Revisiting California's Battle of Hastings - LA Progressive

Revisiting California's Battle of Hastings - LA Progressive

Revisiting California’s Battle of Hastings

Courtesy of re:publica/flickr.

The 2005 Sacking of the Netflix CEO as State Education Board Chief Looks Different Now

After long days supervising my children in their struggles with the miseries of distance learning and hybrid school, I try to relax by watching Netflix. As I do, I often find myself thinking about a state legislative hearing from 2005, and how different California education might be if it had gone differently.

The hearing, in a committee of the State Senate, was supposed to be routine. I, an L.A. Times reporter at the time, didn’t even bother to cover it. The subject was reappointment of the president of the State Board of Education. The president, Reed Hastings, was thought to be a shoo-in.

After all, Hastings, a tech entrepreneur and Democratic donor from Santa Cruz, had put together a successful ballot measure to make it easier to pass school bonds, launching a new era of school construction statewide after decades of neglect. He’d supported the state’s accountability system for schools, and backed the establishment of public charter schools in disadvantaged neighborhoods. Hastings also had bipartisan support—he’d been appointed four years earlier by a Democrat, Gov. Gray Davis, and was nominated for re-appointment by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, a Republican.

But the hearing went sideways. Some education groups didn’t like charter schools, or his blunt interest in transforming education systems. Hastings himself suggested that he was felled by CONTINUE READING: Revisiting California's Battle of Hastings - LA Progressive

Educators: Beware “The City Fund” and Its Many Tentacles of Privatization | Diane Ravitch's blog

Educators: Beware “The City Fund” and Its Many Tentacles of Privatization | Diane Ravitch's blog

Educators: Beware “The City Fund” and Its Many Tentacles of Privatization

This article was co-authored by a group of educators who oppose privatization. They have identified the primary driver of privatization in their different communities: The City Fund, subsidized primarily by corporate “reformers” Reed Hastings and John Arnold. The City Fund is led by experienced privatizers who have tried their hand in places like Tennessee and New Orleans, where the PR was great but the results were not. It opened its operations with $200 million in hand from its funders. Lots of money, no members, and a charge to go out into the nation and find cities where they could disrupt the local school board elections by underwriting advocates of privatization. They are undermining public schools and democracy at the same time. They should hang their heads in shame. They won’t.

The authors of the following are: Dr. Tracee Miller was an elected member of the St. Louis Board of Education. Dr. Keith Benson is president of the Camden Education Association. Christina Smith is Secretary of Indianapolis Public Schools Community Coalition. Dawn Chanet Collins, East Baton Rouge Parish School System Board Member and Candidate for Metro-Council 6. Bobby Blount is a San Antonio Northside ISD Trustee. Don Macleay is a member of Oakland Public Schools Action 2020.

They wrote the following article:

Education Privatization: Eerie Similarities in Stories from 15 Major US Cities CONTINUE READING: Educators: Beware “The City Fund” and Its Many Tentacles of Privatization | Diane Ravitch's blog

Big money for pro-charter school board candidates, picks George Gascón for DA – Los Angeles Education Examiner

Big money for pro-charter school board candidates, picks George Gascón for DA – Los Angeles Education Examiner

Big money for pro-charter school board candidates, picks George Gascón for DA

Los Angeles’ school district used to have sleepy school board races. But those low budget, pedestrian races – like that for LA County’s District Attorney – are bygones. Between the SCOTUS Citizens United ruling codifying limitless lobbying and independent campaign support, and the ascendency of “school choice” as a stalking horse for privatization of the public sector within the education arena, LAUSD’s school boardroom has become a surrogate battlefield for neoliberalism, public-private partnerships and the leveraging of public goods for private gain.

So, too, it would seem might the race for LAC’s District Attorney (LAC-DA) signal a new incursion on privatization in criminal justice.

And given such a grand ideological tussle, it is little wonder that formerly obscure school board elections of local and narrow interest should have become worth astonishing amounts of money to a select few with special interest in (eg, profit, systemic change, ROI extracted from) the political insurgency. Such an influx could concern underlying motivations surrounding next Tuesday’s LAC-DA race.

An explosion of this trend was marked in 2013, when the mayor of New York City 3000 miles away, saw fit to drop one million dollars over the metaphorical backyard fences and literal mailboxes of west LA in order to influence a school board race so very, very far away, and seemingly removed, from him. But in retrospect it is clear that the Education sector provides a goldrush of opportunity for privateers. And the shock and awe of CONTINUE READING: Big money for pro-charter school board candidates, picks George Gascón for DA – Los Angeles Education Examiner