K12NN Wire: The case against Alex Johnson

First published on K12NN Wire on July 25, 2014

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The original draft of this essay was written in mid-June, 2014. The figures cited in the piece are indicative of the Form-460 information available at that time. I will be writing another piece which discusses the currently fundraising figures soon. Given the despicable smear job the Johnson campaign has run against the distinguished Dr. McKenna, expediency dictated publishing this without the benefit of updates.

Ridley-Thomas has plenty of money left over from his $800,000 campaign war chest that was filled with donations from special interests like Monsanto, oil companies, liquor stores, big developers and Eli Broad. His father raised the money for the 26-year old, so surely Sebastian will fork over as much as he can for a campaign for his daddy's education deputy and fellow Morehouse alum, Johnson. — Celes King IV

Johnson is the billionaire's and California Charter Schools Association's (CCSA) Candidate

Alex Johnson was the frontrunner of the three anti-public education candidates the neoliberal corporate reformers ran in the primary election. Despite raising more money than anyone else in a crowded field, he finished a distant second to the community favorite, and experienced educator, Dr. George McKenna. Johnson raised a staggering quarter of a million dollars on his own, and did something even more amazing than that. Of the $244,426 raised from hundreds of donors, NOT A SINGLE ONE OF THEM WAS FROM A SCHOOLTEACHER! Lots of unsavory characters though, here's a few:

http://ethics.lacity.org

• Anti-public school plutocrat Eli Broad was all in for the max contribution
• Republican Frank E. Baxter, a charter industry magnate, invested max amount
• Jeanette Parker, a charter school profiteer gave maximum, as did her husband a Beverly Hills based developer
• Chick-fil-A, who supported Prop-8, donated to the Alex Johnson Campaign, a slap in the face to our LGBT students
• Kevin De Leon for Senate 2014 gave $1,100 — indicating that Monica Garcia's school privatization orbit supports Johnson
• The Meruelo Group, which milked LAUSD for millions of dollars in the past, invested max contribution
• Right-wing real estate developer Rick J. Caruso chipped in

The list goes on and on. It's like a rogues gallery of plutocrats, developers, charter chain tycoons, and others looking for more parasitic business relations with the district.

The CCSA goes big with an IE for Johnson

Johnson is so closely tied to the lucrative charter school industry that the CCSA started a new 501C3 "nonprofit" and a SuperPAC to support him. Dubbing themselves the "L.A. Parents, Teachers & Students for Great Public Schools, sponsored by CA Charter Schools Association Advocates Committee, supporting Alex Johnson for L.A. School Board 2014" they and a few others raised an ADDITIONAL $80,781 as an Independent Expenditure.

http://ethics.lacity.org

Let's put this into context. The CCSA themselves sank more into Johnson than most of the candidates raised in total. In fact, the aggregate of contributions for the three UTLA endorsed candidates was less than the CCSA's funding of Johnson alone. Nothing sums up Johnson's deep ties to the charter sector than this tweet by an ICEF consultant: which boldly states "Charters are our business & will be his." They're a business alright. Johnson, like the author of the tweet, quite simply puts profits before pupils.

Talked to ICEF Staff & Directors about @JohnsonCampaign for #LAUSD & gave literature before I left. Charters are our business & will be his.

— Andrea R. Magee (@iAMandreamagee) June 2, 2014

Johnson called out in the LA Sentinel and CityWatch for ties to wealthy special interests

While Larry Aubry is a mixed bag politically, he captured the dynamics of this school board race perfectly in an Op-Ed entitled LAUSD District 1 Election and Big Money Politics. Here's an excerpt:

Reflective of the difference between opposing sides is the amount of money already raised by Alex Johnson, Supervisor Mark Ridley-Thomas' candidate, and George Mc Kenna a grassroots candidate. Johnson raised $113,000 in the first reporting period, many contributing $1100, the maximum allowed- and he will get a lot more from political action committees (PAC) and IEs (Independent Expenditures) that have no limit on the amount they contribute to a campaign. This was predictable given the Supervisor's ties to big money in Los Angeles and beyond. McKenna raised half that amount.

The late civil rights activist Celes King IV also blasted both Johnson and his patron, Supervisor Mark Ridley-Thomas, in a piece entitled Playing Politics with the Kids, Ridley-Thomas and Rev. Tulloss Show Their True Colors. King does a steller job of naming the names of some of the most pernicious poverty pimps and privatization pushers in town:

A special election hurts the kids of District 1. In calling for a special election, what Mark Ridley-Thomas, Alex Johnson, Rev. Tulloss, Corri Revere, and the charter schools along with their billionaire puppet masters are really saying is we have to hurt the children to protect the children.

Johnson endorsed by company unionist Courtni Pugh

I typically don't care for the phrase "labor aristocracy," especially as employed by Maoists and Stalinists, but in Courtni Pugh's case it's hard for me to argue any other description could be more appropriate. Taking Andy Stern's penchant for company unionism to another level, Pugh is what corporate executives dream of for union leadership. Her "kids first" agenda includes pushing for schools managed by private corporations, deprofessionalization of educators, and advocating for children to eat expired processed foods in unsanitary conditions. Hardly a working class campaign. Nothing convicts Pugh and SEIU 99 more than the fact that with the sole exception of Steve Zimmer's run for a second term, that they endorsed the identical candidates as Philip Anschutz, Reed Hastings, and Eli Broad's Coalition for School Reform (CSR) endorsed.

Johnson, the favorite of the anti-public education Nonprofit Industrial Complex (NPIC)

I've already published on this, but the work bears repeating here. First, from an April 15 post:

Regarding the Alex Johnson Campaign an ally sent me the following (I'm keeping them anonymous for now):

Curious why no one is mentioning how the same brigade that was pushing for an election is now pushing for Alex Johnson - their Facebook page has even morphed from demanding an election to exclusively covering the Johnson campaign: https://www.facebook.com/EmpowerDistrict1

Bear in mind that it was the usual NPIC suspects who pushed for the Special Election: Urban League, Inner City Struggle, United Way Greater Los Angeles, and Parent Revolution. Given what I've already uncovered about Johnson, It's no wonder that he's their candidate of choice, while Hayes is their backup candidate. Parent Revolution was an early backer of Hayes, but has since shifted to the frontrunner, Johnson.

From my LA Progressive piece in April:

Alex Johnson is the worst of bunch. He is an unscrupulous opportunist who only views LAUSD as a political stepping stone. He has been getting $1,100 a shot contributions from charter school moguls, real estate developers, and right-wing bankers. According to his 460 filing, of the 195 contributions for $113,051 to his campaign, not one comes from a teacher, principal, librarian, or social worker. One would think if he really cared about students and education, that he'd have a working relationship with the professionals that work with the community's children. He has dodged multiple requests for policy positions, undoubtably because he is a hand puppet for the neoliberal corporate education reformers. Former LAUSD District 5 candidate, the distinguished Dr. John Fernandez, had this to say about him:

This does not surprise me at all Robert. At a recent candidate's forum at UTLA, I submitted a question commenting that District 1 has been historically represented by an African American but that the students in District 1 now comprise 70% Mexican/Latino student population. I asked what were the three main issues affecting Mexican/Latino students in District 1? All Mr. Alex Johnson could say was they needed resources. Mr. Johnson could have stated that Mexican/Latino students need a culturally relevant and responsive education, they need bilingual cross cultural education, teachers must be trained to teach Mexican/Latino students, textbooks must used to highlight the achievements and contributions of Mexican/Latino students, Mexican/Latino students must be provided with high tech vocational training and teachers must provide English language strategies--all the very things that African American students need.

Alex Johnson would be a disaster for students our district that are poor, immigrant, working class, or having special needs. He would be a windfall to special interests, privatizers, and developers. We must resist him and his neoliberal agenda at all costs.

I am supporting Dr. George McKenna in the runoff election for the District 1 LAUSD Board of Education Seat.

At elect Dr. George McKenna central to volunteer on a Wednesday night

At @ElectMcKenna central to volunteer on a Wednesday night. #LAUSD pic.twitter.com/SAuNcI92KV

— Robert D. Skeels (@rdsathene) July 31, 2014

Reactionary Marshall Tuck killed Ethnic Studies, but progressives like ERUSD's Jose Lara made them standards!

Reactionary @MarshallTuck killed Ethnic Studies, but progressives like #ERUSD's @JoseDelBarrio made them standards! pic.twitter.com/9ChadbFrJy

— Robert D. Skeels (@rdsathene) July 28, 2014

@ THE CHALK FACE: Alex Johnson’s corporate SuperPAC run by Eli Broad’s Dan “students must pledge to capitalism” Chang

First published on @ THE CHALK FACE on July 29, 2014

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"Financed by conservative billionaire philanthropists like Bill Gates and Eli Broad, charters willingly carry out the indoctrination their benefactors seek." — Professor Ralph E. Shaffer

Corporate candidate Alex Johnson and his backer Mark Ridley-Thomas have already raised incredible amounts of money in their attempt to seize a seat on the Los Angeles Unified School (LAUSD) on behalf of the school privatization project. The charter school industry trade group, California Charter Schools Association (CCSA), has raised huge sums on his behalf in the form of an Independent Expenditure (IE) as well. All of this to try to overwhelm the community candidate of choice, the highly regarded lifelong educator Dr. George McKenna.

Notably missing from this LAUSD special election is the notorious neoliberal corporate education reform SuperPAC — the Coalition for Education Reform (CSR). Founded and funded by right wing billionaires, anti-government ideologues, and charter school sector profiteers, the CSR has provided unparalleled support to anti-public school LAUSD candidates for years. Manipulated by former Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, candidates including Tamar Galatsan, Antonio Sanchez, Monica Garcia, Yolie Flores, Kate Anderson, and other privatizers have all counted on a flood of CSR money over the years. Philip Anschutz, Rupert Murdoch, Michael Bloomberg, Frank Baxter, Eli Broad, Jerry Perenchio, and many other reactionary right-wing ideologues have funded the CSR over its existence.

In the absence of the CSR to pump even more funds into non-educator Johnson's campaign, corporate reformer Dan Chang has conjured yet another SuperPAC: the Great Public Schools Los Angeles Political Action Committee. Chang might not be a household name, but he has been a longtime operative on behalf of the ALEC/Gates/Broad/Walton agenda to destroy public education. A graduate of Eli Broad's Urban Residency, his previous positions includes stints with the struggling Green Dot Charter School Corporation, the lackluster Education Management Organization (EMO) LA's Promise, and recently with John Deasy's 501c3, the LA Fund — an organization best known for serving LAUSD students expired processed foods in unsanitary conditions.

Chang's connections to fellow Ayn Rand acolytes has paid dividends for the already asymmetrical fundraising of the Alex Johnson Campaign. In only a few days Chang's corporate SuperPAC managed to raise nearly $100,000. With the big money to be made in the lucrative charter industry through no-bid contracts and sweetheart deals with their unelected boards of directors, charter schools are a favorite investment vehicle of the one percent, who consider these political donations prudent investments.

Like many born into privilege and having studied business rather than the humanities, Chang has difficulty acknowledging that right-wing heroes Howard Roark and John Galt are in fact fictional characters. His obsession with so-called free markets and social darwinism is so unshakable, that he was the central figure in perhaps one of the more shameful episodes of the Green Dot Charter School Corporation's dubious history.

Shortly after the hostile take over of Alain Leroy Locke High School by the privately managed Green Dot corporate charter chain, an important ideological battle played out over astonishing language in the Locke "charter" document itself. The language was discovered by Ralph E. Shaffer, Professor Emeritus of History, California State Polytechnic University, Pomona. The charter required for students in history and social studies to "demonstrate an understanding of American history, government, economics and a belief in the values of democracy and capitalism." [emphasis mine]. Here is a copy of the orignal charter.

Green Dot Public [sic] Schools' original Alain Leroy Locke Charter High School petition by Robert D. Skeels

Standing up to Green Dot Corporation's indoctrination of students that clearly violated the US Constitution's First Amendment, Shaffer was right to say Green Dot "can't require students to believe in any ideology. Even requiring a belief in democracy violates students' right to believe in whatever political system they wish." Dr. Shaffer took the issue to Green Dot Corporation and to LAUSD, which, as the authorizing body for the charter, had nominal "oversight" in the issue. Rather than admit to indoctrinating students with the ideology of their backers, Green Dot, and namely Dan Chang — their Vice President of New School Development — dug in. They desperately tried to hold on to their ability to subject young minds to the propaganda of their top funders (e.g. the Walton Family Foundation, the Gates Foundation, and the Broad Foundation). This letter from Chang shows breathtaking corporate arrogance.

Green Dot Public [sic] Schools' Daniel Chang's smug letter defending their capitalism indoctrination clause... by Robert D. Skeels

Chang's patronizing statement that "Mr. Shaffer may have interpreted a few words of our petition out of context" is stunning in both its arrogance and its ignorance. Only in Eli Broad's version of reality is non-educator with a MBA somehow better equipped to understand a civics rubric than a lifelong educator with a PhD in history. Shaffer, author of several books, and hundreds of published articles and Op-Eds, is infinitely more qualified to "interpret" a rubric than Chang, whose ignorance of the "California state content standards [sic]" is clear in his haughty letter. To be sure, "California's social studies guidelines do not even mention capitalism" whether on require that students demonstrate a belief in its "value." In the end, much to their chagrin, Chang and his corporate charter chain employer were forced to remove the highly offensive requirement from their charter. It's likely that Chang had to bury himself in Rand's The Fountainhead, or The Virtue of Selfishness to salve his wounded pride after having to write this last letter

Amendment Request for the Alain LeRoy Locke Charter High School charter petition - Green Dot Public [sic] S... by Robert D. Skeels

Being able to raise money for fellow neoliberal corporate reformer Johnson is the sort of thing Chang thrives on. While he himself is not a member of the one percent, he is a loyal servant to the power and privilege of the plutocrat class. The dirty money raised to push the Alex Johnson Campaign has been used to try and besmirch community candidate Dr. McKenna. Chang's lack of respect for students, as demonstrated in his letters above, is no different that that of his wealthy backers. Trying to force an unqualified Alex Johnson on a community in desperate need of authentic leadership by a lifelong educator is one more example of how the plutocrat class pushing corporate education reform will stop at nothing to achieve their aims.

Schools Matter: Value-Added Modeling (VAM) is pseudoscience, but profitable pseudosciences persist

First published on Schools Matter on July 26, 2014

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"While value-added models are intended estimate teacher effects on student achievement growth, they fail to do so in any accurate or precise way. — Professor Bruce Baker"

Back in early April I penned a piece for K12NN on The American Statistical Association's (ASA) paper on Value Added Methodologies [1]. In it I asserted that the "document provides strong support to those who oppose this wrongheaded use of statistics to make high stakes decisions effecting the lives of students, educators, and our school communities." This week I noticed a trackback to a reprint of the article. What caught my eye was the title, which seemingly was entirely out of keeping with the spirit of the ASA's stance: Advocating for a robust value-added implementation.

I read through the VAM cheerleading piece and was gobsmacked by the deliberate manipulation of the ASA document's tenor and tone. This VAM apologetic read less like a legitimate blog posting and more like a corporate press release. Without doing much more research, I typed the following comments:

This quotation from the ASA document sums up the entire issue best: "The majority of the variation in test scores is attributable to factors outside of the teacher’s control". To, as the author above has, try and frame ASA's position as supportive of VAM phrenology takes mendaciousness to breathtaking heights. Rather than considering students as empty receptacles for "knowledge" deposited by a method that can be "measured," perhaps we can start talking about students as agents in their own pedagogical experiences—something that doesn't exist in the current regime of the profitable testing-industrial-complex.

The author's response displayed the same blatant avoidance of issues as the original piece. In fact, it stated some of the long discredited claims of the VAM camp, including Professor Bruce Baker's favorite trope about how "more sophisticated" VAMs address the issues people have with VAMs.

Thanks for your comment. The ASA statement seems to discuss primary drivers of student test scores, not student growth. It is well known that there is a strong relationship between students’ achievement (or test scores) and their socioeconomic/demographic background. However, there is typically little or no relationship between students’ growth and their socioeconomic/demographic background.

Another way to see this is that the most important factor of “current” test scores is prior tests scores and, once enough prior test scores are included in the model, the socioeconomic/demographic factors become relatively small or even non-significant, despite enormous sample sizes.

That said and to your concern about considering students in the context of their own experiences, more sophisticated value-added/growth models, like EVAAS, can follow the progress of individual students over time, so that each student serves as his or her own control.

Aside from being patently wrong, the whole thing smacked of being boilerplate text written in the bowels of a corporate public relations department. That's when I decided to look into this dubious Jennifer Facciolini was and who she wrote for. I should have done that in the first place.

As of 2012, Statistical Analysis System (SAS) Institute Inc., is one of the largest privately owned software companies in the world with revenue $3.02 billion USD (2013). They are the developers of the wildly inaccurate, but highly profitable Education Value-Added Assessment System, (AKA SAS EVAAS) — a VAM implementation used in many districts. Money chasing SAS is all about big fish government contracts, to wit an excerpt from a recent Businessweek piece:

SAS Institute Inc. won a $6,479,583.96 federal contract from the Defense Information Systems Agency, Scott Air Force Base, Illinois, for Statistical Analysis System software licenses and support renewal.

When a huge firm like SAS pulling down big dollar defense contracts makes the education "market" their priority, you can believe that they won't let things like facts and evidence discrediting VAM get in the way of them selling and supporting their EVAAS phrenology kit to any and all districts infected by the neoliberal corporate reform virus.

Hiring several white, well educated former-teachers like Nadja Young and Jennifer Facciolini to shill for your product is a smart public relations investment for the VAM behemoth. Given that they were teachers in the south, the chances are that they are making a great deal more money at SAS by simply selling out their former profession to corporate interests. Whether the boilerplate prose in their gushing blog posts is written by them or not isn't all that important. What's important is the appearance that professional teachers actually might think that phrenology and VAM are legitimate sciences. I can only hope that that the prose in these mindless corporate posts isn't written by these former teachers. Students should never be exposed to such nonsensical drivel. A selection of some of their titles should serve to numb the mind of any sentient being:

• Data-driven education books make great holiday gifts for educators. Yes, really.
• "March madness" of student course enrollment gets assist from value-added assessment
• Beyond value-added: Teachers need diagnostic data to improve their practice
• Student growth measures can be the bridge to new assessments

I'll spare readers further torment. As the preponderance of evidence against VAM pseudoscience like the watershed ASA paper grows, expect profit hungry firms like SAS to keep doubling down on the duplicity and deception. Having an army of former teachers shilling for your defective product is a small expense compared to losing those highly profitable contracts with districts.

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NOTES

[1] In its various permutations we've seen the "M" in VAM stand for Modeling, Measures, Methodologies, and others. The only honest word for last member of the acronym would be "Mendaciousness," since phrenology by any other name is…

Schools Matter: Open letter to Ellie Herman, or how Green Dot's Marco Petruzzi's special education policies hurt everyone including their own administrators

First published on Schools Matter on July 12, 2014

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"It is not legally or morally acceptable that these so-called "schools of choice" that are concentrated in urban communities and supported with public funds, should be permitted to operate as segregated learning environments where students are more isolated by race, socioeconomic class, disability, and language than the public school district from which they were drawn." — COPAA

Wall Street privatization darling Marco Petruzzi (above) led a beleaguered Green Dot through charges of racism, embezzlement, poor performance, and even cheating. He has claimed that his lucrative charter chain doesn't receive money from rich guys, meanwhile foundations give them millions. He has gone beyond denying that Green Dot discriminates against special needs students, he takes pride in it.

July 11, 2014

Ms. Herman:

I occasionally read your posts with skepticism. Typically, even when you seem to almost reach the correct conclusion about an education topic, you find a way to ignore your own evidence. In the end nearly all your pieces cheerlead for the lucrative charter industry, and provide cover for the biggest enemies of public education.

My interest was piqued today with a piece you wrote on a Green Dot Corporate Charter principal stepping down from one of the schools they seized from the public system. Here is the passage that caught my eye:

Nat was taken aback to find that 18% of the students were in Special Ed. "We thought they were overidentified. Turns out they were underidentified." When I ask why there were so many kids with special needs, he's not sure. Part of it, he thinks, is that the number of kids in foster care may be a factor, because foster kids are often moved from school to school, not staying long enough for their issues to be identified. "It's just conjecture, but kids in foster care, they're often in foster care because their parents were on drugs or couldn't take care of them, well, are you more likely to be unable to take care of a kid with special needs and behavior problems?"

For years those of us engaged in social justice activism have criticized the corporate charter chains—Green Dot Corporation has always been a particularly egregious example—for under-identifying special needs children. I've spent years advocating for families struggling for Special Education (SPED) equity, working closely with the former chairperson of the LAUSD SPED Community Advisory Committee. Marco Petruzzi, the erstwhile hedge fund manager running Green Dot Corporation, has gone as far as to attack those of us that have brought up this issue. He has called us liars (among other things), and gone on to say that Green Dot's SPED percentage are low because LAUSD somehow over-identifies SPED. The mendacious corporate executive stated that the entities' outside of Green Dot "over identifying" SPED children is—this will be hard to comprehend for any reasonable person—is a "civil rights" issue. That's right, the wealthy CEO of Green Dot is on record saying just that. Here's one instance of Petruzzi's convoluted corporate thoughts on the matter [1]:

our track record serving kids speaks for itself for those who want to look at the real numbers, but is a very technical issue and this is not the forum for it. For example, the special Ed issue is fraught with misunderstanding and manipulation of data. LAUSD has high numbers because it over identifies African American and Latino boys relative to many other urban Districts, a civil rights issue, not something to be proud. It also has high numbers because it doesn't serve kids well and thus exits them from special Ed in the typologies of special Ed that can be addressed. It serves special Ed kids in over restrictive environments. Anyway, I realize we will never agree with certain folks, particularly those employed by the current system and that view us as a job threat.

Ms. Herman, I appreciate your post as it bears testament to what many of us have always said about Green Dot and other corporate charter chains. Public schools also under-identify SPED as well, but unlike the well heeled executive quoted above, nobody boasts about underserving them. Petruzzi seemingly makes it a point of pride that Green Dot SPED IEPs are significantly lower than that of public schools. Green Dot has a long record of avoiding obligations to SPED students [2]. Moreover Petruzzi has a long record making outrageous statements, like when he told the families of Animo Justice that Green Dot Corporation doesn't get any money from "rich guy[s]". [3] Must have been all those years he worked for Mitt Romney's sister company, Bain & Company, Inc.

I agree with you and Mr. Pickering on the SPED issue. Since Green Dot Corporation, like all corporate charters, is about bottom lines rather than education, that will never change. Ironically Petruzzi is right to frame the issue in terms of students' civil rights, but he and his fellow six-figure profiteers are the ones violating them.

Advocating Public Education and Social Justice

Robert D. Skeels ****@ucla.edu

"Problem posing education does not and cannot serve the interests of the oppressor" — Paulo Freire

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[1] http://venice.patch.com/groups/schools/p/space-for-a-new-building-at-walgrove-elementary-likel839b5a4cd8
[2] http://www.scribd.com/doc/100558792/Green-Dot-SPED-Binder
[3] http://rdsathene.blogspot.com/2010/04/advocating-public-education-roundup.html the video in which Petruzzi claims Green Dot gets no outside funding is here: http://youtu.be/kbtUUBS3eO0 the transcribed quote is "We have no money. We're a nonprofit. We don't have a rich guy that gives us extra."

Schools Matter: Corporate Education Reform: the "civil rights issue" up until it actually addresses civil rights issues like segregation

First published on Schools Matter on June 26, 2014

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"Children have a right and a need to have quality schools in their neighborhood." — Francis Howell School District

White school district sends black kids back to failed schools

The one upside to the article is that it clearly puts to lie the corporate reformers' assertion that equitable funding isn't the issue. The resegregation—and in many cases, the continuation of segregation—of schools was the first step in creating these inequities that the neoliberal corporate education reformers would later exploit through austerity and privatization programs. This is why monsters like Ben Austin can say he wants all schools to be like Warner Elementary School, knowing that his school is "safely" ensconced in Holmby Hills. Ask any corporate reformer if they are for desegregation and busing. Watch how all their rhetoric about the "civil rights issue of our time" changes immediately when they are faced with a solution that would actually begin to address issues of race and class.

At the end of the day these students are sent back to their segregated schools, ripe for take over by corporate entities like KIPP and Green Dot. We'll cover up the systemic racism and class exploitation by drill-and-kill Common Core test preparation, and throw in some "grit training" for good measure.

h/t Sandy Stenoff

Fundraiser for Dr. George McKenna, come support the communty and teacher's choice for LAUSD

Dr. George McKenna Fundraiser by Robert D. Skeels

'Crenshaw' documents what education reform monsters like Deasy do to schools with black students

Crenshaw documents what #edreform monsters like Deasy do to schools with black students http://t.co/KV9NQCzslY #LAUSD pic.twitter.com/ySpMihBj1y

— Robert D. Skeels (@rdsathene) July 9, 2014

From Filmmaker Lena Jackson. Please forward widely:

Please join us for the first Los Angeles screening of Crenshaw at the Southern California Library this Thursday, July 10th at 6:30pm. The evening will include a screening of the 20-minute film, plus Q&A with Crenshaw students, teachers, and parents.

The Crenshaw district's own students, teachers, and parents detail the stark consequences of a school superintendent's quick-fix reforms of their public high school in South Los Angeles. This documentary takes the viewer deep inside the lives of those most affected by the callous "reconstitution." As teachers were kicked out, curriculum replaced, and class sizes swelled, community activists and students take to the streets and meeting halls to fight for a say in their school's future.

Southern California Library is located at: 6120 S. Vermont Avenue, Los Angeles, CA 90044.

Refreshments provided, please RSVP to Lena Jackson at crenshawfilm [at] gmail [dot] com

Recall Echo Parque gang injunction supporters saying it was unrelated to real estate prices?

Recall Echo Parque gang injunction supporters saying it was unrelated to real estate prices? http://t.co/kDjsRUFbX7 pic.twitter.com/5lbzMseOw3

— Robert D. Skeels (@rdsathene) July 7, 2014