Congressional action can save the New York Schools
War has finally broken out, on both coasts, over whether profit-driven corporate management entities will seize our urban school districts to run as they see fit. Most dramatic is New York City, where organizational backbone has suddenly appeared in the City Council. People are finally taking a close look at the money flowing OUT of public education, and into the pockets of the edubusiness "philanthropists" and their corrupt toadies. In this Gotham Gazette expose of the "Fund for Public Schools", we see how the Bloomberg administration created a "non-profit" foundation front, which does not need to file financial disclosure statements, submit contracts for bids, or meet public disclosure requirements in its sub-contracts, because it is a supposedly private entity.
I am asking readers to contact congressional representatives with this demand:
The Finance Committee must draft legislation requiring that all "foundations" which are designated to receive the Education Stimulus money be required to file full financial disclosure statements, and that all their subcontractors must do the same, to account for who actually receives the money.
In my previous diary, I linked to a sickening interview in which educational misanthropist Eli Broad makes this boast:
"We’re often accused of having too much influence in education," Broad said. "I’m not sure how you’d restrict that." While foundations and nonprofits are barred by law from getting involved in politics, they might expand their reach by spinning off organizations with a different tax status that allows them to back political candidates and lobby for pieces of legislation, Broad said. He said the Klein-chaired Education Equality Project is considering doing just that.
We should understand that politicians will pay a price for standing up to Broad and his henchmen, just as educators and journalists do. Also, there are serious rewards available for those who cooperate with his agenda. Follow the flickr link to see the Clintons sitting at Broads table, at his Obama inauguration party. Broad is confident that democracy is still helpless against him.
Other New York organizers are working toward a street demonstration on May 14 (you can track them on Education Notes Online
In Los Angeles also, school superintendent Cortines is standing up to a brazen broad powergrab, demanding that the beautiful new public School of the Arts be handed over to him, before it even opens. The remarkable thing about this story is that it is carried in the Los Angeles Times. Stories even slightly critical of Broad generally appear only in obscure independent sites, because he has also had the foresight to buy out the universities and newspapers.
This leads to my final reason for writing tonight:
I am asking you to blog these links, and the others you will find, to the bravest journalists you know. Get this story out there into the mainstream (I think there's a Pulitzer prize in it). Shift the debate away from their fake storyline about "standards" versus lazy kids and teachers unions. When you pull up the layers of fake non-profit "advocacy and research" foundations, you find that, underneath, they are crawling with the same masters of management and governance who brought us the economic collapse.