This Week's Topic: Echo Park's Newest School is an Echo Park Patch piece intended to spark community dialog about the disposition of CRES 14. As we've seen throughout the process, there's what the community thinks and then there's propaganda campaign by CNCA executives and staff. The pernicious Hoa Truong, CNCA's COO, made very misleading, and frankly, mendacious comments under the article. Here is my expanded and revised response to his proverbial pack of lies:
Hoa Truong presents what can only charitably be called half truths here. True CNCA is a 501C3 "non-profit," but that is merely a tax status and says little else. Rather than private companies, they are private corporations (that's what the C in 501C3 stands for). As private corporations, the have unelected boards. In CNCA's case that board has no parents or community members from our attendance boundary.
For more on Camino Nuevo's board, see: 'Social justice hedge fund managers' and 'social justice investment bankers' at Camino Nuevo?
Moreover, although Camino Nuevo Charter Academy are "not for profit" there are no limits to the salaries charter-voucher schools pay their well heeled executives. Ana Ponce, CEO of CNCA, pulls down a whopping $140,639. For more on this see: Crafty Camino Nuevo Charter Charlatans
Mr. Truong mentions that CNCA's "board meetings are public meetings." Note that being able to attend a meeting is a far cry from the community having control over CNCA and their schools' operations. To CNCA's credit, they are one of the very few Charter Management Organizations (CMO) that hold public meetings, most meet in secret. CMOs like CNCA mistakingly equate input with decision making.
Truong, a businessman, not an educator, certainly has a vested interest in not divulging such information. More to the point Truong is a graduate of the vile Broad Residency in Urban Education, a plutocrat funded venture that can only be described as school privatization shock troops. Rather than allowing him and the elites populating his board dictate to us, we have a better idea.
The public school option (LD4 Echo Park Partnership) for CRES 14 will almost certainly be run under the Pilot school model. Pilot schools have Governing School Councils which have real decision making power. Governing School Councils are comprised of community members, parents, teachers, and administrators. There is nothing analogous to this in the corporate charter-voucher school world. CNCA's Ana Ponce herself said the following at a Union Avenue School meeting "Parents having decision making power over a budget is not a sustainable model." Aside from her business buzzwords, she shows an utter contempt for ordinary working class people. In Truong and Ponce's world, decision making is best left to "our betters."
We say no, we demand the right of our community's self determination. We want CRES 14 to be a community controlled public school, not a corporate charter school.
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