Category Archives: Los Angeles City Government

LAUSD

In March 2018 Then-LAUSD-Board-Member Ref Rodriguez Shared A Top Secret Confidential Copy Of A Board Resolution With Cassy Horton Of The California Charter School Association — Before Anyone Other Than Richard Vladovic Had Seen It — And Cassy Horton Of CCSA Inserted Comments And Rewrote Language — And Arranged For Marcia Aaron of KIPP LA — And Parker Hudnut Of ICEF Charter Schools — To Meet In Her Company With Rodriguez And Aixle Aman Prior To Its Introduction To The Board To Discuss It — And Shared It With Christina De Jesus Of Green Dot Charter Schools — And Emilio Pack Of STEM Prep — For Their Comments — And Rewrites

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Remember how in September 2018 universally-reviled-by-sane-people LAUSD superintendent Austin Beutner gave an advance copy of a major policy speech to the California Charter School Association for their comments, and even organized a conference call between Jed Wallace, then supreme commander of the CCSA, and Beutner’s speechwriter Shira Fine so that Wallace could pass along pro-charter propaganda to Fine for inclusion?

And then, when it got tweeted about, reprehensible CCSA shill Cassy Horton responded with a particularly mendacious claim that this kind of thing was just business as usual and everyone does it?1 Well, today’s story, about Horton getting top secret information from Ref Rodriguez in March 2018, may tend to support her claim that it’s just business as usual. But I still haven’t seen any evidence that anyone other than CCSA flacks is getting advance information out of LAUSD officials.

Before he was investigated by the Los Angeles City Ethics Commission, before he resigned in what passes for disgrace in municipal politics, before he pled guilty to a felony and assorted misdemeanors, before all that nonsense, former school board member Ref Rodriguez was famous for being the handpicked stooge of the CCSA. And, like his asshole buddy Austin Beutner after him, it turns out that Ref Rodriguez also secretly shared major policy documents, including at least one LAUSD board resolution, with CCSA flacks for them to revise to better reflect their interests.

The story begins with this email from Cassy Horton to four of the very creepiest of creepy charter creeps, which is to say Marcia Aaron of KIPP LA, Emilio Pack of STEM Preparatory, Christina De Jesus of Green Dot, and Parker Hudnut of Inner City Education Foundation Charter Schools.

Its subject alone tells quite a story: “<DO NOT SHARE OR FORWARD> Authorizing Resolution for Review and Feedback”. But the whole thing is essential reading. What’s at stake in the resolution is how charters should be authorized by LAUSD, how their performance should be evaluated, and so on. Not, sane folks might think, something which ought to be written by the very industry it’s meant to regulate. Evidently Ref Rodriguez disagreed. Here’s a transcription of the email:
Continue reading In March 2018 Then-LAUSD-Board-Member Ref Rodriguez Shared A Top Secret Confidential Copy Of A Board Resolution With Cassy Horton Of The California Charter School Association — Before Anyone Other Than Richard Vladovic Had Seen It — And Cassy Horton Of CCSA Inserted Comments And Rewrote Language — And Arranged For Marcia Aaron of KIPP LA — And Parker Hudnut Of ICEF Charter Schools — To Meet In Her Company With Rodriguez And Aixle Aman Prior To Its Introduction To The Board To Discuss It — And Shared It With Christina De Jesus Of Green Dot Charter Schools — And Emilio Pack Of STEM Prep — For Their Comments — And Rewrites →

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Los Angeles City Council

The Resurgence Of The Unhinged Grudge Informer — Anonymous CD5 Resident Threatens To Call ICE On Construction Workers Because They Don’t Speak English And The Constant Beeping Of Trucks Drives Her Crazy — And CD5 Staffer Debbie Dyner Harris Doesn’t Say A Critical Word About It — It’s All Normal In Quality-Of-Life-Land — If Our Society Creates And Weaponizes An Institution Like ICE It’s Certainly Not Unexpected That People Would Use It As A Weapon — But Can’t We Rely On Our Public Officials Not To Encourage It — If Only Through Their Invidious Silence?

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Tomorrow, July 12, 2019, under the banner of Lights for Liberty, thousands of people across the country and across the world will be participating in vigils at American concentration camps run by ICE, protesting the murderous treatment of the prisoners held there. You can find an event near you here. There are any number of serious reasons to abolish ICE, you can even ask ICE agents about it.

And one of these reasons is that the very existence of this organization, which is empowered to lock people up and torture them on the barest suspicion that they’re somehow violating immigration laws, incites people to use that power to further their personal goals. Under the original Nazis concentration camps were not only a tool of state terror but were used regularly by ordinary people to settle entirely non-political grudges with their neighbors.

The very existence of the capability creates the irresistible urge to use it. The blade itself incites to violence.1 This behavior was so commonplace and so problematic for various reasons that there’s a term for those who engage in it, they’re grudge informers. As Colleen Murphy puts it in her fine book The Conceptual Foundations of Transitional Justice:

The term “grudge informers” refers to individuals who, during periods of conflict or repression, report personal enemies to authorities in order to get rid of them.2
Now, I’m not interested in rehashing the endlessly stupid discussions about the appropriacy of comparisons of ICE concentration camps to Nazi concentration camps nor, obviously, the appropriacy of the term “concentration camp” to refer to them. If it strikes you that there are two legitimate sides to that debate, you can go here and talk about it to your heart’s content.

I am, however, interested in talking about public records. In this case, a set of emails I obtained from the office of Paul Koretz, putatively esteemed CD5 repster, containing the phrase “quality of life.” I’m really interested in the kind of crazy shit that housedwellers gripe about to their council offices, and especially interested in the kind of terrorism that gets conjured up and poured down upon the tender heads of the helpless like so much molten lead from the ramparts as a result of such complaints.

Searches on this phrase seemed like a good way to find more of it, and oh boy, did that ever work out! Just for instance, if you have the heart, or the stomach, really, take a look at this endless series of constituent complaints from folks on Sweetzer Avenue in May of this year, really worked up about some construction noise created by an assuredly villainous outfit known as ETCO Homes.
Continue reading The Resurgence Of The Unhinged Grudge Informer — Anonymous CD5 Resident Threatens To Call ICE On Construction Workers Because They Don’t Speak English And The Constant Beeping Of Trucks Drives Her Crazy — And CD5 Staffer Debbie Dyner Harris Doesn’t Say A Critical Word About It — It’s All Normal In Quality-Of-Life-Land — If Our Society Creates And Weaponizes An Institution Like ICE It’s Certainly Not Unexpected That People Would Use It As A Weapon — But Can’t We Rely On Our Public Officials Not To Encourage It — If Only Through Their Invidious Silence? →

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LAUSD

Green Dot Charter Schools CEO Cristina De Jesus Served On Gavin Newsom’s State Charter School Task Force Earlier This Year — According To Tony Thurmond The Point Was To Identify “what is truly best for kids” — But De Jesus Told Her Colleagues That Her “Representation On The Task Force” Gave Green Dot “The Ultimate Voice” — And She Used Her Knowledge Of Task Force Meetings To Shape Green Dot PR Messaging On Charter School Controversies — None Of Which Sounds Like Thinking About What’s Best For Anyone Other Than Green Dot — Oh And Also It Seems That In Early 2018 De Jesus And The California Charter School Association Were Just Sitting Around Waiting For Michelle King To Die — So They Could Start Manipulating The Choice Of Her Replacement — Which As We Now Know They Ultimately Managed Really Well — At Least From Their Infernal Point Of View — And Making Insensitive Remarks While They Waited — Which Is Not A Good Look For A Bunch Of Privatizing Vultures — Especially Given How Their Hand-Picked Dude Is Working Out

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Earlier this year Governor Gavin Newsom asked State Superintendent of Public Instruction Tony Thurmond to convene an expert task force to study some aspects of charter schools in California and to issue a report by July 1, which task they duly completed. Here’s what Tony Thurmond had to say about what all these experts were going to get up to:

I am excited that we have this incredible assembly of experts from all sectors to help lead this charge, to take a deeper look at the impact of charter schools. We plan to research data and facts, and will review the fiscal impact and authorization process of charter schools. But more importantly, we are going to do this with thoughtful intention and through the lens of identifying what is truly best for kids.

And one of the putative experts appointed thereto was Cristina De Jesus, mostly famous for being the supreme commander of behemothic privatizing charter school organization Green Dot California. And even though Tony Thurmond thought the task forceers were going to think about the kids, well, as might be expected by the cynical,1 it turns out that, as shown in some emails I recently obtained via the California Public Records Act, De Jesus had very, very different ideas about her role on this expert body.2

The story begins on March 27, 2019, when Anna Phillips published a story in the Los Angeles Times, privatizers-into-a-tizzy-throwingly entitled How a couple worked charter school regulations to make millions. And into a tizzy indeed were thrown the privatizers, especially their ministers of truth.3 Thus did Green Dot commo-king Sean Thibault write an email to his Supreme Commander CDJ,4 proposing a response, perhaps to be submitted as a letter to the editor, which Thibault refers to as an LTE because of course he does.

This proposed LTE is incredibly worth reading for its crackpot accusation that “ideological charter critics” essentially caused Clark and Jeanette Parker to steal all that money from Today’s Fresh Start Charter School because they “have focused their legislative proposals on areas that already have healthy public scrutiny” rather than what, according to Sean Thibault, they ought to have been doing, which is “partnering to update charter laws and regulations to help catch bad apples.” But what we’re really interested in here is Thibault’s summing-uppery, directed at his boss CDJ:
Continue reading Green Dot Charter Schools CEO Cristina De Jesus Served On Gavin Newsom’s State Charter School Task Force Earlier This Year — According To Tony Thurmond The Point Was To Identify “what is truly best for kids” — But De Jesus Told Her Colleagues That Her “Representation On The Task Force” Gave Green Dot “The Ultimate Voice” — And She Used Her Knowledge Of Task Force Meetings To Shape Green Dot PR Messaging On Charter School Controversies — None Of Which Sounds Like Thinking About What’s Best For Anyone Other Than Green Dot — Oh And Also It Seems That In Early 2018 De Jesus And The California Charter School Association Were Just Sitting Around Waiting For Michelle King To Die — So They Could Start Manipulating The Choice Of Her Replacement — Which As We Now Know They Ultimately Managed Really Well — At Least From Their Infernal Point Of View — And Making Insensitive Remarks While They Waited — Which Is Not A Good Look For A Bunch Of Privatizing Vultures — Especially Given How Their Hand-Picked Dude Is Working Out →

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Homeless Issues, Los Angeles City Council, Venice

Remember Mike Bonin’s Former Venice Field Deputy Taylor Bazley? — The One Who Was Always Going On About How He — And His Boss — And The Rest Of The Damn Staff — Didn’t Have Anything To Do With Those Damn Planters? — But It Turned Out That He Did? — Well Now It Turns Out That He’s Been Encouraging Housedwellers To Place Planters At Least Since 2017 — To “Harden” Streets “From Future Encampments” — And Other Such Nasty Language — Never Once Mentioning Beauti-Freaking-Fication — And Those Recent Planters Behind Whole Foods On Lincoln? — The Venice Neighborhood Council Paid For Two Of Them! — Public Money Spent On Actually Illegal Things — This Is Very Not OK — Last Thing — Mark Ryavec Acknowledges In Writing How Much Help His Planter Placer Buddies Have Gotten From LAPD — The Whole Thing Is So Gross

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Here’s a little self-quoting for background:

Everybody knows about those damn planters in Venice, but we’re just beginning to learn the depth of the City’s complicity with the angry housedwelling planter-placers. And fairly recently I obtained some emails that proved that Mike Bonin’s staff, if not Bonin himself, have been very complicit indeed, which led me to file a complaint with the City Ethics Commission against one of them, Taylor Bazley.

And today I have some serious new information about the planters. First, some planters were recently installed near the Whole Foods at Lincoln and Rose. It turns out that two of these planters, as illegal as all the rest of them, were paid for by the Venice Neighborhood Council, which allocated $600 for two of them at its meeting on January 8, 2019. You can read all about it in the minutes and agendas.

The process was initiated by solipsistic Venice housedweller Tatiana Morrison, whose ridiculous Go Fund Me is still at less than forty percent of its goal, with this formal request to VNC for money. Like so many of the zillionaire classes, when her pathetic attempts at putative self-reliance failed miserably, she was perfectly happy to misappropriate public funds to accomplish her misbegotten goals.

So here we have the City of Los Angeles, through its department the Venice Neighborhood Council, spending public money on things that violate actual laws. If they had spent the $600 on, say, cocaine, it would have been legally, ethically, morally, the same thing although much, much less harmful to society. I’m not exactly sure if there’s any recourse for this kind of thing, or at least any affordable recourse, but I’m thinking about it and I will be sure to let you know if anything presents itself.

Now on to your friendly neighborhood psychopath, Mark Ryavec. Everyone knows he and his Klown Kar Krew of Venice housedwellers have been one of the major forces behind the deluge of illegal planter placings and that the LAPD has been helping him out big time, even though LAPD Chief Michel Moore has publicly denied that his folks are involved at all. But nevertheless, documentary evidence of these well-known facts has been fairly sparse. That’s why this email exchange from August 2018 between Ryavec and Taylor Bazley, Mike Bonin’s former field deputy for Venice1 is so important. Here Ryavec, trying to cajole some money out of Bazley, makes the following admission against interest:2
We – the residents – have done allthe heavy lifting with the beautification effort, with the only real assistance from the City coming from the LAPD. To date we have raised over $35,000 for this effort and provided countless hours of volunteer labor. Can the City of Los Angeles at least make an effort to provide trash bins and regularty empty them?

And finally, now, on to the main thing.3 It’s also well-known that Taylor Bazley has repeatedly denied his involvement with the planters. And yet, behold this email conversation from December 2017 between Bazley and former VNC member and all-round sociopathic housedweller Matt Shaw about placing some planters on Third Avenue in Venice.4 And despite all the denials, it’s Bazley who’s the instigator: “Can we push this ball over the hill? lf we wait until the problem is back and there is urgency it might be too late…” And despite all the talk about beautification, Bazley’s very explicit about the purpose being anti-homeless: “I think that will harden 3rd significantly from future encampments.”
Continue reading Remember Mike Bonin’s Former Venice Field Deputy Taylor Bazley? — The One Who Was Always Going On About How He — And His Boss — And The Rest Of The Damn Staff — Didn’t Have Anything To Do With Those Damn Planters? — But It Turned Out That He Did? — Well Now It Turns Out That He’s Been Encouraging Housedwellers To Place Planters At Least Since 2017 — To “Harden” Streets “From Future Encampments” — And Other Such Nasty Language — Never Once Mentioning Beauti-Freaking-Fication — And Those Recent Planters Behind Whole Foods On Lincoln? — The Venice Neighborhood Council Paid For Two Of Them! — Public Money Spent On Actually Illegal Things — This Is Very Not OK — Last Thing — Mark Ryavec Acknowledges In Writing How Much Help His Planter Placer Buddies Have Gotten From LAPD — The Whole Thing Is So Gross →

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LAPD, Los Angeles City Government

In The Wake Of Federal Lawsuits Against The City Of Los Angeles For Its Outrageous Unsupportable Illegal Pretextual Arrests At 2014 Protests Over The Murder Of Michael Brown City Attorney Mike Feuer Issued Detailed Confidential Case Filing Guidelines Explaining Precisely Which Crimes To Arrest Protesters For — And Exactly What Information Had To Be In The Police Reports In Order To Prosecute Successfully — Which Looks To The Even Mildly Cynical Eye As A List Of Suggested Lies For The Cops To Include — And Here — Friends — Is A Copy Of Feuer’s Confidential Report — All Eighteen Pages Of It — And Special Bonus! — LAPD Enforcement Guidelines For LAMC 55.07 — Which Regulates How Big Your Signs Can Be At Protests And Forbids Glass Bottles — Among Other Things

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In 2014 a police officer in Ferguson, Missouri murdered Michael Brown. On November 24, 2014 a grand jury announced its decision not to indict the officer and, in response, civil unrest broke out across the United States, including in Los Angeles, where hundreds of protesters were arrested by the LAPD. And it’ll be no surprise to anyone paying attention that the police here used illegal tactics, arrested people who weren’t breaking the law, and so on.

These allegations were the subject of at least three federal civil rights suits against the City. One by Charmaine Chua, filed in January 2016, was eventually certified as a class action, and seems poised to settle fairly soon. Another, by Patti Beers and others, seems to have settled already. The third, filed by Girmay Amha, has particularly vivid descriptions of LAPD misconduct, and it’s really worth your time to read to find out exactly the kind of crap the cops pulled.

So evidently, and this is supported by the fact that none of these cases seem likely to go to trial and the fact that evidently few if any of the arrestees were ever charged, the City realized that they had incurred significant liability due to LAPD misconduct. In defending the City against these multiple suits, and also having been involved in the decisions not to charge most or all of the protesters, the City Attorney’s office would have had to had a deep look into LAPD’s arrest policies at protests.

The lack of charges certainly suggests that they didn’t like what they found. It’s possible, therefore, although I don’t (yet) have direct proof, that LAPD behavior at the Michael Brown protests was the cause of the fact that in October 2017 Los Angeles City Attorney Mike Feuer released an extensive and detailed set of filing guidelines related to arrests made at protests. I recently obtained a copy of this putatively confidential document, you can get your own copy here, and there’s a transcription below.1

This remarkable document lists 16 distinct violations that the City Attorney recommends LAPD arrest protesters for. It includes “evidentiary recommendations” for each crime, which read like nothing more than winking advice to police about what kinds of things they have to make up in order to avoid future debacles. There are also notes to filing deputies city attorneys for some of the violations. In all it’s a technical but absolutely fascinating document, and surely the time spent reading it will be repaid manyfold.

And included in the same document release from which I obtained this record, there was also this other notice from the Chief of Detectives, entitled “Enforcement Guidelines for Violations of LAMC §55.07.” This law regulates what kinds of items are forbidden to possess at protests, like sign poles that are too thick, or sharpened, and so on. It breaks down the division of responsibilities among different command levels for arresting people for violations, and includes a copy of the mandatory warning, in both English and Spanish, which must be read by officers before they start arresting people for violations. Very, very interesting stuff.
Continue reading In The Wake Of Federal Lawsuits Against The City Of Los Angeles For Its Outrageous Unsupportable Illegal Pretextual Arrests At 2014 Protests Over The Murder Of Michael Brown City Attorney Mike Feuer Issued Detailed Confidential Case Filing Guidelines Explaining Precisely Which Crimes To Arrest Protesters For — And Exactly What Information Had To Be In The Police Reports In Order To Prosecute Successfully — Which Looks To The Even Mildly Cynical Eye As A List Of Suggested Lies For The Cops To Include — And Here — Friends — Is A Copy Of Feuer’s Confidential Report — All Eighteen Pages Of It — And Special Bonus! — LAPD Enforcement Guidelines For LAMC 55.07 — Which Regulates How Big Your Signs Can Be At Protests And Forbids Glass Bottles — Among Other Things →

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LAUSD

During The UTLA Strike In January 2019 — The Union Sent A Letter Around To Various Charter School Employees — Expressing Solidarity And Stuff — And Emilio Pack — Supreme Commander Of STEM Preparatory Charter School — Was So Offended That He Contemplated Blocking All Emails From UTLA To His Employees — Only On The Strongly But Cynically Worded Advice Of His High-Powered Charter School Lawyer Janelle Ruley — From The World’s Most Privatizing Law Firm — Which Is Of Course Young, Minney, & Corr — Did He Back Off From His Creepy Paternalistic Disrespectful-Of-Humanity Position — And I Have A Copy Of The Damn Letter From The Damn Lawyer! — Along With Other Emails Of Interest! — And You Can Read Them Here!

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Today we’re looking at Dr. Emilio Pack, supreme chief head executive honcho & founder of STEM Preparatory Schools, which is, of course, yet another instance of the usual herd of entities of the general type of entity that it’s an instance of, and supremely so. Pack, renowned amongst those whose renown is the currency of his world, profiled and lionized and so on, is a member of the shadowy pro-charter conspiracy known to the world as the Los Angeles Advocacy Council. And not just any member, but a member of the executive committee, perhaps the chair, something big.1

And then there’s the world’s most privatizing law firm, Young, Minney, and Corr.2 Famous in these parts for their of counsel guy, H. Wayne Strumpfer and his hapless and feckless but tireless advice to the hapless and feckless but tiresome Ms. Sakshi Jain, founder and CEO of weirdo little co-locationist charter upstart GANAS Academy.3 And then, of course, there is the UTLA, which needs no introduction around here and neither does their monumental strike in January 2019.

It’s well-known, of course, that charter schools hate unions, and that, friends, is where our story begins! Well, and ends too, pretty much. It seems that on January 7, 2019, UTLA sent an email to a bunch of charter school employees, expressing solidarity and explaining their position vis-a-vis charter schools and the strike. I have a copy of it only because Kerry Kletter, who is not just the head boss of Village Charter Academy but is also a bootlicking snitch of the first water,4 emailed a copy to bootlicking first-water snitch-handler Cassy Horton of the CCSA and was all like OMG the freaking nerve of these damnable unionists! You can read a copy of it here along with subsequent bootlickery between Kletter and Horton.

And it seems also that this letter was sent to some people who worked at STEM Prep, laboring in the happy fields overseen by Supreme Executive Commander Pack! And it seems that Supreme Executive Commander Pack blew his supremely executive commanderish stack! And decided to block incoming UTLA emails! Because why should damnable unionists consume his valuable electrons?! But supreme executive commanders generally have not attained the supreme executive commanderships they enjoy by taking action without weighing potential consequences, And Pack is clearly no exception. Thus did he ask his lawyer, Janelle A. Ruley, hey friend! Can we do this thing?

And Janelle A. Ruley was all like no freaking way, friend! That’s just the very briar patch into which the UTLA seeks to get thrown! Later they will lie about stuff and you’ll be busted! And, as it happens, I know this story because subsequently Emilio Pack forwarded an email from Ruley to Christina De Jesus of Green Dot Charter Schools and a couple of pinheaded flacks from the California Charter Schools Association, thus waiving the privilege and creating a public record which, as will happen, I managed to obtain a copy of. Here’s a link to a PDF of it and you can read a complete transcription below!
Continue reading During The UTLA Strike In January 2019 — The Union Sent A Letter Around To Various Charter School Employees — Expressing Solidarity And Stuff — And Emilio Pack — Supreme Commander Of STEM Preparatory Charter School — Was So Offended That He Contemplated Blocking All Emails From UTLA To His Employees — Only On The Strongly But Cynically Worded Advice Of His High-Powered Charter School Lawyer Janelle Ruley — From The World’s Most Privatizing Law Firm — Which Is Of Course Young, Minney, & Corr — Did He Back Off From His Creepy Paternalistic Disrespectful-Of-Humanity Position — And I Have A Copy Of The Damn Letter From The Damn Lawyer! — Along With Other Emails Of Interest! — And You Can Read Them Here! →

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LAUSD, Public Records Act Pragmatics

In January 2019 Sakshi Jain — Founder And Supreme Boss Of Universally-Loathed-By-The-Sane Charter School GANAS Academy — Solicited Her Peeps For What She Was Pleased To Call “Your Meaningful Donation” — So I Hit Her Up For A List Of Donors Along With Amounts Given — And Today I Received A List — With No Last Names — I Hassled The Lawyer — And He Claimed That That Was The List — And That They Claimed No Exemptions — And I Didn’t Believe Him — And Then Jain Emailed Me When She Meant To Email Him — And Admitted That She Had Deleted The Last Names — To Hide Them From Me — So The Lawyer — Lied To By His Client — Handed Over The Complete List — And You Can Read It Here!

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Yeah, the headline has the story! Here’s the background! Noted galaxy brain Sakshi Jain is starting a charter school in the City of Carson. It’s called GANAS Academy, and it’s putatively going to co-locate on the campus of the well-beloved neighborhood school Catskill Elementary. But the Catskill folks aren’t taking this quietly. They’re kicking up a damn storm, and rightly so! And I’m investigating right and investigating left and investigating all over the place because who can gaze approvingly upon themselves in the damn mirror in the damn morning if they’re not doing something to thwart these damn privatizers?!

And of course I’m doing my small part by wielding the California Public Records Act like, well, like the California Public Records Act. And in May I got a bunch of emails from the privatizers, and one in particular, this from January 2019, is an important part of the story I’m telling in this post. Therein, you see, amongst other admonitions, did Sakshi Jain admonish her audience thusly: ” If you have not already done so please make your meaningful contribution to the school. The amount of this donation is an amount that is meaningful to you and is not shared with any other board members.”

And a claim like that, that it’s possible for an agency like Jain’s crackpot little charter school that’s subject to the CPRA to keep this kind of crapola secret just because their weirdo sense of what passes for propriety among zillionaires and their willing servants suggests that they ought to do, well, I can’t resist exposing their self-proclaimed but exceedingly putative secrets to the world.

So that very day, the very day I read the email, I popped off this request for records to Jain and her lawyer, the bizarre but weirdly well-dressed little dude known in some circles as H. Wayne Strumpfer, who is of counsel1 to the world’s most privatizing law firm, Young, Minney, and Corr, asking for the damn donation records.
Continue reading In January 2019 Sakshi Jain — Founder And Supreme Boss Of Universally-Loathed-By-The-Sane Charter School GANAS Academy — Solicited Her Peeps For What She Was Pleased To Call “Your Meaningful Donation” — So I Hit Her Up For A List Of Donors Along With Amounts Given — And Today I Received A List — With No Last Names — I Hassled The Lawyer — And He Claimed That That Was The List — And That They Claimed No Exemptions — And I Didn’t Believe Him — And Then Jain Emailed Me When She Meant To Email Him — And Admitted That She Had Deleted The Last Names — To Hide Them From Me — So The Lawyer — Lied To By His Client — Handed Over The Complete List — And You Can Read It Here! →

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LAUSD

More On Covert California Charter School Association Involvement In Austin Beutner’s 13 September 2018 Policy Speech — Then-CEO Jed Wallace Spoke To Beutner On Sept. 7 — Beutner Was Impressed So Had His Flacks Arrange A Conference Call Between Themselves And His Speechwriter And Wallace So Wallace Could “walk through how he thinks Austin should be talking” — And Beutner Chief Of Staff Rebecca Kockler Opened A Back Channel With Green Dot Boss Christina De Jesus — And Shared The Speech Language With Her To “Ease [Charter Proponents’] Minds” — But Was Paranoid About Leaks So Refused To Share A Copy — Insisted On Reading It Out Loud Over The Phone — Apparently At The Behest Of CCSA The Speech Was Edited So As To Not Even Mention Charters — Because Evidently That’s What It Takes To Ease Their Damn Minds

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I wrote yesterday about how Los Angeles Unified School District Superintendent Austin Beutner and Rebecca Kockler, at that time Beutner’s chief of staff, allowed privatization lobbyists the California Charter School Association to vet the content of a major policy speech he gave on September 13, 2018, supplying them with an advance copy and talking repeatedly with their representatives. If you’re not familiar with the issues or the people that post is a good place to start.

This evening’s story is about more covert meetings between Beutner and his staff and CCSA regarding the content and even the specific wording of the speech.1 The story begins on September 7, 2018, when Jed Wallace, at that time the CEO of CCSA, talked to Beutner on the phone about the speech. The next day Wallace sent an email describing the conversation to his close associates Marcia Aaron of KIPP LA, Emilio Pack of STEM Preparatory Schools, Christina de Jesus of Green Dot, Myrna Castrejon, then of Great Public Schools Now,2 and the famous Cassy Horton, CCSA’s Greater Los Angeles minister of propaganda.

According to Wallace, Beutner promised to keep charters out of negotiations with UTLA. Beutner also said that he was planning to “get further left than UTLA,” whatever that might mean to a guy like Beutner, and he said that he was planning to discuss an (unrevealed) additional policy item that might have to do with charters. Wallace, by his own account, fed Beutner the party line on charter oversight and some other issues. The money shot, though, is this statement:
Continue reading More On Covert California Charter School Association Involvement In Austin Beutner’s 13 September 2018 Policy Speech — Then-CEO Jed Wallace Spoke To Beutner On Sept. 7 — Beutner Was Impressed So Had His Flacks Arrange A Conference Call Between Themselves And His Speechwriter And Wallace So Wallace Could “walk through how he thinks Austin should be talking” — And Beutner Chief Of Staff Rebecca Kockler Opened A Back Channel With Green Dot Boss Christina De Jesus — And Shared The Speech Language With Her To “Ease [Charter Proponents’] Minds” — But Was Paranoid About Leaks So Refused To Share A Copy — Insisted On Reading It Out Loud Over The Phone — Apparently At The Behest Of CCSA The Speech Was Edited So As To Not Even Mention Charters — Because Evidently That’s What It Takes To Ease Their Damn Minds →

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LAUSD

On September 13, 2018 Los Angeles Unified School District Superintendent Austin Beutner Gave A Major Policy Speech — The Week Before That Beutner Staffers Rebecca Kockler And Elmer Roldan Met Separately With Lobbyist Cassy Horton Of The California Charter Schools Association To Vet His Proposals With Her — I Have A Copy Of Horton’s Extensive Notes On These Two Meetings! — On September 7 Beutner Met With Christina De Jesus Of Green Dot And Emilio Pack Of STEM Prep For The Same Purpose — And On September 12 Cassy Horton Had An Advance Copy Of Beutner’s Speech And Shared It With Those Two For Feedback — Ironically In The Speech Beutner Touted The Importance Of Transparency — But Didn’t Mention Word One About All This Back Channel Commo With Elite Privatizers About The Very Speech In Which He Was Touting Transparency!

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A little history and a list of the dramatis personae are in order before we begin. In May 2018 noted zillionaire Austin Beutner was appointed superintendent of the Los Angeles Unified School District via a shady, probably illegal, backroom process pushed through by noted charter-lovers Monica Rodriguez and later-indicted-and-convicted criminal Ref Rodriguez.1 Subsequently Beutner hired Broad Foundation alumna Rebecca Kockler away from the already-pretty-wrecked state of Louisiana where she was famous for privatizing everything in her reach and thereby wrecking everything even more as his chief of staff2 and some dude named Elmer Roldan as his director of civic engagement.

Then there’s the shady charter school lobbying conspiracy known as the California Charter Schools Association, sitting like a fat green spider at the center of the various ickety-stickety webs of privatization spritzed all over our fair city by behind-the-scenes zillionaires. These privatizing peddlers of metaphorical poisoned apples are not just lobbyists, but also actively gather what passes for intelligence in privatizerlandia and spread it around among their members. They’re probably reading this very blog post. Their local capo is Cassy Horton.

And one of the CCSA’s creepiest little Southern California projects is something called the Los Angeles Advocacy Council, a shadowy website-lacking group of twenty-ish super-elite local charter leaders who convene regularly to discuss how to privatize everything they can lay their greedy paws on, to meet with politicians, propose policy, and so on.3 And among these elite privatizers there is an even eliter bunch, the so-called LAAC Leadership. This hyper-exclusive crew consists of Green Dot Charter Schools CEO Christina De Jesus and STEM Preparatory School boss Emilio Pack, facilitated by Cassy Horton.

And it came to pass that after Beutner had been on the job for a few months, in September 2018, he decided that he wanted to give a major policy speech, explaining just what the hell he planned to get up to way high up on the zillionth floor of the Bastille on Beaudry.4 And how does a galaxy-brain like Beutner prepare for such an event? Well, perhaps he thinks about things, reads up on things, talks about things with his senior staff, goes out in the field and looks at things.

And maybe Beutner did all of that and more. But he also had two of his senior staff, the aforementioned Kockler and Roldan, meet with Cassy Horton to run all his proposals by her. And the next day he met with LAAC elites Christina De Jesus and Emilio Pack. We know about this first meeting from an email which Horton sent to De Jesus and Pack, ensubjected “<Confidential/For Review> Preview of Austin Convo for Tomorrow” describing in astounding detail both the content and her thoughts on these two meetings with Beutner’s staffies.
Continue reading On September 13, 2018 Los Angeles Unified School District Superintendent Austin Beutner Gave A Major Policy Speech — The Week Before That Beutner Staffers Rebecca Kockler And Elmer Roldan Met Separately With Lobbyist Cassy Horton Of The California Charter Schools Association To Vet His Proposals With Her — I Have A Copy Of Horton’s Extensive Notes On These Two Meetings! — On September 7 Beutner Met With Christina De Jesus Of Green Dot And Emilio Pack Of STEM Prep For The Same Purpose — And On September 12 Cassy Horton Had An Advance Copy Of Beutner’s Speech And Shared It With Those Two For Feedback — Ironically In The Speech Beutner Touted The Importance Of Transparency — But Didn’t Mention Word One About All This Back Channel Commo With Elite Privatizers About The Very Speech In Which He Was Touting Transparency! →

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Lawsuits, Los Angeles City Council, Public Records Act Pragmatics

City Of Los Angeles Sued Yet Again To Enforce Compliance With The Public Records Act — This Time It’s Over CD1’s Obstinate Refusal To Produce Emails Between Staffer Jose Rodriguez And Two LAPD Officers About Homeless Encampments In CD1 — On The Advice Of The City Attorney Cedillo Staffer Mel Ilomin Claimed A Series Of Bogus And Ever-Shifting Exemptions — But I Got Two Responsive Records From LAPD — Which Show The Utter Implausibility Of The Exemption Claims

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As you know, one of my long-term projects is using the public records act to understand how and why the City of Los Angeles schedules sweeps of homeless encampments and related enforcement actions. Emails between Council offices and either LAPD or LA Sanitation have been essential in this effort. For instance, a monumental recent email release from LAPD revealed a number of essential facts.

First, that CD11 staffer Taylor Bazley, despite official denials, had been complicit in the illegal placement of anti-homeless planters in Venice. This revelation led, in turn, to my filing a complaint against a list of LAPD officers with the Internal Affairs Division and a complaint with the Ethics Commission against Bazley. These same emails revealed that CD11 itself had been illegally withholding incredibly important records in the face of a number of my pending CPRA requests, which led to my filing another writ petition against the City seeking to compel the release of those materials.

And also, there among these 1,200 pages of stuff, were a couple emails between CD1 staffer Jose Rodriguez and a couple of police officers, Arturo Siguenas and Ruben Arellano, about homeless encampments and sweep scheduling at an encampment on Avenue 61 between Figueroa Street and Piedmont Avenue, one block to the North. Here’s the first one and also the second one. These emails in themselves are fairly innocuous, but since other emails in the release had turned out to be so very consequential, and since CD1 is a particular interest of mine although not, so far, with respect to homelessness, the importance of tracing this thread further was quite clear.

Thus I sent a request for all emails between Rodriguez and these two officers from between January 1, 2018 and April 30, 2019, the day before the date of the request:1 Continue reading City Of Los Angeles Sued Yet Again To Enforce Compliance With The Public Records Act — This Time It’s Over CD1’s Obstinate Refusal To Produce Emails Between Staffer Jose Rodriguez And Two LAPD Officers About Homeless Encampments In CD1 — On The Advice Of The City Attorney Cedillo Staffer Mel Ilomin Claimed A Series Of Bogus And Ever-Shifting Exemptions — But I Got Two Responsive Records From LAPD — Which Show The Utter Implausibility Of The Exemption Claims →

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