Today Is Another Election Day In Los Angeles

I can only imagine how low the turnout has been so far. It's the runoff between progressive former teacher Jackie Goldberg and the slick downtown establishment candidate, Heather Repenning. The primary was an overwhelming success for Goldberg who bested 9 other candidates with 48.45%, almost enough to avoid a run-off. The big-money candidate, Repenning, had 13.17%. It should be an easy win for Jackie Goldberg but... is anyone voting today? A charter school-backed superPAC spent $750,000 on advertising for Repenning. People were so annoyed that the unbearable barrage of ads did more damage than good. Polls close at 8pm.

The district, whose 81,000 students in 177 schools are almost 90% Latino, includes Los Feliz, Silverlake, Highland Park, Echo Park, Eagle Rock, Huntington Park, Maywood, South Gate, Vernon and Bell. Goldberg, 74, served on the school board in the 1980s and then went on to serve on both the City Council and in the State Assembly. She is strongly allied with the teachers unions and opposes the further spread of charter schools which, she says, need to be seriously reformed. I don't know if Elizabeth Warren, a former public school teacher herself, is aware of this race or not, but yesterday she sent an e-mail entitled: "In my administration, the Secretary of Education will be a former public school teacher who is committed to public education."

She made the point that "we need to make sure the Department of Education actually works for our students and our educators. I’ll just be blunt: Betsy DeVos is the worst Secretary of Education we’ve seen. She and her team are up to their eyeballs in conflicts of interest. Instead of championing our students, they protect for-profit colleges that break the law and cheat them."

So I’m making this pledge to you: In my administration, the Secretary of Education will be a former public school teacher who is committed to public education.

Let’s get a person with real teaching experience. A person who understands how low pay, tattered textbooks, and crumbling classrooms hurt students and educators. A person who understands the crushing burden of student debt on students and young professionals and who is committed to actually doing something about it.

And our teachers are being crushed right now. Too many have to work another job to make ends meet, are weighed down by student debt, and struggle to teach on shoestring budgets and insulting salaries.

When we fail our teachers, we fail our students-- and we fail our future.

Now, this problem is bigger than Betsy DeVos-- she’s the symptom of a badly broken system. We’re up against powerful forces, and to win, we need big, structural change.

I’ve got a plan for exactly that.

Let’s pass my Ultra-Millionaire Tax and use the money to invest in Universal Child Care and pre-K for all kids.

Let’s use some of that new revenue to raise salaries for all our pre-school teachers to professional level wages-- make them a part of the K-12 teaching corp.

Let’s use more of it to cancel student loan debt for 95 percent of people who have it.

Let’s make it easier to join a union. Unions give teachers-- and firefighters, sheet-metal workers, steelworkers, working people across this country-- more power over the long run. That's good for teachers, good for students, and good for making sure we put the resources we need directly into our schools.

It’s that straightforward: Get the right leadership, invest in our kids, and invest in our teachers.

Oh, and one last thing: Wouldn’t it be amazing to have a former public school teacher in the White House?

We get what we fight for.

Jeff Bryant is also fighting, though not for political office. Yesterday he wrote a piece for Our School, "Why Charter School Proponents Have Lost Many of the Democrats Who Once Supported Them," that is important reading for people interested in the public schools and the attack on them from the right. "The politics of charter schools have changed, and bipartisan support for these publicly funded, privately controlled schools has reached a turning point," he wrote. "A sure sign of the change came from Democrats in the House Appropriations Committee who have proposed a deep cut in federal charter school grants that would lower funding to $400 million, $40 million below current levels and $100 million less than what the Trump administration has proposed. Democrats are also calling for better oversight of charter schools that got federal funding and then closed. This is a startling turn of events, as for years, Democrats have enthusiastically joined Republicans in providing federal grants to create new charter schools and expand existing ones. In explaining this change in the politics of charter schools, pundits and reporters will likely point to two factors: the unpopularity of Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos, an ardent charter school proponent, and teachers’ unions that can exert influence in the Democratic Party. But if the tide is truly turning on bipartisan support for charter schools, it is the charter industry itself that is most to blame."

Dems Divide on Charters

For years, support for charter schools has been the norm in the Democratic Party. The Obama administration dramatically expanded federal support for charter schools with the avid support of Democrats in Congress. A slew of Democratic governors, from Andrew Cuomo in New York to former Governor of California Jerry Brown, have been charter champions.

Candidates in the Democratic Party presidential primary who’ve been highly supportive of charter schools include Senators Cory Booker of New Jersey and Michael Bennet of Colorado and former Colorado Governor John Hickenlooper. Other Democratic presidential contenders who are newer on the scene such as Julian Castro and Beto O’Rourke have connections to charter schools or their supporters. [And then there's Biden's brother, Frank Biden, the top lobbyist for the Charter School alliance. Photo of the two on the right.]

Even in the first year of the Trump administration, as Democrats rejected the education budget put forth by U.S. Secretary Betsy DeVos, they voted with Republicans for the Trump administration’s increase in funding for the charter school grant program.

But the divergence in charter school politics was certainly visible in 2018 elections when Democrats flipped seven governor seats and brought into office new leaders who expressed strong skepticism of these schools. In races for seats in the U.S. House and in state legislatures, the largely uncontested playing field charter school proponents have enjoyed in nearly two decades of elections was thick with formidable opponents who campaigned against an open-wallet policy for charters.

The growing divide over charter schools in the Democratic Party is a reflection of what’s happening among voters. A recent Gallup survey showed support for charters among Democrats eroding from 61 percent in 2012 to 48 percent, while Republican support remained steady at 62 percent over the same five years.

Now candidates in the Democratic presidential primary are taking cautious approaches to talking about charters. When CNN correspondent Jake Tapper recently asked Booker whether he was “part of the charter school movement,” Booker declined to answer the question directly, responding instead that he is for “solutions.” Tapper replied, “It seems you’re reluctant to say you’re part of the public charter school movement.”

What Happened?

Serious analysts of charter school politics can point to multiple factors that are changing alignments.

The drumbeat of reports revealing corruption, fraud, and blatant profiteering in the charter school industry has certainly penetrated the conversation.

News outlets report the legislation proposed by House Democrats was influenced by a recent analysis which found that as much as $1 billion in federal money was wasted on charter schools that never opened or that closed because of fraud, mismanagement, other issues. That analysis, which I coauthored with Carol Burris of the Network for Public Education, urged the department of education to follow through with recommendations from a 2018 federal audit of charters, a recommendation House Democrats have also taken up.

Concerns over widespread charter school corruption have mushroomed as news of scandals have become near-daily occurrences across the country, including from Arizona, Florida, California, Georgia, Nevada, and New Mexico.

Also, teachers who recently walked off the job to protest unchecked charter expansion in Los Angeles, Oakland, West Virginia, and Jefferson County, Kentucky, have helped to shift the politics of charter schools by pointing out that charters, as they are currently conceived and operated in most places, now pose an existential threat to public school systems.

The politics of charter schools have also changed in the African American community. Urban communities of color that were supposed to be the intended beneficiaries of charter schools have now become intense battlegrounds where expansions of these schools are increasingly strongly contested. When prominent civil rights groups including the national NAACP, the Movement for Black Lives, the Journey for Justice Alliance, and the Alliance to Reclaim Our Schools called for a moratorium on the expansion of charter schools and for stronger oversight of these schools, it signaled to Democrats that two of the party’s strongest factions, labor and civil rights groups, have come together on resistance to school privatization.

Charter Schools’ Pogo Moment

But the charter school industry’s worst enemy is undoubtedly itself.

When the whole idea of creating a charter school to serve as a laboratory of innovation for educating special needs students transformed into a movement, and then an industry, the goal changed from a collective effort of local citizens to educate children to become a scourge of low-quality institutions devouring the common good for the sake of its own growth.

While stories of corrupt and low-quality charter schools have become routine in local and national news, the charter industry has continued to argue that government regulation and the ineptness of charter authorizers are the only problems and that there could not possibly be anything wrong with charters themselves.

As numerous research reports continue to reveal charter schools increase segregationof students on the basis of race, income, and ability, the charter industry responded by denying and then ignoring the problem.

“What was once billed as a model for the improvement of traditionally governed public schools,” writes the Washington Post’s Valerie Strauss, “has become a troubled parallel system of privately managed schools with, in many places, patterns of waste, fraud, and segregation.”

In that piece, Strauss includes a lengthy analysis by Burris asking whether charter schools can be rehabilitated and reconnected to their original mission. Her conclusion-- after weighing the frequency and seriousness of scandals, the persistent evidence of discrimination and segregation, and the depletion of public school funding-- is “a resounding no.”

The fact there are numerous charter schools that do wonderful work will continue to provide fodder for charter fans to refute Burris’ argument. But charter schools will be an increasingly contentious political issue-- and deservedly so. In her piece, Strauss points to an observation I made in 2013, that charter school enthusiasts who had concerns about creating good schools had come to a Pogo moment when their search for an enemy had led “to a mirror.” Clearly, six years ago they liked what they saw. Now they’re paying the political consequences for that.

UPDATE: Huge Win For Berniecrats, For The Unions, The Public Schools And For Jackie Goldberg

It wasn't even close. The downtown establishment and charter school shills had their asses handed to them last night when Jackie Goldberg swept to a massive 72-28% win over Heather Repenning.

Angelenos Go Overwhelmingly For The Progressive Over The Establishment-Backed Big Money Candidate

Exactly a week ago, there was an election in Los Angeles to replace a crooked School Board member, Ref Rodriguez, a charter school shill who was forced to resign after a many-faceted financial scandal. (Rodriguez pleaded guilty in July to 5 separate charges involving election fraud, exactly the kind of stuff you would imagine from a charter school lowlife selling out his community.) In last week's 10-person race, voters overwhelmingly chose the most progressive candidate, Jackie Goldberg, who got close to the 50% mark that would have precluded a run-off. Despite the airwaves clogged with $750,000 worth of garbage ads from a PAC supporting Heather Repening, the establishment candidate and the probable run-off contender, Goldberg finished with 15,241 votes (48.45%)-- 489 votes shy of what she needs to avoid a run-off-- to Repenning's 4,144 (13.17%). Graciela Ortiz is right behind Repenning and votes are still being tabulated and it is actually possible that Goldberg could win outright or that she will face Ortiz instead of Repinning. The run-off is May 14.

The district, whose 81,000 students in 177 schools are almost 90% Latino, includes Los Feliz, Silverlake, Highland Park, Echo Park, Eagle Rock, Huntington Park, Maywood, South Gate, Vernon and Bell.

Goldberg, 74, served on the school board in the 1980s and then went on to serve on both the City Council and in the State Assembly. She is strongly allied with the teachers unions and opposes the further spread of charter schools.

According to Los Angeles Magazine, "The seven-member school board is deeply divided ideologically. There are a number of sticking points, chief among them the spread of independent charter schools. There are currently two board members who are fairly sympathetic to the teachers union and skeptical of the charter movement, and three members who are the reverse. In somewhere approximating the middle is the idiosyncratic Richard Vladovic. A Jackie Goldberg victory in May would leave the board balanced on a knife’s edge. She would press for more oversight and more regulations on existing charter schools, and would likely work to stop their spread, although that’s tricky one, since their right to exist (and their right to be located on school district-owned campuses) is mandated by state law.

“I think the biggest battles will probably be in Sacramento,” said Goldberg. “I’m sorry, but there needs to be some reform to charter legislation.”

No matter who wins the special election, the board will be pressing for more money, both from the State Legislature and from voters. One month after the runoff, in June, the district will ask voters to increase their own property taxes by 16 cents-a-square-foot, in order to raise half a billion dollars or so a year and save L.A. Unified from insolvency. The measure will need a 67-percent supermajority to pass, so it’s far from a sure thing. Should that vote fail, then the board’s business would become dominated by the money crunch. Should it succeed, then they may find themselves supervising fights over the spoils, between different unions and factions.

Bernie Endorsed Steve Zimmer For L.A. Unified School District Chairman

At the end of March, L.A. progressive icon Marcy Winograd wrote a guest post about the importance of Steve Zimmer's May 16 school board election-- a week from today. She termed it "a showdown over education privatization and de-regulation [with] voters in the San Fernando Valley, coastal Los Angeles, West Hollywood and Hollywood deciding who controls the Los Angeles Unified School District Board, a 7-member governing body that oversees 900 schools-- some 200 specialized magnets-- with 650,000 students, over 75% students of color. If the billionaire boys club-- Eli Broad, former mayor Dick Riordan, the Waltons of Wal Mart-- have their way, voters will choose a candidate who will carry their water to make 50% of LA’s public schools independent charter schools over the next eight years. Not so fast, fat cats. LAUSD Board President, Steve Zimmer, a champion of the arts, a believer in equity for all, the guy who saved adult education and early childhood education from lethal budget cuts-- the mensch who balanced the budget is running for a third time to stop Broad’s plan to decimate the District by taking over its land while draining it of capital."

Yesterday Zimmer wound up with another progressive icon endorsing him: Bernie. He wrote to his supporters to announce the good news "Senator Bernie Sanders just endorsed our campaign to save public education in Los Angeles! Senator Sanders has a long record of standing up to the corporate special interests. I'm honored that he's joined our fight to stop the 'hostile takeover' of our public schools, in what has become the most expensive school board race in history thanks to outside spending against me by PACS funded by billionaires, and oil and energy executives. [He] is leading the fight in Washington against the Trump administration’s devastating cuts to education. We are going to feel these cuts right here at home. After school programs, summer learning programs, teacher training, and many other vital public education programs and services are all at risk."

A few days ago Marcy formerly endorsed Zimmer and Imelda Padilla, labor and community organizer, both of whom are the endorsed candidates of the LA County Democratic Party, United Teachers of Los Angeles, a union representing 35,000 teachers fighting for the schools students deserve, as well as Our Revolution, a nationwide organization of progressive activists. Steve Zimmer has also been endorsed by LA Mayor Eric Garcetti and California Senate President Kevin de Leon.

"Under Zimmer’s leadership," wrote Winograd, "our school district has increased graduation rates from 54% to over 80%, saved arts education, early childhood education, and adult education from devastating budget cuts, promoted exciting new language immersion and science and technology magnet programs, declared our schools safe sanctuaries from immigration raids, and balanced LAUSD’s budget to earn the highest bond rating. We, progressives, will decide this important run-off election. To protect public education from Trump’s privatization agenda-- more and more charter schools operating behind closed doors, siphoning money from our school district's fixed costs, like electricity and building maintenance, as well as legacy costs, health care and debt service, I ask for your vote for Steve Zimmer and Imelda Padilla for LAUSD School Board. Yes, Zimmer and Padilla will keep the public in public school."

With Trump In The White House, Corrupt Conservatives Get A Shot At Re-Shaping U.S. Education

LAUSD Board President, Steve Zimmer

In many urban centers-- L.A. is one-- the Republican brand is so toxic that it's a real stretch for the party to even run plausible candidates. So the special interests and big money behind the kind of corrupt conservatism that the GOP embodies, finds its way into the campaigns of corrupt conservative Democrats-- the Republican wing of the Democratic Party. In my Assembly District last year, I was mortified to see the charter school billionaires successfully pass a repulsive Republican masquerading as a "moderate" Democratic, Laura Friedman, off on the voters by flooding the district with immense amounts of cash in the form of a deluge of deceitful communications. Today, in the congressional district next door, CA-34, the avaricious developers and predatory charter school monsters are doing the exact same thing-- flooding the airwaves with expensive false ads for Sara Hernandez, in effect, the stand-in for the Republican Party in the congressional race.

Our old comrade-in-arms, Marcy Winograd, has been warning about a similar situation in the elections in the L.A. Unified School District race. DWT readers probably remember Marcy as a brilliant progressive congressional peace candidate who did a great service for America by helping to drive Blue Dog Jane Harman-- a female Joe Lieberman-- out of Congress. Marcy has also served as a delegate to the California Democratic Party and teaches special education students at Venice High School. You can follow her on Twitter @marcywinograd. I asked her to explain why the school board race is so important to progressives everywhere.

Re-Elect Steve Zimmer Tues., May 16th-- Stop the Privatizers’ Hostile Take-Over of the Los Angeles Unified School District
-by Marcy Winograd

You don’t need to jet to DC in a pink pussy hat to flip the bird to billionaires hoping to bankrupt the Los Angeles Unified School District by turning half of the district's schools into union-busting independent charters, siphoning off state attendance funds to run a private crap shoot with public dollars.

A showdown over education privatization and de-regulation is set for Tuesday, May 16th, when voters in the San Fernando Valley, coastal Los Angeles, West Hollywood and Hollywood will decide who controls the Los Angeles Unified School District Board, a 7-member governing body that oversees 900 schools-- some 200 specialized magnets-- with 650,000 students, over 75% students of color. If the billionaire boys club-- Eli Broad, former mayor Dick Riordan, the Waltons of Wal Mart-- have their way, voters will choose a candidate who will carry their water to make 50% of LA’s public schools independent charter schools over the next eight years.

Not so fast, fat cats. LAUSD Board President, Steve Zimmer, a champion of the arts, a believer in equity for all, the guy who saved adult education and early childhood education from lethal budget cuts-- the mensch who balanced the budget is running for a third time to stop Broad’s plan to decimate the District by taking over its land while draining it of capital. Challenging Zimmer in the run-off is “Pick Nick” or the billionaire boy’s pick, Nick Melvoin, an attorney who taught for a minute in Watts until he lost his job during the recession, sued the District over its “last hired, first fired policy”, participated in a settlement, then offered to testify again in another expensive lawsuit against the District, (Oh, suing the District is so much fun, isn’t it?) this time unsuccessfully challenging its seniority commitment to get a thumbs down and cold shoulder in the Court of Appeal.

For the privatizers, it’s all about choice. I agree. Under California law, charter schools can choose to blow off much of the state education code, like caps on administrative salaries, requirements that teachers receive certification in teaching English learners, textbooks for all core academic subjects, third party vendor rules designed to thwart favoritism and corruption, and requirements that school boards be elected, not self-selected. Also in the choice column is the privatizers’ legal right to choose to plop their independent charter school on an existing public school’s property, booting public school teachers out of their classrooms to become rovers, sprinting between bells to make it to the next classroom.

According to the United Teachers of Los Angeles, independent charter schools already owe the larger district almost a half-a-billion dollars in unpaid or partially paid rental and oversight fees the District sorely needs to cover fixed district costs, such as electricity and building maintenance, as well as legacy costs; health care and debt service. To add insult to injury, an LAUSD report (2016) of the Budget, Facilities and Audit Committee, says charter schools serve disproportionately fewer severely disabled students and spend over seven times less on educating those same students.

Surely, Trump's Education Secretary Betsy DeVos-- a cheerleader for charter schools and vouchers-- will be eyeing the run-off, for as goes Los Angeles, the second largest school district in the US behind NYC, so goes the rest of the nation in the rocky terrain of education reform – or rip-off. First came the charters with their uneven-- some good, some horrific-- performance, then came the vouchers, and then came the bundlers on Wall Street, selling taxpayer-subsidized education coupons as derivatives that, like the fancy mortgage investments that went belly-up, will soon be worthless when the fly-by-night voucher-recepients shutter their schoolhouse doors after stashing their profits in a Swiss bank account.

Zimmer says he wants a robust public education system; Melvoin writes he wants a hostile take-over of LAUSD. Trump’s man Steve Bannon would call that "administrative deconstruction." Sounds more like plain old destruction.

Don't vote for the billionaire's pick. Vote for the people's educator. Re-elect Steve Zimmer on May 16th.

Resisting DeVos-- The 2017-18 School-Board Elections

-by Alice Marshall

In order for DeVos to carry out her plan to destroy public education she has to have thousands of collaborators. Therefore we must act to deprive her of collaborators. School boards and state legislatures are the first fields to be worked. (I prefer agricultural metaphors to sports and war metaphors, because agricultural metaphors emphasize the cumulative effect of grassroots political action.)

We need to elect school board members who are entirely committed to public education and reject the failed model of charter schools and privatization. Unfortunately, even at this late date there are Democrats who support charter schools. (Fortunately not a single Democrat in the Senate backed Trump's nomination of DeVos, not even long-time charter school advocate Cory Booker.) We need to replace them with candidates who are committed to public education. DeVos will use all the considerable levers of power the Department of Education offers to coerce local officials to go along with her train wreck schemes, so we need to elect candidates who are ready for a fight.



School board races are usually non-partisan; that is political parties do not field candidates but do make endorsements, which comes to the same thing. If you are a member of your local Democratic committee, and you live in a jurisdiction which is having a school board race, NOW is the time to question potential candidates about their commitment to public education and their opposition to charter schools. NOW is the time to examine their records to judge whether their promises match up with their past actions.

It is important to keep in mind that school board elections are very low turnout affairs. On the one hand this means that low income voters are unlikely to vote in school board elections. On the other hand it means that local activists can make a disproportionate impact on an election. The 1999 Hunter Mill Board of Supervisor's race in Fairfax County is a perfect illustration of this. In 1999 Cathy Hudgins, an African American Democrat, challenged Bob Dix, the white Republican incumbent. The Hunter Mill district (Vienna, Reston, and Herndon, Virginia) is overwhelmingly white, there are just a few black precincts, and a few precincts that are majority immigrant. There were no state wide races in 1999, so there was very little press coverage and very little awareness about the race. Dix raised $320,000, Hudgins succeeded in raising only $80,000. Yet Hudgins won. How? By recruiting a team of volunteers who knocked on every door in Democratic precincts and succeeded in identifying those Democrats who lived in Republican precincts and turning them out to vote. Hudgins also benefited from a voter registration project that targeted all the low rent garden apartment complexes in the district. In this sort of race, just registering and additional hundred Democratic voters across such a district is the difference between victory and defeat.

This illustrates the tremendous power of precinct captains in a low turnout election. The power to shift just a handful of voters is the difference between victory and defeat. You don't need much money. All you need is a decent walking list, conscientious volunteers, and campaign literature to hand out.

Winning the school board races THIS year will have an out-sized impact on the 2018 elections. We can demonstrate that charter schools and privatization are politically radioactive. We can also change expectations about which congressional districts are “winnable.” If the charter schools candidates go down in flames, progressive congressional candidates running in those districts will have an easier time attracting donations and volunteers.

33 states have jurisdictions with school board elections coming up. Of these, 26 are also electing governors-- Alabama, Alaska, Arkansas, California, Cororado, Connecticut, Georgia, Idaho, Illinois, Iowa, Massachusetts, Minnesota, Nebraska, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, Ohio, Oklahoma, Oregon, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, South Dakota, Texas, Virginia, Wisconsin). If we are to stop voter suppression we need to elect governors who will protect voting rights. Trump, Pence, Bannon, Ryan and the Republican party have made it clear that voter suppression is their preferred tool to cling to power. If we are to protect voters, we must do it at the state level.

Campaigning for progressive school board candidates will have a synergistic effect of bumping up the vote for the Democratic gubernatorial candidates. Usually, the top of the ticket leads the other candidates. But from  a precinct captain's point of view it is the other way around. Someone supporting a Democratic gubernatorial candidate might or might not know who to support for school board, but anyone sufficiently informed to have an opinion about school board will almost certainly vote in the governor's race. Pushing up from the bottom of the ticket is an extremely effective tactic to drive up the vote for the entire ticket.

My book, The Precinct Captain's Guide To Political Victory, is chock full of ideas how to push up the vote in these low turnout election. Buy it at the DownWithTyranny online bookstore.