Category Archives: LAUSD

In May 2018 Mitch O’Farrell Held Secret Invite-Only Meetings With So-Called “Key Community Stakeholders” To Build Buy-In For Hollywood Bridge Housing — Larchmont Charter School Supreme Commander-For-Life Amy Dresser Held Was Among Those Invited — She Then Helped Orchestrate Community Meetings With Dan Halden To “Clear Up Any Misconceptions” — And Listen To More Made-Up Anti-Homeless Housedweller Grievances — And Hear His Promises Of “Additional Enforcement Tools” Against Homeless Human Beings — In Exchange He Proceeded To Spend Months Doing Special Little Favors For These Whiny And Entitled LCS Privatizers

June 19, 2019 Mike Leave a comment

Readers of this blog surely don’t need me to explain how Prop HHH money, meant to establish so-called bridge housing to help alleviate our crisis of homelessness, has at best been spent far too slowly and too ineffectively and at the worst corruptly and in secret. But despite all that, creepy little CD13 repster Mitch O’Farrell did manage to organize one of these projects in Hollywood.

And his flack Tony Arranaga’s inordinately superficial press release on the subject, touting the only-from-an-inordinately-superficial-perspective success of this project is well worth reading.¹ And of particular interest in that slew/slough of whah-whah-whahwawawa, there is this little number right here:

The office of Councilmember Mitch O’Farrell has championed this project from the start: Councilmember O’Farrell originally introduced the motion which paved the way to build the project on the City-owned parking lot; his office led the community outreach before and during construction; and the office served as the liaison between City departments, partnering agencies, and local stakeholders.

This business about the community outreach and the liaison between City departments, partnering agencies, and local stakeholders is of the utmost interest. I’ve spent a little time looking into the processes by which Los Quince Jefes construct the appearance of community buy-in for their pet projects, most notably as orchestrated by Jose Huizar and by Gil Cedillo in the notorious case of the demolition of Parker Center.

And of course another interesting line of inquiry I’m presently working on is charter schools. I don’t know enough about them yet to narrow² my inquiries, but I’m learning, mostly via my usual technique of reading³ their damn emails. I recently got gigantic set of goodies from Larchmont Charter School, in particular from their supreme commander Amy Dresser Held. These have so far yielded up a couple of really interesting stories.⁴

Like for instance the one about how Amy Dresser Held used her personal connections with high-powered senior staffies of LAUSD school boardie Icky Sticky Nicky Melvoin to get a luxe internship for a family friend or the one about how Amy Dresser Held and the Icky Sticky one had a mutually satisfying comfort sesh about how mean and crazy the charter-haters were being. And today, before your very eye, friends, these different lines of inquiry have merged into one!

You see, among all those emails sent to me by LCS were well over a hundred between Most High Brigadier-in-charge Amy Dresser Held and Mitch O’Farrell’s chameleonic Hollywood button man, Dan X. Halden.⁵ You can browse through the whole subset here on Archive.Org, and turn the page for transcriptions and discussion, the better to relate the tale so adroitly summarized for you in the headline above!
Continue reading In May 2018 Mitch O’Farrell Held Secret Invite-Only Meetings With So-Called “Key Community Stakeholders” To Build Buy-In For Hollywood Bridge Housing — Larchmont Charter School Supreme Commander-For-Life Amy Dresser Held Was Among Those Invited — She Then Helped Orchestrate Community Meetings With Dan Halden To “Clear Up Any Misconceptions” — And Listen To More Made-Up Anti-Homeless Housedweller Grievances — And Hear His Promises Of “Additional Enforcement Tools” Against Homeless Human Beings — In Exchange He Proceeded To Spend Months Doing Special Little Favors For These Whiny And Entitled LCS Privatizers →

LAUSD

In January 2019 Larchmont Charter School Supreme Commander Amy Dresser Held Wrote To LAUSD Board Member Icky Sticky Nicky Melvoin — And A Bunch Of His Most Seniorest Staffies — Allison Polhill Holdorff — Sarah Angel — Clayton Rosa — Expressing Solidarity In What She Called “Some Crazy Crazy Times” — The Craziness Being Anti-Charter Sentiment — And She Was All Like Do Not Be Bullied — She Actually Said Bullied — Which Demonstrates Her Utterly Characteristic Contempt For Democracy By The Way — Into Passing A Cap On LAUSD Charter Schools — It Is — Says Amy Dresser Held — “The First Step In Killing Charters” — So Even The Enemy Knows This Strategy Will Work! — And Nicky Wrote Back And Was All Like — Mmmm! You Are Right! Thank you Amy!! — Note That He Actually Did Use Two Exclamation Points!! — Cause That Is The Depth Of His Gratitude Towards Amy Dresser Held!!!

June 11, 2019 Mike Leave a comment

So you probably remember that one of the welcome outcomes of the courageous and world-shaking January 2019 strike against the Los Angeles Unified School District by the United Teachers of Los Angeles was a resolution to be considered by the school board on freezing the approval of new charter schools in Los angeles. This was considered and passed by the board on January 29, 2019, with pro-charter board member icky sticky Nicky Melvoin casting the lone vote against.¹ This resolution, not really binding on anyone, is of course but one step in a journey whose ultimate goal is the elimination of charter schools in California.

And you may also recall that recently I obtained a huge, huge set of emails from the thermonuclearesque privatizers at the Larchmont Charter School.² I used these the other day to write about how Amy Dresser Held, supreme Larchmontane shot-caller, used her publicly funded power and position to hook up some kid she knows privately with an internship with LAUSD in the sticky one’s office.

And today’s story has to do with an email that Held sent to Melvoin in the quasi-early morning of January 29, right before the fatal board meeting, expressing solidarity with whoever and saying a lot of fairly kooky stuff about how she was thinking of Nicky and these were crazy times and thanks Nicky for caring about kids and don’t be bullied into voting for this charter cap crap because to zillionaires political pressure to do what they don’t want equals bullying.

Most importantly, Held states in a remarkably self-contradictory sentence that a charter cap is “the first step in killing charters and there’s no good argument for it.” She is right, of course, that this is the first step in killing charters. Somehow³ she misses the point that this very fact is the good argument for it. And because of that tired nonsense about bread, butter, sides, and so on,⁴ El Ick-Stick got right back to Held with this little email here. Took him a mere 17 minutes to send this response.⁵ And he was really feeling it, yes indeed, thanked her profusely!

And because why waste a good email she didn’t just send this email to Nick M. but also to a bunch of his senior staffies, with a slightly different subject line and other minor mods. But their response was much more muted, and I won’t speculate on why that might be.⁶ Read on, friends, for transcriptions of the Held/Melvoin part of this exchange!
Continue reading In January 2019 Larchmont Charter School Supreme Commander Amy Dresser Held Wrote To LAUSD Board Member Icky Sticky Nicky Melvoin — And A Bunch Of His Most Seniorest Staffies — Allison Polhill Holdorff — Sarah Angel — Clayton Rosa — Expressing Solidarity In What She Called “Some Crazy Crazy Times” — The Craziness Being Anti-Charter Sentiment — And She Was All Like Do Not Be Bullied — She Actually Said Bullied — Which Demonstrates Her Utterly Characteristic Contempt For Democracy By The Way — Into Passing A Cap On LAUSD Charter Schools — It Is — Says Amy Dresser Held — “The First Step In Killing Charters” — So Even The Enemy Knows This Strategy Will Work! — And Nicky Wrote Back And Was All Like — Mmmm! You Are Right! Thank you Amy!! — Note That He Actually Did Use Two Exclamation Points!! — Cause That Is The Depth Of His Gratitude Towards Amy Dresser Held!!! →

LAUSD

Larchmont Charter School’s High-Concept Constructivist Educational Programs “Help [Students] Continue To Grow [And Become] Able To Gain Entrance To The College And Career Path Of Their Choice” — And Amy Dresser Held — Supreme Boss Of The LCS — Will Use All The Force Of Her Personal Relationships With Stratospherically Elite LAUSD Staff To Get A Family Friend An Ultra-High-Powered Internship In Nick Melvoin’s Office — Which Is A Much More Realistic Picture Of How The Ruling Class Reproduces Its Power Than All That Booshwah About “Gain[ing] Entrance” Through Education

June 9, 2019 Mike 2 Comments

Here’s the short version of charter school theory from the point of view of the privatizers: people who run public schools are dumb and incompetent which is harmful to kids therefore pay a bunch of zillionaires and their usefully idiotic minions to create private schools and run them with essentially no oversight and they’ll innovate the hell out of everything and also the kids will be better off, so yay!

Just for instance, consider the Larchmont Charter School, a self-proclaimed fermentatory constructivist¹ hotbed of quantumly cosmic disruptive innovation, diverse by design, guided by the idea that racially integrated classrooms are good for the kids of color, who gain all the apparently myriad benefits of going to school with the white kids.² And what they claim is that they’re going to teach these putatively disadvantaged³ kids how to pull themselves via an extraordinary education right on up:

The high expectations of Larchmont Charter School’s High School Program prepare students for college … rigorous college preparatory humanities, mathematics, and science instruction from quality educators who focus on the unique needs of the learner through the constructivist lens … positively address challenges occurring in the world around them … leadership and arts opportunities … grow as well-rounded, successful persons, able to gain entrance to the college and career path of their choice.

And although around this blog we never ever take any of these people at their word for anything because it’s turned out always, every last time, that they were lying, well, at least I’ll admit that if we were naive enough to take them at their word in this case all this nonsense wouldn’t be so bad. Teach poor kids, kids without the social connections to skip to the head of the line, kids whose parents can’t afford to pay a zillion dollars in bribes to get them into USC, teach them the skills they need to get into “the college and career path of their choice.”

But whatever the delusional conscience-easing narrative according to which these Larchmontane privatizers have managed to convince themselves they’re operating, the truth, as revealed by a massive steaming heap of emails I recently obtained from these antisocial parasites on the public realm,⁴ turns out to be quite different. Behold 27 emails, mostly between LCS supreme boss Amy Dresser Held and senior supremo-slash-advisory Icky Sticky Nicky⁵ staffer Allison Polhill Holdorff.⁶

These reveal a much, much different set of rules. When it comes to students, not even LCS students, who are friends of the family, Held is not so much about hard work, education opening doors, and so on. Instead she’s all like phone a friend for the kid, get her an internship. A service, I am going to go out on this limb now, I would wager, access to which she does not facilitate for the students whose career-path-choosing skills she’s meant to be cultivating, that she’s paid out of public funds to cultivate.

And even worse than that from Holdorff’s side, two months after she started in with these conversations between her and Held about internships LAUSD posted the position, presumably inviting members of the public to apply, but the fix was in, as you’ll see below. Many organizations have rules requiring jobs to be posted widely, precisely to preven the kind of nepotism you’ll see unfolding here. The conversation kicked off on December 14, 2017, when Held wrote to Holdorff thusly:
Continue reading Larchmont Charter School’s High-Concept Constructivist Educational Programs “Help [Students] Continue To Grow [And Become] Able To Gain Entrance To The College And Career Path Of Their Choice” — And Amy Dresser Held — Supreme Boss Of The LCS — Will Use All The Force Of Her Personal Relationships With Stratospherically Elite LAUSD Staff To Get A Family Friend An Ultra-High-Powered Internship In Nick Melvoin’s Office — Which Is A Much More Realistic Picture Of How The Ruling Class Reproduces Its Power Than All That Booshwah About “Gain[ing] Entrance” Through Education →

LAUSD

Sakshi Jain — Self-Proclaimed Founder And Head Of School At Universally Loathed Co-Location Horror Show GANAS Academy — Reacting Badly To Catskill Elementary School Folks’ Opposition To Her Plans For World Domination — Another Instance Of Jain Asking LAUSD To Intervene — But They Would Not — And Then There Are Her Obsequious Begging Letters To Various City Of Carson Electeds — And Her Board Member Gaetano Scotti’s Request To Port Of LA Police To Attend Board Meetings — Because The Catskill Parents “Are All Pissed Off” — Which The Cops Refused To Do Unless Someone Actually Committed An Actual Crime — Like The Los Angeles County Sheriff Before Them — Hate To Say It But — These GANAS Folks Could Really Use Some Professional PR — Cause This Amateur Stuff Is Getting Them Nowhere

June 6, 2019 Mike Leave a comment

This is part two of a short series on a rich set of emails I recently obtained from the universally reviled privatizers at GANAS Academy via the California Public Records Act. You can read part one here, a post which also includes some background on the situation. Today I’m just transcribing and commenting on a few more of these emails.

Oh! And no doubt you remember the famous Denny’s episode! Where Sakshi Jain called the Sheriff on some peaceful protesters and the dispatcher was all like ma’am, we don’t arrest people for protesting because IT IS NOT ILLEGAL. Well, today’s first email, this April 2019 conversation between GANAS board member and not-so-nascent fascist Tom Scotti,¹ Port of Los Angeles police officer Jose Alvarez, and Sakshi Jain, shows that she didn’t learn her lesson at all, not at all. It also shows that Scotti has some really, really weird ideas about what’s going on. E.g.

GANAS wants to open in Wilmington but LAUSD is forcing it to open on one of their campuses (Catskill Elementary) in Carson. Not GANAS’ fault but now the Catskill parents and UTLA (united teachers los angeles) are all pissed off

Anyway, turn the page for a transcription of the whole thing, commentary, and even more emails!
Continue reading Sakshi Jain — Self-Proclaimed Founder And Head Of School At Universally Loathed Co-Location Horror Show GANAS Academy — Reacting Badly To Catskill Elementary School Folks’ Opposition To Her Plans For World Domination — Another Instance Of Jain Asking LAUSD To Intervene — But They Would Not — And Then There Are Her Obsequious Begging Letters To Various City Of Carson Electeds — And Her Board Member Gaetano Scotti’s Request To Port Of LA Police To Attend Board Meetings — Because The Catskill Parents “Are All Pissed Off” — Which The Cops Refused To Do Unless Someone Actually Committed An Actual Crime — Like The Los Angeles County Sheriff Before Them — Hate To Say It But — These GANAS Folks Could Really Use Some Professional PR — Cause This Amateur Stuff Is Getting Them Nowhere →

LAUSD

New Los Angeles Charter School Board Member Financial Disclosure Forms Reveal Extent Of Zillionaire Infiltration And Control — Most Interesting Is The Case Of Bari Cooper Sherman — A Principal In Some Incomprehensible Financial Services Firm — Turner Impact Capital — Which Manages A Charter School Real Estate Fund — The Existence Of Such A Thing Is Entirely New To Me — May Be A Path Towards Understanding The Megabucks-Fueled Necromancy Behind Charter Schools

June 2, 2019 Mike Leave a comment

The Political Reform Act of 1974 requires various public officials in California to file financial disclosure forms, known to the locals¹ as Form 700s. In many cases it’s very clear who has to file. Elected officials, high-powered appointed decisionmakers, like e.g. the City Clerk of Los Angeles. But when one descends into the peculiar brushy backwater thickets of privatization where are found the local agencies whose publicness is merely quasi, e.g. business improvements and charter schools, things become murkier indeed.

I don’t (yet) understand the details, but BID staff and directors are required to disclose in some jurisdictions, e.g. the City of Fortuna, California, and not in others, e.g. the City of Los Angeles. And I really don’t know what’s up with California charter schools in general, but I do know that LAUSD charter boards and executive staff are required to file disclosures. And these forms are very likely to make interesting reading, so they’re a must-request item for CPRA sleuths!²

And just recently a stack of Form 700s came in from our old friends at New Los Angeles Charter Schools came in! You can read the whole spool here in a single PDF and there are links to some individual files below. And they’re pretty various. Some have nothing to declare and it seems legit. Others have nothing to declare and appear to be lying about it. There’s one guy with a zillion small positions in various individual stocks, not that creatively chosen. See that an apparently inordinate number of these folks are associated with The Wildwood School. But one of these forms really stands out to me,³ and that’s the one belonging to board member Bari Cooper Sherman.
Continue reading New Los Angeles Charter School Board Member Financial Disclosure Forms Reveal Extent Of Zillionaire Infiltration And Control — Most Interesting Is The Case Of Bari Cooper Sherman — A Principal In Some Incomprehensible Financial Services Firm — Turner Impact Capital — Which Manages A Charter School Real Estate Fund — The Existence Of Such A Thing Is Entirely New To Me — May Be A Path Towards Understanding The Megabucks-Fueled Necromancy Behind Charter Schools →

LAUSD, Public Records Act Pragmatics

Roya Saghafi Is Suing Palisades Charter High School Over Nasty Evil Racist Hostile Targeted Harassment In The Workplace — Alleged Doncha Know — Of Exactly The Type That Sane People Have Associated For Decades With Pali High In Particular — And For That Matter With The Palisades In General — Abhorrent Little White Supremacist Stronghold That It Is — So Naturally I Requested Everybody’s Emails With Saghafi Under The CPRA — And Then Doctor Pamela Magee — Chief Boss Of Pali High And Their Designated CPRA Responder — Refused To Give Them To Me On The Basis Of A Wildly Unsupportable Interpretation Of An Exemption — The Battle Rages On!

May 29, 2019 Mike 1 Comment

UPDATE: Dr. Pamela Magee hired a lawyer to advise on this matter and he capitulated to my demands! At least in theory! So these emails should be forthcoming! At least in theory!

So there’s this charter school in the Palisades, Palisades Charter High School, which is moderately famous for, among other things, being chock full of both satan-worshipping privatizers¹ and openly racist baby thugs. Two salient facts about Pali High² are that the supreme boss of the school, Doctor Pamela Magee, earns more money in one year than all but three of the sixty thousand employees of LAUSD, and that a former teacher, Roya Saghafi, is suing the school for the torment she suffered at their racist horrible hands while she worked there.

You can read about both of these matters in a previous post of mine and also get your hands on Saghafi’s complaint. And I’ve been following up on the Saghafi story, of course, and as part of this effort I sent this request under the California Public Records Act to Doctor Pam Magee asking for:

… emails in the possession of any administrative staff which are to/from/cc/bcc Roya Saghafi from January 1, 2012 through March 29, 2019.

And eventually I got a response from Doctor Pam Magee, and what she said was not encouraging:

This information is not available under CPRA 6254b as these records pertain to pending litigation.

This doesn’t seem right! Better read the code section. Always read the code section:

… this chapter does not require the disclosure of any of the following records:

(b) Records pertaining to pending litigation to which the public agency is a party … until the pending litigation … has been finally adjudicated or otherwise settled.

Yikes, man! She quoted it accurately, so that was a disappointment. But on the other hand it seemed really implausible that the emails I’d requested could be exempt on this theory. First of all, they obviously weren’t exempt before Saghafi filed suit so they couldn’t really become exempt on the day she filed.
Continue reading Roya Saghafi Is Suing Palisades Charter High School Over Nasty Evil Racist Hostile Targeted Harassment In The Workplace — Alleged Doncha Know — Of Exactly The Type That Sane People Have Associated For Decades With Pali High In Particular — And For That Matter With The Palisades In General — Abhorrent Little White Supremacist Stronghold That It Is — So Naturally I Requested Everybody’s Emails With Saghafi Under The CPRA — And Then Doctor Pamela Magee — Chief Boss Of Pali High And Their Designated CPRA Responder — Refused To Give Them To Me On The Basis Of A Wildly Unsupportable Interpretation Of An Exemption — The Battle Rages On! →

LAUSD

GANAS Academy Founder Sakshi Jain Emails Now Available — Showing A Pattern Of Increasing Anxiety And Paranoia About Anti-Co-Location Activists — Appeals To LAUSD To Punish Catskill Elementary Employees Who Seemed To Oppose Co-Location — Discussions With The California Charter School Association On Media Strategy — Wild Accusations Of “borderline libelous and slanderous accusations – not just about the Founder, but about the school as well” — Whatever The Hell That Means — Resignation Of A Board Member Who Did Not Want “to be villainized by the community [he] was hoping to help” — Other Essential Information — Including A Potential Brown Act Violation In February 2019 — Read All A-Freaking-Bout It!

May 27, 2019 Mike Leave a comment

Here’s more on the anti-colocation battle being fought by a brave and devoted band of teachers and parents at Catskill Elementary School in the City of Carson against impending plans to install upstart charter school GANAS Academy on their campus. I have been investigating this story using requests made to GANAS via the California Public Records Act.¹ And just recently these GANASsholes handed over a trove and a half of goodies. You can read about the video over here, and today we’re talking about the emails, which, as always, are where the serious action is. Browse them yourself, of course, or download the whole damn stack of them, right here on Archive.Org.²

And today I’m just going to run through a few highlights with transcriptions and a little light commentary. They paint a revealing picture of the effect that the anti-co-location protests have been having on GANAS, with at least one board member having resigned when he became aware of the intensity of the animosity towards his charter school. They also show the growing anxiety, shading into abject paranoia, of galaxy-brained GANAS founder and head of school³ Sakshi Jain as it became increasingly clear to her that she was in for a long and bitter struggle, and that there wasn’t really much help forthcoming from either LAUSD or the California Charter School Association.
Continue reading GANAS Academy Founder Sakshi Jain Emails Now Available — Showing A Pattern Of Increasing Anxiety And Paranoia About Anti-Co-Location Activists — Appeals To LAUSD To Punish Catskill Elementary Employees Who Seemed To Oppose Co-Location — Discussions With The California Charter School Association On Media Strategy — Wild Accusations Of “borderline libelous and slanderous accusations – not just about the Founder, but about the school as well” — Whatever The Hell That Means — Resignation Of A Board Member Who Did Not Want “to be villainized by the community [he] was hoping to help” — Other Essential Information — Including A Potential Brown Act Violation In February 2019 — Read All A-Freaking-Bout It! →

LAUSD

More Records From The New Los Angeles Charter School Co-Location Battle! — Including A Copy Of The West Adams Neighborhood Council Anti-Charter Resolution Marked Up And Annotated By NLA Executive Staff! — This Is A Real Glimpse At The Usually-Hidden Thought Processes Of Some Privatizers — And An Example Of The Power Of The California Public Records Act

May 25, 2019 Mike Leave a comment

New Los Angeles Charter Elementary School was forcibly co-located on the campus of the public Baldwin Hills Elementary School leading to a great deal of tension which came to a head during the UTLA strike in January and NLA boss Brooke Rios said that her school would try to find somewhere else to have their school but then they couldn’t find another place so parents from the public school proposed an anti-charter-school resolution to the West Adams Neighborhood Council which approved it by a vote of 8 to 3 and you can read a copy of the resolution here and watch some video of the whole damn meeting, or at least the part where they’re discussing the charter school stuff.¹

And at that meeting NLA Elementary School principal Kate O’Brien passed out a document, and you can get a copy of the document here. But that document, NLA’s response to the motion opposing their co-location, didn’t just pop up out of nowhere. They read the proposed motion before the meeting, read it carefully, marked it up with a highlighter, and drafted detailed responses to the various points made against them.

There is absolutely nothing wrong with that, of course. In fact I find it commendable in a way that very little habitual privatizer behavior is to me. By engaging is really detailed preparation the NLA folks showed that they were taking the process seriously, as a threat to them. Which is was. And is. But regardless of that, not only is the fact that NLA prepared so carefully interesting, but the nature of the preparations is really interesting.

And this is where the Public Records Act comes in. After the meeting, when it became clear that NLA had prepared so carefully, I asked them for copies of their notes and prep documents. And yesterday they gave them to me² and today I am giving them to you! This is a really important piece of history.

☆ Copy of the WANC resolution highlighted by NLA — This is NLA’s advance copy of the resolution presented to the West Adams Neighborhood Council, liberally highlighted and with handwritten numbered references to comments.

☆ NLA annotations for WANC resolution — These are the actual comments referred to in the previous document.

And turn the page for images of all this stuff!
Continue reading More Records From The New Los Angeles Charter School Co-Location Battle! — Including A Copy Of The West Adams Neighborhood Council Anti-Charter Resolution Marked Up And Annotated By NLA Executive Staff! — This Is A Real Glimpse At The Usually-Hidden Thought Processes Of Some Privatizers — And An Example Of The Power Of The California Public Records Act →

LAUSD

Video From GANAS Academy Now Available! — See Chanting Catskill Protesters Following Sakshi Jain And Juliana Mercurio Out Of A Carson City Council Meeting In April! — But From Jain And Mercurio’s Point Of View!! — With Their Commentary!!! — See Video Of Mercurio And Jain Driving Away From The Protesters! — Shot From Inside The Getaway Car!! — Mercurio: “We’re About To Be Blocked In … Again …” — Video From The Famous Carson City Council Meeting — California Charter School Association Flackie Gives Public Comment — Very Interesting Stuff Here Friends!

May 22, 2019 Mike Leave a comment

Recently, for instance, I obtained a copy of a call to 911 made by GANAS’s shockingly unsocialized founder, Sakshi Jain, in March 2019 during which she pleaded persistently with an unsympathetic dispatcher at the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department to come arrest a bunch of protesters whose presence she found dismaying despite the dispatcher’s repeated admonition that protesting wasn’t illegal.

And, as these defenders of Catskill Elementary School’s resources and autonomy are a feisty bunch of folks, that March protest is not the only direct action they’ve taken to further their goals. For instance, on April 10, 2019 they attended a meeting of the GANAS Academy directors and gave vigorous and extended public comment, which was not gracefully received by the privatizers on the board.

The board ultimately tried to shut down the meeting and it ended with the Catskill folks following them out to the parking lot chanting. The Catskill defenders posted an uplifting video of this event and the chaos starts here at 1:10:20, with board chair Juliana Mercurio’s angry pronouncement that if the protesters don’t sit down she is going to close the meeting. A few days later the Carson City Council considered and ultimately passed an anti-GANAS resolution.

Which brings the story up to yesterday, when I received almost an entire gigabyte of public records from GANAS via their lawyers at Young, Minney, & Corr, a law firm specializing in the affairs of California charter schools.¹ Included in this release, most of which I’m still prepping for publication, were a number of videos shot by GANAS Academy people in the performance of their duties. You can browse the collection and download copies here on Archive.Org and also here on my YouTube channel.

There are links to the individual videos with brief descriptions below, but before we go there, you must, must watch two of these clips. These were filmed by GANAS board member Juliana Mercurio after the Carson City Council meeting on April 16. They capture the protesters following Mercurio and Jain to Jain’s car and the subsequent vehicular escape. The first one features the protesters as seen over Mercurio’s shoulder and includes Mercurio’s commentary, e.g. she describes the protesters as “an irate mob of people.” The second is shot from inside their getaway car. As they’re driving away Mercurio wearily predicts that they’re “about to be blocked in … again …”
Continue reading Video From GANAS Academy Now Available! — See Chanting Catskill Protesters Following Sakshi Jain And Juliana Mercurio Out Of A Carson City Council Meeting In April! — But From Jain And Mercurio’s Point Of View!! — With Their Commentary!!! — See Video Of Mercurio And Jain Driving Away From The Protesters! — Shot From Inside The Getaway Car!! — Mercurio: “We’re About To Be Blocked In … Again …” — Video From The Famous Carson City Council Meeting — California Charter School Association Flackie Gives Public Comment — Very Interesting Stuff Here Friends! →

LAUSD

March 27, 2019 — Sakshi Jain — Privatizer And Founder Of Charter School Ganas Academy — Famously Seeking To Co-Locate At Catskill Elementary School In Carson — Was Trying To Hold A Meeting At A Denny’s — But Protesters Were There Too — And Not Only Does Sakshi Jain Hate Public Schools — She Also Hates Democracy — So She Called 911 To Complain That They Were Being Really Really Really Mean To Her — And The Dispatcher Was All Like — Ma’am — It Is Not Illegal For People To Be Mean To You — And Sakshi Jain Was All But This Is A Private Event — At A Private Denny’s!

May 11, 2019 Mike Leave a comment

I don’t know if you’ve been following the thrilling tale of privateering charter school Ganas Academy, its astoundingly unsympathetic founder Sakshi Jain, its misbegotten plans to co-locate at the well-loved Catskill Elementary School in Carson, and the refreshingly vigorous battle being waged by a brave and devoted band of parents and teachers pushing back against the privatizers. But if so, well, today I have an interesting bit of information on one episode in the struggle.

It seems that on March 27, 2019, Sakshi Jain and her co-locationist co-conspirators were holding a meeting of some kind at a Denny’s in Carson. And the Catskill supporters showed up to protest. And because she hates the public realm Sakshi Jain didn’t appreciate this. She didn’t like it one bit. And so, in the grand tradition of life-denying totalitarians everywhere, she called 911 on the protesters.

And today I am pleased to present to you a copy of that 911 call! You can listen to it here on YouTube, and download it here on Archive.Org in whatever format suits your needs.¹ And it’s really heartening, actually. Jain tells the dispatcher that there are protesters at this Denny’s and the dispatcher keeps telling her that protesting isn’t illegal and they won’t be able to do anything.

Jain can hardly believe her ears. She keeps saying that it’s a private event! In a private Denny’s!² That she paid for! None of this is surprising coming from a woman who hates the public realm so much that she wants to make a living by privatizing public schools, but it’s a little shocking to hear it said out loud.

And I also have a copy of what the responding deputies sent to dispatch when they closed out the call, which was that they didn’t do anything because the protesters weren’t breaking the law. If you don’t feel like playing the audio there’s a transcription right after the break!

Dispatcher: Hi, this is Sheriff’s [unintelligible], how can I help you?

Sakshi Jain: Hi, I’m at a Denny’s in Carson and we’re having a private event that is being bombarded by protesters who are harassing us and making videos.

Dispatcher: OK, I’ll send deputies out there but you know protesting is not illegal. But I will…

Sakshi Jain: [interrupting] We understand but we’re at a private event so they’re trying to crash it.

Dispatcher: I’ll send someone out there but like I said I don’t think we’ll be able to make them leave but I’ll send someone out there to talk to you guys, OK?

Sakshi Jain: OK. They’re inside too, so that’s why… They’re inside a private Denny’s and like our guests can’t come in now.

Dispatcher: OK. And do you own Denny’s? Are you working there? Or are you just there having the event?

Sakshi Jain: No, no, no. I’m paying for an event.

Dispatcher: OK. What’s the address there?

Sakshi Jain: Alright, excuse me? The address? Yeah, hold on one second.

Dispatcher: And what’s your name while you’re getting it?

Sakshi Jain: My name is ■■■■■■■■■ ■■■■■■■■■ and one second. It’s in the Carson Plaza Drive.

Dispatcher: And what’s your phone number?

Sakshi Jain: ■■■■■■■■■

Dispatcher: OK, I’ll send someone out there to talk to you guys.

Sakshi Jain: Thank you.