Video Available Of August 29, 2019 Accelerated Schools Board Meeting — Protestors Speak Powerfully In Support Of Hilda Rodriguez-Guzman — Fired By The Board For Insubordination — Which Equals Saying Something True On The Radio — All White Board Credibly Accused By Activist Beverly Roberts Of Lacking Diversity — Demonic White Supremacist Nightmare Marionette And Board President Juli Quinn Not Only Won’t Explain She Says She Doesn’t Have To Explain — Later She Mentions Board Member Binti Yost — Who Has Darkish Skin And Therefore Evidently In The Mind Of Juli Quinn Counts As “Diversity” — And Says “We do have some diversity on the board, unfortunately they’re just not here” — And Then Explains How They Want To Have Parent Reps On The Board — But They Will Have To Be Trained All Summer To Be “More Verbal And Able To Assist Us On The Board” — Because Juli Quinn Is A White Supremacist — And This Is Less Than Ten Minutes Out Of Three Freaking Hours Of Video

August 31, 2019 Mike Leave a comment

I went to my first board meeting of The Accelerated Charter Schools last Thursday, and what a freaking horror show it turned out to be. Here’s the video, almost three damn hours of it, on YouTube and also on Archive.org for ease of downloading.¹ The meeting started out with a series of moving public comments in support of Hilda Rodriguez-Guzman, unceremoniously and unjustly fired by TAS last month in retaliation for her activism. Here’s my Twitter thread on that with links to some comments, and it is well worth watching the whole thing, which starts here.

In particular, though, see this comment by community activist Beverly Roberts, who wants to know why the board members present are all white when they’re running a school in South Los Angeles. She waits for an answer until the point where Juli P. Quinn, president of the board, who has a guilty conscience and a bad case of demonic possession, just seething with anger, with privilege, with rage at Roberts’s insubordinance, tells her out freaking loud that “this is public comment, we don’t need to respond.” The protest essentially lasted for the first half hour of this interminable meeting, ending with this exceedingly dramatic exit.

But the meeting went on for more than two hours after that. And as tedious as it was it was nevertheless filled with revelations.² And there are far, far too many for one post, as usual, so I’m going to have to lay it on you in increments. Today’s episode has to do with surprisingly life-like horrible white supremacist nightmare marionette³ Juli Quinn and her understanding of race in the context of her position as an affluent white president of an affluent white board of trustees in charge of a publicly funded private school located in a decidedly non-affluent, non-white community and whose student body is more than 98% Latinx and African American and pretty much 100% on free or reduced lunch.⁴ Continue reading Video Available Of August 29, 2019 Accelerated Schools Board Meeting — Protestors Speak Powerfully In Support Of Hilda Rodriguez-Guzman — Fired By The Board For Insubordination — Which Equals Saying Something True On The Radio — All White Board Credibly Accused By Activist Beverly Roberts Of Lacking Diversity — Demonic White Supremacist Nightmare Marionette And Board President Juli Quinn Not Only Won’t Explain She Says She Doesn’t Have To Explain — Later She Mentions Board Member Binti Yost — Who Has Darkish Skin And Therefore Evidently In The Mind Of Juli Quinn Counts As “Diversity” — And Says “We do have some diversity on the board, unfortunately they’re just not here” — And Then Explains How They Want To Have Parent Reps On The Board — But They Will Have To Be Trained All Summer To Be “More Verbal And Able To Assist Us On The Board” — Because Juli Quinn Is A White Supremacist — And This Is Less Than Ten Minutes Out Of Three Freaking Hours Of Video →

LAUSD

Galaxy-Brained GANAS Academy Charterscammer And Founder Sakshi Jain Kicked Off Her Co-Location Conspiracy In August 2018 With $325K From The Walton Family Foundation — And Immediately Commenced To Pay Herself Thirteen Freaking Thousand Dollars A Freaking Month — Probably Including Benefits — Add That To The $63K For Recruitment And Consulting — And The $15K For Lawyers — And It’s No Wonder She Burned Through A Quarter Of A Million Damn Dollars In Just Eleven Freaking Months — And There’s Not Even A Damn School To Show For It — Oh And Also It Was On June 26 2019 That She Informed LAUSD That Her School Would Not Be Opening In 2019 — But Recall That She Didn’t Tell Parents Until July 12 — Stealing More Than Two Weeks From Their Planning Time

August 30, 2019 Mike Leave a comment

I just got a small set of records from everybody’s favorite star-crossed charter school horror show, that is to say GANAS Academy. The set is woefully incomplete, and it’s pretty clear that Sakshi Jain is lying to her lawyer about it yet again, but nevertheless there is some essential material in there, and you can browse through the whole pile of it over here on Archive.Org.

And by far the most important material in here is GANAS Academy’s general ledger in MS Excel format⁵ along with monthly bank statements through June 2019. The ledger shows every credit and every debit from the inception of the school in August 2018 with very detailed descriptions. The story kicks off with a $325K grant from the Walton Family Foundation, deposited in the California Credit Union on August 11, 2018 as shown on that month’s bank statement and it’s all downhill from there.

In September 2018 she began paying herself $13K per month, as shown in that month’s statement and this continued at least through June 2019, which is the last monthly statement I have.⁶ But like I said, the real action is found in that ledger. It’s there that we learn that the $325K Jain has been burning through came from the Waltons. That she spent about $63K on recruiting students, which no doubt includes the $850 per kid bounty she paid her recruiter. And last but never least $15K to charter school contract killer law firm Young, Minney, and Corr.⁷

So that, friends, is the charter school innovation laboratory model. Get a ton of free money from an appalling gang of zillionaires and proceed to burn through it at an astonishing rate. A quarter of a million dollars between August 2018 and June 2019.⁸ And at the end, you don’t even have a damn school. Although I will say that given the horrific nature of these schools, the world is clearly better off having her spend all that money and not start a school than otherwise.

Oh, and recall that Jain didn’t publicly announce that her school wouldn’t open this Fall until July 12, 2019. I previously proved that she knew as early as July 1 that she wasn’t going to open but didn’t tell the parents of enrolled students, the people who needed to know as soon as possible.⁹ But evidence from this set of records proves that in fact Jain knew as early as June 26, 2019 that she would not open.

That’s the day that LAUSD received her “Back Out Letter”¹⁰ according to this letter to Jain from Jose Cole-Gutierrez, chief boss of LAUSD’s Charter School Division. So that’s an extra four days that Jain cheated the parents out of for purposes of figuring out what they were to do with their children in the Fall. Bad, irresponsible, selfish, but, sadly, not surprising. And read on for a transcription of Cole-Gutierrez’s letter and some screenshots from that ledger in case it’s hard to read on your phone or whatevs!
Continue reading Galaxy-Brained GANAS Academy Charterscammer And Founder Sakshi Jain Kicked Off Her Co-Location Conspiracy In August 2018 With $325K From The Walton Family Foundation — And Immediately Commenced To Pay Herself Thirteen Freaking Thousand Dollars A Freaking Month — Probably Including Benefits — Add That To The $63K For Recruitment And Consulting — And The $15K For Lawyers — And It’s No Wonder She Burned Through A Quarter Of A Million Damn Dollars In Just Eleven Freaking Months — And There’s Not Even A Damn School To Show For It — Oh And Also It Was On June 26 2019 That She Informed LAUSD That Her School Would Not Be Opening In 2019 — But Recall That She Didn’t Tell Parents Until July 12 — Stealing More Than Two Weeks From Their Planning Time →

Homeless Issues, Los Angeles City Government, Public Records Act Pragmatics

How I Finally — For Only The Second Freaking Time Ever — Got Advance Notice Of Some Homeless Encampment Sweeps From LA Sanitation Via The Public Records Act After Three Long Years Of Fighting With Them About It — And How They Told Me That I Couldn’t Look At The Next Day’s Schedule But Only Today’s — So I Showed Up At The Public Works Building This Morning At 7 AM And Eventually Did Get To See The Schedule — Which Is A Huge Breakthrough! — But It Also Became Clear That They Have Not Been Fully Honest In Their Claim That The Schedules Aren’t Produced In Advance — So The Next Phase Is To Get The Next Day’s Schedules Each Afternoon

August 30, 2019 Mike 1 Comment

I have been trying to use the California Public Records Act to get advance notice of homeless encampment sweeps for three years now. After a few months of arguing with LA Sanitation, in 2016 I actually managed to get a schedule one day in advance. I went out and filmed the whole thing, but then the City went back into full metal obstructionism and refused to hand over another advance schedule.

So I’ve been pushing them on it since then without making much progress. I did, however, get them to agree in principal that some of the records containing advance info about scheduled sweeps was not exempt from production. However, and frustratingly, this did not lead to my actually gaining access to schedules in advance. But in June of this year a lawyer, Michael Risher, agreed to help me out, and he evidently acted as a catalyst.

He wrote them a demand letter and they dragged their feet and dragged their feet but eventually did make various concessions, although still did not produce. One thing led to another, and we came to the conclusion that I would need to go to the Public Works Building in person and demand to see the schedule. I gave Sanitation notice that I would show up this morning at 7 am to look at today’s confirmation sheet.¹¹ I showed up as promised, and after about 15 minutes of confusion with the guard, she let me go upstairs.
Continue reading How I Finally — For Only The Second Freaking Time Ever — Got Advance Notice Of Some Homeless Encampment Sweeps From LA Sanitation Via The Public Records Act After Three Long Years Of Fighting With Them About It — And How They Told Me That I Couldn’t Look At The Next Day’s Schedule But Only Today’s — So I Showed Up At The Public Works Building This Morning At 7 AM And Eventually Did Get To See The Schedule — Which Is A Huge Breakthrough! — But It Also Became Clear That They Have Not Been Fully Honest In Their Claim That The Schedules Aren’t Produced In Advance — So The Next Phase Is To Get The Next Day’s Schedules Each Afternoon →

Lawsuits, Los Angeles City Council, Public Records Act Pragmatics

City Of Los Angeles Concedes Defeat In My California Public Records Act Petition Based On Cedillo Staffer Mel Ilomin’s Wildly Unsupportable Exemption Claims — They Settled Up And Paid $4,720 In Fees And Costs — It Seems To Me Personally That It Would Be More Efficient Just To Follow The Damn Law From The Get-Go — Rather Than Paying $5K Every Time Some Council Staffer Feels Like Throwing His Toys From The Pram — But I Am Willing To Admit That I Have Zero Experience In Running Major Cities — So Perhaps This Loss Is A Net Win For The City In Some Inscrutable Way That We Amateurs Have No Hope Of Unscrewing — Concluding With An Unscientific Postscript On What Bethelwel Wilson’s Petulance Reveals About Some Ad Hoc Bullshit CPRA Obstructionism That Mike Dundas Made Up One Time

August 29, 2019 Mike Leave a comment

Recall that in June of this year I was forced by the utterly indefensible intransigence of Gil Cedillo staffer Mel Ilomin, who would persist in his bizarre claims that some emails between his office and LAPD were exempt from production under the California Public Records Act, to file a writ petition seeking to enforce my rights under that hallowed law. And less than a month later the City caved and produced a bunch of emails.

Which, as you may know, makes me the prevailing party which, as you also may know, means that the City must pay my attorney’s fees and the court costs, which they just recently did to the tune of $4,720, and here is a copy of the settlement agreement laying out the terms.¹² And one of the tragic aspects of this basically silly little case is that they have not mended their ways in the least. City offices continue to make totally bogus exemption claims for which the only remedy is another suit. And if that’s what the City wants, well, I’m not going to be the one to disappoint them.

Oh, yes, the interesting thing about that settlement!¹³ So the CPRA imposes various duties on local agencies, local agency being something of a term of art in CPRA-ology¹⁴ meaning “entity subject to the CPRA.” Like for instance, when a local agency receives a request, the local agency must respond in ten days.¹⁵ And when a local agency once releases some records to any member of the public, then by law the local agency has thenceforth and for all time waived the possibility of claiming exemptions and must therefore release that same record to anyone who asks for it.¹⁶ Continue reading City Of Los Angeles Concedes Defeat In My California Public Records Act Petition Based On Cedillo Staffer Mel Ilomin’s Wildly Unsupportable Exemption Claims — They Settled Up And Paid $4,720 In Fees And Costs — It Seems To Me Personally That It Would Be More Efficient Just To Follow The Damn Law From The Get-Go — Rather Than Paying $5K Every Time Some Council Staffer Feels Like Throwing His Toys From The Pram — But I Am Willing To Admit That I Have Zero Experience In Running Major Cities — So Perhaps This Loss Is A Net Win For The City In Some Inscrutable Way That We Amateurs Have No Hope Of Unscrewing — Concluding With An Unscientific Postscript On What Bethelwel Wilson’s Petulance Reveals About Some Ad Hoc Bullshit CPRA Obstructionism That Mike Dundas Made Up One Time →

LAUSD

Judge Beckloff Signs Judgment Granting Writ Of Mandate In Our California Public Records Act Petition Against The Chinatown BID — This Puts His Earlier Order Into Force And Gives The BID 30 Days-Ish To Produce The Damn Records — But I’m Guessing They Will Ignore This Too — So We Will See What Happens!

August 24, 2019 Mike Leave a comment

The latest development in the ongoing saga of Katherine McNenny’s and my California Public Records Act suit against the Chinatown Business Improvement District is that the judge signed a judgment granting our petition for a writ of mandate.²² You can get a copy here on Archive.Org.²³ This gives the BID 30 days to comply, and we shall certainly see what happens.

Note that the signing of this judgment is not unexpected news, as we prevailed in court last month, but without this step, putting last month’s order into force, there’s no way to compel the BID to comply, which it seems pretty clearly is going to be necessary since they have shown no signs of being willing to comply in the absence of compulsion.

Without the excellent and relentless work of our lawyers, Abenicio Cisneros and Anna von Herrmann, by the way, none of this would have happened. Cisneros has also blogged about the victory from the lawyerly point of view, absolutely worth reading. Stay tuned for further developments.
Continue reading Judge Beckloff Signs Judgment Granting Writ Of Mandate In Our California Public Records Act Petition Against The Chinatown BID — This Puts His Earlier Order Into Force And Gives The BID 30 Days-Ish To Produce The Damn Records — But I’m Guessing They Will Ignore This Too — So We Will See What Happens! →

Homeless Issues, LAPD, Los Angeles City Government

Emails From The Los Angeles City Attorney’s Office Reveal The Existence Of Pilot Programs To Handle Homeless Encampments — Known As Operation Please Follow The Rules — (Not Making That Up) — That Literally Condition Provision Of Social Services On Taking Tents Down During The Day — Featuring The Direct Participation And Complicity Of Private Social Service Providers — Cornerstone And The People Concern — In This Project — Actually Agreeing To Withhold Services From Noncompliant Homeless People — And To Tell LAPD Who’s Compliant And Who’s Not — So That LAPD Can Arrest Noncompliers — And These People Wonder Why Everyone Lies To Them — Why Nobody Trusts Them — It’s Pretty Obvious Why

August 22, 2019 Mike Leave a comment

Services Not Sweeps is a coalition of dozens of Los Angeles area community organizations who are working for, among other things, the removal of LAPD from all City street cleaning initiatives. There are many reasons for excluding law enforcement officers from encampment cleanups. Police arrest people or do worse to them. The threat they represent, the linking of that threat with the service providers present, cannot help but discourage homeless residents from cooperating in the cleaning process, from taking advantage of the offered services.

Arresting people who are already suffering by being forced to live on the streets destroys any trust the arrestees, their families, their neighbors, might have had in the good intentions of the system. It destroys what might be left of their dignity. It is a bad, bad thing. These encampment sweep teams include not only LAPD, but LA Sanitation workers and other City officials, and the Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority is tasked with pre-sweep outreach. Outreach, at least ideally, consists of offering various social services to the encampment residents and, in theory, helping them take advantage of whatever help is available to them.

And I wasn’t previously aware of this fact, but it turns out that at least sometimes the City invites private social services organizations to be part of the encampment sweep process. Two such groups are Cornerstone and The People Concern. These organizations’ websites, well, they hit all the right notes. E.g Cornerstone talks up “clients develop[ing] trusting relationships with counselors” and TPC is all about “build[ing] self-sufficiency, restor[ing] dignity and help[ing] our vulnerable neighbors become contributing members of the community”.

But these laudable ideals are belied by the fact that at least on some occasions both of these groups have been complicit in pilot programs, organized by the City Attorney’s office, that attempt to coerce people living in encampments into taking their tents down during the day by actually “making services dependent on following this rule” and, with the blessing of the LAPD, immunizing them from arrest if they complied by taking down tents when told to do so.

These programs were evidently started because, in the thoroughly idiotic and offensive words of Assistant City Attorney Tamar Galatzan, “everyone was getting frustrated that the homeless people were telling outreach one thing and LAPD another”. And in its inimitably totalitarian style the City Attorney seems to have called these programs “Operation Please Follow The Rules”.

It’s certainly difficult enough to gain the trust of people who, forced by circumstances beyond their control to live in encampments on public sidewalks, have seen their lives devalued by society, have been repeatedly abused and betrayed, criminalized and infantilized. And yet without gaining their trust it’s impossible to help anyone, no matter what their housing circumstance.

It’s easy to see what the City gets from the complicity of these private agencies, but it’s impossible for me to understand what the agencies get from it. Which is why I don’t explain these stories, I just tell them. And this one is told through a bunch of emails I got recently from the City Attorney’s office. Read on for details and transcriptions!
Continue reading Emails From The Los Angeles City Attorney’s Office Reveal The Existence Of Pilot Programs To Handle Homeless Encampments — Known As Operation Please Follow The Rules — (Not Making That Up) — That Literally Condition Provision Of Social Services On Taking Tents Down During The Day — Featuring The Direct Participation And Complicity Of Private Social Service Providers — Cornerstone And The People Concern — In This Project — Actually Agreeing To Withhold Services From Noncompliant Homeless People — And To Tell LAPD Who’s Compliant And Who’s Not — So That LAPD Can Arrest Noncompliers — And These People Wonder Why Everyone Lies To Them — Why Nobody Trusts Them — It’s Pretty Obvious Why →

Los Angeles City Council

Council District 8 Rep Marqueece Harris-Dawson Has A Private Gmail Account That He Uses To Conduct City Business — And His Chief Of Staff Solomon Rivera Uses City Resources To Arrange For Harris-Dawson To Purchase Rams Tickets — Straight From Joe Furin — The General Manager Of The Coliseum — And A Bunch Of Other Interesting Emails From CD8!

August 20, 2019 Mike Leave a comment

Council District 8 representative Marqueece Harris-Dawson has a private Gmail account at mharrisdawson@gmail.com that he uses to conduct official business. In this practice he is, sadly, not at all alone. Earlier investigations have revealed that at least four other City Councilmembers and one high-ranking LAPD officer use private email addresses in this way:

★ Mitch O’Farrell
★ David Ryu
★ Gil Cedillo
★ Greig Smith
★ Cory Palka

I learned about this from this June 2016 email conversation between Harris-Dawson’s chief of staff Solomon Rivera, his senior field deputy for Baldwin Hills and surrounding areas Dina Andrews,²⁴ and Harris-Dawson himself at the Gmail address. This email, by the way, is part of a small but juicy set I got today from Rivera. You can browse the whole thing here on Archive.Org.

The subject matter of this particular email isn’t that interesting.²⁵ It has to do with former actor Bennett Liss trying to get Harris-Dawson to be interviewed for a documentary directed by Liss’s son about how to cure homelessness by selling the backs of freeway signs for advertising.²⁶ But what is of the utmost interest, of course, is that Andrews doesn’t use an lacity.org email address to communicate with Harris-Dawson. Instead she uses his Gmail address.

The use of private email addresses by public officials is a shameful and secretive practice, and ought to be, if it isn’t already, illegal. Fortunately the 2017 California Supreme Court opinion in City of San Jose v. Superior Court held that such emails were public records, no matter what kind of account they’re in or device they’re on,²⁷ but in order to apply that holding it’s necessary to find the accounts in the first place. I have found a bunch of them, but it’s painful and time-consuming work.

Bunches of creepy Trumpian fascists are rightly and regularly criticized in the national press for exactly the same practice, and yet, at least so far, this is a complete nonstory in Los Angeles.²⁸ And this is far from the only interesting item in this set. Just for instance, there’s a conversation between Rivera and Joe Furin, general manager of the Coliseum, and Sherry Caldwell, the Coliseum’s director of ticketing, trying to arrange for a pair of Rams tickets for Harris-Dawson to purchase at $255 each. Oh, and after all the talk, Harris-Dawson doesn’t even end up wanting the tickets!
Continue reading Council District 8 Rep Marqueece Harris-Dawson Has A Private Gmail Account That He Uses To Conduct City Business — And His Chief Of Staff Solomon Rivera Uses City Resources To Arrange For Harris-Dawson To Purchase Rams Tickets — Straight From Joe Furin — The General Manager Of The Coliseum — And A Bunch Of Other Interesting Emails From CD8! →

Homeless Issues, LAPD

Anti-Homeless Vigilantism Proponent — Associate Of Heavily Armed Thugs — And Fascist Street-Fighting Beerhall Hooligan Cosplay Enthusiasts — Joel Glucksman — Who Jokes In Public About Tasing Human Beings Before The Police Show Up — See This Terrorist’s Buddies Strutting Around On His Company’s Own Damn Video — Menacing Homeless Human Beings On A Public Street — With Guns — And Other Tools Of War — This Is A Guy Who Has More Damn Nerve Than Most Of The Internet Lawyers Who Threaten Defamation Lawsuits Cause Their Sad Little Feelings Got Hurt

August 19, 2019 Mike 1 Comment

CORRECTION: An earlier version of this post stated that Joel Glucksman appears in the video. Glucksman claims that he does not appear in the video and I have no reason to disbelieve him. They are employees of Iron Delta Security, and he’s part owner of that firm, so I’ve rewritten this post to reflect that information and I apologize for my error.

Maybe you’ve been following the story of anti-homeless vigilante activity in the San Fernando Valley, coordinated through private Facebook groups and condoned and assisted by active and retired LAPD officers. It was heavily covered last week, and here’s a list of some of the most notable reports:

★ West San Fernando Valley Residents Take to Facebook To Stalk, Harass and Terrorize the Homeless with Help From Current And Former LAPD Officers. — Knock-LA.com

★ LAPD Involved in Anti-Homeless Vigilante Facebook Groups — KTown For All

★ Two Anti-Homeless Facebook Groups Count L.A. Cops Among Their Members — LA Magazine

★ Exposés on “Crimebusters” Lead to Investigation of LAPD SLO’s — Valley News Group

And subsequent to this wave of exposure there was the predictable backlash from the homeless-hating vigilante housedwelling Facebook warriors who, like all of their ilk, cannot stand having the caustic contents of their seething ids exposed in public and then mocked. I’m sure you can imagine all the idiotic Internet lawyerisms about defamation and lawsuits and et-freaking-cetera. I won’t bore you with it here.
Continue reading Anti-Homeless Vigilantism Proponent — Associate Of Heavily Armed Thugs — And Fascist Street-Fighting Beerhall Hooligan Cosplay Enthusiasts — Joel Glucksman — Who Jokes In Public About Tasing Human Beings Before The Police Show Up — See This Terrorist’s Buddies Strutting Around On His Company’s Own Damn Video — Menacing Homeless Human Beings On A Public Street — With Guns — And Other Tools Of War — This Is A Guy Who Has More Damn Nerve Than Most Of The Internet Lawyers Who Threaten Defamation Lawsuits Cause Their Sad Little Feelings Got Hurt →

LAUSD

As Early As July 1, 2019 Sakshi Jain Already Knew That GANAS Academy Would Not Open In 2019 — She Was In Touch With Gloria Romero — Former State Senator And Supreme Commander Of Scholarship Prep Charter Schools — About Handing Off Stranded GANAS Students To Scholarship Prep’s Wilmington Campus — I Guess It’s Good That Jain Was Thinking About The Kids’ Future — But She Put Off Announcing Non-Opening For Almost Two Weeks — Surely The Families Could Have Used The Extra Time To Climb Out Of The Lurch In Which She Left Them — Oh Yeah — The Official Story At That Time Was That GANAS Wasn’t Opening Because They Were “taking an additional year to plan” — Which Is An Extraordinarily Dishonest Way To Describe What Actually Happened

August 19, 2019 Mike 2 Comments

This is just the briefest of notes to bring you up to date, or at least as up to date as the information presently in my possession will allow, on the slow-mo bridge collapse that is the story of GANAS Academy and its galaxy-brained founder Sakshi Jain.²⁹ Jain’s universally reviled³⁰ plan to colocate her creepy little charter school on the campus of the well-beloved neighborhood public school Catskill Elementary in the City of Carson met with pushback from the community on a massive scale, which was ultimately successful in convincing her to give up on colocation and to postpone opening her school for at least one more year.

This kind of thing, for one reason or another, happens all the time with charter schools. They vanish, leaving enrolled kids in a desperate situation. It doesn’t happen, can’t really happen, with actual public schools. This lack of stability is one of the approximately eleventy zillion reasons why charter schools are pernicious. According to the Daily Breeze, Jain announced on July 12, 2019 that GANAS would not be opening this year. This left enrolled students, for whom, by the way, Jain had paid $850 per each to a super-genius recruiter named Ed, a little more than a month to find a school to attend this fall.

But emails I recently obtained from Scholarship Prep Charter Schools show that Jain had already determined as early as July 1, 2019 not to open GANAS for this school year.³¹ On that day Jain was introduced to former state senator Gloria Romero, supreme commander of Scholarship Prep, by Chris Copolillo, California Charter Schools Association überlobbyist, for the express purpose of hooking up the students stranded by Jain’s instability and unwillingness to honor her word with one of Scholarship Prep’s schools in Wilmington.

On the one hand, I guess it’s commendable that Jain was thinking of the future of the students she’s stranded. On the other hand, it’s pretty awful that by July 1 she had already determined not to open her school, and yet didn’t announce it publicly for another 12 days. Surely the families who were relying on her to educate their children could have used the extra time to place their kids elsewhere.

It’s also interesting, as you’ll see if you read on to the transcriptions, that in her conversations with Romero, Jain nowhere explained exactly why it was that her school wasn’t going to open. The nearest anyone came to an explanation was Copolillo’s extraordinarily disingenuous statement that Jain “may be taking an additional year to plan”. Which I suppose is the truth, but it’s certainly not the whole truth.

Another small but essential revelation here is that CCSA isn’t just a lobbying organization, it also micro-facilitates the daily operation of charter schools. Not surprising, I guess, but I just wasn’t aware that this kind of thing was among the services they provide. Anyway, read on for full transcriptions of the emails and experience for yourself the private talk of privatizers.
Continue reading As Early As July 1, 2019 Sakshi Jain Already Knew That GANAS Academy Would Not Open In 2019 — She Was In Touch With Gloria Romero — Former State Senator And Supreme Commander Of Scholarship Prep Charter Schools — About Handing Off Stranded GANAS Students To Scholarship Prep’s Wilmington Campus — I Guess It’s Good That Jain Was Thinking About The Kids’ Future — But She Put Off Announcing Non-Opening For Almost Two Weeks — Surely The Families Could Have Used The Extra Time To Climb Out Of The Lurch In Which She Left Them — Oh Yeah — The Official Story At That Time Was That GANAS Wasn’t Opening Because They Were “taking an additional year to plan” — Which Is An Extraordinarily Dishonest Way To Describe What Actually Happened →

Michael Kohlhaas dot org

Monthly Archives: August 2019