Capital & Main: Eli Broad Wanted to Destroy Public Education | Diane Ravitch's blog

Capital & Main: Eli Broad Wanted to Destroy Public Education | Diane Ravitch's blog

Capital & Main: Eli Broad Wanted to Destroy Public Education

Upon his death recently, Eli Broad received many laudatory obituaries, describing his philanthropic contributions to the arts and medical research. He even built an art museum in Los Angeles, named for himself. Modesty was not one of his virtues.

Less noted was his determination to disrupt and destroy public education. Not only did he launch an ambitious plan to privatize 50% of the public schools in Los Angeles, but his Broad Superintendents Academy “trained” scores of aspiring superintendents in his philosophy, which meant top-down, tough management and a willingness to close schools with low test scores and replace them with charter schools, no matter how much the schools were loved by students, teachers, parents, and the local community. Anyone could apply to his Academy regardless of previous job experience or lack of education experience.

I was invited to meet Eli Broad at his penthouse apartment on Fifth Avenue in New York City about ten years ago. He explained to me that he didn’t know anything about education but knew management. Lack of management skills, he said, was the biggest problem in education.

I have yet to see any evidence that Broad leaders were CONTINUE READING: Capital & Main: Eli Broad Wanted to Destroy Public Education | Diane Ravitch's blog

Tulsa, Okla., Schools Plan To Use Latest Stimulus To Expand Learning Opportunities : NPR

Tulsa, Okla., Schools Plan To Use Latest Stimulus To Expand Learning Opportunities : NPR

Tulsa, Okla., Schools Plan To Use Latest Stimulus To Expand Learning Opportunities

NPR's Ailsa Chang speaks with Jorge Robles, chief financial officer for Tulsa Public Schools about plans for using the latest stimulus funding for expanded learning opportunities.

AILSA CHANG, HOST:

Schools around the country are about to get a massive infusion of funds. The coronavirus relief package signed into law late last week will pump nearly $130 billion into K-12 schools across the country. And there's additional money for state governments, which will also help many of these struggling school districts. Twenty percent of the money that school districts receive is targeted at addressing what's called learning loss, and that's where Jorge Robles comes in. He's the CFO of Tulsa Public Schools, where the district has already announced a host of new programs aimed at helping students regain some of the learning that was lost during the pandemic.

Welcome.

JORGE ROBLES: Thank you for having me.

CHANG: Well, as we mentioned, your district has announced a lot of new programs. Can you just give us an idea of what's being offered?

ROBLES: Some of the things that we're offering are - for our high school students, we're having - we're setting up a series of programs that go from one-on-one tutoring to boot camps as well as a - we call it the Twilight Academy. So we're - students have flexible evening learning options so that our students who are in secondary can actually have an opportunity to work with teachers and counselors on catching up on learning and work to make sure that they're graduating on time and they're meeting all the graduation requirements.

And then we're also planning for next school year to make accessible our before and after care for all of our families that we know are very important opportunities for families to access enrichment programs and supports before and after school. And it's a great support for families overall and allows their - our students to continue to engage and learn in safe, joyous environments where they can engage with others and adults.

CHANG: I mean, it sounds like it could be very expensive. And I understand that these one-on-one tutoring plans were announced even before the relief package was signed into law in Washington. I mean, would you have even been able to do this one-on-one tutoring program without this extra funding from the federal government, you think?

ROBLES: It would be extremely hard to do those. So we would have - probably have to change the scale of which we could have been doing them. Having a stimulus package of the size that was authorized, it allows us to essentially put these programs in place for a longer period of time and then have a better degree of success on supporting our CONTINUE READING: Tulsa, Okla., Schools Plan To Use Latest Stimulus To Expand Learning Opportunities : NPR

A Broadie Joins the Biden Administration | Diane Ravitch's blog

A Broadie Joins the Biden Administration | Diane Ravitch's blog

A Broadie Joins the Biden Administration

Maureen Tracey-Mooney joined the White House staff as a Special Assistant to the President for Education.

She is a graduate of the notorious Broad Center, the plaything of billionaire Eli Broad, which teaches its “students” the value of applying business principles in education and the benefits of closing low-performing schools instead of helping them. According to the Broad Center, “As a Broad Resident, Maureen Tracey-Mooney worked with Achievement First as Director of Extended Learning.” Achievement First is a “no excuses” charter chain that is known for harsh discipline. It is based in Connecticut, Rhode Island, and New York and was funded by billionaires like Jonathan Sackler, who made his billions selling OxyContin and creating an addiction crisis that took at least 200,000 lives. (In 2019, the charter chain announced it would take no new donations from Mr. Sackler, who had already given $1.6 million).

Broad Resident: https://www.broadcenter.org/alumni/directory/profile/maureen-tracey-mooney/
https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/statements-releases/2021/03/05/white-house-announces-additional-policy-staff/

Maureen Tracey-Mooney, Special Assistant to the President for Education

Maureen Tracey-Mooney worked on the domestic policy team on the Biden-Harris Transition and supported the development of President Biden’s PK-12 agenda. Previously, she worked on President Obama’s campaign and transition. She served as then-Vice President Biden’s Deputy Domestic Policy Advisor in the first term of the CONTINUE READING: A Broadie Joins the Biden Administration | Diane Ravitch's blog

Choosing Democracy: Bretón Vs. the Sacramento Teachers

Choosing Democracy: Bretón Vs. the Sacramento Teachers

Bretón Vs. the Sacramento Teachers

Sacramento Bee opinionnaire  Marcos Bretón offers up one of his frequent attacks on the Sacramento teachers’ union in today’s Bee https://www.sacbee.com/opinion/article249152435.html.

It is the usual anti union diatribe filled with paragraphs cut and pasted from prior columns.  He purposes to deal with the issue of opening schools in Sacramento.  If you ignore all the hyperbole, you get down to the dividing issue – when should Sacramento City Unified re open schools.

There is substantive agreement between the district administration and the union except for one issue. 

Should teachers be given vaccines prior to returning to work.  That is the issue.

Bretón has one side; the union argues teachers should have vaccines first.  That's all.  The remainder in innuendo and name calling. 

Below  is an alternate view- with data citations. 

Re: Opening schools

David Dayen, The American Prospect  Feb.15, 2021

Last Friday the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention finally released a long-awaited set of guidelines for how to safely reopen schools. It really says what the data has said for a while: schools are generally safe when community transmission is low, less safe when transmission is high, and only really safe when following mitigation guidelines, which include masking, social distancing, frequent hand washing and things like not coughing out loud without covering your mouth, sanitation, ventilation, quarantine and isolation for the sick, and contact tracing. Many observers have put the lack of school reopening on teachers and particularly teachers unions, but the polling shows a different story, which plays directly into the above paragraph. If you ask parents whether they want to return their kids to in-person instruction, you see a significant disparity cut by race and class. In general terms, whiter, richer parents are more likely to want to return their kids to school; poorer parents and parents of color do not. And the difference is that, for the whiter and richer parents, their communities have not been as ravaged by COVID, and their schools can actually undertake the mitigation measures.

Black and Latino communities have seen a disproportionate level of death and suffering during the pandemic. Whether community transmission is high right now or not in their area, the accumulated impact makes it feel high. (In truth, community transmission has been high pretty much everywhere in the country since late fall, and only now is coming CONTINUE READING: Choosing Democracy: Bretón Vs. the Sacramento Teachers

Choosing Democracy: $225 Million In New Revenue: 10 Facts About the SCUSD Budget

Choosing Democracy: $225 Million In New Revenue: 10 Facts About the SCUSD Budget

$225 MILLION IN NEW REVENUE

10 FACTS ABOUT THE SCUSD BUDGET

Fact # 1:  Since the 2012-2013 school year, the District has run a surplus every year except one:  2017-18 (2012-13 to 2018-19 Projections & 2012-13 to 2018-19 Actuals).  The District was told by the Sacramento County Office of Education it needed to make budget cuts to offset the costs of our contract settlement. Instead Superintendent Aguilar went on a spending spree including $6 million to cash out the vacation of the District’s top administrators.

Fact #2:  In March 2019, the Sacramento City Unified School Board passed resolution No. 3060 “On Fiscal Solvency Plan to Save Our Schools” which included the following:

“District Superintendent, Jorge Aguilar, has agreed to forgo any salary increase allowed under his Employment Agreement until the District receives either a qualified or positive certification as defined in Education Code section 42131, subdivision (a)(1).”

The District still has not had a budget that has received “either a qualified or positive certification as defined in Education Code section 42131, subdivision (a) (1)” and yet Superintendent Aguilar has taken a $34,126 increase in his total compensation.

Fact #3:  The District has the largest reserve fund in its history:  $93 million.  That’s 8 times higher than the 2% reserve required by the state.

Fact #4:  Since the District’s budget was rejected for the first time in August 2018, the first time an SCUSD budget was rejected in its entire history, the SCUSD reserve has INCREASED by than $23 million. (Ending Fund Balance 2018-19 vs Ending Fund Balance 2019-20).

Fact #5:  At its current $89 million (down from the original budget of $101.3 million) the SCUSD budget currently includes $70 million in books and supplies, more than it traditionally spends in this category.  Chief Business Officer Rose Ramos has acknowledged that these extra tens of millions of dollars are parked in books and supplies until the District figures out how to spend the dollars.

Fact #6:  The District, in a transaction approved by the previous school board on the consent agenda on November 5, 2020 and by the Sacramento County Office of Education (SCOE), went forward with the $6 million purchase of unproven portable air filtration units, even after SCTA recommended that the District seek advice from scientific experts.  Since then, the units had to be taken out of classrooms when SCTA and SEIU raised health and safety concerns and demanded their removal.

Fact #7:  The District is receiving $124 million in new revenue from the federal government as a result of two COVID relief packages (here and here).  This does not include the millions more expected to come from the new Biden administration.

Fact #8:  Governor Newsom’s California State Budget, which calls for the highest K-12 spending in California history, will result in $100 million or more in new revenue for SCUSD.

Fact #9:  Even with Chief Business Officer Rose Ramos’ overly conservative calculations, based on the Governor’s January budget, the District should present a POSITIVELY CERTIFIED Second Interim Budget for board approval in March.

Fact #10:  For the District to cut any services to students or to demand $20 million in shifting health care costs onto staff resulting in cuts to take-home pay by as much as 34.6%, or over $17,000 per year, is unconscionable.

Choosing Democracy: $225 Million In New Revenue: 10 Facts About the SCUSD Budget

Education with the Biden Team | tultican

Education with the Biden Team | tultican

Education with the Biden Team

By Thomas Ultican 1/16/2021

Joe Biden has garnered wide spread praise for his choice of Miguel Cardona as Secretary of Education; maybe too wide. The co-founder of Bellwether Education, Andrew Rotherham says Cardona is “a Goldilocks on charter schools.”  However, Goldilocks was a fairy tale and Rotherham is a well known neoliberal who campaigns for “school choice.”

At the Democratic convention in 2008, the largest groups of delegates cheering the loudest for their new standard bearers were teachers. They saw in Barack Obama and Joe Biden leaders who would end the destructive nightmare, No Child Left Behind. Linda Darling-Hammond the progressive education scholar advising Obama was viewed as someone who would bring professional sanity to national education policy and end the unjustifiable attacks on public schools and their teachers.

They were not aware of a pre-convention seminar billed “Ed Challenge for Change.” This seminar sponsored by Microsoft founder Bill Gates and real estate mogul Eli Broad included a new group of young wealthy hedge fund managers named Democrats for Education Reform (DFER). They had previously established a relationship with Senator Barak Obama. He seemed to share their ideas on education issues like charter schools, performance pay, and accountability. DFER, Gates and Broad viewed Darling-Hammond as a touchy-feely anti-accountability figure and believed she would destroy any chance that Obama would follow through on any of their education reform initiatives.

The seminar group began subjecting Darling-Hammond to withering criticism. They championed the non-traditional (meaning no education background) leader of the Chicago school system, Arne Duncan, to be the next Secretary of Education. Darling-Hammond was berated as favoring the status quo in CONTINUE READING: Education with the Biden Team | tultican

Biden Picks Former President of Broad Foundation as Deputy Chief of Staff | Diane Ravitch's blog

Biden Picks Former President of Broad Foundation as Deputy Chief of Staff | Diane Ravitch's blog

Biden Picks Former President of Broad Foundation as Deputy Chief of Staff

President-Elect announced that Bruce Reed will be his Deputy Chief of Staff. This is alarming news, though not surprising. Reed previously served as Biden’s chief of staff when he was vice president. The toxic Broad Foundation gave grants to some of Betsy DeVos’s favorite causes.

This report from TYT (The Young Turks) describes why we should keep a close watch on Reed. He is not a friend of public schools. The Broad Foundation has spent many millions of dollars underwriting charter schools and funding campaigns for candidates who oppose public schools. Eli Broad has tried to buy control of LAUSD to replace more public schools with charters.

Reed has been an outspoken proponent of charter schools for decades, championing their rise inside the Clinton White House, where he led the Domestic Policy Council. But although Reed has publicly drawn the line at for-profit charter schools and vouchers, the Broad Foundation funded organizations that support both. 

Reed also frowned on community, or “mom-and-pop” CONTINUE READING: Biden Picks Former President of Broad Foundation as Deputy Chief of Staff | Diane Ravitch's blog

DOES IT EVER STOP? – Dad Gone Wild

DOES IT EVER STOP? – Dad Gone Wild

DOES IT EVER STOP?

“Make your interactions with people transformational, not just transactional.”
― Patti Smith

One might have thought that three days of posts on education practices and policies in Tennessee would suffice, they would be wrong.

Today I turn away from the Circus of Illusions being crafted by the Tennessee Department of Education and it’s erstwhile leader, Penny Schwinn. The leaving out of the honorary title in front of her name was not an accidental omission. Like most things with our dear leader, there is much confusion and questioning around her educational achievements. She’s either an incredibly dedicated student who is instilled with an incredible ability for work/life balance or … but I digress.

I said today won’t be about the commissioner and it won’t be. Instead, I turn my jaundiced eye back towards Metro Nashville Public Schools in an effort to clarify a number of things that were covered at the last board meeting.

Here is the link to the board meeting, I urge you to not take my word on things but rather to watch and ponder for yourself.

There are many, many areas of contention for me within this 2:40 minute meeting, but in the interest of brevity, I’m only going to hit a few.

First and foremost, why is the board still meeting remotely? If the district is in the process of bringing back students because they feel they can do so in a safe manner, why is the MNPS School Board not reinforcing that belief by meeting in person? Hopefully, this will be the last of the remote meetings going forth.

The meeting starts with a presentation that gives an overview of the key factors in the school year to date. In his presentation, Chief Finance Officer Chris Henson confirms what most of us already knew – the district is losing enrollments. He attempts to downplay the numbers by showing that the loss is only slightly less than it was last year.

A breakdown by grade level shows that the decline is mostly derived from the lower grade levels and Special Education Populations. Not included in this presentation is a breakdown by socio-economic status. I’d be interested in what those numbers illuminate.

Henson also provides a breakdown by clusters. This chart seems to indicate the largest loss of enrollment being in clusters that serve large populations CONTINUE READING: DOES IT EVER STOP? – Dad Gone Wild

Broad’s Academy and Residencies Fuel the Destroy Public Education Agenda | tultican - https://wp.me/p2txw0-QM on @wordpressdotcom

SCUSD No Longer Insolvent ? They Found the Money ??

SCUSD No Longer Insolvent ? They Found the Money ??

THIS FALL A WINDFALL: SACRAMENTO CITY UNIFIED SCHOOL DISTRICT REPORTS A SURPLUS OF $23 MILLION DOLLARS

 How is it that SCUSD is no longer insolvent ? 

 Perhaps it is because the inappropriately took the money from the LCFF directed to English Language Learners and used it to cover their budget shortfall.

 

As we described to the Board  each year for the last 4 yearsl

 

https://choosingdemocracy.blogspot.com/2020/06/ab-1835-passes-assembly-assists-english.html

Less than one month after the Sacramento City Unified School District announced it will run out of cash in Feb. 2021, citing a $40 million deficit, both the district and an independent fiscal adviser said this week that the district serving more than 40,000 students likely won’t go insolvent that soon.

Instead, the financially distressed district and FCMAT, the Fiscal Crisis and Management Assistance Team, said the district is closer to having a $20 million surplus, due to savings from the coronavirus pandemic and overbudgeting on the district’s part.

The district is still in trouble down the road and will likely go insolvent. Mike Fine, chief executive officer at FCMAT, said it’s not a matter of if, but when.

TOP ARTICLES

Read more here: https://www.sacbee.com/news/local/education/article245805965.html#storylink=cpy

Big Education Ape: OPPS: This Fall a Windfall: Sacramento City Unified School District Reports a Surplus of $23 Million Dollars - Sacramento City Teachers Association - http://bigeducationape.blogspot.com/2020/09/opps-this-fall-windfall-sacramento-city.html

PROCEED AT YOUR OWN PERIL – Dad Gone Wild

 PROCEED AT YOUR OWN PERIL – Dad Gone Wild

 PROCEED AT YOUR OWN PERIL

“When the whole world is crazy, it doesn’t pay to be sane.”
― Terry Goodkind, The Pillars of Creation

“The best way to show that a stick is crooked is not to argue about it or to spend time denouncing it, but to lay a straight stick alongside it”
― D.L. Moody

It was about 7, or a little after, as we made our way back across town from my daughter’s ballet class at Nashville Ballet. Both my 5th-grade son and 6th-grade daughter were engaged in an animated conversation about their school day.

“Daddy, Mr. Keel’s sense of humor is so like mine. Right now we are covering the Mesopotamian age. Mr. Keel says it is really a lot of ground to cover and we don’t want to rush through it too fast. But it’s so interesting.”

“Ms. Cacho’s class is really good. She’s almost as hard as Mrs. Yaklin. She’s really making us work hard.”

“Yea well everybody says Mr. Keel is really strict, but Daddy he’s not. Sure he’s tough but he really tries to help students. I also really like the way Dr. Lemmon is teaching us writing, the prompts really get me thinking. Peter, how was Drama class?”

“Drama Club!!! I was in Drama Club! it was good, Grace and Diana were in there.”

“Grace? Well, that figures, she likes drama…but I didn’t know Diana would be in there. I need to get in that.”

By just listening to them talk, you’d never realize that every class and every teacher they discussed was experienced virtually. Eventually, they got around to listing their favorite all-time teachers, CONTINUE READING:   PROCEED AT YOUR OWN PERIL – Dad Gone Wild

OPPS: This Fall a Windfall: Sacramento City Unified School District Reports a Surplus of $23 Million Dollars - Sacramento City Teachers Association

This Fall a Windfall: Sacramento City Unified School District Reports a Surplus of $23 Million Dollars - Sacramento City Teachers Association

THIS FALL A WINDFALL: SACRAMENTO CITY UNIFIED SCHOOL DISTRICT REPORTS A SURPLUS OF $23 MILLION DOLLARS

• The 2019-20 school year finished with huge $23 million surplus after originally projecting a $12.3 million deficit, a turnaround of $35.5 million

• This marks the eighth consecutive year of grossly inaccurate budget projections by SCUSD administrators

• Reserve fund hits highest mark ever at $93 million

SACRAMENTO — The Chief Business Officer of the Sacramento City Unified School District, Rose Ramos, will report to the district’s board of education today that the Sac City schools finished the 2019-20 school year with a large surplus of cash and record reserves. Only last month, SCUSD leaders were predicting that the district, which educates 40,000 students in California’s capital city, would run a deficit, be out of cash in February 2021 and face state takeover next year.

Contrary to the bleak forecasts presented to the public in August, the “2019-20 Year End Financial Unaudited Actuals” report documents that SCUSD ended the 2019-20 school year with a surplus of $23,113,422.98.  In July 2019, the district projected it would end the 2019-20 school year with a $12,344,416.83 deficit — a $35.5 million turnaround from the district’s dire predictions.  Just as significantly, SCUSD now has $93,048,610.81 in its reserve fund, $82 million more than the minimum reserve fund required by the state. 

“Parents, teachers and business leaders have been bombarded with ‘the sky is falling in’ messages coming out of the budget office that are parroted by both the school board and the Sacramento County Office of Education year after year,” said Sacramento City Teachers Association President David Fisher, who also is a SCUSD parent. “Every year SCUSD goes through this exercise of telling the public that it is running out of cash and better cut programs, only to end with ‘never mind, we actually ran a surplus.’”

It is the eighth year in a row that the district financial projections have been wildly inaccurate, falsely painting a picture of SCUSD on the brink of fiscal insolvency. Among other accounting problems, a budget officer previously hired by the school board based on recommendations from Superintendent Jorge Aguilar, was forced to step down in 2019 when it was revealed SCUSD forgot to count five of the district’s schools, a $25-million mistake.

“With a surplus of $23 million from last school year and a reserve fund that now exceeds $93 million, it’s time to focus on the positive and determine how we can best redirect those resources back to the classroom,” said Fisher. “Especially now, with the added educational challenges that the pandemic brings, we need to employ more school nurses, lower class sizes, improve special education services and provide help so that our teachers can tailor virtual learning to the needs of each student.”

This Fall a Windfall: Sacramento City Unified School District Reports a Surplus of $23 Million Dollars - Sacramento City Teachers Association