Tag Archives: Ganas Academy

LAUSD, Public Records Act Pragmatics

Emails Between Excelencia Charter Academy Founder Ruben Alonzo And Various Lawyers At Powerhouse Privatizing Law Firm Young Minney Corr – Discussing How To Respond To My Request For Public Records – Reveal Strategies Of Obstruction And Delay – And Hint At A Coordinated Campaign Of Intelligence-Gathering And Investigation Of Me – Including Idiotic Interpretations Of My Motives And My Place Of Employment – Pretty Creepy Stuff On Which To Be Spending Public Money Meant For The Education Of Children – But Not Especially Surprising

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In October 2018 I sent a California Public Records Act request for a bunch of emails to Ruben Alonzo, self-proclaimed founder of Excelencia Charter Academy, a creepy co-locating conspiracy currently occupying the Boyle Heights campus of Sunrise Elementary School. And about six weeks later, at the end of November, Alonzo handed over a suprisingly complete set of responsive records. And what important material it turned out to be.

From it we learned about a demand letter that the United Teachers of Los Angeles sent to Excelencia in June 2018 alleging violations of the Brown Act. And about how insidious privateer brigade the California Charter School Association provides free lawyers to charters to help them co-locate on the campuses of actual public schools. And about how charter school operators use all kinds of shenanaganistic financial maneuvers to skim money from the public funds they receive and funnel it into the coffers of their zillionaire sponsors. And about how Ruben Alonzo is a whiny crybaby stalker who hates democracy and freedom.

And not only was all that stuff revealed but Alonzo was kind enough to produce a set of emails between him and a couple of lawyers, Sarah Kollman and Kimberly Rodriguez, from metaphorically mobbed-up charter school law conspiracy Young Minney & Corr advising him on how to respond to my request and giving him apparently illegal suggestions for how to delay my access to the records. I’m exceedingly familiar with the end result of the anti-CPRA machinations of public agencies, but it’s rare, and very interesting, not to mention useful in deciding how to respond and proceed against them, to get a glimpse of the little folks behind the curtain who create the responses sent out over the signatures of their feckless clients.

The emails also include a series of weirdly puerile and self-serving theories on my thoughts about charter schools and my motives for requesting records and related matters, thereby revealing that evidently I myself am an object of investigation and intelligence-sharing1 amongst the local charterites. For instance, in one email to Alonzo, Sarah Kollman says about me that “This guy is a “community organizer” and has made it his mission to harass charter schools across LA.”2 At one point, Ruben Alonzo identifies me in an email to his tech department as “the same blogger who was attacking Sakshi and Ganas.” Which of course is true, see the story here at the tag archive, and isn’t validation nice!

As I said, the story begins with my October 13, 2018 request for access to some of ECA’s emails. It’s really important to provide as specific a description of what one wants as is practicable,3 and here I asked for 2018 and 2019 emails that:
Continue reading Emails Between Excelencia Charter Academy Founder Ruben Alonzo And Various Lawyers At Powerhouse Privatizing Law Firm Young Minney Corr – Discussing How To Respond To My Request For Public Records – Reveal Strategies Of Obstruction And Delay – And Hint At A Coordinated Campaign Of Intelligence-Gathering And Investigation Of Me – Including Idiotic Interpretations Of My Motives And My Place Of Employment – Pretty Creepy Stuff On Which To Be Spending Public Money Meant For The Education Of Children – But Not Especially Surprising →

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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

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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 →

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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!

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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.4 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! →

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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

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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.5 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.6

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.7 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 →

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

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

And by far the most important material in here is GANAS Academy’s general ledger in MS Excel format8 along with monthly bank statements through June 2019. The ledger shows every credit and every debit from the inception of the school in August 2018 with very detailed descriptions. The story kicks off with a $325K grant from the Walton Family Foundation, deposited in the California Credit Union on August 11, 2018 as shown on that month’s bank statement and it’s all downhill from there.

In September 2018 she began paying herself $13K per month, as shown in that month’s statement and this continued at least through June 2019, which is the last monthly statement I have.9 But like I said, the real action is found in that ledger. It’s there that we learn that the $325K Jain has been burning through came from the Waltons. That she spent about $63K on recruiting students, which no doubt includes the $850 per kid bounty she paid her recruiter. And last but never least $15K to charter school contract killer law firm Young, Minney, and Corr.10

So that, friends, is the charter school innovation laboratory model. Get a ton of free money from an appalling gang of zillionaires and proceed to burn through it at an astonishing rate. A quarter of a million dollars between August 2018 and June 2019.11 And at the end, you don’t even have a damn school. Although I will say that given the horrific nature of these schools, the world is clearly better off having her spend all that money and not start a school than otherwise.

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

That’s the day that LAUSD received her “Back Out Letter”13 according to this letter to Jain from Jose Cole-Gutierrez, chief boss of LAUSD’s Charter School Division. So that’s an extra four days that Jain cheated the parents out of for purposes of figuring out what they were to do with their children in the Fall. Bad, irresponsible, selfish, but, sadly, not surprising. And read on for a transcription of Cole-Gutierrez’s letter and some screenshots from that ledger in case it’s hard to read on your phone or whatevs!
Continue reading Galaxy-Brained GANAS Academy Charterscammer And Founder Sakshi Jain Kicked Off Her Co-Location Conspiracy In August 2018 With $325K From The Walton Family Foundation — And Immediately Commenced To Pay Herself Thirteen Freaking Thousand Dollars A Freaking Month — Probably Including Benefits — Add That To The $63K For Recruitment And Consulting — And The $15K For Lawyers — And It’s No Wonder She Burned Through A Quarter Of A Million Damn Dollars In Just Eleven Freaking Months — And There’s Not Even A Damn School To Show For It — Oh And Also It Was On June 26 2019 That She Informed LAUSD That Her School Would Not Be Opening In 2019 — But Recall That She Didn’t Tell Parents Until July 12 — Stealing More Than Two Weeks From Their Planning Time →

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

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This is just the briefest of notes to bring you up to date, or at least as up to date as the information presently in my possession will allow, on the slow-mo bridge collapse that is the story of GANAS Academy and its galaxy-brained founder Sakshi Jain.14 Jain’s universally reviled15 plan to colocate her creepy little charter school on the campus of the well-beloved neighborhood public school Catskill Elementary in the City of Carson met with pushback from the community on a massive scale, which was ultimately successful in convincing her to give up on colocation and to postpone opening her school for at least one more year.

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

But emails I recently obtained from Scholarship Prep Charter Schools show that Jain had already determined as early as July 1, 2019 not to open GANAS for this school year.16 On that day Jain was introduced to former state senator Gloria Romero, supreme commander of Scholarship Prep, by Chris Copolillo, California Charter Schools Association überlobbyist, for the express purpose of hooking up the students stranded by Jain’s instability and unwillingness to honor her word with one of Scholarship Prep’s schools in Wilmington.

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

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

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

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GANAS Academy Recruiter Ed Rodriguez — Yes — The Guy That Sakshi Jain Was Paying A Bounty Of $850 Per Student Signed Up To Attend Her Creepy Little Charter School — Had A Secret Recruiting Plan — Revealed Here For The First Time In Full Flaming Weirdly Idiotic Glory — “Recruiters will focus greatly on El Super located in Wilmington” — And El Super Charges $150 Per Day For Tabling — And Sakshi Jain Coughed Up Another $750 For This — Not To Mention Ancillary Expenses

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The other day I revealed for the first time that Sakshi Jain, founder and supreme commander of the on-indefinite-hiatus GANAS Academy, hired a recruiter, name of Ed Rodriguez, to trick parents into signing their kids up for her school and was on the hook to the guy for $850 per signed-up kid. And the story continues to develop! Today I have an email from Ed to Jain explaining in great detail his entire plan for recruiting the victims.

There are a lot of aspects and details and subtleties and I am sure that I, as an amateur who understands literally nothing about the rarefied world in which Jain and Ed and their peers operate, am missing pretty much everything essential about this plan. However, I believe I can sum it up fairly accurately as two long pages which boil down to:

1. Set up a table at El Super in Wilmington
2. Lie like a MFer
3. ???
4. PROFIT!!

Oh, and also, El Super isn’t letting this happen for free. They charge $150 for people to pitch stuff to their customers from a table. And here’s another email from Sakshi Jain ordering her subordinate to cut five cashier’s checks for $150 each to cover the space rent. It’s only money, friends, and it’s not Sakshi Jain’s money, so why the hell not?

Now, as I said, I don’t really feel qualified to do the sociology here. I will leave it to others to discuss and determine how these privatizers chose El Super as their primary base of operations.17 My forte is, of course, publishing records. Read on, therefore, for a transcription of Ed Rodriguez’s entire recruitment plan for GANAS Academy!
Continue reading GANAS Academy Recruiter Ed Rodriguez — Yes — The Guy That Sakshi Jain Was Paying A Bounty Of $850 Per Student Signed Up To Attend Her Creepy Little Charter School — Had A Secret Recruiting Plan — Revealed Here For The First Time In Full Flaming Weirdly Idiotic Glory — “Recruiters will focus greatly on El Super located in Wilmington” — And El Super Charges $150 Per Day For Tabling — And Sakshi Jain Coughed Up Another $750 For This — Not To Mention Ancillary Expenses →

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Sakshi Jain — Supreme Commander And Founding Spirit Of GANAS Academy — The Little Charter That Couldn’t — Hired A Guy Named Ed In May 2019 To Recruit Students For Her School — Cause Evidently They Weren’t Busting Down Her Doors Trying To Get In — And Per The Contract — Which Naturally I Have A Copy Of Here — Ed Was To Collect $850 Per Student Signed Up — Yes — You Read That Right — Eight — Hundred — And — Fifty — Dollars — Per Recruited Student — So Much For The Vaunted Efficiency Of Charter Schools

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Somehow, even though it makes no freaking sense whatsoever, we are continually asked by innumerable mobs of kool-aid-drunken pro-charter ideologues to believe that somehow their damnable publicly funded private schools are more efficient18 than publicly run public schools. Thus, the argument goes, we are lucky to be able to funnel public money and other valuable assets to them for their supernaturally efficient use in the pursuit of what they’re pleased to present as public goods.

But just logically, theoretically, even without reference to facts, how could this possibly be true? Like how does it make sense to pay the supreme commander of some random charter school out in Northwest Zillionaireville a significant fraction of a zillion dollars in exchange for her skilled elite commandery when we’re already paying Austin Freaking Beutner an equally significant fraction of a zillion dollars for his equally elite equally skilled commanderistic talents? How many damn commanders do we even need?

In any case, that’s the theoretical no-facts-needed version of the anti-charter-efficiency argument. But, as you no doubt know, the very point of this blog, the one thing that sets it apart from your average raving Internet lunacy,19 is facts! Facts as reflected in public records! All this blather, like the blather you’re reading now, exists for no real purpose beyond filling out the blank space around the links to the records.

Like for instance, this link to a contract between Sakshi Jain, supreme commander and founding heroine of the lately placed-on-hiatus GANAS Academy, and some guy named Ed, whose LinkedIn profile identifies him as an educational consultant. The purpose of the contract is to engage Ed’s services to recruit students to attend Jain’s star-crossed but nevertheless self-proclaimedly world-class private school. And what is most amazing to me is that Ed is to be paid per piece. Not a joke. Eight Hundred And Fifty Freaking Dollars per student signed up.
Continue reading Sakshi Jain — Supreme Commander And Founding Spirit Of GANAS Academy — The Little Charter That Couldn’t — Hired A Guy Named Ed In May 2019 To Recruit Students For Her School — Cause Evidently They Weren’t Busting Down Her Doors Trying To Get In — And Per The Contract — Which Naturally I Have A Copy Of Here — Ed Was To Collect $850 Per Student Signed Up — Yes — You Read That Right — Eight — Hundred — And — Fifty — Dollars — Per Recruited Student — So Much For The Vaunted Efficiency Of Charter Schools →

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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 counsel20 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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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

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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,21 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 →

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