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Monday, July 27, 2015

"For the Kids" - Comprehensive Review of California School Bonds, Executive Summary

"For the Kids" - Comprehensive Review of California School Bonds, Executive Summary (Section 1 of 9) - California Policy Center:

"For the Kids" - Comprehensive Review of California School Bonds, Executive Summary


California School Bonds

Executive Summary 

Few Californians realize how much debt they’ve imposed on future generations with their votes for bond measures meant to fund the construction of new and modernized school facilities.
From 2001 to 2014, California voters considered 1147 ballot measures proposed by K-12 school districts and community college districts to borrow money for construction via bond sales. Voters approved 911 of these bond measures, giving 642 school and college districts authority to borrow a total of $110.4 billion.
California voters also approved three statewide ballot measures during that time to authorize the state to borrow $35.8 billion. That money has supplemented local borrowing for construction projects at school and college districts, and the state has spent all but $195 million of it.
That’s a total of $146.1 billion authorized during the last 14 years for state and local educational districts to obtain and spend on construction projects. All of it has been borrowed or will be borrowed from wealthy investors, who buy state and local government bonds as a relatively safe investment that generates tax-exempt income through interest payments.
Current and future generations of Californians are already committed to paying these investors about $200 billion in principal and interest — a number that will grow as school and college districts continue to borrow by selling bonds already authorized by voters but not yet sold.
And more borrowing is coming.
In 2016 California voters may be asked to authorize the state to borrow as much as $9 billion for school construction. More than 100 school and college districts may ask voters to approve borrowing a total of several billion more dollars. Officials at the country’s second largest school district, the Los Angeles Unified School District, claim they need more than $40 billion for additional construction and plan to ask voters to approve borrowing several billion in 2016.
It is time to be wary. The California Policy Center believes that most Californians are unaware and uninformed about this relentless borrowing and the amount of debt already accumulated to pay for school construction. Most voters cannot explain how a bond measure works and do not get enough information to make an educated decision about the wisdom of a bond measure.
California voters who want to learn more before voting will have difficulty finding relevant information. Where does an ordinary Californian find out how much money a school or college district has already been authorized to borrow from past bond measures, or the principal and interest owed from past bond sales that still needs to be repaid, or the projected changes in assessed property valuation and how they affect tax and debt limits, or the past and projected student enrollment? The state does not offer a clearinghouse of information for the public to research and compare data about bond measures and bond debt for educational districts. Much of the information available about debt finance for educational districts is oriented toward interests of bond investors rather than people who pay the debt.
Californians who recognize a need for their own local educational districts to refrain from accumulating additional debt have significant obstacles to overcome. State law gives supporters of bond measures a systematic strategic advantage when local districts develop bond measures and put them before voters for approval. Campaigns to support bond measures are funded and even managed by financial and construction industry interests that will profit after passage. And after voters approve a bond measure, educational districts are tempted to take advantage of ambiguities in state law and use bond proceeds for items and activities not typically regarded by the public as construction.
To help to fix these deficiencies, this report encourages the California legislature and the executive branch to adopt five sets of recommendations:"For the Kids" - Comprehensive Review of California School Bonds, Executive Summary (Section 1 of 9) - California Policy Center:



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How One Educator is Taking Ethnic Studies Mainstream - NEA Today

How One Educator is Taking Ethnic Studies Mainstream - NEA Today:

How One Educator is Taking Ethnic Studies Mainstream

 Thousands of high school students from Los Angeles, Calif. will benefit from a more diverse curriculum this year, thanks in large part to the efforts of Jose Lara, a social studies teacher at Santee Education Complex High School.
His labors led to make ethnic studies a graduation requirement in the Los Angeles Unified School District.
It started in 2013. As a school board member in El Rancho, he quickly worked to get a resolution passed to make ethnic studies a graduation requirement. The district is thought to be the first school system in the state to have made such a requisite. Now, the class of 2016 must take and pass an ethnic-studies course before graduating.
With much success and support from the community, Lara formed the Ethnic Studies Now Coalition, which set out to make ethnic studies a graduation requirement in Los Angeles, which it did in 2014.
Data from the California Department of Education shows that ethnic studies courses are offered at 19 out of 94 of its high schools. This means that only 691 out of a total of nearly 153,000 high school students are taking ethnic studies courses.
To date, more than five school districts have made ethnic studies a graduation requirement while 11 others have established a program or expanded an existing one.
NEA Social Justice Activist of the Year Jose Lara speaks at the 94th Annual NEA Representative Assembly on July 5, 2015. (Photo by Scott Iskowitz)
NEA Social Justice Activist of the Year Jose Lara speaks at the 94th Annual NEA Representative Assembly on July 5, 2015. (Photo by Scott Iskowitz)
Ninety percent of the students in the district, which is the nation’s second largest, are students of color, and it’s been important for Lara to help bring those voices into the mainstream—ethnic studies help to do just that.
“Keeping students from learning about their own history is structural racism, and as educators we have the responsibility to do something about it,” he said. “Ethnic studies is what anti-racist education looks like in the classroom. It is the unforgotten stories of brilliance and resilience of women and men of color that has systematically been kept out of our classrooms.”
Ethnic studies have shown to highlight a more positive sense of self, which helps to increase student and social engagement, as well as improve academic performance. Additionally, it shows to offer all students an opportunity to learn about more diverse experiences and perspectives.
While some districts in California have added ethnic studies to its course offerings, How One Educator is Taking Ethnic Studies Mainstream - NEA Today:
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DEMAND AUDITS: California Charter School Fraud

Risking Public Money: California Charter School Fraud | Center for Popular Democracy:

DEMAND AUDITS: California Charter School Fraud






 In 1992, California became the second state in the nation to pass legislation authorizing the creation of charter schools. Since the law’s passage, which originally authorized 100 charter schools, the number of charter schools in California has grown rapidly. Today, California is home to the largest number of charter schools in the country, with over 1100 schools providing instruction to over half a million students. In the 2013-14 school year, California charter schools received more than $3 billion in public funding.

Despite the tremendous investment of public dollars and the size of its charter school population, California has failed to implement a system that proactively monitors charters for fraud, waste and mismanagement. While charter schools are subject to significant reporting requirements and monitoring by oversight bodies, including chartering entities, county superintendents and the State Controller, no oversight body regularly conducts audits.
In 2006, California took a step in the right direction by amending the Charter Schools Act to permit county superintendents who suspect fraud or mismanagement at charter schools to request an “extraordinary audit” from the Financial Crisis and Management Assistance Team (FCMAT), a state agency charged with helping local educational agencies fulfill their financial and management responsibilities. Although FCMAT only conducts an audit when requested to do so, its findings reveal internal control deficiencies and various forms of mismanagement ranging in severity and form—from inappropriate self-dealing by charter school staff to the spending of thousands of public dollars without documentation. Even after 2006, charter schools in California continue to operate year in and year out without regulator-level audits that are designed specifically to determine whether the public dollars funding these privately managed schools are being spent properly. This lack of appropriate government audits is a problem, especially given the findings of FCMAT’s audits.
The number of instances of serious fraud uncovered by whistleblowers and the FCMAT suggests that the fraud problem is likely not isolated to the charter operators that have been caught. In fact, California’s charter oversight system’s deficiencies suggest that the $81,400,000 in fraud, waste and abuse by charter operators that has been uncovered to date is likely just the tip of the iceberg. Based on conservative estimates, California stands to lose more than $100 million to charter school fraud in 2015. The vast majority of this fraud perpetrated by charter officials will go undetected because California lacks the oversight necessary to identify the fraud. In this report we describe three fundamental flaws with California’s oversight of charter schools:
  • Oversight depends heavily on self-reporting by charter schools or by whistleblowers. California’s oversight agencies rely almost entirely on audits paid for by charter operators and complaints from whistleblowers. Both methods are important to uncover fraud; however,neither is a systematic approach to fraud detection, nor are they effective in fraud prevention.
  • General auditing techniques alone do not uncover fraud. The audits commissioned by the charter schools use general auditing techniques rather than techniques specifically designedto detect and uncover fraud. The current processes may expose inaccuracies or inefficiencies; however, without audits targeted at uncovering financial fraud, state and local agencies willrarely be able to detect fraud without a whistleblower.
  • Oversight bodies lack adequate staffing to detect and eliminate fraud. In California, the vast majority of charter schools are authorized by local school districts that lack adequate staffing to monitor charter schools and ferret out fraud. Staff members who are responsible for oversight often juggle competing obligations that make it difficult to focus on oversight and identify signs of potential fraud and abuse.
To address these serious deficiencies in California’s system, we recommend the following reforms:
Mandate Audits Designed to Detect and Prevent Fraud
  • Charter schools should be required to institute an internal fraud risk management program, including an annual fraud risk assessment.
  • Charter schools should be required to commission an annual audit of internal controls over financial reporting that is integrated with the audit of financial statements charter schools currently commission. These integrated audits should require auditors to provide an opinion on the quality of internal controls and financial statements.
  • Oversight agencies, such as the State Comptroller’s Office and Fiscal Crisis and Management Assistance Team (FCMAT), a state agency, should conduct audits on charter schools once every three years.
  • Auditing teams should include members certified in Financial Forensics trained to detect fraud.
Increase Transparency & Accountability
  • Oversight agencies should create a system to categorize and rank charter audits by level of fraud risk they pose to facilitate public engagement.
  • Oversight agencies should post the findings of their annual internal assessments of fraud risk on their websites.
  • Oversight agencies should determine what steps charter school nonprofit governing boards and executives have taken to guard against fraud over the past 10 years and issue a report to the public detailing theirs findings and recommendations.
  • Charter school authorizers should take fraud risk assessments into account when evaluating whether to renew a school’s charter.
  • Until the state implements the oversight mechanisms described above, authorizers should only approve new charters that commit to the fraud controls recommended above.
Given the rapid and continuing expansion of the charter school industry and the tremendous investment of public dollars, California must act now to reform its oversight system. Without reform, California stands to lose millions of dollars as a result of charter school fraud, waste, and mismanagement.
Campaigns: 
Holding Charter Schools Accountable
Risking Public Money: California Charter School Fraud | Center for Popular Democracy:

REPEAL Charter School Act of 1992 in CA Ballot Initiative

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Peg with Pen: I'm Not Grateful for Compromise

Peg with Pen: I'm Not Grateful for Compromise:

I'm Not Grateful for Compromise





But I am grateful for every activist out there who is pushing hard - in their own way - to save our public schools. Truly I am grateful for that and I want to make that clear before I jump into this blog.

This is my first blog of the summer.  I couldn't blog due to fatigue and I wouldn't let myself blog because I knew that the demands of activism take their toll - and the reformers would like that to happen - they would like me to be tired. Instead, I spent the summer thinking, resting, and simply enjoying being home with my boys. Activism honestly made my stomach churn in June.  I guarded my time like a hawk. I said "no" many many times  - sometimes we have to do that in this world of activism where we work - for free - simply to do the right thing, nothing more. In July, I began to feel myself come out of the fog of fatigue.

But then something interesting happened in July as I sat and watched the days go by. I saw compromise and co-optation occurring within this revolution currently afoot. This revolution has the potential to tear down the test and punish system. It has the potential to demand and get equitable funding for fully resourced schools - as well as social policies set in place to protect children and communities from poverty while lifting them up. This revolution is powerful. It is dangerous. Attempts to redirect the revolution or shut it down will continue to come forward and smack us in the face - but we have to be ready to shake it off with a clear head -  void of compromise and negotiation.

Compromise could potentially kill this revolution.  The energy and time it takes to negotiate a compromise deprives activists of the time and energy needed to push forward a revolution.
Compromise also does something to the soul I think. It changes it. It creates a false sense of peace and success and it's very seductive - if I allowed it in, I could sit back and say, well - we did get that.

And for that we should be grateful.

No.

I'm not grateful.  I'm not grateful that folks pushed hard to get ECAA through with a few bells Peg with Pen: I'm Not Grateful for Compromise:
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Education lobbyists’ backers stay in the shadows - The Buffalo News

Education lobbyists’ backers stay in the shadows - City & Region - The Buffalo News:

Education lobbyists’ backers stay in the shadows






ALBANY – Three groups pushing education reforms that spent heavily lobbying state government this year funded at least a portion of their efforts though donations whose original sources are essentially untraceable.
Those question marks remain despite a 2011 ethics reform law meant to illuminate the sources of funding behind major lobbying efforts. Gaps in the law, however, appear to have allowed deep-pocketed groups or donors seeking anonymity to work around the requirements.
StudentsFirstNY Advocacy, the Coalition for Opportunity in Education, and Families for Excellent Schools spent more than $8.3 million during the 2015 legislative session lobbying state government to promote charter schools and other issues, according to recent lobbying disclosure filings. The three nonprofits allied themselves with Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo in an ultimately unsuccessful push for the Education Investment Tax Credit, which would have incentivized donations to educational efforts, both public and private.
The original donors behind more than $3.4 million of the spending remain murky in the groups’ biannual filings. In one instance, StudentsFirstNY Advocacy received a $1 million donation from a heavily overlapping but technically separate group run out of the same office, obscuring the original sources of the seven- figure gift.
Billy Easton, executive director of the union-backed group the Alliance for Quality Education – which does disclose its donors under the 2011 law – called the groups’ methods part of their effort to “not let New Yorkers know who is trying to control the politics of the state.”
Charter supporters have poured money into Albany lobbying efforts in an effort to counter heavy lobbying spending by teachers unions.
A group backed by union interests, dubbed Hedge Clippers, has in recent months held large protests at the residences of major charter school financial supporters. Those supporters’ identities are known in part because their names have surfaced in the past in public disclosure filings, and some surely would prefer to escape such treatment.
The 2011 state ethics reform law came amid criticism of a nonprofit that spent millions supporting Cuomo’s early agenda but didn’t have to disclose its financial backers. The reform – passed with Cuomo’s support – requires issue-oriented nonprofits, designated as 501(c)4 groups, spending more than $50,000 in a year on lobbying to disclose donations of more than $5,000.
The law took effect in 2013. Loopholes quickly became apparent.
The most generous education reform spender so far this year is the Latham-based Coalition for Opportunity in Education, which spent $4.7 million in an unsuccessful push for the Cuomo-backed education tax credit. The names of most of the donors to the group were disclosed, but one of its largest gifts came from a shadowy source.
On May 8 – roughly six weeks before the end of the legislative session – the coalition received Education lobbyists’ backers stay in the shadows - City & Region - The Buffalo News:
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Kevin Johnson's Cronies Trump Up Racism Scandal Against His Enemies

Kevin Johnson's Cronies Trump Up Racism Scandal Against His Enemies:

Kevin Johnson's Cronies Trump Up Racism Scandal Against His Enemies






There’s a price for taking on Mayor Kevin Johnson in Sacramento, Calif., and the SacramentoNews & Review is now paying it. The small weekly paper has consistently taken the lead in exposing Johnson’s abuses of the public trust—and now, for its troubles, finds itself in a bizarre racism controversy contrived by the mayor’s cronies.
Kevin Johnson's Cronies Trump Up Racism Scandal Against His Enemies
Two weeks ago, Betty Williams, a vice-president of the Sacramento chapter of the NAACP, sent out a press release on the group’s letterhead blasting the News & Review for “racially biased news coverage” of Johnson. The statement, which you can read in full here, focused on a caricature the paper ran in which the former NBA star—now dealing with yet another in a long run of scandals involving a variety of sexual, financial, and ethical improprieties—reads critical N&R coverage. “The NAACP is outraged at the racist SN&R cartoon lampooning Mayor Johnson,” it read. (The cartoon in question can be seen at left.) “Caricaturing images of the Mayor with a crazed and violent look reinforces what many believe is the persona of many African American males.”
Williams, a former president of the NAACP’s Sacramento chapter, then fronted an anti-News & Review publicity campaign. “It’s almost like the blackface and the Sambo look,” Williams said on KFBK, a local news radio station. The group has since threatened a boycott of the paper.
All of this has, so far, worked out just fine for the mayor, who would surely much rather have people talking about cartoons than his legal issues. As is often the case when it comes to how Kevin Johnson is covered in Sacramento, the facts—that Williams is a Johnson agent in long standing; that her campaign is straight out of a playbook written up long ago by Johnson operatives; and that local activists are incredulous at the idea that the N&R did anything wrong—don’t seem to much matter at all.

A well-timed break for Kevin Johnson

Betty Williams’s charges came right as the News & Review was, as it has been, rightly hammering Kevin Johnson for using public resources for personal business. On July 1, apparently seeking to slow down coverage of the scandal, Johnson filed a lawsuit against the paper and its top political reporter, Cosmo Garvin, naming his own city as a co-defendant. That suit, which is still pending, seeks to prevent the release of emails from the mayor’s office related to Johnson’s self-styled “coup” against the National Conference of Black Mayors, an Atlanta-based non-profit. (Johnson is now also suing and being sued by NCBM officials.)
Legal bullying didn’t knock the N&R or Garvin off the beat, however. Days after the suit was Kevin Johnson's Cronies Trump Up Racism Scandal Against His Enemies:

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Mike Klonsky's SmallTalk Blog: The Trust was a bust. Now where's Bill and Randi?

Mike Klonsky's SmallTalk Blog: The Trust was a bust. Now where's Bill and Randi?:

The Trust was a bust. Now where's Bill and Randi?



Back in 2012, Rahm's proposed Infrastructure Trust got him him great press, especially with flack David Axelrod pumping it like it was the second coming of the Marshall Plan. The New York Times hailed it as the  $7 billion plan  that would "transform the city’s infrastructure from the skies above to the pipes underground". 



Rahm flew Randi in to tout the Trust.
Rahm even flew in AFT Pres.Randi Weingarten to laud the Trust at Bill Clinton's Global Initiative Conference. 

I quoted this from the Sun-Times report: 

Emanuel was seated onstage next to Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers, whose largest member union, the Chicago Teachers Union, [was] taking a strike-authorization vote this week, frustrated with Emanuel’s administration, which killed a negotiated 4 percent raise for the teachers last year. 
Well, the last time I looked, the city's infrastructure was still crumbling and the underground pipes still rusting and leaking. The teachers never did get the 4% raise that was promised them. Rahm claimed the city couldn't afford it but could afford $2.7 million in city funds to help set up the Trust. What followed was the historic teachers strike that shook the city and Rahm's administration to its heels. 

But the Trust goes down as only the latest in a series of mayoral financial flops that has led the city to the brink of collapse.


Three years after creating a city infrastructure bank with a huge splash, Mayor Rahm Emanuel has decided to remake management of the finance unit, which by many accounts never has lived up to its Mike Klonsky's SmallTalk Blog: The Trust was a bust. Now where's Bill and Randi?:



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Will John Kasich Stand Up to the Republican Donors Taking Billions from Ohio’s Charter Program? – InsideSources

Will John Kasich Stand Up to the Republican Donors Taking Billions from Ohio’s Charter Program? – InsideSources:

Will John Kasich Stand Up to the Republican Donors Taking Billions from Ohio’s Charter Program?




As John Kasich begins campaigning for President, he’ll be proclaiming a number of impressive policy successes on the trail. In Congress, he was the chief architect of the 1997 balanced budget agreement. As Ohio Governor, he has cut taxes, tripled the state’s surplus, and reduced unemployment.
But during his five years as governor, the state of Ohio remains a joke in the charter school movement. According to research out of Stanford University’s Hoover Institution, Ohio charter school students can expect to learn 36 days less math and 14 days less reading than traditional public school students in Ohio.
Ohio Charter schools have been lacking transparency. The sponsors that oversee the schools have not been required to disclose how they spend the fees they take from state grants, and the charter operators, many of which are for-profit companies, have not been accountable for results.
These issues came to a head a little over a week ago as David Hansen, the School Choice Director for the Ohio Education Department, was forced to resign after he illegally chose to leave off “F” grades for online and dropout recovery schools in state evaluations.
Hansen is a Republican, and his wife is Beth Hansen, Kasich’s chief of staff who will also play a key role in Kasich’s presidential campaign.
Ohio has long had problems with its charters, but these problems are disproportionately based in the for-profit charter operators of online and dropout recovery schools. That industry is dominated by two companies: White Hat Management, owned by David Brennan, and Electronic Classroom of Tomorrow (ECOT), owned by William Lager. Brennan and Lager have donated more than $6 million to Republicans since 1998, and during that same 17-year period, their companies have received $1.76 billion from Ohio taxpayers. According to Stephen Dyer, an education policy fellow at Innovation Ohio, one out of every four charter dollars ever spent by Ohio taxpayers go to Lager or Brennan.
This leaves some wondering why Hansen chose to shield certain charter sponsors from scrutiny, and it also appears that Ohio Republicans are set to impede progress on reforms to Ohio’s failing charters.
The former Ohio House Speaker William Batchelder is now a lobbyist for ECOT, and the current speaker, Cliff Rosenberger, has delayed reform efforts by choosing not to bring these measures to vote.
The question is what Kasich will do.
Dyer, who as a Democratic lawmaker helped shape reforms that passed in 2009, says he is encouraged by the work that has been done to bring people together behind reforms that will strengthen transparency and accountability, but he notes, “The political powers in Columbus still rule the roost.”
Kasich has generally supported reform, but Dyer says he has been absent on the issue for several months. There Will John Kasich Stand Up to the Republican Donors Taking Billions from Ohio’s Charter Program? – InsideSources:

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Is Donald Trump right about what Gov. Scott Walker did to Wisconsin schools? - The Washington Post

Is Donald Trump right about what Gov. Scott Walker did to Wisconsin schools? - The Washington Post:

Is Donald Trump right about what Gov. Scott Walker did to Wisconsin schools?






Is Donald Trump right about what Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker’s education policies have done to the state’s public schools?
Trump, who is running for the 2016 Republican presidential nomination, is going from one opponent in the race to another — as well as people who aren’t even challenging him — to savage them in one fashion or another. Sometimes, his accusations are, well, ridiculous, such as when he disparaged Arizona Republican Sen. John McCain, and, by extension, all prisoners of war, for getting caught by enemies in war. Then there was the time he got mad at South Carolina Sen. Lyndsey Graham and publicly released his cell phone number.
Trump said publicly that he could now attack Walker because a Walker supporter had said something mean about Trump (in the turnabout-is-fair-play spirit). At a rally in Iowa at Oskaloosa High School, Trump said:
“Wisconsin’s doing terribly. It’s in turmoil. The roads are a disaster because they don’t have any money to rebuild them. They’re borrowing money like crazy. They projected a $1 billion surplus, and it turns out to be a deficit of $2.2 billion. The schools are a disaster. The hospitals and education was a disaster. And he was totally in favor of Common Core, which I hate!”
He has also recently said Walker was a flip-flopper on the Core: “Scott Walker changed when he saw he was getting creamed, so now he’s not in favor.”
So is any of this accurate?
It is true that Walker’s administration projected a $1 billion surplus but faces a $2.2 billion deficit. A story in the Chicago Tribune late last month said:
It wasn’t long ago that the forecasting arm of the Wisconsin legislature was predicting that state government by mid-2015 would be flush with a surplus topping $1 billion, which Gov. Scott Walker could have showcased in his bid for the Republican presidential nomination. Today, that projected surplus has morphed into a $2.2 billion budget deficit that Republican lawmakers are struggling to fix.
And it is true that Walker has been at the very least inconsistent on Common Core, being for it before being against it (as I wrote here). Walker’s flip-flops led to an open letter recently signed by an unusual coalition of groups and Is Donald Trump right about what Gov. Scott Walker did to Wisconsin schools? - The Washington Post:
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