Mutual Parasitism: Coronavirus and Charter Virus

When Kevin Huffman left Tennessee after four years of running down the State's public schools the way his ex-wife, Michelle Rhee, did prior to being run out of Washington, DC, Tennessee's teachers and superintendents were overjoyed.  Under Huffman's toxic reign as Commissioner of Education,

[m]ore than 50 superintendents . . . publicly questioned his leadership, several teachers unions expressed "no confidence" . . .; and . . . a group of 15 Republicans . . . called for his resignation.

Many believed that Huffman's poisonous reputation among schoolmen and schoolwomen in Tennessee would guarantee him a leading role in the ongoing efforts by billionaires to monetize and privatize public education.  And sure enough, just like the vastly unpopular Chris Barbic, who mismanaged Tennessee's charter school hothouse, the Achievement School District, before he left under a cloud, Huffman landed a leading role as Partner with City Fund.  

City Fund is generously supported by the same group of oligarchic high rollers who have been working to destroy public schools for the past twenty years:

. . . the [Reed] Hastings Fund, Laura and John Arnold Foundation, the Dell Foundation, and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation were funding the effort. The Walton Family Foundation and the Ballmer Group are also funders . . .

No doubt Huffman is now hoping for a big shipment of federal coronavirus relief dollars to his portfolio of corporate charter schools.  He hints as much in a recent Washington Post op-ed, where he touts Achievement First charter resources as a partial solution to state takeover of Providence, RI schools, just as he celebrates the good work by the Chiefs for Change, who are offering advice to school districts on how to "collaborate" with charter schools during the crisis. Um.

But the real focus of Huffman's op-ed is to remind readers that homeschooling or virtual schooling are dangerously deficient and could do lasting damage.  Underneath this veneer of concern for children is the real fear of damage to the real estate empires and corporate welfare agencies that charter schools represent and enable. 

In fact, Huffman has some advice for what Congress should do in the next round of relief legislation: 

For the next round of stimulus, appropriators could send significant funding to districts and schools with the most low-income students to make up lost instructional time. 

You know, those communities where City Fund is most intent to spread the charter virus, where resistance is minimal and the opportunity is maximal for running roughshod over parents, children, and teachers.

‘People Are Dying’: Battling Coronavirus Inside a N.Y.C. Hospital | NYT ...

CORONAVIRUS RESPONSE: BERNIE ADDRESSES THE NATION

And I

Open Letter to LAUSD Board regarding Citizens of the World Charter School Corporation

A copy of this letter was sent to each individual member via email

March 11, 2020

Dear Members of the Board of Education:

I am an educational rights attorney and law professor here in Los Angeles. I am writing you regarding the Citizens of the World Charter School Corporation (“CWC Corp.”), an alleged non-profit benefit corporation that operates a number of privately managed charter schools authorized by the Los Angeles Unified School District (“LAUSD”).

CWC Corp. is currently trying to occupy a portion of a public school, Shirley Avenue Elementary School, under the provisions of Proposition 39. I will not discuss the myriad flaws, inequities, and attendant problems associated with Proposition 39 in this communication. I do, however, want to ask you to put off any consideration of allowing CWC Corp. to move forward with its hostile occupation of a public school while they have seemingly repeatedly refused to pay their legally obligated bills to LAUSD.

As you know, charter school corporations utilizing Proposition 39 to force their hostile occupations of public schools are obligated to pay over-allocation fees in certain circumstances. CWC Corp. currently owes LAUSD hundreds of thousands of dollars in over-allocation fees. Before allowing them any further opportunities to continue operating in bad faith, LAUSD should collect all payments past due and obtain written assurances from CWC Corp. that they will pay their obligations in the future.

Children in Los Angeles public schools are starved for resources. Our students go without school librarians, full-time health-care professionals, adequate access to services, etc. Meanwhile, just three years ago, CWC Corp.’s Executive Director Mark Kleger-Heine received a staggering salary of over $231,000.00 USD (see CWC Corp.’s 2017 Form 990 Part VII). This disparity of resources is by design, and underlies the purpose of the charter school industry. Public school students go without, while charter school executives collect fat checks.

As a member of the LAUSD Board of Education, I hope you will turn your attention to resolving this matter not only with CWC Corp., but with all of the charter school corporations that are in arrears in their over-allocation fee payments with LAUSD.

-rds

---

Mr. Krugman, Stick to Economics

Paul Krugman won a Nobel Prize in Economics, but he is as dumb as the rest of us about politics--even though his status would never allow him to admit as much. 

The morning after Super Tuesday, he offers this analysis on Twitter:

Of course, it's Bernie's fault that he lost. We know it has nothing to do with the former and current DNC kingpins pulling every lever of power and influence to scare the scared people into voting for Biden. If Bernie were just a little more "magnanimous," rather than uppity and honest--he would have had a chance on Super Tuesday. 

And yet--if there was ever a time that honesty, brutal as it might sound, was required to address the imminence of climate catastrophe and mass extinctions, it is now. That is why the Biden victory yesterday is so utterly sad. Not because he won't beat Trump if nominated--any of the candidates would beat Trump--but because he will beat Trump and have nothing to offer to activate a solution to environmental calamity. 

Biden's mirroring of Wall Street's necrophilous environmental policy will be catastrophic because it will ignore any remaining opening for action that we have during this decade.

If elected, Biden will leave us, then, with no option but to turn the movement that Bernie spawned in the U.S into the most massive guerilla operation of environmental death resistance that has not yet been imagined. 

One outcome is certain; those who persist in the killing will not fare well, regardless of political label.