Category Archives: Los Angeles City Government

LAPD

The Los Angeles Police Department Risk Management Division Runs A Course To Prepare Officers Who Are Being Sued Civilly For Their On-The-Job Actions If They Choose To Be Defended By The City Attorney — The Course Is Called “Professional Resources for Officers in Civil Trials” — Or PROACT — Here Is A Copy Of The Course Outline Showing Exactly How They Prep These Respondents For Depositions — Testimony — And So On — With Advice On How To Dress — How To Answer Questions — How To Deal With The Anxiety Of Not Being In Charge Of The Situation — Apparently How To Hide Their Assets From Judgments

November 9, 2019 Mike Leave a comment

The Risk Management Division of the Los Angeles Police Department runs a course called Professional Resources for Officers in Civil Trials, or PROACT. The City Attorney defends officers who are sued civilly for work-related matters, and this course prepares the officers for the process. I recently obtained a copy of a detailed syllabus for the course, which you can download here in the original rich text format and also here exported to PDF if that’s useful. I also converted it to html and you’ll find that version at the end of the post.

This document might be useful for plaintiff’s attorneys suing LAPD officers seeking to understand the advice and/or the preparation that their respondents have undergone. There’s also some found humor here, as in the recommendation for trial attire forbidding “western wear”. The document is only an outline, which leaves some intriguing ambiguities unresolved.

For instance, there’s a section on “Asset Protection” which includes a section on “Fraudulent Transfers.” This doesn’t appear to be telling officers not to do fraudulent transfers, but rather to transfer assets as early as possible so they don’t look fraudulent. Which would be disconcerting if true but, as I said, the outline form makes it hard to be sure:

Timely implement is necessary, when officers hesitate to act they loose sight of their most valuable resource – time.
a.
Officers have found that neglecting to act necessitates the option, Fraudulent Transfers. (Core Value)
b.
A transfer found to be fraudulent is avoidable by the creditor.

And the whole thing is really worth reading. It’s transcribed into HTML below. Oh, but before you go there, take a look at this little section on how married cops should “protect” their assets from civil judgments:

1.
In Transmutation of community property to separate property to protect 50%, beware it has ramifications for subsequent divorce.
2.
Marital Agreements that are made in advance of problem, are better for long-term protection than undocumented outright gifts.
3.
A divorce is usually too extreme, and you lose all tax benefits associated with marriage.

Continue reading The Los Angeles Police Department Risk Management Division Runs A Course To Prepare Officers Who Are Being Sued Civilly For Their On-The-Job Actions If They Choose To Be Defended By The City Attorney — The Course Is Called “Professional Resources for Officers in Civil Trials” — Or PROACT — Here Is A Copy Of The Course Outline Showing Exactly How They Prep These Respondents For Depositions — Testimony — And So On — With Advice On How To Dress — How To Answer Questions — How To Deal With The Anxiety Of Not Being In Charge Of The Situation — Apparently How To Hide Their Assets From Judgments →

LAUSD

In 2017 Sakshi Jain — Founder Of Ill-Fated GANAS Academy Charter School — Sent Three Videos To CD15 Staffer Fernando Navarrete — Proclaiming That They “Provide A Glimpse Into” What She Had In Mind To Subject Small Children To — Basically Militarized Grammar Drills — Like Some Kind Of Subtextually Coercive North Korean Card-Flipping Performance — Totalitarian Training For Future Automatons — Of A Sort That The Zillionaires Who Fund Jain And Other Charter School Grifters Would Never Subject Their Own Kids To — We Were Luckier Than We Knew That Jain’s Appalling Project Flamed Out

November 7, 2019 Mike Leave a comment

Sakshi Jain, yet another in a long line of nihilistic charter school scammers, once thought she would start a school, GANAS Academy, in the City of Carson, authorized by LAUSD and to be colocated on the campus of public elementary school Catskill Elementary. But the community saw through her lies and fought back against them and Jain ultimately had to abandon her unholy plans and slink back to her lair in disgrace.

It has been clear all along that Jain had no one’s but her own best interests in mind and that placing human children in the custody and care of such a callow grifter was an awful idea, but details of what she was planning for her victims have been few. We did learn recently from a grant application Jain submitted to the California Department of Education that she believed in stringing together empty words about putative excellence, although again, what this would mean for the actual children wasn’t clear:

… rigorous academics, character development, and community engagement, GANAS Academy Charter School educates students in kindergarten through fifth grade for academic success, placing them firmly on the path to college. GANAS Academy believes that all students – regardless of zip code, race, or socioeconomic status – deserve access to a high-quality education that prepares them for success in college and career.

But recently I obtained some really interesting 2017 information from CD15 about what Jain had in mind. Buscaino’s office was involved at that point because Jain originally planned to colocate her infernal school in Wilmington, which is in the City of LA in CD15, so she was cultivating relationships with them. To this end, on October 1, 2017 Jain emailed Buscaino staffer Fernando Navarette and cultivated with all her damn might:
Continue reading In 2017 Sakshi Jain — Founder Of Ill-Fated GANAS Academy Charter School — Sent Three Videos To CD15 Staffer Fernando Navarrete — Proclaiming That They “Provide A Glimpse Into” What She Had In Mind To Subject Small Children To — Basically Militarized Grammar Drills — Like Some Kind Of Subtextually Coercive North Korean Card-Flipping Performance — Totalitarian Training For Future Automatons — Of A Sort That The Zillionaires Who Fund Jain And Other Charter School Grifters Would Never Subject Their Own Kids To — We Were Luckier Than We Knew That Jain’s Appalling Project Flamed Out →

Lawsuits, Los Angeles City Government, Public Records Act Pragmatics

On September 20, 2019 The Aids Healthcare Foundation Filed A California Public Records Act Petition Against The City Of Los Angeles — Just Four Days After Receiving A Characteristically Inadequate Denial From The Office Of The Mayor — This Is A Necessary — And Laudable — And Entirely Appropriate Action — I Can Only Think Of Two Strategies For Encouraging The City To Consistently Comply With The CPRA — One Is For Us To Pass A Local Sunshine Ordinance — And Until That Happens We Have To Sue The Freaking Crap Out Of The City Immediately Every Time They Illegally Withhold Records — Like Freud Said — If They Don’t Pay They Won’t Get Better — So Yay AHF!

November 6, 2019 Mike Leave a comment

Yesterday the Aids Healthcare Foundation held a press conference announcing a lawsuit against the City of Los Angeles for its alleged and exceedingly plausible arbitrary and capricious denial of an AHF homeless housing project. This is an important lawsuit with a a powerful and convincing petition in support of AHF’s laudable efforts to house the unhoused in Los Angeles. It’s been well-covered in the press.

Not quite as well-covered is the fact that in September 2019, as part of the lead-up to that lawsuit, AHF sent a request to HCIDLA for public records related to the bidding process in which their project was rejected. HCIDLA rejected it with a message stating that the Mayor’s Office had the records and that AHF should send it there.¹ They did so, and a few days later Garcetti’s office sent them a denial stating “[it] is our policy not to disclose materials related to competing bids while the contracting process is still ongoing.”

Now, the CPRA is very clear on the fundamental fact that unless there is an explicit reason given in the law for withholding a record, that record must be released to anyone who asks for it. This is found at §6255(a), which says that “The agency shall justify withholding any record by demonstrating that the record in question is exempt under express provisions of this chapter or that on the facts of the particular case the public interest served by not disclosing the record clearly outweighs the public interest served by disclosure of the record.”
Continue reading On September 20, 2019 The Aids Healthcare Foundation Filed A California Public Records Act Petition Against The City Of Los Angeles — Just Four Days After Receiving A Characteristically Inadequate Denial From The Office Of The Mayor — This Is A Necessary — And Laudable — And Entirely Appropriate Action — I Can Only Think Of Two Strategies For Encouraging The City To Consistently Comply With The CPRA — One Is For Us To Pass A Local Sunshine Ordinance — And Until That Happens We Have To Sue The Freaking Crap Out Of The City Immediately Every Time They Illegally Withhold Records — Like Freud Said — If They Don’t Pay They Won’t Get Better — So Yay AHF! →

Downtown Center BID, LAPD

LAPD Transit Services Division Monitored Extinction Rebellion’s Social Media In April 2019 And Sent Out Reports To Allied Universal Security — A Private Security Firm Employed By Many Business Improvement Districts In Los Angeles — Subsequently AUS Distributed LAPD Intelligence Reports To Its Clients

November 2, 2019 Mike Leave a comment

As you may well know there is a group of activists here in Los Angeles, known as Stop LAPD Spying, which is dedicated to the goal of stopping LAPD from spying. Such a group is, sadly, really necessary because LAPD just will not stop spying. From the famous red squad to the present, they just will not cut it out. And one of the forms LAPD spying takes in the present day is the monitoring of social media accounts and the dissemination of so-called intelligence gathered there. For instance, in 2017 dedicated LAPD social media stalkers learned of an unpermitted demonstration planned by a group called Code Pink, and they emailed a bunch of security people and BIDs Downtown about it and possibly even sent cops to the event.

And just today I learned of another such incident, this time involving LAPD’s Transit Services Division. It seems that Extinction Rebellion Los Angeles was planning a protest for April 22, 2019 to take place on the Red Line train, although the location was not at first revealed. As folks will do these days they coordinated it via social media, and the TSD was watching. And screenshotting. And disseminating their work to various private security companies, who sent it along to their clients, which include business improvement districts.

I learned of this from an April 21, 2019 email sent by Brian Raboin of Allied Universal Security to his clients, including the Downtown Center Business Improvement District. Raboin quotes extensively from an LAPD email that I don’t yet have a copy of, in which it’s revealed that not only was TSD monitoring Extinction Rebellion’s social media, but that the Media Relations Division was as well. There is a transcription of this email below. And Raboin also sent an attachment consisting of thirteen pages of screenshots from various Extinction Rebellion social media pages. Selected images from this document appear below as well.

On April 22, 2019 Extinction Rebellion announced via Facebook that the protest would take place, or at least start out, at Universal City Station. And, even more ominously in the jaundiced view of these cops and their henchies in private security, recommended that participants wear “clothes that can get stained.” The police sent out an update immediately and Raboin forwarded it along to his clients. That’s the story. I’ll leave the moral for you to formulate.

But it’s essential to continue to piece together evidence about what LAPD can monitor, what they do monitor, and with whom they share the fruits of their monitoring. Just yesterday it seems like the whole human population of New York City rose up against violent overpolicing on their subways. And the whole human population of Los Angeles can see that we have the same problem and that it might well lead to the same kind of reaction. So it’s worth remembering while we’re organizing, friends and fellow humans, that the cops are reading our Twitters.
Continue reading LAPD Transit Services Division Monitored Extinction Rebellion’s Social Media In April 2019 And Sent Out Reports To Allied Universal Security — A Private Security Firm Employed By Many Business Improvement Districts In Los Angeles — Subsequently AUS Distributed LAPD Intelligence Reports To Its Clients →

LAUSD

Accelerated Schools Board Meeting Shut Down — By President Juli Quinn — In A Petulant Gavel-Smacking Rage — Because Some Members Of The Public Spoke Some Truth In Her Presence — That The Board Members Are Racist — Incompetent — They Endanger Children — They Fired Hilda Guzman In Retaliation For Her Union Activity And Her Political Speech — TAS Violated The Brown Act At Least Three Times In Forty Minutes — Requiring Sign-In For Entrance And Illegally Holding Two (!) Separate Secret Meetings Out Of The Presence Of The Public! — Which May Actually Rise To The Level Of A Criminal Violation!

October 26, 2019 Mike Leave a comment

As you may know, Hilda Guzman was wrongfully fired by The Accelerated Schools in July 2019. Her union, SEIU Local 99, organized a powerful protest at the last board meeting in August and was poised to do so again last Thursday, October 24. You can read more about Hilda’s situation and the Union’s response here. You can also watch the whole meeting, only about 40 minutes, here on YouTube.¹

And as you may also know, TAS has an illegal policy of requiring members of the public to sign in prior to attending their Board meetings,² though, and it took the SEIU members so long to get through this process that president Juli Quinn had closed public comment by the time the SEIU members made it into the room where the meeting was being held.

Quinn tried to make this idiotic decision stand in the face of righteous outrage by the protesters, until she couldn’t bear the shame any longer and said “I’d like to ask the board if you’d like to take a quick recess.” Then she idiotically hit the table with her idiotic gavel³ and they all left the room. Which is so illegal. It’s jaw-droppingly illegal.⁴ All business of the Board must be conducted in public except for a short list of specific reasons, none of which apply here. Even if any of them had applied it’s not allowed to meet in private without agendizing it first.⁵

After about five minutes the Board came back in and Juli Quinn⁶ admitted that she and her stupid colleagues had made a decision while they were in the back.⁷ And the decision that she admitted that they had made is that they were going to reopen public comment for 15 minutes only. But, like the totalitarian martinet she is, Dr. Quinn decided to read the public comment policy out loud first.
Continue reading Accelerated Schools Board Meeting Shut Down — By President Juli Quinn — In A Petulant Gavel-Smacking Rage — Because Some Members Of The Public Spoke Some Truth In Her Presence — That The Board Members Are Racist — Incompetent — They Endanger Children — They Fired Hilda Guzman In Retaliation For Her Union Activity And Her Political Speech — TAS Violated The Brown Act At Least Three Times In Forty Minutes — Requiring Sign-In For Entrance And Illegally Holding Two (!) Separate Secret Meetings Out Of The Presence Of The Public! — Which May Actually Rise To The Level Of A Criminal Violation! →

Lawsuits, Los Angeles City Council, Public Records Act Pragmatics

My Public Records Act Lawsuit Against The City Of Los Angeles — CD11 In Particular — Is Settled — The City Handed Over The Records And Will Pay My Attorney $12K For Her Trouble — Gotta Wonder Why They Think This Is Better Than Just Complying With The Law

October 21, 2019 Mike Leave a comment

Maybe you remember that in June of this year I was forced by the unhinged intransigence of various CD11 staffers with respect to compliance with the public records act, with the able assistance of the incomparable Anna von Herrmann, to file suit against the City of Los Angeles. The issue was over emails mostly involving planters illegally placed on the public sidewalks of Venice by the usual Klown Kar Krew of psychopathic housedwellers, aided and abetted in their absolute flouting of the law by various CD11 staff members.

And unlike e.g. the Venice Beach BID, at least the City of Los Angeles knows when they’re beat and they started handing over records immediately. And although I still have some issues with the City’s compliance, especially over the formats in which they choose to produce emails, this wasn’t the time to fight those battles, and they do at least know when they’re beat.

A lot of the material they produced in response to this suit was quite important. Not least e.g. was this story about how former and not-really-well-missed Bonin staffie Taylor Bazley not only abetted angry housedwellers in another crazed anti-homeless hostile landscaping project but even discouraged them from planting trees because, spake Bazley, homeless people like shade.

And just recently the settlement agreement was finalized, and you can get your copy here. As is the way with such material it’s really not that interesting. But there is one really interesting bit and that is that the City of Los Angeles agreed to pay von Herrmann $12,665 for her labors.
Continue reading My Public Records Act Lawsuit Against The City Of Los Angeles — CD11 In Particular — Is Settled — The City Handed Over The Records And Will Pay My Attorney $12K For Her Trouble — Gotta Wonder Why They Think This Is Better Than Just Complying With The Law →

Homeless Issues, Los Angeles City Council, Los Angeles City Government

Emails Between Keystone Towing General Manager Ed Arensdorf And CD12 Field Deputy Colin Crews — And LAPD Officer Benjamin Jones — And LADOT Staffer Brian Hartman — Provide A Rare Glimpse Into The Functioning Of The City’s RV Towing Machinery — And That Ultimately These Dwelling Places Are “Crushed” — No Conclusions Here But Some Illuminating Detail

October 20, 2019 Mike Leave a comment

I learned recently that the City of Los Angeles opposed a bill banning poverty tows in California for no better reason than that one single lobbyist asked on behalf of his clients, the Official Police Garage Association of Los Angeles, Herb-Wesson-appointed interim CD12 representative Greig Smith to oppose it, stating that his clients couldn’t do so publicly because to do so would expose them as the greedy bloodsuckers that, in fact, they actually are.

As pointed out by the incomparable folks at KTown For All this is an example of one single person determining official policy for a City of four million people for no better reason than to keep diverting zillions of dollars of public money into his clients’ coffers. And today I have a small related story, but an important one, showing not only an unexpectedly granular level of complicity between the tow companies and the City government with respect to RV towing, but some hints about the volume of RV tows and also the scale of the infrastructure required to tow and ultimately destroy motorhomes.

It begins with a May 23, 2019 email from Ed Arensdorf, general manager of OPG Keystone Towing, to Colin Crews of CD12, LAPD officer Benjamin Jones, and LADOT staffer Brian Hartman, in which he tells them that he is forced “to put motorhome towing on indefinite hold”. And in case you’re envisioning chaos, vehicular anarchy, Mad Max but with RVs, well, don’t worry, notes Arensdorf parenthetically, this is “(except evidence, stolens and blocking driveways/intersections).”

Which essentially means that they were going to have to stop towing away RVs that people live in but they will keep on towing RVs where there’s actually a defensible reason to tow, rather than displacement and profiteering. And in case it occurred to you, there were no moral considerations at all involved in the towing hiatus. The company that crushes RVs¹ was having some regulatory problems with environmental agencies.
Continue reading Emails Between Keystone Towing General Manager Ed Arensdorf And CD12 Field Deputy Colin Crews — And LAPD Officer Benjamin Jones — And LADOT Staffer Brian Hartman — Provide A Rare Glimpse Into The Functioning Of The City’s RV Towing Machinery — And That Ultimately These Dwelling Places Are “Crushed” — No Conclusions Here But Some Illuminating Detail →

California State Government, Homeless Issues, Los Angeles City Council

Remember When Assemblymember David Chiu Introduced A Bill To End Poverty Towing — And Fashy Interim City Councilmember Greig Smith Introduced A City Council Resolution To Oppose It — Basically Because — Said Smith — Without Police Power To Tow Cars Homeless Vehicle Dwellers Would Overrun The Whole City — But Newly Obtained Emails Show That Actually No One Even Cared About That — The Motion Was Written By Lobbyist Eric Rose — Working On Behalf Of The Official Police Garage Association Of Los Angeles — Whose Income Would Be Cut Drastically Without Poverty Tows — But Who Could Not Openly Oppose Chiu’s Bill Without Exposing Themselves As The Greedy Bloodsuckers They Are — So Rose Cooked Up The Homeless Connection — And Smith Pushed It — And They Passed Their Motion — And The Bill Died In Committee

October 16, 2019 Mike 1 Comment

On March 18, 2019 the Western Center on Law and Poverty released a monumental report on the effects of poverty towing in California. In conjunction with the report, WCLP issued a press release announcing that Assemblymember David Chiu had introduced a bill, AB-516, seeking to end the practice. Nine days later fash-adjacent hand-picked interim CD12 representative Greig Smith introduced a resolution in the Los Angeles City Council proposing to formally oppose AB-516.

The rhetoric in the motion, to be found in Council File 19-0002-S50, is uniformly anti-homeless, fueled by the axiomatic housedweller beliefs that without coercive means of removing vehicle dwellers they will somehow take over and destroy every last inch of the public realm. And this was a great story, and a completely plausible motive for ultra-fash Greig Smith, who stood out for his inhumanity towards people forced to live on the street even among his homeless-hating peers on the Council.

However, emails newly obtained from CD12 via the California Public Records Act prove that this was nothing but a cover story.¹ No one involved cared at all about the relationship between poverty tows and vehicle dwellers. The anti-homeless rhetoric in this case was no more than smoke behind which was hiding the fact that the only reason that Smith moved to oppose Chiu’s bill is that Eric Rose, a lobbyist with thermonuclear Los Angeles lobbying firm Englander Knabe Allen, incestuously linked with CD12 in any number of ways, represents the Official Police Garages Association of Los Angeles, who would obviously lose a lot of money if the number of tows decreased for any reason whatsover.

On March 19, one day after WCLP’s press release announcing the report, Rose asked Smith² to oppose Chiu’s bill and asked Smith’s permission to draft a motion to that effect. As Rose cynically explained, though, “The OPG’s can’t oppose this because it will be viewed as self-serving.” OPGs, of course, are the official police garages. Smith forwarded Rose’s email to his legislative deputy Erich King, and later that night Rose sent Smith a draft motion, also forwarded to King. And a few days later Smith’s actual motion was introduced. Written, no doubt, by King, heavily influenced by Rose.

In the text of the motion there’s nothing whatsoever about the Official Police Garages, Rose’s client, whose income the sole purpose of this opposition was to protect. Instead the text is all about enforcing the law and the subtext all about punishing people who live in vehicles. Don’t forget, never forget, that none of that’s the reason for any of this. It’s ironic, by the way, that Rose’s cover story relies so heavily on the need to enforce the law. His draft and the actual motion go on and on about scofflaws and how Chiu’s bill would enable them.³ Continue reading Remember When Assemblymember David Chiu Introduced A Bill To End Poverty Towing — And Fashy Interim City Councilmember Greig Smith Introduced A City Council Resolution To Oppose It — Basically Because — Said Smith — Without Police Power To Tow Cars Homeless Vehicle Dwellers Would Overrun The Whole City — But Newly Obtained Emails Show That Actually No One Even Cared About That — The Motion Was Written By Lobbyist Eric Rose — Working On Behalf Of The Official Police Garage Association Of Los Angeles — Whose Income Would Be Cut Drastically Without Poverty Tows — But Who Could Not Openly Oppose Chiu’s Bill Without Exposing Themselves As The Greedy Bloodsuckers They Are — So Rose Cooked Up The Homeless Connection — And Smith Pushed It — And They Passed Their Motion — And The Bill Died In Committee →

LAUSD

Emails Reveal Scholarship Prep Charter School PR Flack Jarryd Gonzales Facebook Stalking Harbor Area Defenders Of Public Education — Trying To Prevent Bad Publicity Based On Board Member Charles Friedrichs’ Xenophobic Anti-Immigrant Retweets — Whose Twitter Account Is Now Protected By The Way — Very Likely On The Advice Of Gonzales — Yet Another Example Of How Charters Squander Public Funds — Paying Idiots An Actual Salary To “Monitor” Adverse Twitter Accounts — I’m Guessing The Meteoric Flameout Of GANAS Academy Has These Piratical Privatizers Quite Worried!

October 15, 2019 Mike 1 Comment

Scholarship Prep is a chain of charter schools in Southern California recently expanded into the Los Angeles Unified School District with a school in Lomita. Charter minion and former state legislator Gloria Romero is one of the founders of the school, locally famous for having conspired with Sakshi Jain to accept the students left without a Fall 2019 school to attend by the spectacular implosion of Jain’s weirdo vanity charter project, GANAS Academy.

And, as you know if you followed that Jain/GANAS thing at all, those Harbor Area public education supporters are fierce. They’re tough as nails and they don’t like charter schools. And having shut down Jain, well, it’s not a surprise that they might be, to understate matters somewhat, not a hundred percent thrilled by Romero’s imperialistic designs on LAUSD kids and money.

And like many of us do these days, they have some presence on social media. For instance, there’s Harbor Area Defenders of Public Education on the Facebook and various Twitter accounts that take an interest, maybe most prominently LA County Leaks. This last account recently, just for instance, tweeted some info about Scholarship Prep’s board of directors and their lack of experience in education.

And the Harbor Area Defenders have also shared some important info about the Board, like for instance this post about Board member and music professor Charles Friedrichs who, despite being in control of a multimillion dollar publicly funded school that serves predominantly Latino populations, probably not entirely documented, will nevertheless gleefully retweet some incredibly xenophobic remarks about immigrants.

You might think, by the way, that Scholarship Prep wouldn’t worry about this kind of talk. They’re a multi-zillion dollar organization, well-funded, thoroughly lawyered up, on the right side of the powerful, and so on. Why would anyone think they might be worried about a little ragtag band of partisans sniping at them from the most obscure of the obscure little backwaters of Twitter.¹ Continue reading Emails Reveal Scholarship Prep Charter School PR Flack Jarryd Gonzales Facebook Stalking Harbor Area Defenders Of Public Education — Trying To Prevent Bad Publicity Based On Board Member Charles Friedrichs’ Xenophobic Anti-Immigrant Retweets — Whose Twitter Account Is Now Protected By The Way — Very Likely On The Advice Of Gonzales — Yet Another Example Of How Charters Squander Public Funds — Paying Idiots An Actual Salary To “Monitor” Adverse Twitter Accounts — I’m Guessing The Meteoric Flameout Of GANAS Academy Has These Piratical Privatizers Quite Worried! →

LAUSD

New Records From GANAS Academy — Pertaining To A $475K Start Up Grant From The California Department Of Education — Expose Sakshi Jain’s Utter — Complete — Total — Lack Of Ability — Of Imagination — Of Competence — Of Original Thought — And Call Into Question Anybody’s Decision To Put Actual Human Children Into This Woman’s Care For Any Reason Whatsoever — Let Alone Give Her Half A Million Bucks — Oh Also These Records Show That The $850 Per Recruited Student That Jain Famously Paid Came Out Of Public Funds — Which Is Apparently Known To Be A Bad Thing — Because Some Charter In San Diego Is Currently Getting Dragged In The News For Doing The Same Thing — But Only Paying $200 Per Kid

October 9, 2019 Mike 1 Comment

I’m spending some time trying to understand the finances of from-scratch charter school startups authorized by LAUSD. In particular, for a number of reasons, I’m looking closely at GANAS Academy, an amateurish little effort, slated to open in Fall 2019 but which for various reasons did not. I previously learned that the would-be founder, Sakshi Jain, kicked things off with a $325,000 grant from the Walton Family Foundation. And very recently I received a number of records that show that she also received a $475,000 grant from the California Department of Education.

It may be that these two amounts aren’t additive, because, according to the award letter, the CDE grant is “reimbursement based.” It’s at least plausible that this means the Walton grant was given to cover expenses that would be reimbursed by the DOE, although I have no proof (yet) either way. I just don’t have enough information to understand exactly how much money total was involved in the abortive debut of GANAS, but it was an awful lot. And I previously showed that Jain paid a recruiter $850 per kid enrolled. One of these records shows that she was paying the guy out of CDE funds.¹ I’m not sure if this is legal, but a charter school in San Diego is getting really bad press right now for doing the same thing.²

However, as interesting as it is, tracking what became of the money is not the most interesting information to be gleaned from this set of records, available here on Archive.Org. Neither is the weird and illegal crap she spent it on. That’s to be expected from such a grifter. What’s really interesting is the story of how this callow, this jejune little nobody, Sakshi Jain, with not an original idea in her head, without significant training, no demonstrated ability to do anything, can basically slap together a bunch of idiotic copypasta and be awarded a charter school and around half a million dollars in money from the state. And what’s worse, given actual responsibility for actual human children.

How anyone can look at this woman’s plans and proposals, can see the money everyone’s throwing at her, and still manage to think charter schools could ever be a good idea I will never understand. Sakshi Jain and her backwards, pernicious little project are not some kind of fluke, it’s no accident that she was able to do this. Everything’s working as it’s meant to work for her. This stupid, harmful little school is precisely one of the things that the system is designed to allow.³ Read on for links to the records, descriptions, and even some snide commentary!
Continue reading New Records From GANAS Academy — Pertaining To A $475K Start Up Grant From The California Department Of Education — Expose Sakshi Jain’s Utter — Complete — Total — Lack Of Ability — Of Imagination — Of Competence — Of Original Thought — And Call Into Question Anybody’s Decision To Put Actual Human Children Into This Woman’s Care For Any Reason Whatsoever — Let Alone Give Her Half A Million Bucks — Oh Also These Records Show That The $850 Per Recruited Student That Jain Famously Paid Came Out Of Public Funds — Which Is Apparently Known To Be A Bad Thing — Because Some Charter In San Diego Is Currently Getting Dragged In The News For Doing The Same Thing — But Only Paying $200 Per Kid →