CPD IN THE NEWS

Capitolwire - October 1, by Christen Smith - A report released Wednesday insists meager state oversight has allowed charter school officials to defraud taxpayers out of $30 million over the last 17 years.

And “that's just scratching the surface of the problem,” says Ted Kirsch, president of the American Federation of Teachers' Pennsylvania chapter.

“It's only talking about what's being reported and there are other things that haven't gotten to the surface yet and they are still being investigated,” he said during an interview Wednesday. “The (fraud) problem is a lot more widespread.”

The Center for Popular Democracy, Integrity in Education and Action United authored the 15-page report last month in which it calls for a moratorium on new charters while the state Attorney General's office investigates all 174 charter schools for potential fraud. The report also pushes the General Assembly to mandate annual fraud risk assessments capable of detecting and preventing waste and abuse.

“While the state has complex, multi-layered systems of oversight in the charter system, this history of financial fraud makes it clear that these systems are not effectively detecting or preventing fraud,” the report reads. “Indeed, the vast majority of fraud was uncovered by whistle-blowers and media exposes, not by the state's oversight agencies.”

The report's index details allegations of fraud against 11 separate charter schools across the state. At least nine of the charter school officials mentioned in the report have pleaded guilty and received prison sentences.

“It’s time for lawmakers to stop providing charter industry players a blank check with little oversight and no accountability,” said Lily Eskelsen García, president of the National Education Association, the parent organization of the Pennsylvania State Education Association. “...For students in all types of schools—traditional, charter or magnet—the key is having a sound structure for oversight and accountability, while providing educators with autonomy to create great learning environments for their students. Let’s work with families, educators and community members to make sure all students can attend great schools that meet their needs.”

“What's lacking here is a process to hold the charter operators accountable,” Kirsch said. “We need some laws that govern the accounting procedures and how money is handled by charter operators. These people are making a lot of money. It's a cash cow.”

Tim Eller, spokesman for the Department of Education, criticized the report Wednesday for “failing to mention” the state uses the same accounting practices for both public schools and charter schools.

“All public schools, including charter schools, are subject to audits by the state Auditor General,” he said. “The Auditor General is charged with ensuring that public entities are using taxpayer dollars for their intended purpose.”

Auditor General Eugene DePasquale said he couldn't confirm the report's $30 million figure, but said “we have found waste in the system,” particularly related to the issues of lease reimbursement and special education funding.

The auditor general uncovered “$1.2 million in improper lease reimbursements” in an August 2013 audit of Chester Community Charter School — Pennsylvania's largest. He said Wednesday lease reimbursement fraud represents about half of the charter cases his office has uncovered.

The audit found that Chester Community Charter School's founders sold the original building to a non-profit organization for $50.7 million, then created a for-profit management company to run the charter school, all the while collecting illegal reimbursement payments from the state for the buildings.

When asked about the report’s proposals regarding more oversight, DePasquale said: “If we had more resources, certainly we could audit more schools. That's absolutely true. But we need partners at the Department of Education to respond when we do find issues.”

DePasquale also suggested the General Assembly pass charter school reform that would address fraud involving lease reimbursements.

Two separate pieces of legislation — House Bill 6188 and Senate Bill 1085 — included measures to improve transparency and accountability in charter schools, but both bills have been stalled in the opposing chambers since budget negotiations wrapped up in July.

“House Bill 618 which passed the House in September of 2013 was basically loaded with accountability measures related to governing audits and academic performance,” said Steve Miskin, spokesperson for House Majority Leader Mike Turzai, R-Allegheny. “We are hoping the Senate passes it.”

Senate leadership did not respond to requests for comment Wednesday.

“If the widespread allegations mentioned in the report prove to be true, then those guilty should be prosecuted to the full extent of the law,” said Bob Fayfich, executive director of the Pennsylvania Coalition of Public Charter Schools, in a statement released Wednesday. “However, the report draws sweeping conclusions about the entire charter sector based on only 11 cited incidents in the course of almost 20 years, while ignoring numerous alleged and actual fraud and fiscal mismanagement in the districts over that same time period, which dwarf the charter school allegations in terms of alleged misuse of taxpayer dollars.”

Fayfich says the coalition supports mandating more stringent audits in the name of accountability, but doesn't think the public sector should be exempt.

“If the authors’ recommendations are to conduct a fraud audit of every charter school based on the actual and alleged misdeeds of a few, and initiate a moratorium on all charter schools until those audits are complete, then, in the name of intellectual integrity, the same recommendations should apply to traditional public school districts,” he said. “Fraud and fiscal mismanagement are wrong and cannot be tolerated, but to highlight them in one sector and ignore them in another indicates a motivation to target one type of public school for a political agenda.”

Renee Martin, acting communications director for the Attorney General Kathleen Kane, said Wednesday a copy of the report “has been shared with our attorneys.”

Spanish fashion chain Zara is among several “hip” retailers making headlines recently for alleged discrimination against employees.

Ian Miller, a former attorney for the mega-retailer, claims he was harassed and discriminated against for being Jewish and gay. In his $40 million lawsuit against the company, which is owned by Inditex SA, Miller alleges that he was excluded from meetings, given smaller raises than other employees and subjected to discriminatory remarks.

In addition, the Center for Popular Democracy released a survey of New York–based Zara employees, titled “Stitched with Prejudice: Zara USA’s Corporate Culture of Favoritism.” The report found that black employees are more dissatisfied with their hours than white employees, are reviewed more harshly by management and are least likely to be promoted.  

When it comes to people who shop at Zara, black customers are seven times more likely to be targeted as potential thieves than white customers, the report found.

A spokesperson for Inditex refuted the claims in the Center for Popular Democracy report in a statement to FOXBusiness.com. 

“It fails to follow an acceptable methodology for the conduct of a credible objective survey on workplace practices, and instead appears to have taken an approach to achieve a pre-determined result which was to discredit Zara. Zara USA believes that the claims made in the report are completely inconsistent with the company’s true culture and the experiences of the over 1,100 Zara employees in New York City and over 3,500 in all the US,” said the spokesperson.

Perhaps even more high profile is a discrimination case involving Abercrombie & Fitch (ANF), which made its way to the Supreme Court. The preppy retailer known for its presence in American malls was sued by Samantha Elauf, a young Muslim woman who wore a headscarf to a job interview at the company seven years ago. 

“Ms. Elauf never informed Abercrombie before its hiring decision that she wore her head scarf, or ‘hijab,’ for religious reasons,” the ruling stated. 

The Supreme Court recently overturned that decision.

A spokesperson for Abercrombie & Fitch told FOXBusiness.com in a statement that although the Tenth Circuit decision was overturned by the Supreme Court, it was not determined that the company discriminated against Elauf. 

“We will determine our next steps in the litigation, which the Supreme Court remanded for further consideration. A&F remains focused on ensuring the company has an open-minded and tolerant workplace environment for all current and future store associates. We have made significant enhancements to our store associate policies, including the replacement of the 'look policy' with a new dress code that allows associates to be more individualistic; changed our hiring practices to not consider attractiveness; and changed store associates' titles from 'Model' to 'Brand Representative' to align with their new customer focus. This case relates to events occurring in 2008. A&F has a longstanding commitment to diversity and inclusion, and consistent with the law, has granted numerous religious accommodations when requested, including hijabs,” the spokesperson said.

Nasty Gal, a self-described “global online destination for fashion-forward, free-thinking girls,” is being sued for illegally firing Aimee Concepcion and several other employees either before taking or during maternity/paternity leave. 

The lawyer for the former employee that filed the suit, who will represent three other female ex-employees in arbitration hearings, said “they were the only pregnant females who provided notice of maternity leave before being terminated, and …their jobs were taken over by other employees.”

"The accusations made in the lawsuits are false, defamatory and taken completely out of context,” a Nasty Gal spokesperson told FOXBusiness.com. “The layoffs in question were part of a larger restructuring of departments we completed over nine months ago.  The lawsuits are frivolous and without merit."

When it comes to the likelihood of this case succeeding in court, it is worth looking to similar prior verdicts for perspective. 

“Shortly before they filed the Nasty Gal lawsuit, a $7.7 million verdict in favor of a pregnant (at the pertinent time) Price is Right model was affirmed by a California appellate court,” said Jeff Trexler, associate director at Fordham’s Fashion Law Institute.

On the flip side, “If Nasty Gal can show that it actually provided the requisite notices, offered reasonable accommodation to her (Concepcion’s) pregnancy, wasn't motivated to fire her because of her pregnancy, and did not treat pregnant women differently from other employees in similar positions, there's a substantial possibility that the company will prevail,” said Trexler.

Retail stores have also received flack in recent months for selling discriminatory merchandise. Urban Outfitters (URBN) was condemned by organizations including the Human Rights Campaign and the Anti-Defamation League for a gray- and white-striped tapestry imprinted with a pink triangle that was sold at a store in Boulder, Colorado. The groups said the item projected Holocaust imagery, specifically of the uniforms gay men were forced to wear in Nazi concentration camps. Calls for comment to Urban Outfitters were not returned by the time of publication.

Despite the extent of public outcry over the merchandise, Urban Outfitters is technically allowed to sell whatever it wants. 

“Designs evocative of Nazi imagery may be offensive, but they're no more illegal than the Confederate flag; ultimately, the decision to stop selling designs with either image comes down to ethical and reputation management concerns,” said Trexler. 

In recent weeks, several retailers including Wal-Mart (WMT), Sears (SHLD) and Amazon (AMZN) announced they would stop selling Confederate battle flag merchandise following the mass shooting in June at Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston, South Carolina.

No stranger to controversy, Zara was also accused of selling discriminatory merchandise. A 2014 white-and-blue striped shirt, which featured a six-pointed star, came under fire for its resemblance to uniforms worn by Jewish prisoners at Nazi concentration camp. The “sheriff shirt” was pulled from the retailer’s site after it issued an apology.

So, is outcry over discrimination becoming more common in the retail industry, or is it simply that intense media scrutiny is making it seem like it is? 

“Allegations of discrimination are nothing new in fashion, as with any business, but what's particularly noteworthy now is their potential to have a substantial negative impact on a brand,” said Trexler. “One could say that the way people characterize discrimination is shifting from incident to identity, and in this fashion reflects a broader cultural trend that has emerged alongside advances in communications technology.”

When asked if changes in the law are making discrimination lawsuits easier to file, Trexler said that enforcement has shifted “in ways that arguably encourage people to take legal action.” 

Most notably, the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission has worked to make pregnancy discrimination an enforcement priority, and a Supreme Court decision also raised awareness on the issue.

“Acts that might have gone unchallenged in years past now might be more likely to spark a lawsuit,” said Trexler.

Source: Fox Business

Hiring workers might get a little more complicated for San Jose businesses come 2017.

Measure E is a South Bay Labor Council-backed San Jose initiative aimed at giving part-time workers access to more hours.

If passed, businesses with more than 35 employees would have to offer additional hours to existing part-time workers before hiring new employees, including temps. Part-time workers would have the option to decline the hours, and employers would not be required to offer hours that result in overtime.

The City of San Jose would enforce and set guidelines for the regulation, and grant hardship exemptions for some businesses.

If approved, the law would take effect 90 days after the vote is certified.

Measure E is opposed by the San Jose Silicon Valley Chamber of Commerce, San Jose Downtown Association and California Restaurant Association.

Opponents argue the measure will lead to a decrease in part-time jobs, burden employers with another layer of bureaucracy and hurt businesses and nonprofits (who are not exempt) that rely on seasonal and part-time labor.

Derecka Mehrens of Working Partnerships USA, a labor-aligned think tank, said the measure is necessary to address a “crisis of underemployment” in Silicon Valley. The initiative, she said, will also help people working multiple jobs, with the accompanying lack of benefits, to be able to work only one job.

Passage requires a majority vote. An October phone poll of 300 likely voters commissioned by supporters of Measure E found 62 percent supported the measure, 30 percent opposed and 8 percent undecided. The chamber declined to share its polling.

Supporters of the measure have a huge advantage in terms of money raised. As of Sept. 24, the Yes on E campaign had raised $481,700, more than eight times the $59,200 raised by the opposition San Joseans for Jobs campaign.

Chamber President and CEO Matt Mahood took a shot at the large amount of money the Yes on E campaign has raised from outside groups, which includes $250,000 from the Brooklyn-based Center for Popular Democracy.

Mehrens responded by saying that Working Partnerships is a member of CPD, and that the measure is part of a national campaign. In September, Seattle passed a “secure scheduling” law that included a provision requiring food and retail businesses with more than 500 employers to offer additional hours to part-time workers before hiring new employees.

By Bryce Druzin

Source

In Seattle’s 2013 election, Nick Licata broke the city’s record for the most votes received citywide for a city councilor in a contested race. That same year he was named the country’s Most Valuable Local Official on The Nation’s list of most valuable progressives.

During his time on council, Licata sponsored and passed legislation like paid sick leave and supported a plan to raise Seattle’s minimum wage to $15 an hour, two social-justice objectives sought by activists around the country. At the end of last year, the veteran Seattle city councilor retired after 18 years in office.

That’s not the end of Licata’s social-justice crusade, however. This week he’ll visit Pittsburgh to attend two conventions on social-justice issues and share insights from his recently released book, Becoming a Citizen Activist.

“My primary mission right now,” says Licata, “is to work with both citizens and elected [officials] to recognize that no matter what happens after November, it’s critical that we maintain an activist space at the local level, because we’ve shown at the local level we can accomplish things, and we can continue to accomplish things no matter who is president.”

Pittsburgh and other cities haven’t seen as much progress on paid sick leave and the Fight for $15 as has Licata’s native Seattle. Pittsburgh City Council passed a paid-sick-leave bill last year, but a judge struck it down in December as unenforceable. And while the city and some employers have raised their minimum wage to $15 an hour, a mandatory minimum wage citywide is a ways away.

But Pittsburgh must be doing something right because it was selected to host those two social-justice conventions. The People’s Convention will bring more than 40 national activist organizations to the city, while the Local Progress Convening will see the arrival of hundreds of progressive municipal elected officials.

“Pittsburgh was identified as a place where [the] movement is very real,” says Erin Kramer, executive director of social-justice group One Pittsburgh. “There’s more workers organizing per capita in Pittsburgh than any other city in the country right now. There’s something happening in Pittsburgh right now, and folks want to come see it and learn from it.”

The pairing of the events isn’t an accident. They’re both sponsored by the Center for Popular Democracy, a group that works to build alliances between progressive organizations and politicians. Participants say collaboration between the two bodies is integral to ensuring progressive laws are passed and enacted.

“It is very important for elected officials who are trying to advance social change to have a direct understanding of the specific concerns of communities,” says Ana Maria Archila, co-executive director of Popular Democracy. “And it’s very important for community members to have relationships with elected officials. We know in the places where working families are winning we need both the pressure on the outside and the strategy on the inside.”

Jimmy John’s employee Chris Ellis has worked in the fast-food industry for more than two decades and has become a leader in the local Fight for $15. At the People’s Convention next week, he’ll have the opportunity to meet leaders from movements in other cities throughout the country.

“[I hope to learn] better organizing skills not just for the Fight for $15 movement but for all movements in general,” Ellis says. “I’m the type of person who sees myself trying to organize other fights, because once this fight is over, I’m looking for other fights.”

The interconnectedness of social-justice issues is widely recognized by activists. The People’s Convention will focus on topics like workers’ rights, health care, gun violence and education — issues that One Pittsburgh, which is part of the hosting committee, has been working on for more than a decade. The idea is to collaborate on these issues to build momentum and produce results.

“In Pittsburgh there’s lots of progressive work on half-a-dozen different issues at any given time, and increasingly those organizations are building partnerships with each other,” says Kramer, from One Pittsburgh. “We’ve been getting together to learn from each other and build our campaigns together. What I think folks are increasingly realizing is whether it’s housing, minimum wage or education justice, it’s really the same people who need to come together to build power to build a city that works for all of us.”

The event will develop strategies for appealing to lawmakers, but will also address barriers in cities where the majority of elected officials are already supportive of social-justice movements.

“Increasingly, we find ourselves literally preempted from solving problems at the local level by state legislatures that are unfriendly to the solutions we would propose,” says Kramer. “A good example is where we passed paid-sick-day legislation for tens of thousands of people in Pittsburgh and immediately it goes in front of the court because the restaurant association [the Pennsylvania Restaurant and Lodging Association] objects. The reason we don’t have a $15-an-hour minimum wage for the vast majority of Pennsylvanians is because you can’t do that at the city level.”

Combating these barriers that stifle progress at the municipal level — and particularly, developing strategies for fighting lawsuits against progressive laws — is something that will be discussed at the Local Progress convention this weekend as well.

“It’s the strategy,” says Licata, a Local Progress co-founder. “It’s smart on [the opposition’s] part, and I think that’s what we’ll see in other cities — corporate strategy to try to limit [these laws]. What I would like to see as we see more of these lawsuits being filed is Local Progress use our network to work on national strategies to fight these corporate challenges through the court system.”

To ensure laws fall within a city’s jurisdiction, Local Progress has also been holding workshops to examine the power that states hold over local municipalities. And they’re also looking into legislation that is being passed to further limit cities’ rights.

“As a rule of thumb, cities are creatures of the state,” says Licata. “Over half the states limit the authority of cities, and one of the ongoing battles we’re having that impacts local politics is the whole issue of states limiting citizens’ rights. We’ve been fighting on that. It’s a major concern.”

Ultimately, as a former activist turned politician turned activism author, Licata says the intersection of the two events and collaboration is important to ensuring that things like paid sick leave and a $15-an-hour minimum wage are realized.

“People at the People’s Convention and the politicians at Local Progress are literally the same people. A lot of the people at Local Progress were activists,” he says. “When someone gets elected to office, people who got the person elected to office think he or she will take care of the problems, and the person who gets elected thinks, ‘Oh, I have to act differently.’ But you have to continue organizing and use the power you get as an elected official to amplify your organizing.

“Government is a tool. It’s not an end-product. I think getting into office does give you more power, but you want to distribute that power so other people have access to power. The main ask of progressive politicians who want to build communities is to disperse the power that was given to them to as many people as possible.”

According to Pittsburgh Mayor Bill Peduto, who as city councilor joined Local Progress nearly a decade ago, the group can counterbalance those organizations that are trying to get conservative legislation passed.

“Certainly we’ve learned from other cities through these organizations,” says Peduto. “We hear a lot about ALEC [American Legislative Exchange Council] and how it is a network that is putting state legislatures into very conservative, Tea Party-type of policies, and it networks nationally. Well, this is the answer, and these organizations have become the network that helps progressive policies to work their way into implementation in city halls. And the fact that they chose Pittsburgh to do it shows that we are a part of that network and one of the areas that the rest of the country looks towards.”

Like Peduto, event organizer Popular Democracy hopes its network of activists and politicians will have the ability to shape the future of the country.

“It’s a really important moment politically because our nation is at a crossroads between the politics of hate and xenophobia and the politics of opportunity and interdependence,” says Popular Democracy’s Archila. “We are in the process of a presidential election where the issues that matter to the working-class community are really centrally positioned in the debate. How the solutions are advanced will depend on who is in motion. And we will have in Pittsburgh thousands of people who are in motion across the country and who are helping define the debate for what’s possible in their cities.”

By Rebecca Addison

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