not, by and large, districts that made reckless decisions. They are districts that made reasonable decisions in the 1980s and 1990s — offering lifetime healthcare to attract and retain teachers when salaries were low — and are now being crushed by the compound interest of medical inflation, declining enrollment, and a funding formula that was never designed to handle structural demographic contraction.

The billionaires didn't cause Prop 13. But they have been extraordinarily good at ensuring that the solution to the crisis it created is more privatization rather than more funding.

THE FINAL ACT: WHAT HAPPENS NEXT

If Sacramento City Unified runs out of cash — projected as early as spring 2027 — the state will issue an Emergency Apportionment loan. The elected school board will be stripped of authority. A state-appointed administrator will take control. School closures, staff layoffs, and facility sales will follow.

Charter operators will be waiting.

They are always waiting.

And the billionaires who funded the campaigns of the officials who defunded the district will shake their heads sadly and say, "Such a shame. Good thing we're here to help."

THE ONLY THING THAT ACTUALLY WORKS: NOVEMBER

Here's the good news — and there is good news, even in this particular dumpster fire.

None of this is inevitable. All of it is political. And politics responds to votes.

The battle over California's public schools is being fought at every level — state, county, and community. And at every level, the outcome depends on who shows up in November.

State races determine who controls the legislature that funds schools, writes the laws that govern charters, and decides whether an elected State Superintendent means anything.
County Board of Education races — historically so low-profile that candidates run unopposed — determine who has the power to approve or deny charter school petitions and oversee district finances.
Local school board races determine whether your community's schools are governed by the community or by the consultants.

The billionaires know this. That's why they spend millions on these races. They understand that a county board seat purchased for $500,000 in Super PAC money can unlock hundreds of millions in charter school ADA funding.

The question is whether the rest of us understand it too.

If you love public schools — if you believe that every California kid deserves a fully funded education, a qualified teacher, and yes, a sixth-grade trip to Camp Sacramento — then remember in November. Vote for candidates who support full, stable, equitable funding of California's public schools. Not the ones with the best-funded Super PAC. The ones with the best-funded conscience.

🔗 Further Reading from Big Education Ape:

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