Major victory over a corporate charter school chain and their trade association

Original post at Robert’s page on Medium.

On Tuesday, March 23, 2021, I got my second big win in court against a charter school corporation. It was also a major victory over their California Charter Schools Association (“CCSA”) trade association, which tried to use the case to carve out immunity to the California Public Records Act (“CPRA”). I represented @DotKohlhaas in the action.

Here was my tweet from the day prior, after skimming through the tentative:

My first win against a corporate charter school was a year ago as third chair in a suit to overturn a wrongful expulsion of a student of color. The Partnerships to Uplift Communities (“PUC”) charter chain (of convicted felon Ref Rodriguez fame) had violated the student’s due process rights. Violated isn’t a strong enough word for what they did. PUC unilaterally changed the charges at the appeals hearing and then branded the child as a terrorist in his permanent record. Under the tutelage of the brilliant partners at the law firm I was a part-timer at the time (I am currently transitioning to full time there), plus sage advice from @DrPrestonGreen, we built a strong case.

It was my argument that the charter corporation never proved specific intent — a crucial element to Ed. Code § 48900.7, as well as PUC’s glaring lack of notice afforded to the student, that saw the court overturn the wrongful expulsion and give the student their life back.

This latest case was a charter trying to hide all its dirty secrets by not complying with the CPRA. The scandal-ridden The Accelerated Schools (“TAS”) charter chain’s leaders absconded when the community started pushing back and started asking questions about union busting.

Michael Kohlhaas dot org sent sent TAS several CPRA requests in 2018, which they ignored (unlawfully). A year later, I filed the petition for writ of mandamus to compel them to produce records. Some ten months later TAS finally sent some records, but claimed “blanket exemptions” on a bunch of other ones.

The good folks at Michael Kohlhaas dot org documented the part when it was decided to continue with the litigation. This was for Hilda, an amazing educator, and all the other people wronged by TAS/CCSA.

An infamous law firm that only represents lucrative, privately managed charter school corporations staked out the position that any communications with the charter school industry’s trade association — the CCSA — was subject to a range of exemptions under the CPRA.

I suppose I can’t blame them. The charter industry — long used to unaccountably spending tax dollars in total secrecy — fought tooth and nail the imposition of the CPRA and Brown Act added by Ed. Code § 47604.1(b)(2)(A). When the statute took effect January 2020, charter school corporations were already looking for ways to skirt the law. At the firm where I’m a junior associate, we use the CPRA for pre-discovery work against charter corporations. Michael Kohlhaas dot org, on the other hand, has used the CPRA to expose some of the ugliest, scandalous conduct by an industry already infamous for scandal. Uncovering the vile Nick Melvoin’s sharing of Los Angeles Unified School District’s (“LAUSD”) confidential legal strategies with their then party-opponent in a lawsuit (the CCSA) was a blockbuster revelation enabled by the CPRA.

Of course, when you start using the sunshine laws on one of the darkest and vilest industries hatched out of the neoliberal project, you’re going to expose a lot of charter school scandals. There’s so many documented here.

Back to TAS claiming blanket exemptions. When I tried to explain the law to them, they responded: “The claim based on your legal analysis that these exemptions do not apply to the records withheld in this matter is incorrect.”

I was a little nervous going into this, but got a great deal of advice from three National Lawyers Guild attorneys who have also represented Michael Kohlhaas dot orgin the past like the incomparable Matthew Strugar, Colleen Flynn, and Abenicio Cisneros. The two former helped me with procedural questions and sample pleadings. The latter provided me argument strategies for my reply brief and gave me the best authority to cite on exemptions (Golden Door Properties, LLC v. Superior Ct. of San Diego Cty., 53 Cal. App. 5th 733, 267 Cal. Rptr. 3d 32, 64 (2020), as modified on denial of reh’g (Aug. 25, 2020))(“Golden Door”). How on point was that case? The Court cited that same case three times in their minute order.

We had already prevailed since the lawsuit caused TAS to produce some records last October, but the dispute over the blanket CCSA exemptions was a proxy political battle. TAS surprisingly claimed exemptions on emails that Michael Kohlhaas dot org had obtained via CPRA from other charter school corporations that had followed the law. Weird hill to die on, but this was the CCSA trying to establish blanket exemptions. The Court ruled that every one of those emails was not exempt! A major win for us.

Also, because we caught TAS in (several) obvious lies, including one where they claimed in one pleading that only a small percentage of documents had been exempted, and then had a high-paid TAS executive claim in their sworn declaration that there were “hundreds of thousands” of records exempted. We pointed out that inconsistency, which led to the court granting our request for a privilege log. Better still, the court used Golden Door to order TAS to produce declarations for each record they claim exempt. While we didn’t get everything we put in our prayer, this was a major victory — especially in regards to the claims for blanket exemptions from the CCSA. I’m sure this isn’t the last time they’ll try this strategy, but at least we can share how to argue against it.

The final disposition will be decided in the summer, but TAS having to produce privilege logs supported by sworn declarations totally justified us continuing to litigate after the settlement offer. Let the corporate charter school industry know that they aren’t going to be able to hide their dark secrets anymore. Here’s a few excerpts from my briefs that probably didn’t sit well with the corporate charter school industry, their CCSA trade association, and their hired mercenaries. ¡La lucha continua!

Screenshots from trial briefs

Lastly, huge shout-out to Michael Kohlhaas dot org. They’re doing the lord’s work. From exposing self-dealing by tax payer funded Business Improvement Districts (“BIDs”), to uncovering some extremely disturbing activities by the Los Angeles Police Department (“LAPD”), to putting the lucrative, corporate charter school industry on notice that the sunshine laws are coming for them, to using the CPRA to protect the most vulnerable in our communities, like I always say: “not all heroes wear capes.”

A Toxic Mess in Cudahy

In November, I drove to South East LA to visit the site where a charter school purchased polluted land to build a new campus.  I made this trip after I had a conversation with Susie de Santiago, an activist protecting her neighborhood in Cudahy.   I wanted to see with my own eyes  twenty thousand square feet of heavy metal and arsenic laced dirt. After I drove around the sweet neighborhood, I was left with a question; why is it always okay for big money to generate toxic messes in non-white communities?

 In September I heard neighbors were concerned that a big monied charter school was moving at breakneck speed in Cudahy. While it was alarming to the community that KIPP, a large corporate charter, would damage the cohesiveness of their small neighborhood, more disturbing was the speed at which the operators were moving. Residents were concerned as to what was being lost with this speed. Was it transparency? Proper civic diligence? Environmental justice? Lack of understanding history?  The activists had real concerns.

Susie de Santiago

A fellow environmental and education activist introduced me to Susie. Over Zoom, we discussed the situation in Cudahy. I noted Susie exhibited something I have seen before when principled people, regular folks with normal, simple lives have to pivot and set personal routines aside to take up a righteous fight. Their moral compass and humility is strong, but their voice is soft. I heard that quiet resolve in Susie as she talked about Cudahy Alliance for Environmental Justice (CAJ) and the toxic land purchased by KIPP.  

Cudahy Alliance for Environmental Justice is a group of parents, teachers, and community activists. Susie explained they were brought together after KIPP bought large parcels on Otis Avenue. Their goal is a  K-12 school with over one thousand students. I shook my head at the thought of one thousand humans in cars suddenly in a neighborhood. But what was even more alarming to the Cudahy Alliance folks was what Susie told me next. “The KIPP property was a former smelting plant”. 

“Like Exide?” I asked. 

She nodded. I sighed.

Smelting plants are dangerous to a community. The melting process sends heavy metals into the air which are blown throughout the area and then fall on the land. For decades, the Exide Battery Plant in Vernon polluted and caused medical issues for the primarily Latino citizens in nearby communities  including Cudahy. If not for former LAUSD Board Member Bennett Kayser, alerted by sparkly rainbow bubbles on gutter water, Exide would still be pumping out pollutants harming innocent citizens.  Board member Kayser had the rainbow water tested in 2013. It was loaded with toxic chemicals. Outside agencies were brought in and Bennett Kayser did what the City of Vernon would not do for decades, call out the toxicity and health risks on the community created by Exide.

Susie told me the chemicals at the KIPP property (Phase 1 environmental report provided to Cudahy) included lead, arsenic, and asbestos.  I recognized them as the same toxic chemicals at Exide. We then talked about the Cudahy City Council meeting on September 15, Susie said they gave KIPP the green light. I asked, “What about public comment?” She said there was little to no community input despite the fact that there were dozens of speakers who wanted to voice their concerns. I saw the tiredness in her face as she continued, “We didn’t get put into the call until an hour later.”

In our Covid Era, city councils are reliant on cyber meetings to conduct business. The activists were admitted late in the meeting, they watched the council vote Yes without real debate or an explanation. The City told them that they had technical issues for admitting them late in the meeting. I was stymied by this answer.  We had been in semi- quarantine for six months by September, a city council should be on their “A” technical game by this point. Additionally, on a matter this great, the city could have delayed the vote until they had robust community input and real discussion. Especially given Cudahy had suffered an environmental injustice earlier this year.  

A view of the site from Otis Avenue.

On January 14, of this year, Delta Airlines Flight 89 bound for Shanghai dumped jet fuel on Cudahy during an emergency landing at LAX. Cudahy residents had high octane aviation fuel land on their bodies, homes, and children in the playground at Park Avenue Elementary. It was a terrible story and deserved more coverage.  There might have been more media attention but for the unfortunate helicopter accident a few days later that killed Kobe Bryant.  Los Angeles and the world went into an understandable mourning and all media went northwest of Cudahy.  

But what about the City Council?  This is hardly the first time that Cudahy residents have been exposed to toxic chemicals and have been abandoned by their City Council.  

Park Avenue Elementary was built in 1968 on Vloadman Dump which had been in existence since 1929. One day in 1990, a toxic sludge bubbled up in the Park Avenue playground. Parents and the community were angered and demanded answers. Park Avenue was shut down, students were sent to other schools and public monies were used to clean up the mess at great cost. Subsequent removal of soils from the site continued for many years. 

Given this history how could the City of Cudahy not pause on this KIPP proposal to build at a  former smelting plant? In an email later I asked Susie if KIPP provided a CEQA (California Environmental Quality Act) report. 

She replied, “KIPP was not required to conduct a CEQA analysis since it was considered a “ministerial project”. I was dumbfounded. A city experiences the chaos of a hazardous school site, a history of toxic air, chemicals oozing up from the ground, petroleum dumped from the air -and no one in the City Council takes a beat before green-lighting a school at a former smelting plant? 

Or is it just a case of big money getting what they want?

Whatever it was, CAJ was not waiting for a wave of common sense to hit City of Cudahy or KIPP, they filed a lawsuit to stop the insanity.  Susie invited me to a zoom where the CAJ was meeting with community members. I knew I needed to see this land called Cudahy prior to the meeting.  

I did a quick research and learned in 1893, Michael Cudahy, a cattle and pork baron, purchased Naudeau Rancho which once belonged to Don Antonio Lugo as part of his Spanish land grant,  Rancho San Antonio.   Lugo’s descendants sold it to Cudahy who used it to hold cattle and pigs before they went to his slaughterhouse on Macy street.  Eventually, he decided the land would better serve Mid Westerners moving to Los Angeles and laid out narrow lots, deep lots perfect for small houses and vegetable gardens.  That land is now Cudahy and along the way it went from a white to Latino community. 

On a warm November afternoon I took Alameda to Florence and drove through the hustle and bustle of Huntington Park.  When I turned off Florence to Otis everything was cozier. There were children on bikes, people heading for a tiny market, a man raking leaves and lots of cars heading towards Florence for the onramp to the 710. I continued South on Otis Avenue until I reached the corner with the huge property. It was impossible to miss. 

The east side is across the street from Lugo Park with its FIFA regulation soccer field. The south side fronts Salt Lake Avenue, a major thoroughfare on an angle adjacent to the Union-Pacific train tracks. On the north side, Olive Street  is where I saw the ghost of Michael Cudahy’s aspirations. The narrow, deep lots had a mixture of houses, both wooden and stucco and multi-unit apartments. Some lots still had fruit trees, perhaps planted by Midwesterners a hundred years ago. I saw a cut-out of a burro leaning against a shed and for a second, I thought, “Is that real?” It was not.

When I checked Google Earth, there were buildings on the property but now there was rubble. I wondered if precautions were taken when the buildings were torn down? Did asbestos go flying in the air and land on the artificial grass of the soccer field? Did it land on the fruit trees?  I took a few photos and then raced home for the meeting.  

The Cudahy Alliance meeting was translated in English and Spanish.  The CAJ folks explained the situation. Neighbors and parents had basic questions about KIPP, the land, the City Council, the toxins and the implications for their children. When the CAJ folks explained what lead does to young bodies you could have heard a pin drop, even on a Zoom screen. 

One Park Avenue teacher spoke with measured and deep emotion about her own fears every time she goes to work for herself and the kids.  Listening to these hard-working teachers answer thoughtful questions from the community was a testament to protective citizens who understand what is fair and equitable versus what has questionable ethics and is self-serving. I noted it was dinner time and the activists probably needed to feed their families but there they were answering questions.

Later I followed up with one of the Cudahy Alliance activists, Aydé Bravo and asked more about KIPP.  She said, “Kipp is a national network of charter schools, it is expanding quickly, and with that they are disregarding safety measures to ensure the health of people in Cudahy.”  

Aydé continued, “I have not seen a cleanup plan by Kipp SoCal Pueblo Unido. Currently, Kipp is not legally bound to clean up the soil although arsenic was found at 200 times the level that is allowed and PCE at double the levels along with many other toxins.  As it stands, Kipp could build their new school on toxic soil and never have to report it.”        

I made a second trip to Cudahy. I wanted to see Park Avenue Elementary and I wanted to ask Susie a few questions. On this trip I took my husband and we drove up and down the streets of Cudahy. He said it reminded him of suburbia Orange County where he grew up. He also noted the traffic and said, “A thousand students and their cars will kill this neighborhood.” 

When we got to Park Avenue Elementary my husband marveled at the height of the wall adjacent to the Los Angeles River. I told him I found images in the LAPL of the river flooding and tearing out Cudahy houses. The periodic flooding was what made this very land so nutrient rich and easy to grow produce I said, “How ironic it would be turned into a dump.”

I pulled up to Susie’s block as the sun was beginning to set. It was nice to meet in person although at a Covid safe distance. Any other time, I think we might have hugged. I asked about her house which looked post war. She said it was built in late 40 or early 50s. I said it reminded me of my childhood home. She and her husband were renters at first but then eventually bought the property nearly twenty years ago. They raised their seven children who all went on to college and it was then we realized my son and her children went to the same magnet high school. We both smiled behind our masks.

The conversation turned back to the KIPP property and I asked about the rubble.  She explained that KIPP tore down the buildings after purchasing the property and she said there were no protective measures  used when they tore them down.  It all happened quickly.  ‘Quick’ is the hallmark of this situation and one of the reasons Susie is on the lawsuit.  Someone had to slow it down.  It fell on this gentle woman who gets nothing for doing the right thing except, I suppose to look in the mirror and feel good about standing up for the righteous fight.  As I got in the car, Susie mentioned that the Mayor of Cudahy lives down the street. I said, “I hope she hears you guys. It will serve her and the community.” Susie nodded, “Yes”. I added, “I’m going to write about this situation”. “Thank you,” she said through her mask. I waved goodbye.

Sunset on Cudahy

As my husband and I were waiting at the stop light on Florence and Salt Lake we both noticed a jet against the orange sky in the west. My husband said that our son, an aviation enthusiast, would love Cudahy, “Don’t you think he would do nothing all day but watch the planes go into final approach to LAX?” The sunset hues bounced on the train tracks, I wondered if these were the tracks that took Michael Cudahy’s hogs to the slaughterhouse. 

The exhaust of a car heading to the 710 wafted in my nose. Studies have shown children’s lead level is elevated if they live near a freeway. How much more lead was added to Cudahy’s children by being downwind of Exide? I thought of KIPP coming into Cudahy.  Would they be like Exide and let others clean up their misguided mess? I saw a man walking down the street, he looked like all the people before him, carving out his life on the land where Don Lugo once rode his horse, where the Tongva earlier hunted their meals. It was a rich land. The jet grew smaller in the sky. My son would know exactly how much fuel was in the tank if he was with us. I sighed then turned to my husband, “Yes, I think he would like Cudahy very much.” The light turned green and we headed home.

Environmental Justice issues in one part of LA does not excuse our responsibility for the injustice even if we live in other parts of the city.

If you wish to help the Cudahy Alliance Environmental Justice go here for their Go Fund Me.

Board Has Wall Street Wolves Guarding LAUSD Henhouse

It’s high time to be paying closer attention to the $14.7b (p. 31) of taxpayer’s money that Covid19 has left in essentially the sole charge of our LAUSD Superintendent, Austin Beutner.

On March 10, 2020 under Covid19, the LAUSD’s publicly elected school board signed over sweeping authority for fiscal and management decisions to Superintendent Beutner, a former investment banker who remarks that the “guiding principle in my career, … is to put myself in uncomfortable positions and take risks.”

The emergency powers relinquished the board’s fiduciary responsibility to stakeholders regarding oversight and regulation, policy and budget, with no sunset date attached. The breathtaking subrogation was to a Superintendent appointed by a former board, chaired at the time by a member charged with and subsequently convicted of felony campaign misconduct, indebted to a different, neoliberal and privatizing ideology of public education.

At next Tuesday’s LAUSD board meeting some more fallout from this power shift will become evident. To date a tremendous amount of emergency spending has been brought to the board as simply courtesy, for ratification rather than actual approval. And the circumstances of this spending is fraught; criticism – even questioning – is awkward at best, difficult in practice. Feeding the hungry during this health and economic emergency is crucial; keeping our community safe is vital. But what happens in the long term? Should permissions for emergency operations be extended to systemic operations?

On the docket (tab 6) for discussion and for waivers of important public-interest oversight mechanisms, is the sale of LAUSD’s central administrative headquarters downtown. Known eponymously for its location at 333 S. Beaudry Ave, “Beaudry” is a building with a history of construction defects and shady real estate deals. LAUSD purchased the building in 2001 under circumstances so fraught as to attract investigation by then-District Attorney Cooley. And in 2017 District staff found “there would be no financial benefit to selling the… building at this time.” The real estate market under Covid19 is uncertain, and downtown office vacancies are climbing. It is hard to envision how the sale or lease-back of this vexed building could be in the best interests of the taxpayer. But under cover of Covid19, the taxpayer has been disenfranchised, represented instead by the former hedge fund manager of distressed assets.

What are distressed assets?

Simply something on the market for below its estimated value. If the seller is under pressure for any of a number of reasons – say, poor cash flow, inability to maintain or repair a property, bankruptcy, or market bubble – a seller might offset a low sale price in exchange for mitigating this pressure – say, via liquid cash, indemnity from repairs, etc.

And the proffering of Beaudry at firesale prices not only follows from complicated current finances resulting in budgets which are good and full even while feeling so fragile as to be on the verge of collapse, but also from an insidious, long-term narration that erroneously undervalues the commodity.

This world of distressed asset (and debt) management is the world orbiting our LAUSD. It is the true major business of local education “philanthropist” Eli Broad (not merely home-building), and it is the world of his favored acolyte, Austin Beutner. It is the world of many of the plutocrats surrounding our District – e.g., Howard Marks and Bruce Karsh and so many other investors from the private distressed assets venture fund, Oaktree Capital, run by the former personal assistant of Eli Broad.

These so-called “vulture capitalists” encircle LAUSD serially. While we arrive at the present day where the curiously-installed Superintendent with zero education experience, now moves to enact the “portfolio plan” long-signaled by Beutner.

As it happens, offering sales and distressed sales of public goods is a well-worn stratagem of Beutner’s. In approximate reverse order there was:

  • Accreting” southern California news outlets for intended privatization and sale (2015). Beutner was fired from his publishing post for this impertinence.
  • More market softening via the City of Los Angeles’ (CoLA) 2020 Commission (2014) cultivating a landscape of doom and distressed selling. A conceptual trap of disruption without solution.
  • Partnering with Eli Broad to purchase and reorganize (2013) the LATimes as a private company. Beutner was promoted following the unsuccessful purchase to Publisher, a job for which he was as supremely unqualified as his subsequent recent appointment to Superintendent.
  • Selling the public LADWP headquarters (2010), another distressed sale proposal quashed by considerable public concern and absence of appropriate conditions.
  • Softening the LA market for development, height and density through forced updating of CoLA’s “Community Plans” (2010). Such atmospherics were enabled through former mayor Riordan’s and then-mayor Villaraigosa’s engineering of a position crafted expressly for Beutner: first deputy mayor of CoLA’s economic and business policy.
  • Partnering with longtime Clinton associate Mickey Kantor and deputy treasury secretary Roger Altman to co-launch the private hedge fund, Evercore (1996), specializing in leveraged buyouts (distressed assets) from out of the personal ash-proceeds of privatizing Russia (below).
  • Participating in the privatization of Russia (1994-96), eventually leading the US Russia Investment Fund, a private investment vehicle backed by the US government – the acme of distressed assets markets.
  • Conducting 16 leveraged buyouts of distressed assets as a 20-something trader at Blackstone Group (1980’s).
  • Meanwhile as prelude to Mr. Beutner’s subsequent mono-focus on the sale of distressed assets he was mandated to protect, was Eli Broad’s own first repeated attempts at a “public” leveraged buyout of the LATimes (2007).

It’s not clear that decentralizing LAUSD’s administration and selling Beaudry is a poor plan. That it was not cost-effective three years past does not make it so today. For example it is now just one year from the time when tax limitations on rental of the building sunset. Cost::benefit analyses change with time.

But along with the proposal is a suggested waiver of public sector rules convening a committee to advise on the use or disposition of District “surplus property”. These are rules meant to protect the public, its money and its trust. It doesn’t help that an additional waiver is requested for a private real estate professional. Public asset management employees are evidently incapable of such a sale in the public’s interest. Or has a combination of inestimable corporate campaign funds, the undue tacit influence of corporatists, and unmitigated emergency powers rewritten some power imbalance on the board irreversibly?

Watch Tuesday’s BOE meeting live at 1pm, 11/10/20, here.

Split Decision on Board Elections Reverses School Board Alignment – EdX News from Election 2020

Seventeen hours from the close of polls in LA County (LAC) leaves a mixed set of results – from polar opposite wins, to hopeful-anticipation.

While 100% of LAC’s precincts have reported partial results, VBM (Vote By Mail) ballots continue to be delivered to ballot counting facilities statewide, including LAC’s Norwalk, where the count is on-going. Updates to LAC counts will not come before the close of day and starting next week, only twice per week.

When registration for delivery of VBM ballots closed last month, 5,709,853 were registered to vote in LAC. Registrations at Vote Centers since that time, including right up through the close of election day, remain unreported.

Continue reading “Split Decision on Board Elections Reverses School Board Alignment – EdX News from Election 2020”

Big money for pro-charter school board candidates, picks George Gascón for DA

Los Angeles’ school district used to have sleepy school board races. But those low budget, pedestrian races – like that for LA County’s District Attorney – are bygones. Between the SCOTUS Citizens United ruling codifying limitless lobbying and independent campaign support, and the ascendency of “school choice” as a stalking horse for privatization of the public sector within the education arena, LAUSD’s school boardroom has become a surrogate battlefield for neoliberalism, public-private partnerships and the leveraging of public goods for private gain.

So, too, it would seem might the race for LAC’s District Attorney (LAC-DA) signal a new incursion on privatization in criminal justice.

And given such a grand ideological tussle, it is little wonder that formerly obscure school board elections of local and narrow interest should have become worth astonishing amounts of money to a select few with special interest in (eg, profit, systemic change, ROI extracted from) the political insurgency. Such an influx could concern underlying motivations surrounding next Tuesday’s LAC-DA race.

Continue reading “Big money for pro-charter school board candidates, picks George Gascón for DA”

Think your vote doesn’t matter? Uneven early voting across LAUSD Districts means it may count more than ever.

Are you wondering whether the vote is effectively all over. Whether so many early ballots have been returned there’s, say, little point still in advocating for Schools And Community First (prop 15)? For community college board members? For Schools local bond measure RR? For your LAUSD BD3 (Schmerelson v Koziatek) or LAUSD BD7 (Castellanos v Franklin) board member?

The TL;DR is Your vote is still needed! Your advocacy is crucial. At best 4 in 5 ballots have not yet been counted as returned. Students are needing their voters’ support.

Who’s already gotten their VBM in? Who votes in the districts electing a school board member?

Continue reading “Think your vote doesn’t matter? Uneven early voting across LAUSD Districts means it may count more than ever.”

“When you find hypocrisy in the daylight, look for power in the shadows”

-Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse, 10/13/20

Senator Whitehouse laid out beautifully on Tuesday the context surrounding Amy Coney Barrett’s confirmation hearings in Washington as the pushing and pulling of ‘actors inside the frame of a puppet theater.’ He argues that not only are outside forces controlling these actors in the main show but they are integral to the narrative of it. And some of the evidence for broadening focus beyond the proscenium is when characters in the drama adopt “the practice of claiming … moral standards or beliefs to which [their] own behavior does not conform”:  hypocrisy.

Just so has Marilyn Koziatek – or the independent expenditure committee (IEC) from which she proudly accepts endorsement of her West San Fernando Valley campaign for school board in the LAUSD3 board district – swerved from insinuation of responsibility for scandals that occurred before his tenure, to antisemitism to anti-LGBTQ and anti-choice bigotry. Schmerelson’s defeated opponent who has endorsed Koziatek, has even hypocritically alluded to Scott Schmerelson’s former republican registration. Meanwhile, swearing brand new allegiance to a political party is precisely the maneuver employed by her endorsed-candidate, Koziatek. The hypocrisy is not without irony, because Koziatek’s unacknowledged switch is in suspicious temporal proximity to her bid for this non-partisan office. Schmerelson’s, on the other hand, is in sharp ethical contrast since in concealing nothing, he has redeemed his revision of four years’ resistance, as ideological repudiation of today’s GOP.

Individual’s campaign contributions reflect ideological, not candidate, loyalty

Table 1 shows contributions to and between these campaigns directly:  from individuals, from PACS (union, individuals and political), and from commercial special interests, as well as government entities (and “unitemized” entries). Individuals with campaign contributions to this set of candidates that totals $500 or below is suppressed in the interest of space; available on request.

Continue reading ““When you find hypocrisy in the daylight, look for power in the shadows””

Outflanking CTA From The Left: How Anti-Racist Demands Are Captured By Privateers

The death of George Floyd in custody of the Minneapolis City Police has roiled our nation. There can be no tolerance of murder, which is all the more abominable at the hands of authority. As citizens everywhere rise – and continue to rise – to protest injustice, and we collectively contemplate systemic and institutional racism, prejudice and bias, our school community reflects these politics and the raising of consciousness in microcosm.

On the last day of its fiscal year, the nation’s largest school district with a democratically elected school board (LAUSD BOE) voted to decimate its school police department (LASPD).

Continue reading “Outflanking CTA From The Left: How Anti-Racist Demands Are Captured By Privateers”

This Week’s Headlines: School’s Out for Summer, How Should It Reopen?, and #DefundTheLASPD

If we thought the 2018-2019 school year was a weird one, we had no idea what this past school year would have in store. It started out normal, and then the virus hit, and two months later people were in the streets asking for the school police to be disbanded.

But the school year is finally over, with classes not scheduled to start again until August 18. In the meantime, Summer school will start next week, The Grab & Go program will continue through the summer, and parents are being asked to take this survey with their opinions on when and how schools should re-open.

Meanwhile, the American Federation of Teachers estimates it will cost $116 billion to open schools safely across the county before a return can be thought about.

Continue reading “This Week’s Headlines: School’s Out for Summer, How Should It Reopen?, and #DefundTheLASPD”

UTLA Calls For School Board To Defund The Police (LASPD)

Yesterday, the United Teachers of Los Angeles (UTLA) Board of Directors voted on a motion demanding that the school board de-fund the Los Angeles Schools Police Department (LASPD), the largest school police department in the country. While the full details of the motion and its reach are not public information as of this writing, UTLA has a long history of supporting major reforms in school policing and the Black Lives Matter movement in Los Angeles.

The vote can be understood as support for the Black Lives Matter protests. Concern for the experience of our BIPOC students everywhere – in our schools and on our streets – has taken over the discourse across the country following the murder of George Floyd and the eruption of police brutality in response to protests.

The UTLA is hardly alone in calling for radical changes, or even a complete abolition, of the LASPD. Groups such as the Community Corporation of South Los Angeles, the ACLU, Black Lives Matter, Students Deserve, and the Labor Community Strategy Center (known for projects such as Taking Action Social Justice Clubs in L.A. High Schools and the Bus Riders Union) have been working for change in how middle and high schools mediate behavioral issues with students for years. And that change would include either de-funding or completely abolishing the school police.

Continue reading “UTLA Calls For School Board To Defund The Police (LASPD)”