Parent Revolution's mendacious minions to appear with The Heartland Institute reactionaries

"The idea of the parent revolution is to say fuck you." — Ben Austin [1] (Executive Director Parent Revolution)


Renowned journalist and Parents Across America co-founder Caroline Grannan just wrote an inspiring essay entitled: Parent trigger misfires by disrupting and dismantling local schools. In the piece she outlines some of more egregious problems with the so-called Parent Empowerment Act in California [2]. Grannan, an expert on Parent Revolution, points out the organization is "not a parent group but was founded by charter school operators, backed financially by billionaires and corporate interests."

Surprisingly, Parent Revolution’s paid staffer Linda Serrato attempts (unsuccessfully) to argue with Grannan’s article. Her overarching assertion is that her plutocrat funded 501C3 somehow isn't in service of the charter-voucher school industry. The comments were so mendacious and outrageous, that I penned a Daily Censored article entitled:

Catching Parent Revolution's Linda Serrato in a lie

There's more.

We've seen over and over how Ben Austin and the Parent Revolution are guided by the ideas of far-right extremists and organizations like The Cato Institute, American Enterprise Institute, The Hudson Institute, and the Hoover Institution. We've documented that AEI's Andy Smarick is Ben Austin and Marco Petruzzi's reactionary ideological muse in CCSA and Market Share: Setting the Table for Vouchers, and by Austin's own admission on his blog post entitled On Moulding Consensus. I've also documented other instances too numerous to list here.

However, the foppish millionaire from Benedict Canyon and his Parent Revolution has taken their teabbaging friendly privatization message to a whole new level! This coming Monday, March 21, 2010 the plutocrat funded Parent Revolution is hosting an event next week with the vile extreme right wing reactionaries of The Heartland Institute.

For those of you that don't know, The Heartland Institute is essentially the John Birch Society with a budget.

The event will feature the following right wing reactionaries:

Ben Austin Executive Director of the Parent Revolution
Bruno Behrend Director of the Heartland Center for School Choice
Ben Boychuk managing editor of Heartland Center for School Choice School Reform News
Larry Sand president of the California Teachers Empowerment Network

Word is that David Duke, Ann Coulter, Rush Limbaugh, and Glenn Beck aren't able to attend, but know their "ideas" will be represented amply.

For details on the event, there's a page on some school privatization site.

Here's how Parent Revolution's Ben Austin's rhetoric stacks up with the fringe right:

"[O]ther education providers to COMPETE with public schools for the opportunity to educate children." — The Heartland Institute (Bigoted Reactionary Right Wing "Think Tank")

"There's nothing the matter with teachers that a little less unionization and more COMPETITION couldn't cure." — Ann Coulter (racist reactionary right wing pundit)

"It would force the district to learn how to run great schools by forcing them to COMPETE." — Ben Austin (Executive Director LAPU/PR)

Can't tell the difference? Neither can I.

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NOTES
[1] http://blogs.uscannenberg.org/neontommy/2010/03/trigger-law-gives-parent-revol.html this one sided pro-privatization article quotes Austin as saying "The idea of the parent revolution is to say fuck you." While we already knew that was how Austin felt about our communities, poor people, and people of color, to hear it coming from the wealthy white charter profiteer's mouth was quite startling. (I first published this footnote in Ben Austin's Biography)
[2] Parent Empowerment Act is often refered to by its co-author as the Parent Trigger — since the wealthy Ben Austin, who lives in an affluent area that is "87.5% white and the median household income is $169,282," is blissfully unaware of how culturally loaded, and frankly racist, the word trigger is to use in conjunction with low income areas like Compton). This isn't the first time Austin has proven himself a bigot.

The Heartland Institute and Parent Revolution panel on the Trigger Law

Parent Revolution's mendacious minions to appear with The Heartland Institute reactionaries

@TCFKSM: Speaking even more truth to Parent Revolution plutocrat power

First published on @TCFKSM on June 19, 2013

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"The resolution by board member Steve Zimmer requires the district to independently verify the signatures and how they're gathered by Parent Revolution, the group that helps to organize parents in efforts to take over schools. The district will also increase the amount and types of information available, such as an analysis of five years of school data and the types of reforms attempted in the past." — Barbara Jones, Daily News

The poverty pimps and privatization pushers at the plutocrat funded Parent Revolution are a little bit rattled right now. After their corporate drive by at Los Angeles' Weigand Elementary resulted in 21 of 22 teachers departing in solidarity with their outstanding principal who was targeted by gunman Austin, the local press and others took notice and were critical. Even the Nonprofit Quarterly took issue with Parent Revolution's unsavory tactics. Professor Diane Ravitch's cogent critiques of Parent Revolution have been so effective, that Ben Austin attacked her on Huffington Post, and now they've created a blog to "debunk" the esteemed education historian's factual dismantling of their astroturf organization.

Parent Revolution was totally caught off guard when Los Angeles Unified School District's (LAUSD) Steve Zimmer introduced a resolution intended to curtail some of their one sided war on public schools. The resolution passed, and there's a chance it could lead to an eventual repeal of the awful legislation. I sent the following note to the LAUSD board members today prior to the historic vote to check the plutocrats' Parent Revolution Pinkertons.

Important evidence supporting Mr. Zimmer's resolution

As the Honorable Members of the Board of Education consider Mr. Zimmer's "Comprehensive Information for Parent Initiated School Transformation" resolution to request provisions for transparency, information, and equity in the Parent Empowerment Act (aka Parent Trigger), it may help to understand why those glaring issues weren't addressed in the first place.

Parent Revolution's Ben Austin was a paid advocate for the lucrative charter school industry before, during, and after the entire process of crafting the regulations for the so-called Parent Trigger. While the two former time periods were unethical, the latter time period was illegal, and Austin received an official letter of censorship from the California State Board of Education (SBE) for breaking California law by lobbying for and tampering with the regulations. That letter is attached and can be also read here: http://www.schoolsmatter.info/2011/07/parent-trigger-co-author-austin-knew-he.html

It tells Parent Revolution's Austin "...please immediately discontinue any paid advocacy to the State Board of Education including advocacy on the Parent Empowerment regulations.

Unfortunately, the letter was too little, too late. All of the anti-democratic provisions in the trigger regulations like the faculty gag rule, rules against holding open informational meetings at schools, no rules providing equity for all stakeholders -- including parents that don't sign the petition, and every other rule crafted to provide Austin's billionaire funded organization with every advantage had already been codified by Austin before he was censured. The milquetoast slap on the wrist didn't reverse or mitigate the abject damage the law has allowed Austin and his group to wreak on our communities.

Why should our Board of Education vote in favor of this resolution and be doing everything it can overturn the trigger? When laws are immoral and serve to perpetuate classism, racism, and other oppressions, we have a moral duty to resist, defy, and even break them. Doesn't matter if it's the Parent Trigger, the Fugitive Slave Law, or the 1870s Enforcement Act. Every era has deplorable laws that exist to serve those on top and to undermine the conditions of working people, the Parent Trigger is just one in a long line of unconscionable crimes against the most vulnerable.

I urge you all to vote yes on the Comprehensive Information for Parent Initiated School Transformation resolution.

Advocating public education and social justice

Robert D. Skeels

PS: Several former Parent Revolution staffers have remarked on Deputy Director Gabe Rose's hygiene issues. Today's tweet from the LAUSD Board Room by Hillel Aron of the right-wing LA School Report really drove home how unsettling this is.

.@parentrev's gabe rose is here and he is wearing flip flops!

— LA School Report (@LASchoolReport) June 18, 2013

@TCFKSM: Speaking even more truth to Parent Revolution plutocrat power

@TCFKSM: More on Parent Revolution triggerman Ben Austin's gunning down of a well regarded LAUSD principal

First published on @TCFKSM on June 2, 2013

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"The 'parent trigger' by definition is a hostile act. It creates division and conflict. It sets parents against parents. It sets parents against teachers. It sets parents against administrators. It is a "trigger" and triggers kill." — Professor Diane Ravitch

Parent Revolution, the well funded neoliberal operatives in charge of achieving reactionary Andy Smarick's dream of replacing public schools with a privatized system, has been experiencing a little blow back from their recent corporate drive by. In addition to the news of protests against the Weigand trigger pull and another Tea Party group joining forces with Parent Revolution, there has been some interesting criticisms from expected, and unexpected venues.

Even the biggest privatization cheerleaders—the Los Angeles Times—have recently expressed concerns with the anti-democratic trigger process in their The 'parent trigger' trap. Refreshingly, they've even been covering the grassroots resistance to Walton Foundation's Parent Pinkertons. An example is Teresa Watanabe's Watts teachers urge public notice for parent trigger campaigns

A surprising source of criticism of both Austin and the so-called Parent Revolution is that bastion of the Nonprofit Industrial Complex (NPIC), the Nonprofit Quarterly (NPQ). In a surprisingly well reasoned piece excoriating the process, the author makes a profound and powerful statement.

Something doesn't add up. Cobian hardly seems like the ogre or incompetent that Austin describes. But Cobian is the first administrator ousted from the Los Angeles public schools under the trigger law. It feels like Parent Revolution was flexing its muscle and putting teachers and administrators on notice. The result seems certain to demoralize teachers far beyond the Weigand Avenue Elementary campus. A button on the webpage of Parent Revolution is, "we <3 our teachers." The Weigand Avenue Elementary School teachers clearly don't feel "<3'ed".

I'm sitting in an emergency UTLA meeting called in response to these hostile take-overs as I'm writting this. While listening to a dozen Weigand parents and teachers speaking effusively about their principal, NPQ's statement that "Cobian hardly seems like the ogre or incompetent that Austin describes" rings all too true. Hearing various educators from school sites current threatened by Wasserman Foundation funded Parent Revolution school terrorists is heartbreaking and reminds me why I've opposed these poverty pimps for so many years.

4LAKids' Scott Folsom sometimes takes somewhat conservative positions on education issues. However, on Parent Trigger he has always been right on the mark. Here is his take on the Weigand situation published in his weekly email digest.

In the San Fernando Valley at Arleta High School (one of the new ones) the principal is retiring in glory having done everything right and having produced the desired results. At Weigand Avenue Elementary School in Watts a principal is booted out, apparently having done nothing wrong save losing a petition-drive popularity contest – courtesy of the Parent Trigger ["Watts teachers urge public notice for parent trigger campaigns"] – with the Board of Ed and Superintendent hiding behind “Our hands are tied, The Law’s the Law!”. As Parent Revolutionary-in-Chief Ben Austin wrote the Parent Trigger Law. As an appointed member of the State Board of Education Ben Austin promoted the Parent Trigger Law – and lobbied for it in the legislature. Now back at P-Rev Ben Austin applies the law…or maybe IS the law! Austin likes to say that the Parent Trigger Law empowers parents – but in reality it empowers Ben Austin – who has been intimately involved in every application of it – welcoming himself to LAUSD as our liberator.

Professor Diane Ravitch has been covering the Weigand tragedy from the get go. Articles like "Parent Trigger" Sets Parents Against Parents in Los Angeles really gets to the heart of the matter. Sherman Dorn's "Parent trigger" as a pale shadow of community involvement is also recommended reading.

I want to close with an expanded version Caroline Grannan's tweet over the weekend. "Parent Revolution - a history of attacking teachers. Ben Austin's awkward made-up story about teachers torturing kids - appalling." The lie laden story she's referring too is the interview Austin did with the arch-reactionaries at ChoiceMedia.TV Austin's mendacious fabrication is disgusting in that he would stoop to such a level, but it's also racist in that he's referring to teachers of color at Compton's McKinley ES. Austin's outrageous lie was carried over to a scene in Philip Anschutz, Bill Gates, and Rupert Murdoch's "Won't Back Down" film. H/T to Jack for reminding everyone of this horrible false narrative.

@TCFKSM: More on Parent Revolution triggerman Ben Austin's gunning down of a well regarded LAUSD principal

Schools Matter: Parent Trigger charlatan Ben Austin booted off The State Bar of California

First published on Schools Matter on November 9, 2011

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"Making students accountable for test scores works well on a bumper sticker and it allows many politicians to look good by saying that they will not tolerate failure. But it represents a hollow promise. Far from improving education, high-stakes testing marks a major retreat from fairness, from accuracy, from quality, and from equity." — Sen. Paul Wellstone (1944-2002) quoted on Alfie Kohn's site

Apparently the right wingers at Parent Revolution are immune to cognitive dissonance. How else could we explain an organization that frequently co-hosts meetings with The Heartland Institute calling the National Educators Association (NEA) teabaggers? In a desperate attempt to preserve George W. Bush's fringe right-wing No Child Left Behind legislation (NCLB), the Parent Revolution reactionaries claim that anyone opposed to Rod Paige's vicious anti-public school project are teabaggers, and somehow opposed civil (read corporate) rights.

The basis for these wild and specious claims? Parent Revolution doesn't want to see what they term "accountability" removed from ESEA/NCLB. Never mind that NCLB's false forms of accountability were never intended to do anything other than make it easy for the neoliberal consensus in Washington to push the corporate agenda. That agenda includes forced school closures, reconstitutions, and ultimately the privatization of the whole system for the benefit and profits of Wall Street hucksters like Whitney Tilson, real estate moguls like Eli Broad, and convicted predatory technology monopolists like Bill Gates. Indeed, in defending NCLB, Parent Revolution wants to maintain the standardized testing status quo.

All their astroturf blather about "accountability" got me thinking. When I think of paragons of accountability, Ben Austin and Parent Revolution are poles apart from those thoughts in every sense. Let's look at the facts. California Parent Trigger author Austin was under investigation by the Los Angeles City Ethics Commission (Case # 2010-36) because he was collecting a check at the City Attorney's Office while at the same time he was a full time charter school advocate (and part time Green Dot consultant) at Los Angeles Parents Union (aka LAPU or Parent Revolution). Besides double dipping, he used his city employee connections to host closed meetings with his political connections garnered from his City job, like with Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa. Those connections also brought lucrative business to his wife, Tracy Austin, who makes a fortune as a fundraising consultant for the very same politicians that gave Austin a pass on his ethics violations. Where was the accountability in all of that?

Of course, Austin's conflicts of interest while working at the City of Los Angeles pale in comparison to when arch-reactionary Milton Freidman acolyte Schwarzenegger appointed the Parent Revolution chief to the California State Board of Education (SBE) to join the rest of the charter-voucher profiteers the SBE was stacked with. Austin used his SBE seat to push through the California Charter Schools Association agenda. He also used the seat to lobby for and manipulate the implementation of his and Gloria Romero's hideous charter takeover law entitled the Parent Empowerment Act, but most often referred to by culturally loaded name Parent Trigger. Austin's unethical and illegal behaviors on the SBE earned him a letter of censorship from the SBE demanding he stop breaking the law. Where was the accountability in all of that?

Ben Austin's latest foray into the realm of accountability?

Parent Trigger charlatan Ben Austin booted off State Bar of California

I'll reproduce my original take on this situation:

Parent Trigger author, Benjamin Benchley Lain Austin, aka the Beverly Hills Barrister, aka the Foppish Millionaire of Benedict Canyon is not eligible to practice law in California because of his failure to take a LEGAL ETHICS course as part of Minimum Continuing Legal Education. It's no small irony that a charlatan that claims to know so much about education doesn't keep up with his own, and more importantly, avoids taking classes on ethics!

I suppose we can't blame Austin for avoiding classes on ethics, since ethics are anathema to him. So next time the slick charter school spokesman and his band of pernicious privatizers prattle about accountability, we can remember that they have no understanding of the word whatsoever.

Special thanks to Lisa for bringing Austin's current State Bar of California status to our attention.

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Addendum: A reader chastised me for not noting another form of accountability Parent Revolution astroturfers are guilty of shirking, and that's keeping their paperwork for tax exempt status in order. I'm a little embarrassed that I neglected to mention this, but in Trigger Happy Parent Revolution Refuses Form 990 Request, we explored how the Parent Revolution scoundrels weren't accountable to the tax paying public. The IRS sent me a letter explaining that they are investigating these poverty pimps.

While we're at it, let's not forget wealthy white Gabe Rose, deputy director of Parent Revolution, has the dubious distinction of being caught posing as a Compton parent when he has never lived in Compton, nor been a parent.

Schools Matter: Parent Trigger charlatan Ben Austin booted off The State Bar of California

Thoughts on Matthew Di Carlo's recent Shanker Blog piece on the 'parent tricker'

Barr's parent organization gave... a grass-roots visual... And his paid staffers hit the right rhetorical notes... while identifying themselves to reporters and officials only as parents. — Howard Blume (Los Angeles Times)

Matthew Di Carlo recently penned a thoughtful and somewhat nuanced piece on the vile so-called "parent trigger" legislation being pushed by the school privatization industry. In When Push Comes To Pull In The Parent Trigger Debate he suggests that support for or against anti-democratic triggers is often dependent on an individual's stance on charter schools to begin with.

Interestingly, he posits that if triggers were associated with authentic reforms like class size reduction as opposed to seizing property for the lucrative charter industry, that there might be less opposition to parent triggers and other shock doctrine style swindles. I for one think that's the point. Triggers were not devised as a way to improve or help public education. They have always been a way of increasing market share for the charter sector, union busting, and have been widely embraced by the fringe-right as a pathway to vouchers and other forms of plunder and poverty pimping.

Had trigger laws been a means for democratically engaging entire communities in the improvement of their schools, I would have become their biggest supporter. Instead, they are simply another way to stuff more money into the pockets of charter executives and their wealthy associates. Here are my comments posted to the Shanker Blog, which still apparently hasn't made it through the moderation process:

I'd agree that some perspective on corporate charter trigger laws is influenced by an individual's views on school privatization and the neoliberal project in general. However, that doesn't mean that the overarching problem with triggers is the fact that they are entirely anti-democratic to put the fate of a public resource into the hands of a minority of the community. More than that, the huge amounts of money and resources expended to sway parents to triggering their school into private hands has been seen repeatedly, with corporate charter advocacy groups like the so-called Parent Revolution with it's multi-million dollar budget from nefarious funders like the Walton Family Foundation.

We can learn much about the origins and motives of groups pushing the corporate charter "parent" trigger by where the majority of its support comes from—fringe right wing groups like The Heartland Institute and The American Legislative Exchange Council.

Parent Revolution can deny their ties to ALEC and other reactionaries all they want, but they can't hide the fact that they have had deep and long-standing partnerships with ALEC members, including fringe right-wing The Heartland Institute. In addition to constant collaboration with Heartland, Parent Revolution hosts forums with them. See the following flyer from one of their events and an article discussing it:

The Heartland Institute and Parent Revolution panel on the Trigger Law

Parent Revolution's mendacious minions to appear with The Heartland Institute reactionaries

For the actual ALEC legislation crafted from Governor Schwartzenegger, Ben Austin, Gloria Romero's original bill, see:

Ben Austin, Gloria Romero and ALEC's Parent Trigger Act

Gloria J. Romero, who along with former Governor Schwartzenegger's staff, and Parent Revolution's Ben Austin, drafted the parent trigger (more aptly, tricker), is also known to work hand and hand with the most extreme forces of reaction on education issues. She works closely with members of the Koret Foundation and The Hoover Institution. Shunned by her own party, she works with teabaggers and other right-wing politicians.

Peas in a pod: Koret Foundation, The Hoover Institution, and Democrats for Education Reform

Senators Romero and Huff to Hold Education Summit

The evidence is damning, and their claims that they don't represent right-wing interests ring hollow. Bear in mind Parent Revolution was originally the Los Angeles Parents Union, which was a wholly owned subsidiary of the Green Dot Charter School Corporation. Parent Revolution's sole reason for existence is to build market share for the lucrative charter school sector. This is born out both by the comments of their funders, and by the privatization policies of their funders.

See this piece for a statement by Eli Broad on why he funds Parent Revolution:

Eli Broad pays Parent Revolution to champion charters not to empower parents!

See these documents to see the names right-wing plutocrats who fund Parent Revolution and the staggering amounts they contribute. Tops on the list, the privatization reactionaries at the Walton Family Foundation. 

Los Angeles Parents Union DBA LAPU or Parent Revolution 2010 Form 990

To be sure, "school choice" was the clarion call of segregationists. It still is. Why the Racist History of the Charter School Movement Is Never Discussed

Quick look at the "there's no money" in charters deception

I was recently asked on facebook to explain how charters make money. This is important since the charter industry has recently been trying to convince the public that they're nothing more than a charitable exercise. Here's what I wrote back to them:

Here's just a taste, but it should be enough for you to answer such inquires.

Operators like Edison make profit directly, as do most EMOs, from the difference between "services rendered" and ADA money. CMOs don't make profit per se, but they pay their executives exorbitant (confer Petruzzi or Ponce to Deasy versus number of schools and students) salaries and make additional money from special relationships with vendors (look up companies like ExED and charter operator Judy Burton's very special relationship with them). Many charter executives set up these sweet vendor deals and then go on to work for the vendors. Another big money maker is charter financing and financial services by corporations like Charter School Capital, pushed by local CMO executive Ricardo Mireles.

The most lucrative part of the charter industry however, is real estate. How big is the charter-voucher school real estate bubble? Big enough to attract big names like Goldman Sachs, Andre Agassi, Citibank, and Richard Riordan to the lucrative land grab ventures. Big enough that Gloria Romero was rewarded with a cushy six-figure job as CEO at Democrats for Education Reform in California for her servile gift the privately managed charter industry called SB 592, which hands public school property over to privately managed charter corporations. New York based vultures, like Gideon Stein, are making a fortune in brokering charter real estate (and the raising of property values via gentrification of neighborhoods through those charters).

There's also all the lucrative "distance learning," "online charters," and "blended learning" cash cows. Bill Gates and Tom Vander Ark are never far from the picture when those money making scams are at hand. In fact, the vile Vander Ark was very recently on the all white (sans one) Board of Directors from LA's Promise that is now firing all of their hard working educators, so they can hire cheaper ones. Sure that has nothing to do with profits though.

Thoughts on Matthew Di Carlo's recent Shanker Blog piece on the 'parent tricker'

Pots, Kettles, and Ben Austin's Unconscionable Hypocrisy

First published in Schools Matter on 2011-07-18

There's nothing the matter with teachers that a little less unionization and more COMPETITION couldn't cure. — Ann Coulter (racist reactionary right wing pundit)

It would force the district to learn how to run great schools by forcing them to COMPETE. — Ben Austin (Executive Director LAPU/Parent Revolution)


Few people are more despicable than Ben Austin, Executive Director of the so-called Parent Revolution (née Los Angeles Parents Union - LAPU) school privatization junta. After all, anyone mendacious enough to claim they're a parent with children enrolled in school when they have no school age children is lacking of any scruples. [1] Moreover, a man who can walk into impoverished neighborhoods like Boyle Heights or Compton and tell parents "I'm just like you" when he has chosen to live in a community that's "87.5% white and has a median household income is $169,282" goes beyond being amoral, he's downright immoral.

Of course Austin's ongoing campaign of dishonesty and pressing scorched earth policies for public education have made him more than just a pariah in Los Angeles. He and profiteering organization recently joined the ranks of fellow reactionaries like Donald Rumsfeld, George W. Bush, Glen Beck, Dick Cheney, Rush Limbaugh, and Ann Coulter on the world famous "Crooks and Liars" website.

Public education advocates like myself have been following the Green Dot Public [sic] Schools' LAPU/Parent Revolution spinoff since its inception, and have beem following the vile Ben Austin since he first took [2] the helm of the privatization pushing organization. We've seen them do cynical things like having their well to do white male Deputy Director Gabe Rose pose as a Compton parent in order to deceive real Compton parents. We've heard parents from Garfield High School tell us paid organizer Mary Najera used to go monolingual Spanish church services with English only petitions and tell unwitting parents to sign the petition if they wanted their children to go to college — those petitions were actually to turn Garfield over to the Green Dot corporate charter chain. The list of Austin and his organization's lies, deceit, and duplicity goes on and on, and one would think that there's no lower depths that they could plumb.

They've found a way to sink lower.

A couple weeks ago, in preparation for last week, when the California State Board of Education (SBE) was about to vote on revisions to the deceptively named "Parent Empowerment Act," right wing reactionary "parents" Lydia Grant, Bruce Wasson, Monica Jones, and Carolynn Martin, with pro-bono legal support from the "Parent Revolution's" deep pocketed plutocrat backers, filed an ethics complaint against SBE member Patricia Rucker. Their claim? They stated that Rucker's employment with the California Teachers Association constituted a conflict of interest and that they would only drop their charges if Rucker would recuse herself on voting on the privatization regulations.

One wonders where these parents were when Parent Revolution's foppish millionaire leader was sitting on the selfsame board, voting on the very same regulations, but the hypocrisy of these "parents" and their "revolution" goes much deeper than that.

Kettles and Caldrons

Let's look at the first "parent" on the list of privatization plaintiffs against Ms. Rucker, the loathsome and imposing [3] Lydia Grant. The one thing all the mainstream (read corporate) media left out regarding Grant is that she is a long time board member of the so-called Parent Revolution. Yet she can speak about conflicts of interest. Aside from being nearly as detestable, Grant shares another quality with Ben Austin — she too has no children currently enrolled in the school she is attacking. Libertarian Grant is also a follower of right wing libertarian Ron Kaye and is a member of his "SLAP" project.


Grant's claim to fame is that she turned a personal beef with Los Angeles Unified School District's (LAUSD) Mount Gleason Middle School's principal into a festering vindictive campaign to oust them. She began signature gathering with Austin's blessings to have the principal removed. Of all the Sunland/Tujunga area parents I spoke with that knew of Grant, only one sympathized with her, and the rest described her as a pariah that browbeat many parents into signing petitions with her overbearing and abrasive personality.

My one encounter with the snarling, mean spirited Grant was outside the Beaudry Building at a LAUSD meeting where she was accosting and haranguing hardworking teachers. The woman's seemingly sociopathic resentments run deep, and I was somewhat taken aback listening to her bark at anyone not wearing the blue t-shirts identifying themselves as members of the reactionary school privatization groups Families That Can and Parent Revolution. I took these photos of her at that event, and even at that proximity I couldn't believe the vitriol spilling out of her mouth. Grant will be the subject of an upcoming article when time permits.

Parent activist Scott M. Folsom, whose popular 4LAKids blogs chronicle all things LAUSD, had the following to say about Grant being on the list of plaintiffs at the behest of her puppet-master Austin:

smf: One of the "four California parents", Lydia Grant, was the Parent Revolution Community Organizer of the Month for Oct 2010.

Parent Revolutionary-in-chief, PR Executive Director, Parent Trigger author, former Green Dot and Mayor Riordan staffer Ben Austin (whose 'day job' is Assistant LA City Attorney @ $119K per year) was removed from the State Board of Ed (Can you say 'Conflict of Interest?') in Brown's ascendency. Austin lobbied for the Parent Trigger Law in the State Board of Ed and also in the legislature.

But, hey - it's not personal!

Pots, Kettles, and Brewing Free Market Fantasies

Next, let's consider that when the reactionary Milton Friedman worshiping former Governor of California wanted a way to help his good friend and fellow charlatan Jed Wallace, of the California Charter Schools Association (CCSA), increase market share with as little resistance as possible, he brought in two well known neoliberal opponents of public education: former State Senator and current Democrats for Education Reform (DFER) California Director Gloria Romero, and Ben Austin of Green Dot's LAPU/Parent Revolution. In what was a perfect storm of Rand/Friedman ideologies, neoliberal principles, naked opportunism, greed, Heartland Institute and Hoover Institution fantasies, and lucrative charter market share grabs, Schwarzenegger, Austin, and Romero crafted a vile piece of legislation that became colloquially known as the "parent trigger." The law allows for well financed charter-voucher advocacy groups, like say, Parent Revolution, to drop into impoverished neighborhoods to bamboozle, browbeat, and bribe a bare majority (ie. fifty percent, plus one) of parents from the school in question, and/or the feeder schools [5] into "triggering" one of the four punitive provisions from Rod Paige and arch-reactionary George W. Bush's No Child Left Behind (NCLB) law. Of course the only provision Schwarzenegger, Austin, and Romero were ever interested in is the charter conversion clause, in which publicly financed schools are handed over to privately run corporations. The law could be most appropriately referred to as the corporate charter trigger, as it has nothing to do with empowering parents.

For his enthusiastic participation in co-authoring the charter market share growing law, Austin was granted a seat on Schwarzenegger's hand picked SBE, which was already stacked with charter school executives, vendors, and other profiteers. Austin, as a highly paid spokesperson for the charter-voucher industry, was a perfect fit, and his job was to insure that the so-called Parent Empower Act be implemented without a hitch, and that both market share and profitable side enterprises of the lucrative charter sector grew to satisfy their investors. Austin was all at once, the bill's author, biggest advocate on the SBE, and the sole stewart of how the regulations were being written, and rest assured he was making them as friendly to charter advocacy groups like his own as he could. There were no cries of conflict of interest then. No astroturf "parents" lodging complaints. No accusations in the mainstream press of ethics violations. No cacophony calling for Austin to recuse himself from the proceedings.

Austin knows a quite a bit about conflicts of interest and ethics violations, he was under investigation by the Los Angeles City Ethics Commission (Case # 2010-36) when he was collecting a check at the City Attorney Office while being a full time charter school advocate (and part time Green Dot Employee) at Los Angeles Parents Union (aka Parent Revolution). He was also using his connections to host closed meetings with his political connections garnered from his City job, like with Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa.

But Austin's own myriad conflicts of interest and ethics violations while on the SBE pale in comparison to his recent transgression. His hypocritical and self serving attacks on Patrica Rucker will look at the more reprehensible in the following section.

Pots Calling the Kettle Black, Austin Illegally Lobbied the SBE

In early March of 2011 an activist showed me footage of Ben Austin speaking at the SBE on behalf of the charter trigger legislation. Bear in mind that by March, Austin and several other of Schwarzenegger's fringe right wing appointees had been swept from the Board by the incoming Governor, and while many charter-voucher industry profiteers remain — like the reprehensible Yvonne Chan — a few of the most egregious members are gone. I knew that former Board members were barred from lobbying at the Board for a period of time, although I thought the span was twenty four months. Astonished that Austin would be so brazen to flout the law and regulations in such a high profile forum, I immediately contacted the State Board of Education and spoke with then employee Regina Wilson.

Wilson confirmed that Austin had indeed spoken and lobbied at the SBE after he had been officially removed from the board. She also informed me that the period they weren't allowed to appear at the Board to lobby was twelve months, rather than what I thought, and that Austin had certainly violated the rules. I told Ms. Wilson I was working on a story, and asked her to get back to me on a few other questions I had, including: "were the other Board members aware of the regulations regarding former Board members lobbying?"

I waited a week for Wilson and called her again, she said she gathering information and would get back to me. I then went on holiday with my wife to visit her family in Korea. When I returned from Daegu, I called Wilson, but was greeted with an answering machine informing me that she was no longer with the SBE [6] and to contact a Ms. Carol Gorman. I called Gorman, discussed the situation with her and was told to expect a call back. There was no call back. After leaving several voicemails, I grew wary of carrying out my investigation verbally and sent Gorman an email on June 10, 2011. Following is her response that contains my original email:

Dear Mr. Skeels:

I am in receipt of your email of this date, and have forwarded it to the attention of our Deputy Executive Director, Patricia de Cos, for her review. Thank you for your patience in this matter.

Sincerely,

Carol K. Gorman
Executive Assistant
California State Board of Education
1430 N Street, Suite 5111
Sacramento, CA 95814
916-319-0705 Direct
916-319-0175 Fax
cgorman@cde.ca.gov
http://www.cde.ca.gov/be

-----Original Message-----
From: Robert D. Skeels [mailto:rdsathene@sbcglobal.net]
Sent: Friday, June 10, 2011 3:54 PM
To: Carol Gorman
Cc: Superintendent ; Rebecca MacLaren
Subject: Ben Austin at SBE meetings before 12 months completed
Importance: High

Ms. Gorman:

I've spoken with you on the phone and left multiple voice mails about this issue. I was in contact with former SBE employee Regina Wilson prior to that.

I am a freelance education writer in Los Angeles. I have seen video footage of former SBE member Ben Austin speaking at the board in February or March of this year. I am aware of the rule prohibiting former SBE members from lobbying at the SBE for 12 months.

My questions still remain. Are the SBE members aware that Mr. Austin has broken these rules. Will there be disciplinary measure brought against Mr. Austin.

I am about to publish my article about the incident and have expended due diligence trying to obtain answers from the State board of Education. At this point, and I hate to say this, it seem like a cover up. I was hoping a Governor Brown appointed board with be less opaque than that of our reactionary former Governor. Sadly, this doesn't seem to be the case.

Mr. Austin has violated ethics, and perhaps even the law in what he did. He should be held accountable for his vile actions.

Advocating public education and social justice

Robert D. Skeels

Note she uses the phrase "email of this date," as if that was our first communication, despite having spoken on the phone with me. There's still been no word from Ms. Gorman although I wrote her again on July 8, 2011 requesting a status on the above email.

Ms. Gorman:

Now that Mr. Austin and company have attacked SBE Board Member Rucker, it's imperative that his and his own organization's clear conflicts of interest and violation of SBE rules be brought to light.

It's unfortunate that the SBE is seemingly stonewalling my efforts to expose Austin's malfeasance, and I am somewhat taken aback by the intransigence of the board regarding this matter. Does Mr. Austin still have this much influence that this entire affair is being swept under the rug? I'm of of the mind to publish all of our correspondence publicly if there is no response on this.

Robert D. Skeels

Clearly a cover up is taking place. The Board is not only well aware that Ben Austin has violated the rules, but seem oblivious that his connections to the well financed charter voucher industry and their plutocrat backers provide him with immunity to consequences for his actions. Meanwhile he sicks his dogs on current SBE members like Patrica Rucker with impunity. Moreover the SBE members are still clearly pawns of the deep pocket charter school sector as evidenced by SBE President Michael Kirst's disgusting pro-privatization comments during last week's vote to ratify the clean up of the corporate charter trigger law deceptively named Parent Empowerment Act.

The hypocrisy of Ben Austin and his school privation organization claiming Rucker has a conflict of interest is staggering. I like to fancy myself an aspiring wordsmith, but lack the vocabulary to describe the scope of this reprehensible, repugnant, and revolting incident in the light of Austin's ongoing unconscionable behavior. The charter industry has a real gem in Austin, since no lie is unspeakable and no scruples are necessary in his orbit. Like I said in my email above "Mr. Austin has violated ethics, and perhaps even the law in what he did. He should be held accountable for his vile actions."

The only way we can stop these crooks and charlatans is to continue real, grass roots parent and community organizing. They have dozens of paid charter drive "organizers" in the field preying on parents looking for answers to systemic problems. We need to expose the Ben Austins, Gabe Roses, and Pat DeTemples for the reactionary agents of privatization they are. We need to point out that the narrative of parents versus teachers has been forced on us by the same Wall Street hucksters who just swindled us all, and are now tricking us into blaming each other. The real battle is communities versus corporations, but as long as charlatans like Ben Austin and Scott Walker push working people into blaming other working people, the longer the corporations will continue to win.



_____
NOTES
[1] Austin's eldest child, already a preschooler, will probably be starting Kindergarden this fall. Listening to Austin's perfidious rhetoric would lead one to think that she's been enrolled for over decade.

[2] By all accounts Austin first took a consulting position (paying $94,475) with LAPU quite unwillingly, and only after persistent persuasion by his close friend the businessman Marco Petruzzi. Once Austin recognized how lucrative and politically expedient it was to be working for the Broad/Gates/Walton Triumvirate did he, ever the opportunist, agree to take the Executive Director position. Petruzzi is still on the Parent Revolution Board, having ousted Steve Barr from both the organizations Barr founded.

[3] One Tujunga/Sunland area parent I spoke with called Grant "girthsome" and made several other rotund references, but I felt it more appropriate to use the word imposing despite the chance to use my favorite literary devices to follow loathsome.

[4] Green Dot Charter Corporation and Parent Revolution didn't break ties until the Summer of 2010. Until then Green Dot paid LAPU/Parent Revolution's rent and many other expenses. They were still receiving money from the Broad/Gates/Walton Triumvirate, but not nearly as much as they do now. To wit, the bigots comprising the Walton Family Foundation dumped a half a million into Austin's school privatization efforts last year.

[5] "Feeder" schools comprise the school from which the next classes of students at a school will potentially come from. In the example of a middle school, all the attendance boundary elementary schools would be considered its feeder schools. Never mind the fact that those families may move, choose to send their kids to parochial, charter or other private schools, their signatures are as good as gold under the so-called Parent Empowerment Act. Inequitable and unfair that a community's public school could be turned over to a private corporation with only a tiny minority of the community making the decisions? Sure, but the law was to build charter school market share, not empower parents or communities in any way.

[6] So that the rest of the press can reluctantly (given their aversion to public schools and love affair with the profiteers in the charter sector) verify my story, the number I was using to contact Regina Wilson (916) 319-0693. Now that number has a message that says "I'm no longer with the State Board of Education, if you need assistance please call Carol Gorman at (916) 319-0705.

Pots, Kettles, and Ben Austin's Unconscionable Hypocrisy

Astroturf Spawns Ever More Astroturf, Plus Parent Revolution Lies about Celerity Special Education Again!

"The idea of the parent revolution is to say fuck you." — Ben Austin [1] (Executive Director Parent Revolution)

Update on this here: Update on the veracity of McKinley Parents for Change


The phonies, fakes, and frauds running the pernicious asto-turf Parent Revolution, which sprang fully formed from Green Dot Public [sic] Schools Los Angeles Parents Union, has spawned yet another "parent" group. The name of the new group? McKinley Parents for Change, a group whose authenticity and grassroots credibility is best summed up by Caroline Grannan's descriptive passage:

an organizing drive from within a school community does not require paid organizers to cold-call all over town, asking strangers if their children attend the school.

So what does a newly formed, pro-charter-voucher "parent" group, supposedly wholly unrelated to the highly paid staff at the billionaire financed Parent Revolution do first in the midst of the scandal Parent Revolution managed to create in Compton? They produce a flyer announcing another Ben Austin/Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa style closed town hall. You know, one of those meetings where softball questions lobbed up by charter-voucher supporters like Marlene Romero and Ismenia Guzman are answered by slick charter school marketing professionals and the foppish millionaire from Benedict Canyon. Dissenting questions and legitimate concerns by parents like Karla Garcia and Lee Finnie will be patently ignored, or worse, dismissed as supporting the mythical status quo. These corporately controlled closed town-halls are notorious for, in the words of the snarling vicious corporate troll Michelle Rhee, "creat[ing] a hostile environment when parents speak up." [2]

The amateurish prose of the flyer, which sounds suspiciously like it was written by a recent Political Science undergraduate with Coro affiliations, makes the bold assertion that the wealthy Vielka McFarlane's corporate charter has to accept all students under the law [3] and then provides a passage from the proposed regulations of the corporate charter trigger law ostensibly as "proof." While the proposed regulations make vague mention of admitting all students within an attendance boundary, there is no language discussing charters being required to accommodate special education pupils, students with disabilities, or English Language Learners at all. [4] None.

Parent Revolut... er, I mean, McKinley Parents for Change might try to say that means Celerity could in theory support children with special needs, so let's look at the facts.

Here is the [real] proof

Here are Celerity's existing special education figures:



Not very promising if your child has special needs huh? Here is some more hard data disproving the Compton Charter Charlatan's alleged "proof" and putting to lie their accusations that social justice activists spreading misinformation:

Pilot Study of Charter Schools’ Compliance with the Modified Consent Decree and the LAUSD Special Education Policies and Procedures

• SWD attending charter schools made up 7.6% of the overall charter student population, while SWD consisted of 11.3% of the overall student population attending DO schools which indicates that SWD are disproportionately under-enrolled at charter schools.
• Students with low incidence disabilities attended charters representing 1.11% of the total charter enrollment, while students with low incidence disabilities made up 3.09% of the DO school population of SWD. Based on this, the relative risk ratio for students with low incidence disabilities to be enrolled in charter schools is 0.36, which means that students with low incidence disabilities enrolled at LAUSD charters are significantly under-represented.
• During the 2008-2009 school year, 12 of 148 (8.1%) charter schools offered a special day program as an option for serving SWD. In contrast, 87% of DO schools provided this same program option. Collectively, the lack of such programs indicates a disproportionate availability of special education services offered at charters.

Further, "accepting" all children from an attendance boundary is not the same thing as actively supporting all their needs. Charter-voucher schools, which typically pay their executives whopping six figure salaries, usually don't have money left over for special education children, students with disabilities, or English Language Learners. What charter-voucher schools usually do is tell parents "your child is welcome here, but we don't have the facilities to provide them with everything they need, we will do our best but..." At this point parents make the only rational decision they can make, and that is to place their child in a public school — a school where the obligation to educate every child comes before profit and executive salaries. The cynical charter-voucher operators are then able to say "the parent voluntarily withdrew their child, they chose to return to the district."

Bear in mind that Yolie Flores' vile Corporate Charter Choice Resolution [5] also contained so called provisions to accept every child in an attendance boundary (vehemently fought by the California Charter School Association). In practice when "Para Los Niños" was able to seize a portion of Evelyn Gratts Elementary School via Yolie Flore's giveaway resolution, all the parents that had special needs children had to change schools after the charter takeover in order to get their children the resources they needed.

Unlike the heartless and greedy charter-voucher advocates at Parent Revolution (or whatever name they are calling themselves today), I remember the impassioned speech by a mother fighting to keep all of Gratts a public school so that her special needs child could continue attending Gratts. [6]

LAUSD said of PSC, like the CCSA/DFER says of the "trigger" law, that their corporate charter allies have to accept all students. Meanwhile they do nothing of the sort in practice. These pernicious, privately managed entities, have only one real priority — profit. According to Part VII of Celerity Educational Group's 2009 Form 990 Vielka McFarlane pays herself a whopping $193,442.00 a year in salary. That ladies and gentlemen, is the motivating factor behind dubious trigger laws.

_____
NOTES
[1] http://blogs.uscannenberg.org/neontommy/2010/03/trigger-law-gives-parent-revol.html this one sided pro-privatization article quotes Austin as saying "The idea of the parent revolution is to say fuck you." While we already knew that was how Austin felt about our communities, poor people, and people of color, to hear it coming from the wealthy white charter profiteer's mouth was quite startling. (this footnote first published by Robert D. Skeels here)
[2] The evil empress of privatization pushing and poverty pimping is quoted here http://4lakidsnews.blogspot.com/2010/12/compton-triggertakeover-mckinley.html the hedge fund darling found time to support Ben Austin on her way to work for fellow teabagger Rick Scott.
[3] The extremely dishonest bullet point says the following: "Under the law, Celerity has to accept all students (including Special Education students) and all current students regardless of grades."
[4] The closest thing to an obligation to educating every child appears in §4806 under "Permissible activities. An LEA [Local Educational Agency] may also implement comprehensive instructional reform strategies, such as: ... (C) Providing additional supports and professional development to teachers and principals in order to implement effective strategies to support students with disabilities in the least restrictive environment and to ensure that limited-English-proficient students acquire language skills to master academic content;" In other words, educational programs for children with special needs are entirely optional, and not required. Once more the charter-voucher industry has found a way out of the obligation to educate every child! Proof indeed!
[5] Cynically named Public School Choice Resolution
[6] For the mother's impassioned speech see the 08-25-09regbd video in this directory on LAUSD's site http://audio3.lausd.k12.ca.us/cgi-bin/qt-dir-audio.pl?Reg_Bd_Mtg//2009regbdmtg/ This is the same board meeting in which Ben Austin called parent and community votes for community schools "soviet style elections."

Astroturf Spawns Ever More Astroturf, Plus Parent Revolution Lies about Celerity Special Education Again!

Ben Austin channels Sarah Palin substituting his Triggers for her Targets

There's despicable, then there's despicable, then there's Ben Austin.

Highly paid school privatization advocate Ben Austin has been lashing out publicly with ever more vitriol since he ignominiously lost his seat on the California State Board of Education and his supposed moment of triumph in Compton, chronicled in Jill Stewart's trashy masseuse and porn ad pennysaver became mired in controversy and very real accusations of his organization's malfeasance.

The foppish millionaire from Benedict Canyon, Austin, and his minions like Gloria Romero, Gabe Rose, and the ultra-reactionary troll Anthony Krinsky have been attacking community members, teachers, administrators, reporters, and anyone else willing to speak truth to their power with an hereto unknown degree of hate speech. Using language that precisely mirrors that of Sarah Palin's tirades, these corporate charter-voucher sector employees have reached an all new degree of hyperbole and bombast. Like the teabaggers and Palin, their vicious attacks and language are a sure path to violence and community strife. Of course there isn't a dime's worth of difference between the DFER, CCSA, Parent Revolution and the teabaggers to begin with.

One of the best essays I've seen so far addressing this trend is Martha Infante's Words Matter on the InterACT blog. She takes on the importance of our word choices and the focuses on how the dominant narrative about teachers has taken on the same character. Of note is her closing paragraph:

As we left our board meeting, with heavy hearts, the significance of the mass shooting began sinking in. I thought about the power of words and imagery that so many throw around carelessly. I thought about words and phrases such as "trigger," "dropout factories." I think about former Senator Gloria Romero comparing Compton educators to "batterers" and wondered whether the writers of those words ever stop to think about the consequences of their prose. Has the moment arrived where enough is enough? Because it is impossible to believe that continuing down the road of uncivil, polemic rhetoric can in any way enhance or improve our educational system, on which our democracy is built.

In all fairness I am somewhat of a polemicist myself, and can be quite vicious attacking wealthy school privatization pushers and poverty pimps. The difference of course is that they hold all the cards, where we community activists have little more than our polemics. After all, in their corner they have the wealthiest people in the world, The POTUS and Secretary of Education, Oprah, the entire corporate media, high profile filmmakers, a host of astro-turf 501C3 proxies, and so on.

Back to Austin and his corporate entourage's verbal war on the community. In a recent Huffington Post op-ed entitled McKinley Elementary Parents Continuing Their Fight for Change, Austin, a man with NO SCHOOL AGED CHILDREN of his own and who lives in the exclusive Benedict Canyon region of Beverly Hills makes outrageous and inflammatory accusations towards the parents of McKinley. Namely he smears Pastor Lee Finnie, a parent of three children enrolled in McKinley ES and a member of the Parent Teacher Association. Finnie, father to a special needs child who he had to withdraw his child from a local charter-voucher school that wouldn't educate his child, found refuge at McKinley — a real public school obligated to educate every child. Not fooled by false promises that Celerity and Austin hold out about special education [1], Finnie and many other parents have resisted the hostile take over of their school by the wealthy charter interests. Austin goes so far as to accuse Pastor Finnie and the PTA of "underground, secretive, unethical, unregulated, and possibly even illegal" activities. Such unconscionable accusations are reprehensible, repugnant, and revolting.

Here are my comments that appear after Austin's unbelievably insensitive and hostile attacks on the McKinley ES community:

Not a peep about how Parent Revolution's deputy director, Gabe Rose, created a fraudulent group called McKinley Parents for Change posing as a Compton parent? Your staffer, Yuritzy Anaya admitted that to the community.

Update on the veracity of McKinley Parents for Change

Nothing on the trigger law's proposed regulations barely mentioning admitting all students within an attendance boundary, having no language discussing charters being REQUIRED to fully accommodate special education, SWD, or ELL? The closest thing appears in §4806 under "Permissible activities. LEA may also implement comprehensive instructional reform strategies, such as: ... (C) Providing additional supports and professional development to teachers and principals in order to implement effective strategies to support students with disabilities in the least restrictive environment and to ensure that limited-English-proficient students acquire language skills to master academic content;"

In other words, programs for children with special needs are entirely optional — not required. The charter-voucher industry has found yet another way out of the obligation to educate every child!

Astroturf Spawns Ever More Astroturf, Plus Parent Revolution Lies about Celerity Special Education Again!

Amidst vicious and unfounded accusations of deception and dishonesty towards McKinley parents like Pastor Finnie, there's no mention that your staff may have destroyed important documents pertinent to the Attorney General's investigation of your organization?

Seems the above mentioned incidents are "underground, secretive, unethical, unregulated, and possibly even illegal" activities being omitted from your narrative. Must be the $15,000 a month the Walton and Gates Foundations pay you Mr. Austin.

Austin and Krinsky are both close friends and fellow Ayn Rand and Milton Friedman acolytes. Krinsky noticed his BFF Austin wasn't receiving any love on Huffington Post and had to chime in. In his accustomed third grade screed he accuses the PTA of being "accessories" to the teacher unions' "nefarious agendas." He calls hard working dedicated teachers "crooks who simply won't let our [sic] children go." Since Krinksy has NO children of his own, the "our" is way beyond disingenuous, it's an outright lie.

My follow up comments to Krinsky:

So by Mr. Krinsky's "logic" the PTA, a grassroots organization where parents have actual organizing power is nefarious, while the the entirely astro-turf Parent Revolution funded by the Walton Foundation, The Gates Foundation, and in the past by the Broad Foundation, Annenberg Foundation, Reed Hastings and other plutocrats, somehow cares about the same victims that their funders' relentless pursuit of wealth and avoidance of paying taxes made poor? Hate to break this to you Mr. Krinsky, but Atlas Shrugged and the Fountainhead are fictional accounts, as is your 'logic' supporting your well heeled friends at LAPU/Parent Revolution.

For a refresher on Parent Revolution's (neé LAPU) founding, see the infamous Annenberg Document:

Green Dot Public [sic] Schools & Los Angeles Parents Union

_____
NOTES

[1] See Astroturf Spawns Ever More Astroturf, Plus Parent Revolution Lies about Celerity Special Education Again! for more on this. Also know that Celerity Educational Group farms out, or outsources, the special education and students with disabilities in order to cut costs and pay their executive's bloated salaries. This separates children from both their siblings and peers, further marginalizing them.

Ben Austin channels Sarah Palin substituting his Triggers for her Targets

@TCFKSM: Alexander Russo's vicious attack on Weigand Elementary School Teachers

First published on @TCFKSM on May 29, 2013

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Photo courtesy of LS4C1.

Alexander Russo's vicious attack on LAUSD's Weigand Elementary School teachers should be noted by everyone. In a piece where he gleefully sides with AEI's Hess' smear on the distinguished Professor Ravitch, he also decides to take aim at the hardworking women and men teaching at the school recently shot up by Ben Austin's latest corporate drive by. Here's an excerpt of Russo's bile laden commentary.

Given how they're being treated in the Times and by Ravitch (and by the teachers who appear to be more loyal to the principal than to the kids), the Weigand parents may be well be wishing that they'd opted for...

A clear response to these vicious accusations should be in order. The Parent Trigger is one of the most reprehensible tools in the neoliberal privatization and austerity toolkit. For the corporate education reformers to make this about the teachers instead of Austin's poverty pimping NPIC is outrageous. Russo's piece also mentions a UTLA meeting about the trigger. Sad UTLA didn't invite me, considering my years of investigating and covering both the trigger and those associated with it.

I have no problem with reactionaries Jamie Alter Lynton and Alexander Russo pushing The John Birch Society agenda on their @LASchoolReport blog—just don't call it journalism! Somehow the The LA Press Club has nominated them for two awards. Apparently Rupert Murdoch style [1] right-wing propaganda doesn't just pass for news these days, it's now the norm.

I've written about Russo before, in case anyone needs a refresher course on the neoliberal enthusiast.

• The trouble with Alexander Russo
• Once more Alex Russo afflicts the afflicted and comforts the comfortable

Fortunately families, educators, and community members have a message for Alexander Russo and his allies at ALEC, Parent Revolution, and The Heartland Institute:

South LA parents and teachers have a message for law makers in Sacramento regarding parent trigger law. Tomorrow at Weigand ES @4pm.

— Ingrid Villeda (@EducateLAnow) May 30, 2013

It's time for all Parent Trigger legislation to go the way of its other fellow, racist legal constructs like Jim Crow and miscegenation laws.

_____
NOTES
[1] Both Rupert Murdoch and self-proclaimed "Citizen Activist" Jamie Alter Lynton were big donors to the Los Angeles corporate education reform Super PAC Coalition for School Reform (CSR). The CSR extremists spent millions to defeat Monica Ratliff, Steve Zimmer, and myself in the recent LAUSD Board of Education elections. They were only successful in defeating me.

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Update: Just as I finished writing the above I was sent this press release on behalf of the Weigand Community. Please distribute it far and wide!

For Immediate Release: Parents and Teachers Decry flaws in the Parent “Tricker” Law

LAUSD Parents and Teachers will speak out against tactics used to trick parents into singing a petition to pull the Parent Trigger at Weigand EL and other schools where Parent Revolution is currently collecting signatures.  Parents and Teachers are left without a voice or say in changes to made to school sites and parents who do not sign the petition do not get to vote on the type of change that will occur at their school site once the petition is turned in. Parents who were tricked into signing petitions were not allowed to later withdraw their signatures with the organization or the school district.

Parents and Teachers decry, Parent Revolution, the group soliciting signatures at school sites, for misrepresenting themselves to parents and giving false information in order to collect signatures.  Every Parent “Tricker” petition gathering drive in LAUSD has originated from the well funded Parent Revolution organization and has not come from the parents or teachers from the school itself.

Our Central Message is:

1. Call on lawmakers and LAUSD to make changes in the Parent “Trigger” Law to ensure all stake-holders have say in the type of changes they would like to see on a school site campus.
2. Demand Parent Revolution halt tactics that mislead parents into signing petitions.
3. Expose the flaws in the Parent “Tricker” law that disenfranchises parents and teachers from creating authentic academic change at their school sites.
4. NO more drive-through community engagement.

Press Conference and Rally
Thursday, May 30, 2013
4:00 pm
Weigand Elementary School
10401 Weigand Ave
Los Angeles CA 90002

Teachers, Parents and Community Leaders will be available for interviews in Spanish and English.

For More Information Contact:
Ingrid Villeda: ivilleda@yahoo.com
Jose Lara: josexlara@yahoo.com

@TCFKSM: Alexander Russo's vicious attack on Weigand Elementary School Teachers

Shirlee Smith: Parent Revolution? Not really

"The idea of the Parent Revolution is to say fuck you." — Ben Austin (Executive Director, Parent Revolution) [1]


Shirlee Smith's brilliant essay on the so-called Parent Revolution (née Los Angeles Parents Union) is factual, cogent, and strikes at the heart of the astroturf phonies' real agenda. She exposes Ben Austin, Pat DeTemple, Gabe Rose and their little band of privatization profiteers, and also lists some of their plutocratic funders.

Parent Revolution? Not really

Originally published at http://www.pasadenasun.com/news/opinion/tn-pas-0916-commentsmith,0,7623274.story yet now somehow mysteriously gone.

_____
NOTES
[1] http://blogs.uscannenberg.org/neontommy/2010/03/trigger-law-gives-parent-revol.html this one sided pro-privatization article quotes Austin as saying "The idea of the parent revolution is to say fuck you." While we already knew that was how Austin felt about our communities, poor people, and people of color, to hear it coming from the wealthy white charter profiteer's mouth was quite startling. This footnote was first published in Ben Austin's Biography.

Shirlee Smith: Parent Revolution? Not really

Bill Gates and Steve Barr's corporate candidate for UTLA plays fast and loose with the truth

Saw a corporate candidate for UTLA president publish the following lie today: "Mr. Barr has started schools that are teacher-driven and wall-to-wall unionized in partnership…"

Most of us don't consider Yellow Unions actual unions. Furthermore, nonprofit corporations with unelected boards are anything but "teacher-driven." We know the truth about poverty pimp Steve Barr and the corporate empires he has forged. The "union shop" lies need to end here and now!

Here are two essays on Green Dot's special yellow brand of company unions:

Dana Goldstein "Hearts" Yellow Unions and Company Crafted Contracts

Right-wing Reactionary “Guggenheim on Unions, Green Dot”

Here is a compendium of information about the so-called "teacher-driven" corporate schools mentioned above.

Charter Schools are NOT Public Schools!

The corporate candidate's impassioned email also lauded Barr's former schools. Schools that despite getting millions more in funding, and having the ability to pick and choose their student population have results like these:

Fall 2010 Locke Senior High Admissions into the California State University system: system: 88% were NOT proficient in mathematics and an astonishing 98% were NOT proficient in English.

For more on this see:

Perfidious Petruzzi calls for accurate evaluations of Green Dot Charter Corporation?

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Update: More mistruths and mendacity from the corporate candidate today. All of which are refuted here.

I didn't fall for anything. Say what you will. I'm sorry, but your "privatization" claims about unionized charter schools don't hold up. Please go speak to teachers within unionized charter schools before forming an opinion. We can agree to disagree in this area. 

Unions, yellow or otherwise, do not determine whether a school has been or is privatized. What determines privatization is its governance model. If a school is not run by a government entity (eg. LAUSD, UCLA, etc.) then by definition it is a private institution. Especially in the case of schools governed by nonprofit corporations, like Green Dot and FIN. This has been repeatedly stated by Federal and State Courts, the Census Bureau, and the National Labor Relations Board. There's no need to agree to disagree, Gaffney's claims have been disproven in court multiple times.

Again, please do your due diligence before making claims about stakeholders in education and myself. Just so you know, Mr. Barr is not the founder/ instigator of the Parent Trigger law and all its negative consequences on public education. 

Patently false! Steve Barr was on the Board of Directors of Parent Revolution (née Los Angeles Parents Union (LAPU)) before, during, and after the Parent Trigger was formulated with help from ALEC, Schwarzenegger's staff, and others. He was completely immersed in the process.

Parent Revolution (and its founders) took Green Dot's Parent's Union concept of sustained parent engagement and social and political capital empowerment in partnership with the CTA and changed its original purpose to pass the Parent Trigger law through Gloria Romero. 

Again, abject lies. Ben Austin was hired by Green Dot to run LAPU. Both Marco Petruzzi and Steve Barr were on the board of LAPU when the name change occurred, there was no hijacking involved. Green Dot's Petruzzi is still on their board. LAPU was created to deceive parents into supporting the privatization of more schools via the corporate charter model. Unfortunately for dissemblers like Mr. Gaffney, I have a copy of the infamous Annenberg Document that proves who founded LAPU. Also, they still have both names on their 990 forms, and if you type http://parentsunion.org into a web client, guess what site comes up?

http://www.scribd.com/doc/25496653/Green-Dot-Public-sic-Schools-Los-Angeles-Parents-Union

"Social and political capital empowerment"? Please Mr. Gaffney, at least right-wing billionaire Eli Broad admits on his foundation's 990 forms what he provides funds to LAPU/Parent Revolution for: "To support efforts to help Charter Management Organizations apply for new LAUSD schools under LAUSD's School Choice Resolution"

See http://www.schoolsmatter.info/2011/09/eli-broad-pays-parent-revolution-to.html for more on this.

Although I do genuinely support organizing and empowering parents, I do not support Parent Revolution's strategies and also the way the Parent Trigger law is written that allows them to continue.

Steve Barr played a role in that. The only thing Barr has ever empowered are the bank accounts of his billionaire backers. As are you Mr. Gaffney by being associated with a group that is funded by the Gates Foundation, The Moriah Fund, and The New Schools Venture Fund.

Respectfully, Bill

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So @SteveBarrLA's proxy Bill Gaffney now claiming Barr had no role in #parenttrigger @parentrev? #LAUSD http://t.co/4D0jePDNDt

— PESJA Los Angeles (@PESJA_LA) February 26, 2014

He is either completely misinformed about his new masters, or lying. Don't just take my word for it, the Los Angeles Times has also documented what Barr did.

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Bill Gates and Steve Barr are trying to take over UTLA, again by Robert D. Skeels

Bill Gates and Steve Barr's corporate candidate for UTLA plays fast and loose with the truth