From the Communities & Families Resisting Proposition 39 Charter Colocations group on Facebook. The photograph is from a LAUSD public school with a Proposition 39 charter colocation on its campus. The privately managed charter corporation, with its extra funds donated by right-wing plutocrats, has resources to provide arts and other activities for students that public school students are denied. Here a performance at the charter school in which the children listen to a song about loving everyone—while the public school children look on through a chain link fence.
School choice, it's the new apartheid. Proposition 39 is the tacit reinstitution of Plessy v. Ferguson. Join the struggle to end the lucrative charter industry and return education to the realm of public commons governed by the public.
School choice, it's the new apartheid. Proposition 39 illustrated!
Currently under investigation by a number of authorities, including the Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD) Office of Inspector General and the Los Angeles County District Attorney's Office, Charter industry mogul Refugio "Ref" Rodriguez's innumerable front groups are hard to keep track of. The following articles should help contextualize the situation, and the tweets and documents following are from various parent and community activist sources.
“The L.A. County district attorney’s office indicated Monday that it expected another, separate probe to be conducted by L.A. Unified’s inspector general.” — LA Times
In the LA Progressive piece What the PUC Is Going on Here? Hans Johnson and Hector Huezo of the East Area Progressive Democrats take a look at Refugio "Ref" Rodriguez's myriad financial "mishaps." These include: the fishy max campaign contributions from employees paid minimum wage; the eye-opening audit of PUC's Lakeview finances; and passing mention of the FoodGate money laundering scheme that saw PUC employees self-dealing. The latter issue has become such a scandal that now has both the The L.A. County District Attorney and the L.A. Unified Inspector General are investigating PUC corporate officers including Jacqueline Elliot and Ref Rodriguez. Rodriguez was PUC's Chief Executive Officer at the time the Better 4 You contract was awarded, and has been their Corporate Board Treasurer ever since. Rodriguez has shamelessly promoted profiteering on behalf of the burgeoning corporate charter school sector for years.
LA Progressive: Ref Rodriguez—What the PUC Is Going on Here?
Reporters, parents, and community activists have been trying to get the facts about wealthy charter industry executive Refugio “Ref” Rodriguez. They have called, emailed, and even asked Rodriguez campaign workers at their doorsteps simple, but important questions. They are being ignored.
Q1: It’s known that Rodriguez attended Catholic schools, did he ever attend a public school?
Q2: We know Rodriguez has worked for charter schools and Catholic schools. Has he ever worked at a public school? Volunteered at one?
Q3: Lacking public school experience he wants to be elected to our school board. Will Rodriguez ever open up his charter chain’s board to public elections?
Curious? Ask him yourself. Call (310) 968-5729
In addition to dodging the simple questions above, Rodriguez never disclosed that his California Charter School Association (CCSA) boasted “30% profit margins… with 20-30% lead generation and 20-50% close ratios.” He won’t discuss his relationship with the secretive Gülen cult charter network. Rodriguez has avoided discussing how much money his charter chain spends on advertising instead of students. That’s a lot of secrets! Los Angeles Unified School District students deserve honest, forthcoming school board members, not ones with so many things to hide.
Daily Censored: Why won’t Ref Rodriguez tell the truth?
“In the long run, charter schools are being strategically used to pave the way for vouchers. The voucher advocates, who are very powerful and funded by right-wing foundations and families, recognize that the word voucher has been successfully discredited by enlightened Americans who believe in the public sector. So they’ve resorted to two strategies. First, they no longer use the word “vouchers.” They’ve adopted the seemingly benign phrase “school choice,” but they are still voucher advocates.” — Jonathan Kozol
How does California Charter Schools Association (CCSA) hide the billionaires, fringe right-wingers, and extreme ideologues contributing to charter profiteer Refugio "Ref" Rodriguez and neoliberal school privatizer Tamar Galatzan's Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD) campaigns? Hide those contributions by laundering them from one SuperPAC, to another SuperPAC (CCSA Advocates), to another SuperPAC (Parent Teacher Alliance in Support of Rodriguez, Galatzan, and Vladovic for School Board 2015, Sponsored by CCSA Advocates Independent Expenditure Committee).
Although they'll be able to hide the contributors until many months after the election, you can be sure it's the usual suspects supporting their fellow school privatization profiteers. Reed Hastings, Eli Broad, Michael Bloomberg, Philip Anschutz, and others are names they are likely hiding from the public.
Unless every instance of CNCA providing their meeting spaces, food, materials, dinners, etc. is documented on a 460 Form for this election, then they are breaking the law. In kind donations of that sort are calculated to their nearest fair market value and are considered campaign contributions just as much as cash contributions.
Conscientious parents on this list should consider documenting the instances that this has happened and reporting it.
Los Angeles City Ethics Commission
200 North Spring Street
City Hall, 24th Floor
Los Angeles, California 90012
Office Hours:
Monday through Friday
8:00 a.m. to noon; 1:00 p.m. to 4:30 p.m.
Anonymous reporting is available
The City Ethics Commission's enforcement division investigates and brings enforcement actions against individuals and entities who violate the City's ethics, campaign finance or lobbying provisions. Many of its cases begin as complaints to the Whistleblower Hotline. The division also refers to and works with other government agencies when appropriate.
“Walmart fortune heiress, Carrie Walton Penner, is currently the CCSA Board Vice-Chair (term ending 6/30/2017). By most accounts Walton Penner is close to both profiteer "Ref" Rodriguez of the PUC Charter School Corporation, and the well-heeled Ana Ponce of the Camino Nuevo Charter School Corporation.” — Robert D. Skeels
Charter industry profiteer Refugio "Ref" Rodriguez, and his California Charter Schools Association's (CCSA) ruthless campaign to capture the Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD) Board of Education seat for District 5 has had every advantage. Rodriguez is backed with millions of dollars from an assortment of billionaires ranging from right-wing extremists like the Walton Family Fortune (Walmart) heirs to anti-public-commons ideologues including Reed Hastings, Eli Broad, and Michael Bloomberg. He has received uncritical press from all the major Los Angeles corporate media outlets. Rodriguez has waged a dishonest campaign that viciously mocked the incumbent school board member's disabilities, and went as far to make deplorable accusations of racism. With essentially unlimited funding at his disposal, one would think that the profit hungry corporate charter school executive wouldn't need any more advantages. However, Rodriguez and his CCSA allies are leaving nothing to chance in defense of their lucrative profits. Profits that have been threatened by an incumbent who has insisted that the charter industry serve all students, not just the ones that are "cheap" to educate.
Evidence of possible further impropriety was provided by Cheryl Ortega. Ortega is the Director of Bilingual Education at United Teachers Los Angeles, has taught in the community for nearly half a century, is a member of the Greater Echo Park Elysian Neighborhood Council, and was recently honored as the 28th Congressional District Woman of the Year. Given her long-standing ties to the community, parents frequently use her as a clearinghouse for education issues. For example, this revelation that she posted on her Facebook feed:
Interesting and shocking fact regarding the Kayser - Rodriguez LAUSD school board race. A long time friend and former school parent at Logan Elementary School, told me that parents at the Sandra Cisneros/Camino Nuevo Charter Corp School in Echo Park were paid to attend political meetings to help elect Ref Rodriguez. They were told that Bennet Kayser would "close down their school" if elected to the school board. I am not surprised at Camino Nuevo's message given their record of "misleading" parents.
Asking around, I've been informed that these parents are being paid in kind (not cash), with expensive dinners, trips to Starbucks, etc. These reports corroborate each other, and with definitive proof that CCSA and Rodriguez are chasing profits, their purported "payment" of parents to sway this election makes perfect sense. Who is doing it makes sense too.
Camino Nuevo Charter Corporation's profits depend on market share
Camino Nuevo Charter Academy Corporation (CNCA) has a long record of duplicity. Their fourteen member Board of Directors, comprised mostly of hedge fund/investment managers, venture capitalists, brokers, and bankers, is wholly unaccountable to the community. CNCA's campaign to expropriate the newly constructed CRES #14 school site during Gates Foundation employee Yolie Flores' so-called Public School Choice (PSC) charter school handout project, saw CNCA trying to stack the vote by busing in outsiders. CNCA lost to the community public school plan by more than 2 to 1 margin, but Flores gave them our school anyway. Here is a photo, taken at Rosemont ES during the CRES #14 advisory vote, of one of nearly a dozen buses brought in by the Camino Nuevo Charter Corporation.
Charter schools using parents as political pawns for profits
It should be no surprise if CNCA is bribing parents to campaign and vote for Rodriguez. Even when they aren't using meals, gift cards, t-shirts, and other material enticements to induce parents into engaging in charter political activities, the lucrative charter school industry has another means of getting what they want—forced parent work policies. For years social justice activists have pointed out that CCSA, CCSA Advocates, Families that Can, and individual corporate charter chains have compelled parents to participate in their political activities by evoking their required "volunteer" hours. However, it wasn't until the watershed report from Public Advocates Inc. entitled Charging for Access: How California Charter Schools Exclude Vulnerable Students by Imposing Illegal Family Work Quotas was published that we began to recognize the full extent of this practice.
Wealthy Ana Ponce and Ref Rodriguez aiming for more profits
Walmart fortune heiress, Carrie Walton Penner, is currently the CCSA Board Vice-Chair (term ending 6/30/2017). By most accounts Walton Penner is close to both profiteer "Ref" Rodriguez of the PUC Charter School Corporation, and the well-heeled Ana Ponce of the Camino Nuevo Charter School Corporation.
CNCA Corporation's 2012 Form 990, Part VII§A shows Ponce stuffing her pockets with a mind-boggling $230,811.00. Her ties to Rodriguez extend beyond their mutual profiteering, and California Charter Schools Association (CCSA) board memberships. Ponce did postgraduate work at Loyola Marymount University (LMU), and Rodriguez is an adjunct instructor there. Sadly LMU's education department faculty and administration is dominated by neoliberal privatizers, like Shane P. Martin, who actively work to destroy public education at the behest of their corporate sponsors. The one exception to LMU's complicity with the Broad/Gates/Walton Triumvirate is that of renowned Freirian scholar Professor Antonia Darder, who writes brilliant essays like Racism and the Charter School Movement: Unveiling the Myths. Darder's is the sole voice of reason in LMU's cacophony of corporate concerns.
Paying parents to advocate for the charter industry's political and financial aims, whether those payments are in kind, through required "volunteer" hours, or any other form of consideration is highly unethical, immoral, and likely illegal. In other words, it's just the sort of thing that Refugio "Ref" Rodriguez and his CCSA cabal would do.
If you live in LAUSD District 5, I implore you to demonstrate to charter profiteer Ref Rodriguez, his CNCA allies, and his deep-pocketed CCSA trade association that our communities value pupils over profits. Reelect the Honorable Bennett Kayser in the May 19, 2015 General Municipal Election!
Schools Matter: Is CNCA paying parents to support CCSA's Ref Rodriguez's LAUSD Board campaign?
“The education industry represents, in our opinion, the final frontier of a number of sectors once under public control... represents the largest market opportunity... the K-12 market is the Big Enchilada.” — Montgomery Securities prospectus quoted in Jonathan Kozol’s The Big Enchilada
Most of the time the charter school industry's corporate leadership is able to craft their messaging so as to distract the populace from the real purposes undergirding their project. Occasionally, someone in their sector goes off script and tells the truth about what chartering is all about. Usually it's those in the sphere of finance capital—gleefully celebrating how lucrative the charter school industry has been for them. The Forbes piece, Charter School Gravy Train Runs Express To Fat City , is an excellent example of this. Sometimes individuals in the neoliberal corporate education reform camp spill the proverbial beans. Industry proselytizers like Andy Smarick and Paul Vallas have been candidly honest about charters discriminating against Students with Disabilities (SWD), and charters eschewing veteran teachers, respectively. Revelations of the dark secrets behind the charter industry's insatiable drive for profits also shine cleansing light on a current local issue—namely the attempts of charter industry profiteer Refugio "Ref" Rodriguez, and his California Charter Schools Association's (CCSA) campaign to capture the Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD) Board of Education seat for District 5. One of Rodriguez's fellow CCSA profiteers inadvertently provided incontrovertible evidence of why the school privatization camp spent over three quarters of a million dollars in the primary election alone.
A Twitter follow from a name I recognized as a marginal player in the corporate education reform camp sparked curiosity. A moment spent checking their LinkedIn profile yielded a veritable gold mine of information unequivocally proving the charter industry's, and particularly CCSA's, drive for profits comes at the expense of children and community. The prose from their profile says it all:
Co-Founder/VP - School Services & Products California Charter Schools Association
July 2003 – July 2007 (4 years 1 month)
Launched and operated association services and products division providing financial, insurance, special education, and other member services that broke-even the first year and generated 30% profit margins in subsequent years--with 20-30% lead generation and 20-50% close ratios.
Profit margins, lead generation, and close ratios… refreshing honesty from an industry that claims it "puts kids first."
Like the hedge fund managers discussed in the Forbes piece above, platitudes about helping kids are quickly subsumed by talk of plentiful profits, revenues, and business opportunities when charter school executives talk among themselves. This focus on profits drives Ref Rodriguez's CCSA charter school industry trade association to eliminate any political opposition, and also explains their unhinged viciousness and ruthlessness towards the Honorable Bennett Kayser, our sitting LAUSD Board member, who has had the temerity to oppose charter schools placing greed over student need. Let's look more closely at CCSA's business dealings, how they harm students enrolled in charters, how they harm students enrolled in public schools, and then return to the implications of the May 19, 2015 General Municipal Election in Los Angeles.
Charters convert public funds into private profits
California Charter Schools Association's (CCSA) business ventures were so outrageously profitable, they drew in an array of corporations, privately held companies, and large foundations wanting a share. Firms like EdTec, Arthur J. Gallagher & Co., Charter Impact, Inc., and Discover Re (The Travelers Indemnity Company) jumped in CCSA's profits pool. Longtime school privatization advocates The Walton Family Foundation and Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation loomed large. Seeing an opportunity to exploit public education dollars nationally, the CCSA, Walton Family Foundation, Travelers, and Gallagher & Co. launched School Risk Management, LLC, which later became known as CharterSafe/PrivateSafe. Here is an excerpt of a 2007 press release from one of the corporate entities involved in this deal.
"In 2007 as a response to the growing need for appropriate insurance for charter schools nationally, Gallagher partnered with the California Charter School Association JPA and the Walton Family Foundation to form a risk management and insurance program for charter schools. This program has been known as the CharterSafe program. Recently the California Charter School Association JPA began promoting their self insured pool program as CharterSafe. In an effort it differentiate the national program from the California based JPA program, we have decided to change our program name. Going forward, we will be known as the Charter First Insurance Program."
Note the prominence of the right-wing-reactionary Walton Family Foundation in the press release. Walmart fortune heiress, Carrie Walton Penner, is currently the CCSA Board Vice-Chair (term ending 6/30/2017). By most accounts Walton Penner is close to both profiteer "Ref" Rodriguez of the PUC Charter School Corporation, and the well-heeled Ana Ponce of the Camino Nuevo Charter School Corporation. Rodriguez was a CCSA Board member from 2005 to 2009, while Ponce currently serves as the CCSA Board secretary. Like all 501c3 "non-profits", the CCSA Board is unelected, and, to all intents and purposes, is unaccountable to anyone other than its charter executive membership and private funders. CCSA's public funders (the taxpayers) have no voice in the 501c3 corporation's affairs. Its private investors get seats on the board. Known for their aversion to public education, and their exploitation of working class families, the Walton Family Foundation is CCSA's biggest funder. In 2010 they showered the CCSA charter school industry association with a staggering $3,940,652.00. Annual investments like that are nothing when one considers the return of investment in the forms of profitable finance capital spinoffs like CharterSafe, LLC.
The avaricious insurance executive… ahem, "education entrepreneur" who oversaw growth of the hugely profitable CCSA CharterSafe enterprise, then launched his own consulting firm to skim more money from the trough of public funds. Funds which became entirely unregulated when the charter school industry was created by corporate interests in the nineteen-nineties. Refugio "Ref" Rodriguez's revenue hungry PUC charter school chain is a client of that selfsame consulting firm.
The money making aspect of chartering is so predominant, that peripheral concerns like pupils, pedagogy, or populace are not part of the discussion. Here is a LinkedIn endorsement for our CharterSafe protagonist by the Senior Vice President for Strategic Initiatives at the National Alliance for Public [sic] Charter Schools:
"Ted is one of the most creative people I know. He is an excellent partner because he always makes sure the business relationship benefits both parties. I have introduced him to our customers, and they always come away impressed."
I doubt many think of children, schoolteachers, or education when they see phrases like "business relationship", or "introduced him to our customers", but that's what the charter school project is all about—business. Big business at that.
The charter industry's profits-first agenda hurts it's own students
The CCSA counts 14 of the schools comprising Refugio "Ref" Rodriguez's charter empire among its membership. As mentioned above, CCSA and its business partners profit from selling financial products and services to its corporate charter members. Additionally, just like the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, CCSA charges dues. Their formula is based on enrollment. Of issue is whether these corporate charters can demonstrate that the dues they pay to their trade association come from somewhere other than taxpayer funds intended for students. Rodriguez's PUC has paid well over a hundred thousand dollars into the CCSA slush fund, which in turn is used for political lobbying to increase charter industry profits. Those funds, regardless if they came straight out of taxpayer pockets, or are front end investments from billionaire ideologues like Walton Penner, would be better spent on students. Yet as we saw above, when it comes between profits and pupils, the charter industry always prioritizes the former. The "non-profit" designation of the charter industry is simply a tax status, indicating they don't have shareholders. The 501c3 "non-profit shells" of these organization merely serve as a fronts to the myriad businesses they feed education funds to. Real estate, leasing, insurance, administration, and many more lucrative industries benefit from this arrangement.
Charter executives make sure they partake of the profits too. I remember interviewing a young person who had worked for a wholly owned subsidiary of the Green Dot Charter Corporation. They told me they had lost any illusions that they were a "non-profit" when they saw Green Dot's Alma Vivian Marquez roll up in a brand new Porsche Cayenne. A sampling of Los Angeles corporate charter school CEO salaries is eye opening, especially when one realizes that they all work for schools with a tiny fraction of the student population that the public school district serves:
Charter Chain
Executive
Total Compensation
Form 990, Part VII§A
Celerity
Vielka McFarlane
$438,730.00
2012
Alliance
Judy Burton
$330,400.00
2012
Aspire
James R. Willcox
$293,687.00
2012
Green Dot
Marco Petruzzi
$279,478.00
2013
Camino Nuevo
Ana Ponce
$230,811.00
2012
While representatives of the lucrative charter industry claim they run public schools, entities tasked with using precise legal definitions all say otherwise. This includes the 9th Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals, the California Court of Appeals, and the National Labor Relations Board, all of which are on record stating that charter schools are not public entities. The most authoritative framing of this issue comes from the U.S. Census Department:
"A few "public charter schools" are run by public universities and municipalities. However, most charter schools are run by private nonprofit organizations and are therefore classified as private."
Like the rest of the private sector, the charter industry must continually increase market share in order to maintain profitability. One of the ways they do this is through advertising. Rodriguez's corporate charter schools squander untold amounts of taxpayer funds on advertising in pursuit of growing market share, and hence increased profits for the business interests associated with his schools and his CCSA trade association. The photo of a ubiquitous PUC advertisement below was taken by the author. Our tax dollars are being leveraged in order to secure more of our tax dollars to fuel the revenue hungry machine that is the charter school industry. Obviously this is of no concern to profit minded charter executives like Rodriguez, but those funds could, and should, be spent in the classroom for student learning, instead of growing market share for the burgeoning charter school sector. Ironically these corporate charter school chains frequently claim they have long "waiting lists," so why the need to advertise? In a word the whole waiting list myth is another part of their marketing scheme.
Despite having additional resources invested in them by billionaire foundations, not to mention their being able to control their student populations through selective enrollment, attrition, and outright discrimination against Students with Disabilities (SWD), PUC charter schools, while profitable, haven't done much for students. For example, in 2013 students from Rodriguez’s Early College Academy for Leaders and Scholars (ECALS) took the California State University (CSU) entrance exams. Half of those taking the test failed to test proficient in either mathematics or English. The fifty percent of Rodriguez's students that failed had to take remedial high school classes.
Other corporate charter school chains, like Alliance, Camino Nuevo, and Green Dot, have had years where up to ninety-eight percent of their "graduates" failed to test proficient in either mathematics or English. If the tradeoff for public control and oversight of our education dollars was supposedly to accommodate these so-called "high performing," privately managed entities, then we have been duped. The only area where charter schools have performed well is that of funneling precious education funding into the coffers of the corporate interests they serve.
The charter industry's profits-first agenda hurts public school students
I recently wrote in response to a charter chain getting away with defrauding the public for millions of dollars.
"One cringes thinking of all the Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD) public school libraries that could have been reopened with those millions "missing" from the privately managed Magnolia Gülen Charters."
This sentiment holds true across the board. For every education dollar that winds up in the hands of hedge fund managers, business bankers, and corporate executives, there is a public school child suffering from the inequity of a system being systematically starved of resources. In March of 2015 The Center for Popular Democracy released a groundbreaking report entitled Risking Public Money: California Charter School Fraud. The report meticulously details tens of millions of dollars in fraud stemming from this essentially unregulated industry, and suggests that "[b]ased on conservative estimates, California stands to lose more than $100 million to charter school fraud in 2015." As a community organizer I constantly hear parents talk about overcrowded classrooms and lack of resources. It is incomprehensible that at the same time our neighborhood public schools are in desperate need, our community's funds are wantonly, recklessly, and even fraudulently squandered by the opaque structures of the privately managed charter school industry.
In response to our public schools being short changed because of the myriad shortcomings of the lucrative charter school industry, the Honorable Jackie Goldberg founded the Transparency, Equity, and Accountability in Charter Schools (TEAch) organization a few years ago. Everyone should support TEACh, even families with children enrolled in privately managed charter schools. Their mission statement: "An organization working to ensure that charter schools are Transparent, Equitable, and held Accountable for their practices."
Aside from budget woes created by the charter sector syphoning our education dollars off into corporate coffers, another area where public school students are most hurt by charter industry's profits-first agenda is that of special education. The 2008 Andy Smarick piece alluded to earlier outlines how the charter industry deliberately avoids enrolling Students with Disabilities (SWD) to save money and uses that additional financial burden to bankrupt the public school district. His words echo the neoliberal ideology of eliminating the public commons in favor of a profitable, private sector:
"As chartering increases its market share in a city, the district will come under growing financial pressure. The district, despite educating fewer and fewer students, will still require a large administrative staff to process payroll and benefits, administer federal programs, and oversee special education. With a lopsided adult-to-student ratio, the district's per-pupil costs will skyrocket." [emphasis mine]
As a society we must stand against the exploitation of our most vulnerable. Frankly, any school getting public funding should be obligated legally, ethically, and morally to educate every child. If it is too difficult for the charter school industry to stop prioritizing corporate greed over special education need, then there needs to be discussions of shutting down their industry. Los Angeles School Board members who have attempted to enforce these obligations on charters have been savaged by the CCSA. Bennett Kayser's principled stand against the lucrative Aspire Charter Corporation is notable. Depending on which source one cites, Aspire either served a negligible number of SWD, or none at all at the time of Kayser's opposition to their charter renewal:
"But a look at area special education programs provides insight into the types of students served by Aspire. ¶ El Dorado's special ed program does not serve a single visual or hearing impaired student nor students with multiple disabilities, orthopedic or brain injuries, according to state reports. L.A. Unified's program serves many of these disabilities, requiring highly-specialized, costly care." (KPCC, April 16, 2014)
This is unacceptable. We already saw James R. Willcox's compensation package above. Children in both the public school system, and the privately managed charter school sector, deserve better than to have the funds we alloted them diverted into private hands.
The billionaire backed CCSA campaign for the May 19, 2015 School Board election
With prodigious profits for themselves and their investors at stake, the California Charter Schools Association (CCSA) launched a scorched earth campaign to get one of their longtime industry operatives, Refugio "Ref" Rodriguez, elected. Dr. Andrew Thomas, the third place finisher in the primary election for the LAUSD District 5 seat, wrote the following commentary regarding the ideologically charged billionaires supporting CCSA's SuperPAC for Rodriguez:
Why are out-of-district billionaires such as Netflix Chief Executive Reed Hastings, former New York Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg, Jim Walton of the Wal-Mart founding family, and local philanthropist [sic] Eli Broad spending over a $1 million in this school board race?
In defense of their profits, Rodriguez and his CCSA trade group launched the most deplorable and dishonest political campaign in recent memory. One lie and innuendo packed CCSA mailer attacking the Honorable Bennett Kayser was so repugnant that it saw Kayser's fellow board member, the Honorable Dr. George McKenna, calling the CCSA out for being "racially inflammatory". Rodriguez's CCSA trying to paint their opposition as racist is no small irony, given that the CCSA was founded by bigoted nativist Steve Poizner. Another series of Rodriguez's CCSA attacks mocked Kayser's disability. Kayser, who suffers from Parkinson's Disease, has been one of the strongest advocates for Student with Disabilities (SWD) the district has had in years. As discussed above, the charter school industry sees SWD as an impediment to their profits, so Kayser's standing up for those students has made him CCSA's biggest target.
With almost unlimited funding at their disposal, Rodriguez and his fellow CCSA profiteers look to seize the LAUSD District 5 Board of Education seat and use it as a means to increase charter market share, proliferate profits, and eliminate any oversight interfering with those first two goals. An important question we should be asking ourselves is why can charter industry executives run for our public school board, but no member of the public can ever run for the boards of their charter school empires?
If you live in LAUSD District 5, I implore you to demonstrate to profiteer Rodriguez and his CCSA trade association that our community values pupils over profits by voting for Bennett Kayser in the May 19, 2015 General Municipal Election.
PROFITS! Why Ref Rodriguez and his CCSA covet the LAUSD Board Seat
"LG" is a frequent commenter on the distinguished Dr. Diane Ravitch's site. Here LG offers the best response I've read to date on California Charter Schools Association (CCSA) and Refugio "Ref" Rodriguez's vile campaign against Students with Disabilities (SWD) and their champion on the Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD) Board, the Honorable Bennett Kayser:
“When criticizing a person who happens to have a debilitating medical issue, I would think opponents would have more class than to blur the lines by presenting ANYTHING that could be construed as discriminatory and hateful. Defending this is akin to saying, “Well, I didn’t mean to insult your condition–I was merely trying to insult you in order to preserve your dignity. YOU were the one who misconstrued my meaning.” Sorry, you watch your Ps and Qs when you are refuting actions–you don’t imply physical impairment in the process. That’s personal…but by all means, defend this heinous act as “creative and clever.”
B. S.
On a stick.”
Ravitch reader offers best response to CCSA and Ref Rodriguez's attacks on Bennett Kayser's disability
Long-time Los Angeles activist Muffy Sunde is a prominent member of Radical Women. She offered the following on California Charter Schools Association (CCSA) and Refugio "Ref" Rodriguez's vile campaign against Students with Disabilities (SWD) and their champion on the Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD) Board, the Honorable Bennett Kayser:
One main point here is that charter schools are mostly specifically exempted from the federal requirements to provide access to education to all regardless of disability--and they are campaigning that all schools should be able to roll back that, because they envision a school system like New Orleans, which are all publicly funded private schools and/or military academies where profits are great but still non profit. My belief is that, with the support of the Obama administration, their target now is special education.
Their campaign is disgusting and pandering--and I suggest that folks who are close to Kayser urge him to issue a really direct response, defending access for the physically and otherwise disabled, advocating MORE, not less resources for the most needy, and then condemning this attack. Just urging the bad guys to "say it to my face" is really nada.
Something like "I stand for ......., what do you stand for"....besides belittling the disabled that is" My, admittedly limited, knowledge of Kayser, is that he won't do that, but it is worth a try. Does he demand that the rich (like, you know, Steve Soboroff and Eli Broad) pay more in taxes to fund quality public schools? That would be a campaign that could develop some momentum.
In solidarity,
Muffy
Los Angeles activist Muffy Sunde on CCSA's vile ableist attacks on SWD and Bennett Kayser
Ref Rodriguez’s California Charter School Association (CCSA) backers have created a vicious attack campaign centered around the Honorable Bennett Kayser’s Parkinson’s disease, questioning his ability to continue serving the Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD). Why? Because Kayser champions the rights of Students with Disabilities (SWD). What is CCSA’s record on SWD? The Office of the Independent Monitor finds that “SWD are disproportionately under-enrolled at charter schools”, and that “low incidence disabilities enrolled at LAUSD charters are significantly under-represented”. In other words, there’s a clear connection between the way Rodriguez and the CCSA attack candidates with disabilities, and the way the they treat children with disabilities. That’s unacceptable.
Shame on Refugio “Ref” Rodriguez and California Charter Schools Association
Tell @CALCharters that ableism is discrimination, a violation of civil rights!
First published in a slightly edited form by LA Progressive on July 5, 2013
Statuesque in a six thousand dollar suit, Los Angeles Mayor Antonio R. Villaraigosa graced the June 2009 cover of Los Angeles Magazine. Emblazoned across his photograph was the bold word "Failure." The tenuous article, embodying the sentiments of many hopeful Angelenos, reproached the Mayor for not being the visionary progressive many envisioned him to be, and in that regard, a failure.
While Villaraigosa disappointed supporters and failed to deliver any progressive policies whatsoever, he was hardly a failure to those he really serves. Indeed, for developers, real estate tycoons, billionaires, and school privatization profiteers, Villaraigosa's eight year reign was a smashing success.
As a young man, Villaraigosa was involved in some progressive, even radical groups. His college years saw him participating in organizations including MEChA and CASA [1]. He even attended People's College of Law, where he learned the language of the labor movement. Many at the time reckoned he would carry those experiences and ideas into his political career, but by the time he became an California Assembly member, his propensity for serving moneyed interests was becoming crystal clear. Supporter and author of a number of anti-labor initiatives, in 1999 Assembly Speaker Villaraigosa authored the bill amending California's Stull Act for teacher evaluations with the reactionary provision of tying into student performance on culturally and class biased standardized tests.
Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa speaking at a school privatization event. Photo by Robert D. Skeels
When Villaraigosa was elected as the first Latino mayor in 138 years, many thought he would be a mayor of the people and focus on fostering affordable housing, community building, and improving public education. Instead, one of the first things he did was try to seize mayoral control of the Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD) in the fashion that billionaire bully Mayor Michael Bloomberg had done in New York City.
After a bitter court battle and a loss in a referendum, Villaraigosa relented and settled for a group of schools run by a quasi-private organization known as the Partnership for Los Angeles Schools (PLAS). PLAS went on to hire former Green Dot Charter Corporation CEO flunky Marshal Tuck and school privatization veteran Joan Sullivan, two individuals poorly qualified to run public schools. PLAS schools, while staffed with hardworking unionized teachers, have floundered as a direct result of Villaraigosa and Tuck's "leadership," drawing criticism from many quarters, including the normally privatization friendly Los Angeles Times in L.A. Unified bests reform groups in most cases, data show. The Mayor's disastrous meddling and manipulation of schools extends much further, and we'll return to his ongoing assault on public education in a bit.
Heartlessly terrorizing the homeless
Not content with attempting to mimic Bloomberg's heavy handed education policies, Villaraigosa also borrowed New York City's media mogul mayor's playbook for creating gentrification friendly regions for the then nascent Downtown Los Angeles real estate boom. Along with outgoing Councilwoman and recent mayoral hopeful Jan Perry, Villaraigosa launched an all out war on the poor and the homeless in order to create a developer friendly environment for both new construction and the conversion of older structures into highly profitable lofts and condominiums.
Safer Cities Initiative (SCI) is the name of the vicious set of policies Villaraigosa inflicted on downtown residents with the help of Bloomberg veteran Police Chief Bill Bratton, who brought his wrongheaded "broken window" policies that were hatched from theories originated from the fringe right Manhattan Institute. The broken window theory posits that a crackdown on innocuous violations like jaywalking or littering somehow improves "quality of life" and reduces more serious crimes. There is scant evidence that this is true, but the policy continues unabated to this day.
A 2007 Socialist Worker piece entitled Clearing out skid row exposed both the cruelty of and the motives behind SCI. A quote near the end of the article spoke to what SCI looks like in practice: "Los Angeles' best response to its homeless crisis is to criminalize, intimidate, and incarcerate its most vulnerable." The ethnic cleansing of skid row and its surrounds created a lucrative boon for real estate, and essentially transformed Downtown Los Angeles into a gentrifying area that grows more expensive and exclusive by the day. None of Villaraigosa's policies helped the homeless or other downtown residents displaced by gentrification. Professor Gary Blasi of UCLA summed up SCI's real accomplishments in terms of helping the homeless in a landmark report highly critical of the policy thusly:
Indeed, the main source of additional shelter and housing for homeless people, at least on Skid Row, has been provided by the State Prison system or the Los Angeles County Jail, at enormous cost to both homeless people and the taxpayers.
Villaraigosa's war on the homeless in order to appease his deep pocketed developer friends and campaign donors has been the antithesis of progressive policy. Indeed these programs have made him a pariah with homeless advocacy groups and organizations dedicated to serving the poor. Once, during a self congratulatory Villaraigosa press conference on skid row, nuns and volunteers at the Catholic Worker soup kitchen (affectionately known as the hippy kitchen) began an impromptu protest which effectively shut the press conference down. Ironically, the press conference was a venue for the Mayor to claim he was helping the homeless. This is something he has become quite adept at — offering platitudes to the very people he is victimizing.
Ousting OccupyLA — making Los Angeles safe for banksters
Villaraigosa's handling of Occupy Los Angeles mirrored his callous, but carefully stage-managed, strategy toward the homeless. His media campaign gave the appearance that he cared or even supported those camping for economic justice, but his actions demonstrated the polar opposite.
Eager to avoid the missteps of Mayor Jean Quan of Oakland, Villaraigosa made press statements expressing an understanding of the Occupy movement, and went as far as to let the media see him passing out rain ponchos to protesters. However, his mollifying Occupy would only extend so far with an impending presidential election in which Villaraigosa hoped to play a prominent role in promoting. It's widely documented that the FBI coordinated the crackdown on Occupy, but it's unknown how involved they were with Los Angeles. Regardless, under the Mayor's orders the raid and closure of OccupyLA occurred with lightening paramilitary precision from the notorious Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD) with full cooperation from the corporate media.
The carefully orchestrated attack on OccupyLA was held at night in order to minimize media coverage of LAPD's brutal offensive against the encampment. Accounts of alleged beatings, torture, and collective punishment were published in alternative media, while the corporate press bemoaned the state of the lawn surrounding city hall. Some of the more interesting accounts included those by high profile sitcom writer Patrick Meighan, journalist Yasha Levine, and activist Bruce Cooley. While Villaraigosa gushed about LAPD's "professionalism and restraint in clearing the park around City Hall of protesters," others told dark tales of Villaraigosa sending a political message to his OccupyLA captives:
After we were finally booked at 10 a.m., we awaited word on what was going to happen. Suddenly, a police captain appeared in front of the jail cell and began to talk to us. He flat out said the following: "Yes, normally all misdemeanors are immediately released with a citation and spend no time in jail, but it's been decided, at the highest levels of the department and city government, that you are going to spend the maximum time we can keep you in jail without charging you with anything, not for criminal reasons but to be made political examples." Literally that is almost a word-for-word quote of what the captain told us.
Our bail was set at $5,000. We were never formally charged with anything, never given lawyers and never read any rights. It's true, the law states you can be held in jail for 48 hours without being charged with anything.
Ever looking to stage manage his image and always in damage control mode, the Mayor released a mildly apologetic press statement regretful of LAPD's brutality some seventeen months after the fact. A convenient apology, given that Occupy's importance was its conspicuous visibility to keep the crimes of the finance capital class in the forefront of everyone's mind. Ousting Occupy made it easier for people to forget that today's austerity for working people was rooted entirely in the excess and recklessness of CEOs who crashed the world economy. Meighan best sums this up:
What does it say about our country that nonviolent protesters are given the bottom of a police boot while those who steal hundreds of billions, do trillions worth of damage to our economy and shatter our social fabric for a generation are not only spared the zipcuffs but showered with rewards?
Imperialist aspirations and taxed enough already
Like many Mayors and Governors with their eyes on loftier (read national) political posts, Villaraigosa holds positions on international affairs. While he never claimed that he could see Russia from the lavish Mayoral Mansion on Irving Boulevard, he does hold some extremely reactionary views mirroring those of the erstwhile Governor of "The Last Frontier." Villaraigosa's June 12, 2011 twitter post explains this best:
At The Democrats for Israel dialogue. It's important for us as progressives to support Israel. http://twitpic.com/5ara5w
Villaraigosa's reactionary foreign policy stances find an equally reactionary counterpart in his unbridled support of the Tea Party's obsession with national debt. To wit, he sits on the steering committee of Peter G. Peterson's "Fix the Debt" austerity organization. Fix the Debt's "solution" to our country's regressive tax system is to enact massive cuts to Social Security and Medicare. Instead of making the progressive case for a progressive tax structure that returns the wealth from those extracting it back to the broader society that created it, Villaraigosa calls for cuts to programs effecting the most vulnerable.
The long list of transnational corporations supporting Fix the Debt undoubtedly love that Villaraigosa has become an apologist for ideas long the domain of the most fringe right think tanks. Meanwhile, working class Angelenos continue to suffer from these austerity for the poor only policies. As the predatory firms behind Fix the Debt continue to take advantage of "performance pay" tax loopholes, they can rely on Mayor Villaraigosa to provide them "bipartisan" political cover, as he did in this Op-Ed he co-authored in USA Today:
...we've also taken heat from those on the left who feel that the notion of compromise and collaboration across party lines is somehow a betrayal of Democratic principles.
We strenuously disagree. We believe reaching a comprehensive, bipartisan debt deal will demonstrate to the financial markets, and to people everywhere, that America has the political will to tackle difficult issues and provide a tremendous boost to the economic recovery. The stimulating effect of these developments will unlock billions of dollars in currently inactive capital, spur investment and, most importantly, produce real job creation.
Squelching the South Central Farm
The South Central Community Garden, often called by its shorter name, the South Central Farm, was the largest urban farm in the country. Provided to the community in 1994 as means of ameliorating the trauma South Central residents suffered from the rebellion following the LAPD's vicious beating of Rodney King, the once arid wasteland was transformed into productive, fertile green space by hard working local campesinos (farmers). From the point when wealthy developer Ralph Horowitz began vying to reacquire the 14 acres from the City of Los Angeles, Villaraigosa again played the game that he has developed to a fine art — feigning support for a progressive movement and workers, while arranging victory behind the scenes for the propertied class. One of the best accounts of this is by prominent activists Leslie Radford and Juan Santos:
The cynicism of the top-level players is profound; Mayor Villaraigosa, for all his posturing about searching out large donors to save the Farm, always had the money to save it at his disposal. He chose not to spend it...
...But Villaraigosa sank no roots in the Farm, even though he had used the Farm for campaign photo ops While constantly reassuring the Farmers behind the scenes, promising them $5M in private fundraising to buy the Farm from Horowitz, he cynically refused to endorse their efforts publicly...
...In the end, when Villaraigosa offered to "raise" money from charitable sources to buy back the Farm from Horowitz, he had at his disposal both the profit the City had made from the Harbor Department sale, and also the money it had made in the more recent back room sale to Horowitz. The Mayor didn't have to beg money from anyone. He didn't have to lose a moment. He only had to use the massive profits from the land to buy it back.
To do so of course, would be problematic; it could only emphasize a question the Farmers are asking this week in court — "Why would the City sell land to Horowitz for $5.3M when it was worth at least three times that amount"? Especially when the City had already sold it once before for triple that amount?
Note the mention of Villaraigosa using the struggle to save the farm for photo opportunities. Always conscious of his tinsel town image, Villaraigosa wanted to be associated with the long list of celebrities supporting the South Central Farm. In the end, the developer friendly Mayor's actions didn't reflect his rhetoric, and like the homeless, OccupyLA activists, immigrant rights supporters, and other progressive movements, the family farmers found themselves face to face with Los Angeles' paramilitary police forces.
Predatory developer Horowitz, with enthusiastic assistance of Villaraigosa and Jan Perry's offices, unleashed the Sheriff's bulldozers on hapless community members. This final act adding much insult to injury, with taxpayers footing the bill for Horowitz's eviction force after he had wrangled two highly profitable deals out of the same parcel of land at the public's expense twice. Horowitz, also sat on the unelected board of the colocated Gabriella Charter School Corporation, which has the dubious history of constantly encroaching on more space of one of Los Angeles' oldest public elementary schools.
South Central Farm activist Rufina Juárez's stern words for Villaraigosa encapsulate his Janus-like modus operandi:
She also had strong words of criticism for Villaraigosa, who over the course of his corporate ladder-climbing, power-hungry career has used his "origins" and "race" as political bargaining chips.
"Mexicans," she said as tears welled up in her eyes, "have a long tradition of defending our land and we aren't going to forget this aggression. Those who don't love their land have no mother, so it's clear that Villaraigosa has no mother. It would be better if he dropped his name and just went by 'Tony.' He doesn't care about women, kids, nothing."
Impounding impoverished immigrants' livelihood
MEChA students protest Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa at his lavish mansion for his role in the confiscation of immigrants' cars. Photo by Robert D. Skeels
Given the Mayor's cultural and early political background one would think that the issue he would be most progressive on would be that of immigrant rights. Here too, Villaraigosa's uncanny ability to seek out photo opportunities and venues for self-promotion have always taken precedence over any substantive actions to help the plight of undocumented peoples. Quick to embrace and promote the California Dream Act created by his childhood friend Gil Cedillo, Villaraigosa has no tangible accomplishments of his own. In fact, with his penchant for law enforcement, one could argue that his tenure has been harmful to Los Angeles' extensive immigrant population.
Villaraigosa wouldn't participate in, but never failed to show up at the end of the massive immigrant marches of 2006 and subsequent years. Allowed to speak at the ending rallies, he relished the opportunity to be photographed with immigrant rights organization leadership. However, the Mayor repeatedly refused to designate Los Angeles a sanctuary city, despite repeated calls to so by those selfsame leaders. Villaraigosa vocally supported the Los Angeles City Council's resolution to boycott Arizona in response to their SB 1070 racial profiling law. However, when it came to actually implementing the boycott as the Chief Executive, "little ha[d] changed."
Tragically, perhaps the most enduring images of the Villaraigosa administration's immigrant rights policy are those of LAPD in paramilitary gear trampling and beating helpless women and children during the 2007 MacArthur Park May Day rally. While the Mayor condemned the use of excessive force (a progressive would use the phrase police brutality), he never condemned LAPD's pervasive institutional racism that was at the heart of the attack. Several subsequent incidents involving LAPD and immigrants saw Villaraigosa siding with the police, including the widely protested murder of Manuel Jamines by officers seemingly all too eager to discharge their weapons.
Immigrants and all communities of color also need to be wary of Villaraigosa and LAPD's Special Order 11/1, which all but codifies racial profiling and surveillance. The Stop LAPD Spying Coalition website features an explanation of who is targeted by the spying initiative.
A few years ago the National Lawyers Guild (NLG), the Southern California Immigration Coalition (SCIC) [3], Instituto de Educacion Popular del Sur de California (IDEPSCA) and other community organizations created a coalition to demand an end to LAPD's seizure of immigrant vehicles. Their campaign called upon Mayor Villaraigosa to adopt the same no-impound policies that cities like San Francisco, Oakland, San Jose, Santa Ana and others smaller towns had implemented. The no-impound rationale was deeply rooted in social justice principles, since most undocumented immigrants are day workers, and vehicles are vital to support their families. This excerpt from a 2011 press release spells out how disastrous impounds are to immigrant families:
Cities and counties throughout the state are confiscating thousands of cars a month at drivers license checkpoints and during random traffic stops. Most drivers are often the victims of racial profiling.
The towing and impound business is quite lucrative for tow companies, the city and the county. The average victim of an impound cannot pay the estimated $2,000 in towing fees, storage fees and the citation. Those unable to pay these charges lose their vehicles completely as they are sold at auction just days after the 30-day impound period.
The coalition's spirited campaign went on for months, and at one point saw protesters picketing the Mayor's magnificent mansion. Aside from the irony, nothing was more telling about Villaraigosa's political trajectory than the sight of MEChA students protesting the Mayor, an erstwhile MEChA member himself, to demand human rights for immigrants.
Championing corporate education reform
A thorough treatment of Villargaigosa's fanatical participation in the neoliberal project to destroy Los Angeles' public school system would probably require a chapter in a book, or perhaps even several chapters. As mentioned earlier, his mismanagement of PLAS schools have made them a point of criticism from the mainstream media, a subject of ridicule by activists, and even an issue of concern by his fellow corporate reformers. Local education activists have called for the end of PLAS control at Villaraigosa' alma matter Roosevelt High School, and a recent protest by families at Santee High School saw a disgraced Marshall Tuck of PLAS ducking for cover. Yet the failed PLAS experiment pales in comparison to the rest of Villaraigosa's education agenda and policies including: a proliferation of corporate charter schools, the so-called parent trigger, outright attacks on teachers and unions, and a penchant for killing heritage language programs and ethnic studies courses.
In 2008 right-wing fundamentalist Andy Smarick wrote an essay entitled Wave of the Future for the reactionary Hoover Institution sponsored EducationNext journal. Extolling the spurious advantages of market-based schooling, Smarick laid out a road map for bankrupting urban school districts by ever increasing the market share of privately managed charter schools—the end goal to replace public education altogether. [4] Smarick's model has been the objective of corporate education reformers nationwide, and Los Angeles is their archetype. Villaraigosa proudly boasts that the number of charter schools in Los Angeles more than doubled during his tenure. Indeed the number of these institutions grew to 241 during the past eight years. Aside from draining critical finances and other resources from the public school system, charter schools exacerbate segregation, and openly discriminate against children with special needs or other issues like discipline problems.
The corporate charter school chains most promoted and supported by Villaraigosa are some of the worst offenders in the discrimination against the must vulnerable of students. A watershed report by the Office of the Independent Monitor (OIM) for the Modified Consent Decree for LAUSD found that children with disabilities are "significantly underrepresented" at privately managed charter schools. [5] Cynically, the charter school industry's discrimination against special needs students is part of the neoliberal plan, and mentioned explicitly in the aforementioned Smarick essay:
The district, despite educating fewer and fewer students, will still require a large administrative staff to process payroll and benefits, administer federal programs, and oversee special education. With a lopsided adult-to-student ratio, the district's per-pupil costs will skyrocket. [emphasis mine]
Following his stinging defeat to take over the entire district, Villaraigosa began a strategy of stacking the publicly elected school board with privatization minded board members. His grand design led to the formation of the Coalition for School Reform (CSR), a SuperPAC with the sole purpose of ensuring candidates espousing neoliberalism, austerity, and corporate education reform would control the Board of Education. The Mayor had no problem finding like minded candidates to run, and more importantly, like minded contributors to fund them. Arch-reactionaries like News Corp's Rupert Murdoch, creationists including Phillip Anschutz, neoliberal ideologues like Eli Broad, and Villarigosa's privatization mentor Mayor Michael Bloomberg are among the ideologically charged billionaires who have funded the CSR. With no entity able to compete financially with the plutocrat class funding CSR, it had early success electing candidates dedicated to dismantling the public school system, though as of late, voters have been less swayed by CSR's millions of dollars and have elected educators in place of ideologues. [6]
Educator and activist Randy Childs best captured the modus operandi, motives, and mendaciousness of Villaraigosa and the billionaire plutocrats funding his SuperPAC:
In what education historian Diane Ravitch calls the "dominant narrative" of education reform today, buzzwords like "accountability" and "choice" are used as window dressing for a concerted effort to impose corporate management techniques and market-style competition on the education system. Teachers unions and anyone else who dares to disagree with this agenda are invariably accused of being "against reform" and "for the status quo."
These allegations come straight from Bizarro World, where the richest and most powerful people in the U.S. are cast as a plucky band of selfless rebels fighting for the civil rights of poor children of color, while dedicated and overworked teachers who can't afford a house or pay for their children's college tuition are imagined to be the greedy overlords of the old order.
The early success of Villaraigosa's CSR SuperPAC yielded two board members who inflicted considerable damage to public education: Mónica García and Yolie Flores-Aguilar. Hand picked by the Mayor for their disdain of the public commons and working class people, they oversaw an unprecedented period of educator layoffs, school closures, school reconstitutions [7], charter giveaways, and more. Flores-Aguilar, who was unabashedly a Gates Foundation employee while holding her LAUSD seat, introduced a particularly pernicious reform named Public School Choice (PSC). The resolution was crafted in response to the strong push to ever increase charter school market share, and was designed to give away brand new public school facilities away to corporately managed Charter Management Organizations (CMO). The PSC school giveaway project was widely condemned by grassroots civil rights groups and social justice organizations like Association of Raza Educators. CSUN Professor Theresa Montaño's analysis of PSC is spot on:
"The alliance, formed between the mayor, the school board, and Los Angeles' corporate elite to design the idea of "public school choice," is another example of how neoliberal economic policies have influenced educational policies. [8]
Villaraigosa lobbied city wide to push through the PSC giveaway resolution, recruiting help from neoliberal leaning nonprofits funded by the Broad and Gates Foundations, and a city attorney moonlighting as a charter school consultant named Ben Austin, whose wife also happened to be Villaraigosa's political fundraiser. Villaraigosa and Austin held a series of closed town halls to help pass the unpopular resolution. PSC gave millions of dollars in brand new public school facilities away to the corporate charter industry despite concerted resistance by local communities. The partnership between the Mayor and Austin would continue to produce ways to achieve Smarick's plan of privatizing urban school districts, the most virulent being the parent trigger.
The idea of manipulating parents against the rest of the stake-holders comprising the social contract to provide public education isn't new. Variations of that theme have floated in right wing think tanks like The Heritage Foundation and The Heartland Institute for years in support of their voucher, and later charter, school choice schemes. [9] Villaragosa's close ally Austin, who worked so hard to foist PSC on the public, would take that right wing idea and repackage it into one of the most vile corporate education reforms of all time. Initially hired as a part time consultant by the Green Dot Charter School Corporation, Austin was tapped to take over their Los Angeles Parents Union which was left in shambles financially by outgoing director Ryan Smith. To justify the organization's continued existence (read funding), Austin crafted a hybrid idea by taking a page from reactionary think tanks on parent manipulation, market solutions, and so-called school choice, and combined those ideas with the 50% faculty petition provision of the seldom utilized California conversion charter law Green Dot used to convert Locke High School into a privately managed charter. The concept would allow Austin's organization to grow charter market share by merely getting a simple majority of parents to sign a petition. They named this corporate villainy the Parent Trigger. Austin and Villaraigosa unsuccessfully pushed to have the parent trigger included in the PSC process. However, they found a receptive audience with then Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, and State Senators Bob Huff, and Gloria Romero.
Seeing the potential to open a floodgate of growth and revenues for the lucrative charter school industry, Austin's allies managed to get the Parent Trigger (officially the Parent Empowerment Act) passed by the California legislature by one vote. Meantime Austin changed the branding of Los Angeles Parents Union to Parent Revolution, and was appointed by Schwarzenegger to the State Board of Education (SBE) so that he could craft the regulations to be of maximum use to the charter school sector. Even after he was removed from the SBE by incoming Governor Jerry Brown, Austin continued working on the regulations illegally. From the start Villaraigosa crusaded for the parent trigger, and he was joined by fringe right groups including The Heartland Institute, and the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC). Austin's Parent Revolution hosted forums with Heartland, and the parent trigger became ALEC template legislation.
Villaraigosa successfully lobbied The U.S. Conference of Mayors to adopt and endorse the trigger law for use on hapless school communities nationwide. He continues to promote the trigger at every opportunity. An anathema to democratic processes, the public commons, and community building, the trigger has been a highly destructive weapon in the war on public education. Despised on the left and discredited by prominent education experts like Professor Diane Ravitch, even political moderates realize "Triggers Create Nothing but Chaos and Division."
Early in Villaraigosa's career he worked as a paid staffer for United Teachers Los Angeles (UTLA). While it was just a paycheck for him, he's continually tried to leverage that distant past association with unions as cover for what at times seems to be an irrational loathing towards teachers. Truth is he never misses an opportunity to virulently attack both the teaching profession and their working class organizations.
A few years ago at the high profile Public Policy Institute of California, Villaraigosa gave an unhinged speech in which he called UTLA an "unwavering roadblock to reform," "most powerful defenders of the unacceptable status quo," and the "the largest obstacle to creating quality schools." His unfounded and mean-spirited tirade segued into a call to remove basic job protections and academic freedoms from teachers, including seniority and tenure. He also made a renewed call to further tie teacher evaluations to the culturally, racially, and class biased standardized tests that California subjects its public schools students to for a good portion of the of the school year. Villaraigosa's diatribe was so beyond that pale, that a distinguished education expert took exception to it:
And Stanford University School of Education professor Linda Darling-Hammond said she was taken aback by Villaraigosa's reference to eliminating the process in which bad teachers get pushed from school to school. "This isn't just about doing away with the 'Dance of the Lemons,' it is about chopping down the trees that grow bad lemons," the mayor said.
Darling-Hammond said that teachers should be trained and professionally supported to develop skills and good teaching practices. A good orchardist carefully feeds, prunes and cultivates a harvest - and doesn't arbitrarily cut down 10 percent of the trees in the orchard every year, she said.
Villaraigosa's contempt for teachers was also apparent in his unequivocal support of the poorly thought out Reed settlement, instead of calling for an end to teacher lay offs and a return to the sensible and sustainable solutions of the previous Rodriguez consent decree. However, supporting that latter would have addressed the systemic issues underlying schools staffing problems, something Villaraigosa has apparently never been interested in.
One would think the first Latino mayor in nearly 140 years, especially one with Villaraigosa's associations as a young man, would be a champion of heritage language programs and ethnic studies programs. Regrettably that notion would be erroneous. At his PLAS schools, the Villaraigosa's camp callously eliminated the only ethnic studies program at Santee High School and...
The decision to rob Santee's impoverished students of color of their chance to learn about their culture and history follows on the heels of PLAS killing heritage language programs at two of their other schools. Four years ago they banned the Dual Language Program and the Academic English Mastery Program at Ritter Elementary School, and two years ago they banned the teaching of core subjects in Spanish at Roosevelt High School as they had had as a response to the activism of the famous East Los Angeles Blowouts in 1968.
Calls by activists for the Mayor to restore those programs before leaving office were ignored. The disposition of PLAS schools is unknown with a new Mayor in office, and the replacement of Marshall Tuck by Villaraigosa's former Deputy Mayor of Education, Joan Sullivan.
A prominent immigrant rights activist used to always say "show me your friends and I'll tell you who you are." On September 19, 2011 the arch-reactionary American Enterprise Institute (AEI) held an event celebrating Mayor Antonio R. Villaraigosa's role in their brand of education reform. Both Villaraigosa and right-wing fundamentalist Frederick M. Hess spoke at the affair. The function culminated with Villaraigosa being presented [10] with the Champion for Charters 2011 Award. That occurrence pretty much sums up Villaraigosa's education policies in a nutshell. A "progressive" politician would never win an award from the AEI or its allies, much less travel to AEI's Washington, D.C. headquarters to receive it.
It's important we remember Villaraigosa's true allegiance
Los Angeles' largest medical-marijuana-store-and-escort-service-advertisement-supported gossip magazine —LA Weekly— recently published a tawdry account of the outgoing Mayor's extravagant excesses and personal indiscretions. Unsavory as the article paints him, it's safe to say that Villaraigosa would prefer we would reflect on his flamboyant self promotion and opulent lifestyle rather than his actual political record and alliances.
In the final analysis, Villaraigosa has been a faithful servant of the rich and powerful, and his politics in practice have been downright reactionary. Any claims to his being progressive are mythical, and he should never be allowed to run for another office claiming the progressive mantle again. His recent announcement that he will seek the Governorship of California adds to the urgency of true progressives' need to educate our communities on how Villaraigosa's politics have been disastrous for working people, so he isn't afforded another opportunity.
Robert D. Skeels is a social justice writer, public education advocate, and immigrant rights activist. He lives, works, writes, and organizes in Los Angeles with his wife and cats. Robert holds a BA in Classical Civilization from the University of California at Los Angeles (UCLA), and is currently a law student at Peoples College of Law (PCL). A US Navy Veteran, he is a proud member of Veterans for Peace. A student of Liberation Theology and Paulo Freire's work, Robert devotes much time towards volunteer work for 12 step, church, homeless advocacy, and grassroots groups. Robert's articles and essays appear in publications including Schools Matter, CounterPunch, Dissident Voice, Daily Censored, Echo Park Patch, K12NN, LA Progressive, and The Los Angeles Daily News. In 2013 Robert ran for the LAUSD School Board against a billionaire funded corporate reform candidate, finishing second in a field of five, with over 5,200 votes.
[3] Disclosure: I was one of the twenty-some-odd founding members of the SCIC, which was formed on the initiative of prominent immigrant rights activists Carlos M. Montes, Gloria Saucedo, and Jessie Diaz. However, I was inactive by the time that the frequent protests against Villaraigosa began.
[4] The charter school industry has been very effective at marketing their schools as being public. They go as far as to call themselves "public charter schools." The truth is that these unaccountable, privately managed entities with unelected boards have been repeatedly determined by both the courts and numerous other government bodies to be private sector agents. For a concise compendium of information, examples, and links on this see: Charter Schools are NOT Public Schools!
[5] See both the Executive Summary and the Data Tables for the OIM Report. This is just one of many reports confirming the abject exclusiveness and discrimination practiced by the charter sector.
[6] CSR lost a key seat in the 2011 elections to retired teacher Bennet Kayser, and lost two out of three races in the 2013 elections. Professional educators Steve Zimmer and Monica Ratliff beat their CSR funded non-educator opponents. The only CSR candidate to win in 2013 was long time Villaraigosa ally Mónica García (Disclosure: I was the runner up in the five candidate race that García won). Experts like Professor Diane Ravitch are asking Is the Tide Turning Against Corporate Reform in Los Angeles?
[8] Carr, Paul R., Porfilio, Bradley J., Editors. The Phenomenon of Obama and the Agenda for Education: Can Hope Audaciously Trump Neoliberalism?. Charlotte, N.C.: Information Age Pub., 2011. p. 176.
(Montañez's chapter is highly recommended — Obama, Eschucha! Estamos en la Lucha! Challenging Neoliberalism in Los Angeles Schools).
[9] Education author Jonathan Kozol explains the negligible distinction (and symbiotic relationship) between vouchers and charters: 'In the long run, charter schools are being strategically used to pave the way for vouchers. The voucher advocates, who are very powerful and funded by right-wing foundations and families, recognize that the word voucher has been successfully discredited by enlightened Americans who believe in the public sector. So they've resorted to two strategies. First, they no longer use the word "vouchers." They've adopted the seemingly benign phrase "school choice," but they are still voucher advocates.'
[10] The actual award was from the National Alliance for Public [sic] Charter Schools, though the fact they choose AEI as the venue for presenting the award is telling about their politics and who they serve.
![Shame on Refugio "e;Ref"e; Rodriguez and California Charter Schools Association](https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgWY2Zz3nArozhEYReQe2pmDmTGjbh2O4hqE3fF3ZmVHPGVeK3kZm0agJN5oa5-0UN_vE1tM2RNtEBeKFEKw35UOK1RVYxXyDnyFTn6gSLZh0K6R2k_XaaDlJEwmJa8CGYwqB8J/s1600/ccsa-ableism.jpg "Shame on Refugio "e;Ref"e; Rodriguez and California Charter Schools Association")
Robert D. Skeels is a social justice writer, public education advocate, and immigrant rights activist. He lives, works, writes, and organizes in Los Angeles with his wife and cats. Robert holds a BA in Classical Civilization from the University of California at Los Angeles (UCLA), and is currently a law student at Peoples College of Law (PCL). A US Navy Veteran, he is a proud member of Veterans for Peace. A student of Liberation Theology and Paulo Freire's work, Robert devotes much time towards volunteer work for 12 step, church, homeless advocacy, and grassroots groups. Robert's articles and essays appear in publications including Schools Matter, CounterPunch, Dissident Voice, Daily Censored, Echo Park Patch, K12NN, LA Progressive, and The Los Angeles Daily News. In 2013 Robert ran for the LAUSD School Board against a billionaire funded corporate reform candidate, finishing second in a field of five, with over 5,200 votes.
