Meet the Group of Feisty Urban Progressives Who Want to Transform the Country One City at a Time
The Nation - December 10, 2014, by Steve Early - A century ago, working-class radicals frustrated with the pace of change often scoffed at their more patient comrades in city government, calling...
The Nation - December 10, 2014, by Steve Early - A century ago, working-class radicals frustrated with the pace of change often scoffed at their more patient comrades in city government, calling them “sewer socialists.” The latter, however, numbered in the hundreds, and, in their heyday, were quite influential in cities both large and small. After being elected to municipal positions on the Socialist Party ticket, they labored mightily to improve local services, from public sanitation to street repair. They even encroached on private markets by expanding public housing and experimenting with municipal ownership of utilities.
The national expansion of popular democracy sought by these left-wing reformers was, sadly, never achieved under their party banner. But several decades later, their many ideas for putting government to work for the people found traction during the New Deal. Programs to promote social equality and economic opportunity first tested at the state or local level became a Depression-era lifeline for millions of Americans nationwide.
In the twenty-first century, many on the left still yearn for economic and policy victories on the scale of the 1930s and the emergence at the federal level of a counter-force that might one again curb the influence of corporate America. While waiting for that second coming, progressive activists have, like the “sewer socialists” of old, been forced to grapple with serious problems—national and even global in nature—at the municipal level instead.
Some of the bravest (or most ambitious) among them have sought and won local elected office. So, in city halls across the country, they are now trying to deploy the limited resources of local government to fight poverty, inequality and environmental degradation at a moment when higher levels of government have failed to address such problems or made them worse. To maintain public support, these reform-minded mayors, city councilors, county commissioners and allied civil servants must be as concerned about street paving and policing as saving the planet from global warming.
Until recently, most of these “pothole progressives” have toiled largely in isolation. They chipped away at local injustice or city hall dysfunction in ad hoc fashion with little national infrastructure to sustain or support them. But as their ranks have swelled in recent years, several networks have developed to promote greater coordination of this difficult work through systematic sharing of information, ideas, and technical expertise.
From December 4 to 6, the only of these groups to focus exclusively on cities, Local Progress, hosted a lively and racially diverse “convening” in New York City to celebrate recent municipal election victories and progressive policy wins, while laying the groundwork for more. Local Progress is funded by several national unions and social-change foundations. Its individual and organizational affiliates profess a “shared commitment to a strong middle and working class, equal justice under law, sustainable and livable cities, and good government that serves the public interest effectively.” Its mission? “To drive public policy at the local level—an area of governance that is too often ignored by the progressive movement.”
Among the “electeds” gathered in New York City for the Local Progress third annual meeting, there was little moping about the Democratic Party’s now much weakened condition in various state capitols and Washington, DC, as a result of last month’s midterm elections. Instead, they and their larger supporting cast of labor and community organizers, public policy advocates and social-change funders all resolved to expand their influence at the local level, where reform is still possible. To hasten this goal, the organizers distributed a sixty-page compilation of “case studies and best practices” from around the country, co-produced with the Center for Popular Democracy. This dense, well-documented guide provides an ambitious blueprint for improving local labor standards, housing and education, policing practices, environmental sustainability, treatment of immigrants, voting rights and financing of elections.
Local Progress has recruited 400 members in forty states; about a third turned up for its latest annual meeting, with impressive representation from the city councils of San Diego, San Francisco, Seattle, Tacoma, Denver, New Orleans, New York, Baltimore and Philadelphia. Mayoral participants included everyone from the high-profile chief executive of the host city, Bill de Blasio, to his far less well-known, but equally feisty, West Coast counterpart, Meghan Sahli-Wells. She hails from Culver City, California, a Los Angeles County enclave with a population smaller than some New York City neighborhoods.
But that difference in scale hasn’t stopped Sahli-Wells from making waves of her own, as an enviro-oriented “bike mayor” who helped secure a ban on single-use plastic bags and has been working tirelessly to ban fracking as well. Now her talk about property tax reform has local realtors organizing against her and wishing she had never been chosen by her council peers to be the city’s part-time mayor. “My Chamber of Commerce hates me,” she reported, but expressed confidence that “harnessing the power of community” would enable her to overcome business opposition to some of her future plans.
De Blasio welcomed such diverse colleagues amid the ornate surroundings of the New York City Council chamber. He was joined by Council Speaker Melissa Mark-Viverito and Brooklyn councilmember Brad Lander, who both described the salutary effect of having a Progressive Caucus of nineteen in the city’s fifty-one-member leadership body.
The Big Apple’s affable, lanky mayor quickly gave what an alarmed New York Post called, the next day, “a fawning shout-out to Seattle.” And indeed, de Blasio did hail Seattle city councilmember Nick Licata, chair of Local Progress, and others from “the Left Coast,” for their leading role in the nationwide minimum-wage campaign that has now bettered the pay of seven million workers. “We all reference each other,” de Blasio noted. “We all build on each other’s work…. Every time we succeed, it builds momentum for other cities.”
The job of Local Progress members, the mayor argued, is to be organizers, not just elected officials. As a result of the group’s collective efforts, “change is coming from the grassroots and working its way up—real, sustained and lasting change.”
In the smaller strategy sessions that followed, participants shared information and ideas on a wide range of topics. These included “participatory budgeting”—an experiment now underway in New York City to solicit neighborhood input on spending priorities—and multi-state efforts to expand public financing of candidates for local and county office. According to Emmanuel Caicedo, state affairs manager for Demos who spoke at the conference, this election reform was a key factor in making progressives more competitive electorally in New York City and enabling them, once in office, to expand the reach of paid sick day legislation. “Without this matching funds system, councilmembers would not be able to do the right thing for their constituents, “ he said.
Local Progress workshop turnout and the intensity of discussion were both driven, in part, by the momentum of events unfolding outside the gathering. The latest round of national fast-food worker protests and street demonstrations in Manhattan over the grand jury decision in the Eric Garner case provided an urgent backdrop for brainstorming about workers’ rights and major reform of US police departments.
On the labor front, city officials were reminded by several speakers from the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) and the AFL-CIO that minimum wage hikes, statutory entitlement to paid sick days, and better enforcement of local labor standards still doesn’t give enough Americans the workplace voice that collective bargaining provides. More needs to be done, they argued, to help workers for government contractors or in public facilities, like airports, to win bargaining rights without management interference. “Having a union is necessary to sustain gains,” Héctor Figueroa, president of SEIU Local 32BJ, pointed out.
Few labor allies in Local Progress question the value of unionization—but some did express concern about unions being unhelpful in their own past municipal campaigns. For example, Anders Ibsen, an earnest 28-year-old city councilor from Washington State, sought advice from AFL-CIO Executive Vice President Tefere Gebre about dealing with conservative “business unionists” who’ve tried to thwart progressive initiatives in Tacoma. In the same panel discussion, San Diego councilmember David Alvarez—a recent labor-backed candidate for mayor—recalled the initial opposition he faced from a major AFL-CIO affiliate. According to Alvarez, it took much patient relationship-building to win over this union, despite his strong commitment to local labor causes like taxi-driver organizing.
Before their gathering ended, most of the city officials present endorsed a Local Progress statement criticizing the “excessive use of force” by police officers in Ferguson, Cleveland, and New York City. They urged federal officials to ensure “that cities around the country end discriminatory policing practices and replace them with programs that respect and empower residents…”
Just how to do that, at the local level, was the subject of much debate at a session on “Winning Real Police and Criminal Justice Reform.” Panelists discussed remedies like requiring police body cameras, retraining officers, recruiting more from minority communities, and offering them financial incentives for local residency. Lisa Daugaard, policy director for the Public Defender Association in Seattle, cautioned against quick fixes, including indiscriminate body camera use and training programs unaccompanied by real institutional change. “It’s easy to hold a three-day training session. It’s very difficult to have training change behavior, habits, instincts,” she said.
Daugaard reported on Seattle’s Community Police Commission (CPC), an oversight body, which she co-chairs and includes two active members of the police force. According to Daugaard, the CPC has spurred a “deeply transformative” shift in the treatment of jobless, homeless, addicted, and/or mentally ill residents previously targeted for police round-ups and jailing, with a disproportionate racial impact. By expanding relevant social services and, in effect, decriminalizing vagrancy and low-level drug dealing, Seattle has been able to “re-humanize” at least some “daily interactions between police and the community.”
And just as cities like Seattle can’t arrest their way out of petty crime spawned by poverty and unemployment, Daugaard warned against a singular focus on prosecutions of police misconduct, after the fact. Many such cases are likely to fail, she noted, and, even if successful, don’t transform the departmental culture or quality of police-community relationships. Jumaane Williams, a New York City councilmember from Brooklyn, agreed with Daugaard that community policing done right “works better than the lock-‘em-up strategy” that still prevails in most cities, even some with Local Progress ties. “The problem, “said Williams, “is when we send policemen to do the job that everyone needs to do. Public safety is an everybody kind of thing.”
Turning the overall Local Progress agenda into actual public policy in more places is also “an everybody kind of thing.” As Seattle’s Nick Licata observed, urban progressives “need both an outside and inside game” to win because neither street politics nor electoral victories alone can change the status quo sufficiently. Instead, he said, “you need people on the inside and people protesting on the outside to provide insiders with backbone.”
By bringing both catalysts for change together, in one organizational network, Local Progress is not blazing an entirely new path or one as explicitly anti-capitalist as left movement builders a century ago. But, in a modern political landscape otherwise bereft of many bright spots at the moment, contesting for power locally, in ecumenical fashion, still makes sense for any group of progressives with higher aspirations and longer-term societal goals.
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I'm Still Recovering From Hurricane Maria — & Here's What I Want You To Know
I'm Still Recovering From Hurricane Maria — & Here's What I Want You To Know
For activists like Xiomara Caro of the Center for Popular Democracy, it's all emblematic of a larger trend: that the struggles of Puerto Rico are its own, borne under the indifferent gaze of the...
For activists like Xiomara Caro of the Center for Popular Democracy, it's all emblematic of a larger trend: that the struggles of Puerto Rico are its own, borne under the indifferent gaze of the United States.
Read the full article here.
Pilot Program to Represent Detainees Facing Deportation
New York Law Journal – September 30, 2013, by Mark Hamblett and Jeff Storey -
Aiming to foster the rights of immigrants and to keep their families together, two legal services...
New York Law Journal – September 30, 2013, by Mark Hamblett and Jeff Storey -
Aiming to foster the rights of immigrants and to keep their families together, two legal services organizations, the Bronx Defenders and Brooklyn Defender Services, have been picked for a unique pilot project to represent indigent detainees facing deportation.
The two organizations will form the New York Immigrant Defenders, which will take on 166 cases in the next year at the Varick Street Immigration Court.
The program will be funded by a $500,000 grant made available by the New York City Council in June.
Robin Steinberg, executive director of the Bronx Defenders, said that her organization created an in-house immigration practice more than a decade ago when it realized that nearly one-third of its clients were facing adverse immigration consequences from even minor brushes with the law.
“The Bronx Defenders joining forces with the Brooklyn Defender Services to create NYID is a natural and necessary step in ensuring that all residents of New York City—no matter where they were born—have their day in court with lawyers who will fight for their right to stay here, with their families and in the communities they now call home,” she said in a statement.
Lisa Schreibersdorf, executive director of Brooklyn Legal Services, agreed that working with immigrants was “very much in line with our mission.”
Schreibersdorf said that she had told her daughter after the group’s selection Thursday that the new program was part of the most groundbreaking public defense development of her generation—the extension of the right to counsel to immigrants.
“This is a groundbreaking program. There is no program of this sort anywhere else in the country. It’s a program that aligns American values with the reality on the ground when it comes to immigrants and due progress,” said Angela Fernandez, executive director of the Northern Manhattan Coalition for Immigrant Rights, one of the groups that advocated for creation of the program.
According to Brittny Saunders, senior staff attorney for the Center for Popular Democracy, another leading advocate for the effort, potential clients will be screened only for economic need, with anyone making under 200 percent of the poverty limit making the cut.
The poverty limit currently is $11,400 for a single person and $23,550 for a family of four.
Other factors, such as the strength of immigrant cases, will not be considered.
Oren Root of the Vera Institute of Justice, a nonprofit and nonpartisan center for justice issues, said the program will stress the importance of keeping families together. In many cases, the detainee has lived in the country for years, is the family’s principal wage earner, serves as the caretaker for family members and has children born and raised in the United States.
The one-year pilot project will be administered by Vera, which will coordinate the delivery of legal services and analyze the data that emerges from the effort.
Root said that Vera is “thrilled” to be working with “such high-caliber, innovative organizations as Brooklyn Defender Services and the Bronx Defenders.”
Providing support for the effort to represent immigrant families has been the Kathryn O. Greenberg Immigration Justice Center at the Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law.
Most immigrants cannot afford representation, and attorneys and bar groups have become increasingly concerned about the dire consequences they face
Schreibersdorf said studies show that detainees with a lawyer are “more likely to identify valid immigration remedies.”
She cited one case of a 17-year-old on a minor offense handled by her agency. His attorney dug into the defendant’s family background and discovered that his parents had been naturalized, and thus he was a citizen himself.
“Without a lawyer, that kid would have been deported,” she said.
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Three honored by Jefferson Awards for public service
Barkan, who was diagnosed with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis in 2016, started two programs at the Center for Popular Democracy, a national advocacy group that promotes progressive political groups...
Barkan, who was diagnosed with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis in 2016, started two programs at the Center for Popular Democracy, a national advocacy group that promotes progressive political groups. The programs include “Fed Up,” a pro-worker policy group, and “Local Progress,” a network of progressive politicians. For one of his projects, “Be a Hero,” Barkan traveled across a country in a wheelchair-accessible RV to campaign for political candidates who will “stand for” families so that “health care benefits [families have] paid for [will be] there for them when they most need it,” according to the campaign’s website.
Read the full article here.
Fraud and Financial Mismanagement in Pennsylvania's Charter Schools
Charter school officials have defrauded at least $30 million intended for Pennsylvania school children since 1997. Yet every year virtually all of the state’s charter schools are found to be...
Charter school officials have defrauded at least $30 million intended for Pennsylvania school children since 1997. Yet every year virtually all of the state’s charter schools are found to be financially sound. While the state has complex, multi-layered systems of oversight of the charter system, this history of financial fraud makes it clear that these systems are not effectively detecting or preventing fraud.
Download the full report.
Indeed, the vast majority of fraud was uncovered by whistleblowers and media exposés, not by the state’s oversight agencies. In this report we identify two fundamental flaws with Pennsylvania’s oversight of charter schools:
General auditing techniques alone do not uncover fraud. Pennsylvania oversight agencies rely on general auditing techniques, but not those specifically designed to uncover fraud. The current processes may expose inaccuracies or inefficiencies; however, without audits targeted at uncovering financial fraud, state agencies will rarely be able to detect fraud without a whistleblower. Adequate staffing is necessary to detect and eliminate fraud. Pennsylvania inadequately staffs its charter-school oversight agencies. In order to carry out high-quality audits of any type, auditors need enough time. With too few qualified people on staff, and too little training, agencies are unable to uncover clues that might lead to fuller investigations and the discovery of fraud.To address these two fundamental flaws, we propose targeted reforms of the existing oversight structure:
Mandate Audits Designed to Detect and Prevent Fraud
Charter schools should institute an internal fraud risk management program, including an annual fraud risk assessment, and audits that specifically investigate high-risk areas. Existing oversight bodies should perform targeted fraud audits focused on areas of risk or weakness through the annual fraud risk assessments. Auditing teams should include members certified in Financial Forensics trained to detect fraud.Increase Transparency & Accountability
All annual audits and fraud risk assessments should be posted on authorizers’ website; Charter authorizers should create a system to categorize and rank charter audits by the level of fraud risk they pose to facilitate public engagement. Charter schools should voluntarily make the findings of their internal assessments public. Charter school authorizers should perform comprehensive reviews once every three years rather than once every five years as is current law. The Attorney General’s office should conduct a review of all charter schools in Pennsylvania to identify potential fraud or inadequate school oversight by boards of directors or executives and publicize the findings.Improve Protections against Future Fraud
The state should enact other legal protections such as a statewide False Claims Act that encourage whistleblowers to report instances of fraud. The state should impose a moratorium on new charter schools until the state oversight system is adequately reformed.Pennsylvania cannot afford to wait. Since 2000, charter school enrollment in the state has doubled three times and Pennsylvania’s students, their families, and taxpayers cannot afford to lose another $30 million misspent or misdirected within the charter school system. While the reforms proposed will require additional resources, they represent a smart investment in our communities and in our future.
Download the full report.
AFT’S $2.6 Million Bayou State Pay
Tuesday’s Dropout Nation analysis of American Federation of Teachers’ 2014-2015 financial disclosure to the U.S. Department...
Tuesday’s Dropout Nation analysis of American Federation of Teachers’ 2014-2015 financial disclosure to the U.S. Department of Labor certainly offered plenty of insight on how it is buying influence on the national level. But the nation’s second-largest teachers’ union’s applies its influence-buying most-fervently on behalf of its locals, especially in big cities that are the battlegrounds in the battle over the reform of American public education. This is especially clear in Louisiana, where the union has spent $2.6 million to oppose the reforms in New Orleans and the rest of the state that run counter to the union’s very mission.
Since the damage from Hurricane Katrina (and the longstanding failures of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to ensure that levies surrounding the city could stand up to potential disaster) a decade ago, the Crescent City has become the epicenter of one of the nation’s most-important systemic reform efforts. Thanks to the Louisiana state government’s takeover of failing schools run by the Orleans Parish district, and the move to transform them into charter schools (as well as open new ones), New Orleans has now become the model of sorts for expanding school choice. Charter schools serve 79 percent of the city’s children (as of 2012-2013), according to the National Alliance for Public Charter Schools.
The transformation hasn’t been perfect by any means. There is still lingering anger among residents over how the state essentially implemented the reforms without their input. The quality of public education, though improved, is still nowhere near it should be, especially in Orleans Parish-run schools. As the Center for Reinventing Public Education also points out, the need for building out the infrastructure for families to exercise choice in informed ways also remains; this includes addressing transportation issues that result in kids traveling for as long as two hours from one part of town to another just to go to school.
All that said, the results for kids have been amazing. As Tulane University Professor Doug Harris determined in his assessment of public school performance in New Orleans, the improvements in student achievement were greater than those made by traditional districts in other cities and even better than those that could be achieved by tactics traditionalists tend to tout such as class-size reduction schemes. This is good for kids in the Crescent City and for their families, who have been subjected to the abuse of both the educational and criminal justice systems of the Bayou State for far too long.
None of this is good news to the ears of AFT, its Crescent City local, United Teachers New Orleans, or the Louisiana Federation of Teachers, the union’s state affiliate. After all, if children in New Orleans are getting higher-quality education through a Hollywood Model style of delivering teaching and curricula, than there is no need to keep the obsolete traditional district model upon which AFT (along with National Education Association) derive its influence and ideology. As it is, charters have become the dominant players in cities such as Detroit, and Washington, D.C., in which AFT operates. Given that unlike NEA, AFT has little penetration in suburbia, propagandizing against growth of charters in New Orleans — along with stopping the expansion of choice — is critical to the union’s long-term survival.
It also about the cold hard cash and power of its local. Before Katrina, UTNO had a stranglehold over education policies and practices within Orleans Parish, and had the ability to forcibly collect dues from 7,500 teachers and other employees working for the district. But with all but a smattering of schools still operated by Orleans Parish — and charter schools having the ability to not bargain with the union if they so choose — UTNO no longer has the bodies or the money necessary to oppose systemic reform. Some 1,000 teachers and others now likely make up the union’s rank-and-file, 87 percent less than the numbers on the rolls a year before Katrina reached landfall. This, in turn, isn’t helpful to AFT, whose own revenue is derived from the per-capita tax collected from every teacher and school employee compelled to pay into its units.
But AFT isn’t just concerned about New Orleans alone. After all, the Bayou State has been among the foremost states in expanding school choice and advancing systemic reform. This includes outgoing Gov. Bobby Jindal’s successful expansion four years ago of the state’s school voucher program, which now serves 7,400 children attending 141 private and parochial schools. Eight seats on the Bayou State’s Board of Elementary and Secondary Education, which oversees the department run by Supt. John White, are also up for grabs. There’s also the possibility that the Recovery School District, which oversees systemic reform in New Orleans, could also end up taking over failure mills in Baton Rouge and other cities. Particularly in Louisiana’s capital city, just 50 percent of kids attending traditional public schools there met proficiency targets in 2013-2014.
Another hotbed, until recently, was Jefferson Parish, whose board was under the control of a reform-minded majority. Back in 2012, the board decided to ditch its contract with AFT’s Jefferson Federation of Teachers and negotiate for a deal that would give the district more flexibility in operation. This didn’t sit too well with the unit, which then sought national’s help in putting the district back under its thumb.
So AFT has put a lot of energy and money into demonizing Crescent City reform efforts — and stopping reform in the rest of the state.
The union subsidized UTNO to the tune of $134,593 in 2014-2015, four times levels given to the unit during the previous year. At the same time, the union kicked another $59,294 into the organizing project it controls along with the local; the union also paid teachers’ union-oriented law firm Rittenberg, Samuel & Phillips $57,654 to handle a variety of lawsuits, including one filed against Orleans Parish over the layoff of black teachers working in the district before Katrina reached shore. Over the past two years alone, AFT poured $754,878 into propping up UTNO and helping it rebuild its membership.
AFT’s work in New Orleans goes beyond subsidizing UTNO. The union has spent big on events and meetings. This includes dropping $80,490 on meeting space and “reimbursable expenses” at the swanky Loews New Orleans Hotel, $9,840 at the more-humble Homewood Suites, and $7,700 at one of the several Marriott hotels in town. Expect AFT to have dropped even more money this fiscal year for this week’s “Advancing Racial Justice” gathering, which will feature several of the union’s prime vassals, including the Schott Foundation for Public Education, Center for Popular Democracy and the Alliance to Reclaim Our Schools, all of whom are making the trip as condition of being beneficiaries of the largesse the union gets forcibly out of the pockets of teachers. AFT also spent $10,843 on materials printed by Simmons Press, a local outfit, for print materials, paid $7,500 to Lamar Media for billboards, and dropped $17,921 on ads in the Times-Picayune.
But never forget that AFT will play all the political angles. This includes going so far as to attempt to unionize the very Crescent City charters it opposes. The union subsidized its New Orleans Charter Organizing Project to the tune of $244,070 in 2014-2015. As with a similar effort in Los Angeles, AFT hopes that it can get teachers working in charters to forget all the bad things the union says about them and let it collect dues out of their precious paychecks. Lovely.
Meanwhile AFT put plenty of dough into efforts in the rest of the Bayou State. It subsidized Louisiana Federation of Teachers and its various political action funds to the tune of $462,965. While 13 percent less than in 2013-2014, it still means that AFT has sunk $995,790 into the state affiliate over the past two years. The union also paid $20,000 to lobbyist Haynie & Associates for its work at the statehouse. AFT also backed the East Baton Rouge Federation of Teachers and its organizing project to the tune of $222,420, while spending another $10,501 on so-called “Member-related costs” at a Doubletree hotel in the city. In the state’s northeast sector, AFT subsidized an organizing project focused on helping an affiliate in Monroe at a cost of $104,363. In Caddo Parish, where the AFT got involved in stopping an effort to create a new school district, the union put $224,002 into an organizing project there.
AFT’s biggest spend –and best bang for the buck — came in Jefferson Parish, where its local had lined up a slate of candidates to take out the reform-minded majority. The union put down $669,135 to fund a so-called “Committee for School Board Accountability”, which ran adds backing the local’s favored candidates. It also subsidized an organizing project there (which, as you would expect, was partially tied to rallying members to vote on Election Day) to the tune of $186,837. The union also sent paid $23,911 for hotel and meeting space at a Sheraton Hotel in Metairie, where the district’s offices are located, as well as $5,553 for room-and-board at an Extended Stay hotel.
It was money well-spent. By last December, three of the four candidates AFT and Jefferson Federation of Teachers backed won seats, giving the union a five-to-six-seat majority on the nine-member board. AFT President Rhonda (Randi) Weingarten celebrated the victory with a press release as well as two tweets on Twitter. Eight months later, the district struck a new contract with the AFT local, albeit one that is a mere seven pages long (versus 100 pages for the previous deal), and requires teachers to resolve differences with school leaders before going to the union for help. At the end of the day, a contract with the district means dollars that continue to flow into AFT’s coffers. And for the union and its 229 staffers earning six-figure salaries, that’s always a good thing.
You can check out the data yourself by checking out the HTML and PDF versions of the AFT’s latest financial report, or by visiting the Department of Labor’s Web site. Also check outDropout Nation‘s new collection, Teachers Union Money Report, as well as for the collection,How Teachers’ Unions Preserve Influence, for this and previous reports on AFT and NEA spending.
Source: Dropout Nation
Milestone charter's credit fraud has produced no criminal charges
Milestone charter's credit fraud has produced no criminal charges
Milestone Academy is the latest New Orleans–area charter school where theft has gone unpunished for months after it was discovered. No one has filed charges against former chief executive D'Juan...
Milestone Academy is the latest New Orleans–area charter school where theft has gone unpunished for months after it was discovered. No one has filed charges against former chief executive D'Juan Hernandez for putting $13,000 of personal expenses on a school credit card, according to an audit released Monday (April 18).
Hernandez quit in June 2014. The audit covers only the rest of that calendar year, but new Milestone chief executive LaKeisha Robichaux said Monday nothing had changed. In addition, Jefferson Parish clerk records showed no case against Hernandez.
This is hardly the first time that it's taken months for local charter school employees to face criminal charges for alleged financial crimes. Typically, lax oversight lets a member of the finance team profit from wrongdoing until someone notices odd gaps in the reports.
Ten months after someone stole almost $70,000 from the KIPP charter network, a criminal investigation was still underway.
Someone stole almost $26,000 from Lake Area New Tech High in 2014; more than a year later, police had not found a culprit.
New Orleans Military/Maritime Academy employee Darral Sims took $31,000 during the 2011-12 school year but had not been charged as of early 2013.
Lusher accountant Lauren Hightower had not been charged with a crime more than a year after she paid herself $25,000.
The Center for Popular Democracy issued a report in 2015 blaming Louisiana state education officials for cutting corners on oversight.
At Milestone, the theft followed a tumultuous year. The governing board dropped its for-profit management company only a couple of months before school was to start. Hernandez, the board attorney, stepped in to run the school. The school also struggled to improve long-languishing academic results and faced losing its Old Jefferson campus. It has since moved to Gentilly.
Hernandez quit in June, saying he was sick of a power struggle that also resulted in the departure of the principal. A month later, the financial wrongdoing emerged.
The board withheld $13,000 from Hernandez' $135,081 pay to cover the loss. It also "contacted the applicable law enforcement agencies regarding the unauthorized credit card usage," auditors from Hienz and Macaluso wrote. "However, as of the date of the audit report the school is not aware of any charges being filed in this matter. This was due to the lack of proper policies and procedures governing the acquisition and use of credit cards by the school."
Auditors said the school has since restricted credit card use to key employees. Under the new policies, no one may obtain a school credit card without written approval from the board's finance committee. All purchases "must have the same level of support as any other disbursement," auditors wrote. And school credit cards may not be used for personal purchases, cash advances or alcohol.
However, further conversations Monday showed the wheels of justice often did turn eventually:
The KIPP employee was prosecuted, spokesman Jonathan Bertsch said Monday. He added that although criminal charges took time, the charter group detected the crime within weeks.
Simms was convicted and paid restitution, Military/Maritime Academy Principal Cecilia Garcia said. The case went to court in late 2014 and early 2015. However, Simms has since had his record at least partially expunged, according to Garcia and Orleans Parish sheriff's records.
Hightower was prosecuted and convicted, Lusher spokeswoman Heather Harper Cazayoux said. Hightower's LinkedIn account indicates that she now works as a florist at a Harvey Winn-Dixie.
Former Arise Schools employee Quinton Barrow pleaded guilty on May 7, 2015, to stealing $9,000. He was ordered to pay restitution but then failed to appear to pay in June, according to Orleans Parish sheriff's records.
And the biggest local charter school crime resulted in serious jail time: Langston Hughes Academy's financial manager was sentenced to five years in federal prison for stealing about $660,000.
An employee stole about $2,000 from Lake Forest Charter in 2013. As of early 2015, the school's board president would not identify the employee or say whether anyone had been charged. School leaders did not immediately respond to a request for an update.
By Danielle Dreilinger
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The DNC Is Voting On Whether To Keep Superdelegates. Get Ready For Controversy
The DNC Is Voting On Whether To Keep Superdelegates. Get Ready For Controversy
PHILADELPHIA — Democrats are about to have a delegate fight of their own. Following the Republican’ controversy over bound and unbound delegates, the Democratic National Convention is about to go...
PHILADELPHIA — Democrats are about to have a delegate fight of their own. Following the Republican’ controversy over bound and unbound delegates, the Democratic National Convention is about to go headlong into a conflict over superdelegates in its rules committee this weekend.
The DNC’s rules committee is expected to convene Saturday morning, where groups are planning to gather outside the city’s convention center and urge the party to end the superdelegate system.
According to a media advisory, the pre-vote press conference with rules committee members includes a formal petition delivery of more than 500,000 signatures collected by Democratic-leaning groups working to end the use of superdelegates at the Democratic National Convention.
A superdelegate is a party official or elected official who is free to cast a vote for any candidate for the presidential nomination at the party’s national convention, regardless of whom the voters of their state prefer. This is in contrast to a “pledged delegate” who must cast their ballot in accordance to the winner of their state party’s primary.
DNC rules committee members are expected at the press conference and include Aaron Regunberg, the amendment’s chief sponsor. Groups presenting the signatures will include: MoveOn.org, Demand Progress, Daily Kos, Social Security Works, Democracy for America, New Democrat Network, National Nurses United, The Other 98%, Courage Campaign, Progressive Kick, Credo, PCCC, Progressive Democrats of America, Center for Popular Democracy, Social Security Works, and Reform the DNC.
“This is a historic moment for the Democratic Party,” said Aaron Regunberg, Rhode Island state representative and rules committee member. “Saturday we vote on whether to end the undemocratic superdelegate system. It’s time to restore democracy in the Democratic Party.”
Supporters of former Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders became frustrated with the superdelegate system, as they saw it as a way that damaged the Vermont senator’s candidacy during the party’s primary against former secretary of state Hillary Clinton.
“The super delegate system undermines the promise of one person one vote that is bedrock of democracy,” added Deborah Burger, RN, co-president of National Nurses United and rules committee member. “It was created to block the nomination of candidates who would challenge a political system that has for far too long been dominated by corporate interests and a wealthy elite. Ending this undemocratic selection process would be a strong step forward to making the Democratic Party more responsive to those thirsting for real change and a healthier America.”
By KERRY PICKET
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Bloomington Addiction Treatment Agenda Pushed by Group
“The vast majority of funding for Hoosier Action and its initiatives comes from its dues-paying membership,” Greene said. “Although we are a local partner of the Center for Popular Democracy, a...
“The vast majority of funding for Hoosier Action and its initiatives comes from its dues-paying membership,” Greene said. “Although we are a local partner of the Center for Popular Democracy, a national network that offers support.”
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How Bad Are Waste and Fraud at Charter Schools? This Bad.
NEA Today - May 14, 2014, by Tim Walker - Lax oversight and limited accountability has led to a shocking misuse of taxpayer funds by charter schools nationwide, according to...
NEA Today - May 14, 2014, by Tim Walker - Lax oversight and limited accountability has led to a shocking misuse of taxpayer funds by charter schools nationwide, according to a new report from the Center for Popular Democracy and Integrity in Education.
“We expected to find a fair amount of fraud when we began this project, but we did not expect to find over $100 million in taxpayer dollars lost,” said Kyle Serrette, the Director of Education Justice at the Center for Popular Democracy. “That’s just in 15 states. And that figure fails to capture the real harm to children. Clearly, we should hit the pause button on charter expansion until there is a better oversight system in place to protect our children and our communities.”
The report, “Charter School Vulnerabilities to Waste, Fraud, and Abuse,” examined representative charter school data from 15 states and found instances of charter operators using charter funds for personal use; school revenues being used to illegally support charter operator businesses; mismanagement that put children in potential danger; charter executives illegally inflating enrollment to boost revenues; and charter operators mismanaging their schools.
While many of the instances of fraud and abuse noted in the report resulted from charter school administrators pilfering funds and misrepresenting their successes—a comparatively small number when compared to the national total of charter schools—it should be pointed out that limited oversight has helped foster an atmosphere where these kinds of problems are more commonplace. And much of this hands-off practice stems from the way charter schools have evolved over the ensuing years since their initial conception.
“To understand why there are so many problems in the charter industry, one must understand the original purpose of charter schools,” the report says. “Lawmakers created charter schools to allow educators to explore new methods and models of teaching. To allow this to happen, they exempted the schools from the vast majority of regulations governing the traditional public school system.”
So even as the number of charter schools increases, along with the funding that they receive, accountability measures have been slow to keep pace.
“Despite rapid growth in the charter school industry, no agency, federal or state, has been given the resources to properly oversee it,” the report noted in its introduction. “Given this inadequate oversight, we worry that the fraud and mismanagement that has been uncovered thus far might be just the tip of the iceberg.”
So what are some of the common-sense laws and oversight methods that the report suggests? For starters, establishing an office dedicated to managing and overseeing charters on the state level will help maintain performance standards and temper instances of fraud and abuse. Greater transparency on the part of charters, including independent audits available to the public and easy access to the charter agreements and other pertinent documents, will create a sustainably open atmosphere. And expanding many of the requirements for public schools to charter schools, including non-discrimination and transparency requirements, will narrow the divide in terms of oversight.
“Our school system exists to serve students and enrich communities,” says Sabrina Stevens, Executive Director of Integrity in Education. “We need to have rules in place that can systematically weed out incompetent or unscrupulous charter operators before they pose a risk to students and taxpayers.”
If so-called reformers are so determined to tout charter schools as a panacea for traditional public schools, then at the very least they can be held to the same standards of accountability, oversight, and scrutiny that public schools must take for granted.
“School funding is too scarce as it is; we can hardly afford to waste the resources we do have on people who would prioritize exotic vacations over school supplies or food for children,” Stevens adds. “We also can’t continue to rely on the media or isolated whistleblowers to identify these problems.”
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