Category Archives: LAUSD

LAUSD

In October 2020 The Accelerated Schools Produced Five GB of Records In Response To My 2019 Requests — And In Response To The Lawsuit I Filed In December Over Their Refusal To Comply With The Law — The Production Was Huge But Seriously Deficient In A Number Of Ways — And Their Exemption Claims Were The Usual Implausible Nonsense — Through My Lawyer — The Incomparable Robert Skeels — I Begged Them To Be Sensible And Discuss — Pleaded Even — But They Unaccountably Refused — So We’re Going To Trial On March 23 2021 — Unless They Come To Their Damn Senses Before Then — Get A Copy Of The Trial Brief Here!

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Today’s post is an update on my December 2019 lawsuit against The Accelerated Schools. As of now all settlements are off the table and we’re going to trial! Attorney Skeels filed the trial brief last week, and here’s some background from an earlier post:

… Which brings us to that shady criminal conspiracy known as I’ve written a lot about these folks and their cartoonishly wicked white supremacy but, you may have noted, none of it has been based on public records apart from this very first thing I did in April 2019.

So I sent them a few [CPRA] requests … and they made a few desultory stabs at answering me in compliance with the law and then stopped responding at all. But as you’re probably aware, the situation with this Klown Kar Krew has grown ever more urgent, more of public interest than ever before.

What, that is, with their retaliatory firing of long-time employee Hilda Guzman and subsequent unfair labor practices complaint by her union, with repeated community protests at their infernal board meetings, and the unexpected1 recent petulant rage quit by now thankfully former board chair Juli Quinn. We need to be able to understand what these folks are up to! Which is why their special variety of unhinged intransigence can’t go unanswered, not if we expect government of, by, and for the people to not perish from this earth.

Remember all the way back in December 2019 when I was forced to file yet another lawsuit seeking to enforce the California Public Records Act against yet another white supremacist gentrifying charter, this one known as The Accelerated Schools? Well, it happened. And after fooling around for almost a year, TAS2 produced a bunch records in October 2020.3 Exciting, of course, but they were up to their usual no-good nonsense and the production was deficient in a number of essential ways.
Continue reading In October 2020 The Accelerated Schools Produced Five GB of Records In Response To My 2019 Requests — And In Response To The Lawsuit I Filed In December Over Their Refusal To Comply With The Law — The Production Was Huge But Seriously Deficient In A Number Of Ways — And Their Exemption Claims Were The Usual Implausible Nonsense — Through My Lawyer — The Incomparable Robert Skeels — I Begged Them To Be Sensible And Discuss — Pleaded Even — But They Unaccountably Refused — So We’re Going To Trial On March 23 2021 — Unless They Come To Their Damn Senses Before Then — Get A Copy Of The Trial Brief Here! →

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LAUSD

The California Department Of Education Released Its 2020 List Of School Rankings — And AB1505 — One Of Last Year’s Charter-Control Measures — Requires LAUSD To Revoke Charters Of Any School Ranked Low Performing Two Years In A Row — The List Contains 22 LAUSD-Authorized Schools Ranked Low Performing — Which Means They Are Halfway To Mandatory Dissolution — Big Names On The List Include KIPP — Animo — Para Los Ninos — Magnolia — Convicted Felon Ref Rodriguez’s Baby PUC — And Many Many More — Schadenfreude Much??!

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One of the key components of last year’s AB1505, which modified the California law authorizing the existence of charter schools, is a requirement that chartering authorities must revoke the charters of any schools ranked “low performing” by the California Department of Education for two years in a row.4 The CDE released its rankings last month,5 and twenty-two of LAUSD-authorized charters ranked “low performing.”

If any one of these 22 schools ranks low next year LAUSD must revoke their charters. The California Charter School Association famously picks a few very low-performing schools each year and publicly advocates at LAUSD meetings for their revocation. This is a very, very friendly process the point of which is pure propaganda. The difference here is that no one’s asking CCSA’s opinion and there’s no opportunity for CCSA to spin this in their favor.

And these aren’t just a bunch of random unheard-of charter schools, either. Many of them are run by big name charter management organizations like KIPP, Animo, PUC, Para Los Ninos, and Magnolia. For extra schadenfreude, many of these schools are run by some of the most vocal privatizers, who will go on and on and on without evidence about their educational superpowers. Here’s a list of all 22 of the LAUSD-authorized charters that are halfway to their mandatory charter revocations. A bunch of these are sure to go down next year, so let’s keep watching!
Continue reading The California Department Of Education Released Its 2020 List Of School Rankings — And AB1505 — One Of Last Year’s Charter-Control Measures — Requires LAUSD To Revoke Charters Of Any School Ranked Low Performing Two Years In A Row — The List Contains 22 LAUSD-Authorized Schools Ranked Low Performing — Which Means They Are Halfway To Mandatory Dissolution — Big Names On The List Include KIPP — Animo — Para Los Ninos — Magnolia — Convicted Felon Ref Rodriguez’s Baby PUC — And Many Many More — Schadenfreude Much??! →

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LAUSD

Walmart Gave $325K To Waldorf Infused Gentrification Enabling Charter Conspiracy El Rio Community School — Just Dropped It In Their Checking Account Like A Bomb — Blowing Public Schools To Smithereens Three Hundred And Twenty Five Thousand At A Time

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It’s apparently pretty well known that the Walmart Foundation6 gives big ass grants to charter schools as part of their general project of undermining civil society.7 And it turns out they’re handing them out right here in Los Angeles!

Consider the case of the Waldorf-infused gentrification charter known as El Rio Community School. I recently obtained copies of their recent bank statements and right there in November 2019 you can see that big old Walmart Family deposit, just BAM! Straight into the checking account! Or see image below!!
Continue reading Walmart Gave $325K To Waldorf Infused Gentrification Enabling Charter Conspiracy El Rio Community School — Just Dropped It In Their Checking Account Like A Bomb — Blowing Public Schools To Smithereens Three Hundred And Twenty Five Thousand At A Time →

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Brown Act Pragmatics, LAUSD

The Latest Episode In My Sporadic Brown Act Demand Letter Project! — The White Savior Charter Conspiracy Known As The Accelerated Schools — Hired A Self-Proclaimed Lawyer — Name Of Wayne Strumpfer — Who Apparently Never Learned In Law School That You Gotta Read The Damn Statute Before You Go Advising Your Clients On A Course Of Action — But Fortunately For All — Even Though I Never Went To Law School — I Do In Fact Know How And When To Read — So When Strumpfer Says Something Super-Crazy Like That The Brown Act Doesn’t Apply To Committees — Here I Am To Save The Doggone Day — With Yet Another Brown Act Demand Letter — Read It Here!

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The Brown Act, California’s open meetings law, imposes a long list of requirements on local government agencies and among these are a duty to send copies of meeting agendas to members of the public who request this service.8 Both I and heroic public education activist Hilda Rodriguez-Guzman have asked this of that local white savior charter conspiracy known as The Accelerated Schools (“TAS”).

And on June 16, 2020 the TAS Board’s Finance Committee held a meeting9 but notified neither Hilda nor me in advance. A couple days later I sent an inquiry via email to Wayne Strumpfer, one of TAS’s many lawyers,10 this one in particular of counsel11 to California charter school law powerhouse Young Minney Corr, basically asking “hey friends, what the freaking heck?!”

And five days later, certainly long enough so that we can discount impulsivity as an explanation, Strumpfer sent me his response. In this remarkably idiotic document Strumpfer argues that while the Brown Act may indeed require agencies to send copies of Board agendas to members of the public it imposes no such requirement with respect to committee meetings. In particular, thus spake Strumpfer: “This code section relates to any meeting of a legislative body — i.e., The Accelerated Schools Board. There is nothing in the code section that mentions committee meetings.”

Which is an interesting statement. Strumpfer is correct in the sense that the word “committee” does not appear in the Brown Act at §54954.1. But he’s about as wrong as can be when he equates “legislative bodies” with “The Accelerated Schools Board.” The term “legislative body” is a term of art in the Brown Act. Whatever it may mean in a naive sense is overridden by the law’s extensive definition, found at §54952(b), which states in part that:

“legislative body” means [among other things]:
…
A commission, committee, board, or other body of a local agency, whether permanent or temporary, decisionmaking or advisory, created by charter, ordinance, resolution, or formal action of a legislative body. … standing committees of a legislative body, irrespective of their composition, which have a continuing subject matter jurisdiction, or a meeting schedule fixed by charter, ordinance, resolution, or formal action of a legislative body are legislative bodies for purposes of this chapter.

In other words, committees are legislative bodies. Therefore the Brown Act requires TAS to send copies of committee agendas to members of the public who so request. Also TAS violated the Brown Act by not sending agendas for the June 16, 2020 meeting of the Finance Committee. And Wayne Strumpfer, despite the big bucks he’s paid, apparently didn’t bother to read the law before advising his clients on a course of action.12

One of the tragic aspects of the Brown Act, though, is that essentially the only way its enforced is via litigation. And while county district attorneys have standing to file such suits, at least here in Los Angeles County they rarely if ever do. But private citizens also have standing to challenge violations. According to §54960.2 such a suit must be preceded by a demand letter giving the local agency a chance to “unconditionally commit” not to violate the law in the specified manner ever again.13

I send these letters out from time to time when an agency violates the law egregiously enough. The last one I sent was in December 2019, also to TAS, which did at that time14 capitulate to my demand and unconditionally agree not to violate the law in the specified manner ever again. But that violation was very different from the current one. These shenanigans with the Finance Committee don’t violate their earlier unconditional commitment.

And thus another demand letter is in order, which is why I sent one this morning via email to Strumpfer and TAS Supreme Commander Dr. Grace Lee Chang.15 A transcription follows and now we wait to see whether they capitulate!
Continue reading The Latest Episode In My Sporadic Brown Act Demand Letter Project! — The White Savior Charter Conspiracy Known As The Accelerated Schools — Hired A Self-Proclaimed Lawyer — Name Of Wayne Strumpfer — Who Apparently Never Learned In Law School That You Gotta Read The Damn Statute Before You Go Advising Your Clients On A Course Of Action — But Fortunately For All — Even Though I Never Went To Law School — I Do In Fact Know How And When To Read — So When Strumpfer Says Something Super-Crazy Like That The Brown Act Doesn’t Apply To Committees — Here I Am To Save The Doggone Day — With Yet Another Brown Act Demand Letter — Read It Here! →

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LAUSD, Public Records Act Pragmatics

Dr. Katie Sobczak Chau — Supreme Commander Of The Gentrifying Charter Conspiracy Known As El Rio Community School — Is Very Unhappy That She Is Required To Comply With The California Public Records Act — And She Seems To Think I’m A Big Meany For Asking For Records — And Maybe I Am A Big Meany But I’m Not The One Who Signed A Contract With LAUSD Agreeing To Comply With The CPRA — And I’d Rather Be A Meany Than A Whiner Who Whines About Having To Live Up To My Own Freely Made Promises — I Mean For The Sake Of Argument Only Of Course — Since I’m Not A Meany — Or At Least Not Because Of My CPRA Requests

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All over the State of California local agencies are using the COVID-19 pandemic as an excuse to deny the public access to records required by the California Public Records Act. I don’t, therefore, have nearly as much material to write about so in response I’m writing about the lack of records instead, and the various ways agencies deny access. Here are some earlier posts on this topic.

It’s well-known among requesters of public records that agencies don’t just violate the law, they don’t just ignore it or misunderstand it or willfully misinterpret it. They also whine about it constantly, they aggressively mischaracterize requesters to create the impression that the requests are the problem rather than the agency’s noncompliance, and so on.

Such behavior is bad enough when governments do it, but at least in the state of California numerous private corporations, if created by the government to carry out government functions, are also subject to the Public Records Act. These entities, mostly business improvement districts and charter schools, are not only subject to the CPRA by law but also due to contracts they sign with their authorizing governments.

It strikes me as especially egregious when such quasi-private entities whine about their CPRA obligations and gaslight requesters because they voluntarily agreed via contract to comply. This is a brief post to highlight a recent example involving the gentrification-enabling Highland Park charter conspiracy known as El Rio Community School. It’s not the most egregious instance I’ve encountered, but it’s straightforward, so a good illustration.
Continue reading Dr. Katie Sobczak Chau — Supreme Commander Of The Gentrifying Charter Conspiracy Known As El Rio Community School — Is Very Unhappy That She Is Required To Comply With The California Public Records Act — And She Seems To Think I’m A Big Meany For Asking For Records — And Maybe I Am A Big Meany But I’m Not The One Who Signed A Contract With LAUSD Agreeing To Comply With The CPRA — And I’d Rather Be A Meany Than A Whiner Who Whines About Having To Live Up To My Own Freely Made Promises — I Mean For The Sake Of Argument Only Of Course — Since I’m Not A Meany — Or At Least Not Because Of My CPRA Requests →

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LAUSD, Lawsuits, Public Records Act Pragmatics

Two Of My Public Records Act Lawsuits Against Charter Schools Settled In April 2020 — ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ PUC Charter Schools — Between Them They Paid More Than $11K — Which Was Supposed To Be Spent On Educating Children — But Which These Privatizing Pirate Academies Wasted Due To Their Appalling And Antisocial Arrogance — Here’s Some Background And Copies Of The Settlement Agreements!

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As you probably know I’ve been investigating LAUSD charter schools using the California Public Records Act since January 2019. I was moved to this work16 by the monumental UTLA strike and especially the union’s focus on charter co-location.

I obtained some striking early results including an incredibly consequential release of emails from Green Dot Charter Schools, some of the fruits of which got wide and fairly devastating coverage in the media, including the Los Angeles Times, and Capital and Main, and Diane Ravitch’s blog, and elsewhere.

But this kind of success breeds resistance, so a lot of charters lawyered up and stopped producing records in response to my requests, or even stopped producing without the benefit of a lawyer’s advice.17 The only option left in such a situation is to start filing lawsuits, and that’s just what I’ve been forced to do.

In January 2020, for instance, I filed two.18 One ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ and the other against white savior charter conspiracy PUC Charter Schools, in some vague sense co-founded by former LAUSD board member and convicted felon Ref Rodriguez.
Continue reading Two Of My Public Records Act Lawsuits Against Charter Schools Settled In April 2020 — ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ PUC Charter Schools — Between Them They Paid More Than $11K — Which Was Supposed To Be Spent On Educating Children — But Which These Privatizing Pirate Academies Wasted Due To Their Appalling And Antisocial Arrogance — Here’s Some Background And Copies Of The Settlement Agreements! →

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LAUSD

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LAUSD

The Charter School Industry Famously Wants To Shut Down Schools That Don’t Measure Up To Various Putatively Objective Standards — Part Of Their Narrative Of Government Inefficiency — Lack Of Incentives To Excel — The Usual Nonsense — And — Apparently To Demonstrate Ideological Consistency Or Something — Each Year The California Charter School Association Picks A Few Charter Schools And Publicly Advocates For Their Closure — In 2017 They Targeted Lou Dantzler Elementary School — A Co-Located South LA School Run By White Savior Charter Conspiracy The Inner City Education Foundation — But ICEF Unilaterally Closed The School Rather Than Undergo The Humiliation Of CCSA Openly Calling For Its Closure — Never Mentioned In The Discussion — The Trauma And Disruption In The Students’ Lives Caused By The High-Level Politicking Of These Charter School Geniuses — It’s Almost As If That Kids First Nonsense Is Nothing More Than Empty Sloganeering

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One argument we see over and over and over again from school privatizers is that charter schools are more effective than public schools because public schools are not accountable for their performance. Because their funding, their very existence, are guaranteed by the government they have no incentive to improve.

That last sentence, by the way, reads very easily even without an explicit statement of what it is, according to privatizer propaganda, that the public schools don’t have an incentive to improve. Which is a sign of how thoroughly public discourse about public schools has been shaped by the charter school industry.

There’s no satisfying answer to this question of what public schools need to improve, at least not one that satisfies anyone who sees children, students, as actual human beings, of fully equal value to every one of the disrupting grifters corruptly siphoning off billions in public funds meant to educate these kids.

Privatizers try to make this narrative hang together by using vague nouns like “outcomes,” “results,” “accountability.” What is it that public schools need to be accountable for improving? Outcomes and results! But the story doesn’t really work, not to the extent that they need it to work, without there being some concrete, some superficially objective,21 way to measure this putative non-improvance.

The technical details of the actual metrics don’t matter much since all that’s needed to serve the purpose is a bunch of numbers. You can read about them here online if you want to but feel free not to as they’re all lies and also quite boring. And the flip side of this narrative is that charter schools are nimble22 and run like businesses23 unlike the public schools they’re out to destroy. To really underscore this last point it turns out to be politically expedient for charter proponents to once in a while toss one of their schools off the sleigh to be devoured by the hungry wolves that follow.

Which is exactly what the mainline charter conspiracy does in California. The California Charter School Association, premiere privatizer lobbying conspiracy, has a program called Public Calls for Non-Renewal whose sole purpose is to pick off a few schools each year that miss their benchmarks and publicly, that is in front of the authorizing entities, advocate against their targets being renewed. They openly justify this program, this process with an appeal to nothing more than its political expedience for their movement:

We applaud the many charter schools that are among the highest-performing schools in the state. However, we believe that a small number of chronically underperforming charter schools threatens the overall success of the broader charter school movement.

And this is a really disconcerting position to be taken by people who will not for an instant shut up about how they put kids first, how they’re the most overwhelmingly efficient educators in history, how they are the only ones who can save children from the horrors of government incompetence. This kind of realpolitik calculus is fine24 when all the parties involved are adults, are responsible and able to look after their own interests. But real human children are gravely harmed when their schools close down.
Continue reading The Charter School Industry Famously Wants To Shut Down Schools That Don’t Measure Up To Various Putatively Objective Standards — Part Of Their Narrative Of Government Inefficiency — Lack Of Incentives To Excel — The Usual Nonsense — And — Apparently To Demonstrate Ideological Consistency Or Something — Each Year The California Charter School Association Picks A Few Charter Schools And Publicly Advocates For Their Closure — In 2017 They Targeted Lou Dantzler Elementary School — A Co-Located South LA School Run By White Savior Charter Conspiracy The Inner City Education Foundation — But ICEF Unilaterally Closed The School Rather Than Undergo The Humiliation Of CCSA Openly Calling For Its Closure — Never Mentioned In The Discussion — The Trauma And Disruption In The Students’ Lives Caused By The High-Level Politicking Of These Charter School Geniuses — It’s Almost As If That Kids First Nonsense Is Nothing More Than Empty Sloganeering →

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LAUSD, Public Records Act Pragmatics

El Rio Community School — A Gentrification-Enabling Charter In Highland Park — ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■

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Yes, this post is about ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■!

Charter schools in Los Angeles25 serve a variety of social functions. There are white savior charter schools which operate in majority black/brown neighborhoods and seem to mostly consist of real estate and tax scams thinly overlain with implausible social justice rhetoric and toxic moral complacency. The Accelerated Schools are a paradigmatic example of this variety. There are zillionaire-serving schools, which play essentially the same role in 21st Century Los Angeles as segregation academies did in their day. Pali High and Granada Hills Charter High are good examples of this sort.

And then there are gentrification-enabling charters.26 Once the gentrification of a neighborhood has moved past the edgy urban pioneer stage and the pre-existing residents have been pacified to a sufficient extent, young families start to move in. Or the original edgies get smoothed down a little and start having kids. All these new arrivals need schools to send their kids to, and the neighborhood public schools generally won’t do for all the obvious reasons. The same reasons that the so-called legacy bars and restaurants won’t do.

The gentrification process requires new establishments with craft cocktails and $37 nitro cold brew lynx poop coffee drinks to satisfy the settlers, and the equivalent replacements for neighborhood public schools. Charters are an ideal (and recognized) way to fill this need, given that they can be relatively easily started from scratch and the kids of the soon-to-be-displaced so-called legacy residents relatively easily excluded. And they can be spiffed up with all kinds of shiny hipster-appealing educational baubles, like e.g. Waldorf or Montessori.27

And of course Highland Park has been and is one of the most gentrificationally contested neighborhoods in Los Angeles. And the gentrification bars are there in force. And the coffee. And now, therefore, it is time for the gentrification charters to move in. Which brings us to the subject of today’s post, that is El Rio Community School, a Waldorf charter establishment approved by LAUSD last year and set to open in Highland Park in the Fall of 2020.

This school is in the intersection of three of my favorite subjects to investigate via the California Public Records Act,28 ■ ■ ■ ■ ■■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■■ ■ ■ ■ ■■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■■ ■ ■ ■ ■■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■■ ■ ■ ■ ■■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■. ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■
Continue reading El Rio Community School — A Gentrification-Enabling Charter In Highland Park — ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ →

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LAUSD, Lawsuits, Public Records Act Pragmatics

PUC Charter Schools — Former Home Of Convicted Felon And Disgraced Former School Board Member Ref Rodriguez — Sued To Enforce Compliance With The California Public Records Act — They Refused To Respond At All And Now They Will Have To Pay — And Comply!

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In January 2019 I started investigating Los Angeles charter schools using the California Public Records Act and immediately ran into the typical block-headed obstructionism so beloved of CPRA-subject public agencies. I got some pretty interesting material early on, when I was still focusing on how charters reacted to the UTLA strike. As I began to understand the issues better I started looking into co-locations in general and learned, e.g., a lot of important stuff about GANAS academy.

This material ultimately helped to some extent supporters of their co-location target, Catskill Elementary School, fight off their co-location attempt, which really started to show me the utility of the CPRA not just to scholars and journalists, but to anti-charter activists as well. But things really took off in June 2019 when I received a massive release of emails from Green Dot Charter Schools containing explosive correspondence with the California Charter Schools Association.

These documents revealed, among many, many other things, that LAUSD Superintendent Austin Beutner allowed CCSA lobbyists to vet and edit an advance copy of his first major policy speech. That board member Nick Melvoin asked CCSA lobbyists to write a board resolution for him that would facilitate charters expanding control over LAUSD facilities. That Melvoin shared confidential legal information with CCSA while they were actively suing the District.

That former Board member and now convicted felon Ref Rodriguez also allowed CCSA lobbyists to edit and vet at least one Board resolution. That CCSA intended to put all California students in charter schools by 2030. Revelations from this material were widely covered in the press, including the Los Angeles Times, and Capital and Main, and Diane Ravitch’s blog, and elsewhere. The ramifications of these revelations are still unfolding even now, more than six months later.
Continue reading PUC Charter Schools — Former Home Of Convicted Felon And Disgraced Former School Board Member Ref Rodriguez — Sued To Enforce Compliance With The California Public Records Act — They Refused To Respond At All And Now They Will Have To Pay — And Comply! →

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