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...
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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Jeff Flake Is Confronted on Video by Sexual Assault Survivors A Tumultuous 24 Hours: How Jeff Flake Delayed a Vote on Kavanaugh Women Are Watching
Jeff Flake Is Confronted on Video by Sexual Assault Survivors A Tumultuous 24 Hours: How Jeff Flake Delayed a Vote on Kavanaugh Women Are Watching
Surrounded by his colleagues in a cramped corridor behind the Senate Judiciary Committee, Senator Jeff Flake was in...
Surrounded by his colleagues in a cramped corridor behind the Senate Judiciary Committee, Senator Jeff Flake was in agony, getting pounded on all sides.
Read the article and watch the video here.
Immigration reform advocates rally in Lehigh Valley before heading to Washington, D.C.
Lehigh Valley Live - April 10, 2013 - Waving American flags and carrying handmade signs, Lehigh Valley residents and...
Lehigh Valley Live - April 10, 2013 - Waving American flags and carrying handmade signs, Lehigh Valley residents and workers rallied for immigration reform this morning in Salisbury Township. Speaking in Spanish, about 40 people chanted "What do we want? Justice! When? Now!" and shared stories of their experiences as undocumented immigrants living and working in the region.
The Lehigh Valley Campaign for Citizenship demonstration outside U.S. Sen. Pat Toomey's office included representatives from local labor unions and kicked off the group's bus trip to Washington, D.C. There, they'll meet with Pennsylvania's Congressional legislators -- Sens. Toomey, R-Pa., and Bob Casey, D-Pa., plus U.S. Rep. Charlie Dent, a Republican whose district includes parts of Northampton and Lehigh counties. They'll join thousands of other immigration reform advocates in a march on the Capitol.
A clear, short path to citizenship, the preservation of families, the protection of workers' rights and the rejection of measures that would increase deportation are all key components of comprehensive immigration reform, according to Max Cohen, a Center for Popular Democracy spokesman who helped organize today's event.
When Jasmine Leonor's father, Reyes Leonor, was arrested on unspecified charges, jailed and targeted for deportation to Mexico, she, her mother and siblings were left in limbo, the 16-year-old Liberty High School student said.
They didn't know when or if Reyes Leonor would be allowed to return home to run his business, El Mariachi Mini Market in Bethlehem, she said. The teen fought back tears as she described her family's fears during that time and their continued frustration with the system that led to his detainment.
Reyes Leonor avoided deportation and is back home, but said the experience motivated him to join the fight for immigration reform. He spoke passionately about how important it is for immigrants and others to step up and join this cause.
"I was able to do it. Everyone needs to fight for their rights. Everyone needs to fight to stay here," Reyes Leonor said. "We have to fight to get what we get. We have to fight like warriors."
The nation's current immigration policy puts an unnecessary strain on families and wastes money on the deportation of people who are hardworking, law-abiding and looking for their slice of the American dream, demonstrators said. The messages on some of their signs -- "Keep Families Together: Immigration Reform Now" and "Stop Deportation, Stop Separation" -- highlighted that point.
Tatiana Tooley, a U.S.-born Allentown resident whose parents emigrated from Panama, said, "I cry for the families that don't have family unity" because of deportation.
Dennis Hower, president of Teamsters Local 773, said immigration reform would protect all laborers from exploitation by unscrupulous employers. When undocumented immigrants are underpaid, paid off the books or forced to work excessive hours, it undermines the rights of everyone in the workplace, he said.
"For us, it's a matter of fairness and doing what's right for all workers," said Hower, who is a Whitehall Township commissioner.
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After Volkswagen scandal, can consumers trust anything companies say? (+video)
After Volkswagen scandal, can consumers trust anything companies say? (+video)
Adam Galatioto’s loyalty to diesel Volkswagens predates his ability to drive. The 29-year-old’s parents...
Adam Galatioto’s loyalty to diesel Volkswagens predates his ability to drive.
The 29-year-old’s parents first bought a Jetta TDI in 1998, and he drove the little sedan through high school, college, and a master’s program before selling it in 2013. Mr. Galatioto and his girlfriend now share a 2011 Jetta TDI SportWagen, which he helped encourage her to buy.
“They get really good mileage,” he says. “Mine got 50 m.p.g. on the highway. By proxy that means you are being environmentally friendly.”
He’s not alone. Volkswagen has long enjoyed a reputation for reliable engineering, cheerful affordability, and, largely thanks to its efforts in clean diesel, sustainability. In Consumer Reports’ 2014 survey on how people perceive leading car brands, the German automaker was singled out (alongside Tesla) for its fuel efficiency.
That made recent revelations that VW had duped environmental regulators for years, installing software on 11 million diesel vehicles worldwide allowing them to run cleaner during emissions tests than they did on the road, all the more unnerving.
“I don’t generally trust corporations on what they say, and this was so intentionally devious it just lumps them in with any other car company for me,” Galatioto says.
This is a worst-nightmare scenario for companies trying to attract customers that increasingly want to make not just quality or affordable purchases, but ethical ones. It’s an impulse nearly every consumer industry is racing to capitalize on, from restaurant chains shifting to cage-free eggs and fair-trade coffee to retailers pledging to raise wages and give workers more predictable scheduling.
But with such promises being made left and right, and especially in the wake of Volkswagen’s fall, conscientious consumers may be wondering: Can any of them really be trusted?
Not always, clearly, but there is some comfort to be had on that front. Brands that fail to deliver risk even greater financial and reputational fallout than ever before (Volkswagen lost a third of its stock value when the scandal broke, and it faces billions in future losses from EPA fines, repairs, and lost sales). Combined with effective third-party oversight, it’s a powerful motivator for companies on the whole to behave better, experts say.
Consumers, particularly younger ones, are armed with easier access to information about what they buy than previous generations, and it’s affecting their choices. Millennials (adults ages 21 to 34) are more than twice as likely as their Gen-X and baby boomer counterparts to be willing to pay extra for products and services billed as environmentally and socially sustainable, according to a 2014 Nielsen survey. They are equally more prone to check product labels for signs of sustainable and ethical production.
“There’s an increased attention to more intangible characteristics of a product,” says Dutch Leonard, a professor who teaches corporate responsibility and risk management at Harvard Business School. “When I buy a shirt, it has a particular color, it’s soft, or wrinkle-free. But now people are also paying attention to where it was made, if the workers are being exploited, and if the company is environmentally conscious or not.”
This makes responsible changes effective marketing tools, which can create domino effects as companies try to keep up with and outdo standards in their particular industries. When Wal-Mart, the biggest retailer in the world, raised its minimum pay rate at the beginning of this year, competitors such as Target and Kohl’s quickly followed suit. The success of Chipotle, which has a carefully detailed food-sourcing policy, has been followed by major supply chain overhauls for McDonald’s, General Mills, and other giants of the corporate food world.
“Customers want 'food with integrity,' ” Warren Solochek, a restaurant-industry analyst with NPD Group, a market-research firm, told the Monitor in May. “[Companies] that choose locally sourced, fresh ingredients can put that on their website and know that people are looking at it.”
But especially for major corporations, “when you say you are doing things, you will attract attention from outside business groups," Professor Leonard says. "You can bet some NGO [nongovernmental organization] is going to try and figure out if that’s true or not.”
Indeed, Volkswagen isn’t the first brand to have its positive positioning face pushback, especially as global companies work to strike an operational balance between ethics and profitability. Wal-Mart’s wage hikes were followed by cutbacks in worker hours when the retailer’s earnings suffered, a move that led labor advocacy groups to call the earlier wage hikes “a publicity stunt.” Earlier this week, the Center for Popular Democracyreleased a report showing that Starbucks has so far failed to live up to a much-publicized vow from a year ago to give workers more consistent schedules.
While Volkswagen eluded the Environmental Protection Agency, it was eventually found out by the International Council on Clean Transportation, an independent nonprofit aided by researchers at West Virginia University.
In addition to catching such discrepancies, watchdog groups can be helpful in weeding out credible claims of positive change from the less so. In the mid-2000s, the Unions of Concerned Scientists’ annual environmental consumer guide largely dispelled the idea that washable cloth diapers are significantly better for the environment than disposable ones.
Furthermore, some major corporations and industry groups have partnerships with independent, NGO-like organizations to set ethical industry standards and submit to outside monitoring. Unilever, for example, teamed up with the the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) in the 1990s to create the Marine Stewardship Council, a certification program for sustainable fisheries. In 2008, Starbucks embarked on a decade-long project with Conservation International to improve the sustainability of its coffee supply around the world. Home Depot sells lumber certified by an outside organization.
Such collaborations may not catch everything, Leonard says, but they are effective because they are “constructed in such a way that the [certification groups] are not beholden to an industry. We may not be able to get full agreement on the standards, but we might make real progress by creating safe harbors through development of standards that are negotiated in advance.”
Source: The Christian Science Monitor
CFPB says Education is obstructing access to Navient records
CFPB says Education is obstructing access to Navient records
YOUTH ‘LOBBY DAY’ LOOKS TO DISCIPLINE GUIDELINES: More than 100 young activists are expected to gather in front of the...
YOUTH ‘LOBBY DAY’ LOOKS TO DISCIPLINE GUIDELINES: More than 100 young activists are expected to gather in front of the Education Department today and call on Education Secretary Betsy DeVos to maintain Obama-era guidelines aimed at addressing racial bias in school discipline policies. DeVos is chairing a White House school safety commission that’s considering whether to rescind the guidelines over concerns that they burden school districts and potentially keep violent students in the classroom. The activists are also expected to visit the offices of Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-N.Y.), Rep. Nydia Velazquez (D-N.Y.) and Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.), urging them to sign a pledge and “prohibit federal funding for any school policing or criminalization of schools and invest in restorative justice, and mental health supports and resources for schools, students, and families,” according to a release. The “youth-led lobby day” is being organized by left-leaning groups including the Center for Popular Democracy, Make the Road New York and the Urban Youth Collaborative.
Read the full article here.
Can Game-Changing "Community Schools" Model Survive Dallas ISD Politics?
Can Game-Changing "Community Schools" Model Survive Dallas ISD Politics?
On a sunny morning in early May, a wayward DART bus pulled to a stop in front of Paul Laurence Dunbar Learning Center...
On a sunny morning in early May, a wayward DART bus pulled to a stop in front of Paul Laurence Dunbar Learning Center in South Dallas. From the porches of tumbledown homes, neighbors glanced with mild curiosity as the school’s principal, Dionel Waters, stepped aboard. Waiting for him on the bus was an array of local dignitaries, including a city council member, a state representative, a U.S. Congressman, a Dallas County judge, and the guest of honor, Robert Kaplan, the president of the Dallas Fed. The riders had accepted an activist group's invitation to tour hardscrabble Dallas neighborhoods that remain untouched by the region’s booming economy.
Waters stood at the front of the idling bus with a microphone and described for Kaplan some of Dunbar’s challenges. The previous school year, all but two of the campus’ 594 students qualified as low-income. The median household income for the surrounding neighborhood, which borders the sprawling parking lots on Fair Park’s eastern edge, is around $10,000 per year. Broken families are the norm, as are parents with criminal records. Unemployment in the area is staggering, with only a third of working-age men and around 40 percent of working-age women with jobs, according to census data.
Then, Waters pivoted. Together with Hank Lawson, who works for the community development nonprofit Frazier Revitalization Inc., Waters described a vision for transformational change at Dunbar. With support from the Texas Organizing Project, which organized the bus tour, Dunbar would open the 2016-17 school year as Dallas ISD’s first ever “community school.”
Community schools are built on the idea that education doesn’t happen in a vacuum. Poverty levels, family structure, health and nutrition, emotional well-being, and all manner of other outside factors impact academic performance and school quality. Creating a better school, then, requires addressing not only what happens in the classroom but outside social and economic factors as well.
Exactly what a community school looks like depends on the specific needs of the individual school and the surrounding community. Generally speaking, though, the model emphasizes getting parents, community members and teachers greater input in campus decision-making; forging partnerships with local businesses and nonprofits to provide programming and services the school can’t; and finding non-punitive ways to address student behavior.
It is billed as a more humane alternative to No Child Left Behind-style school reform, which can punish poor and heavily minority schools for poor performance without doing much to address root causes.
Community schools are meant to be transformational. A report released in February by the Center for Popular Democracy profiled eight campuses and school districts across the country that have implemented the community schools model with tremendous success.
One of the more dramatic turnarounds took place in Austin. Webb Middle School, a perennially low-performing campus in a working class Hispanic neighborhood in northeast Austin, was on the brink of closure in 2007 when neighbors rallied and convinced the district to give them a final chance to save the school. They turned to the community schools model and crafted a detailed plan based on feedback from parents and neighbors.
The school restored music and art to the curriculum, adding band, orchestra and a dance troupe. The Boys and Girls Club began offering after-school programs. Another nonprofit provided college mentoring. A mobile clinic offered free immunizations and physicals. Other organizations provided parents help with employment, housing and health issues and offered them ESL classes.
Test scores climbed. So did enrollment. By 2015, Webb had gone from the worst middle school in the district to one of its best.
Waters and Lawson hoped something similar could happen at Dunbar, which had been placed on the state’s list of failing schools in the 2014-15 school year. So did Ed Turner, the Texas Organizing Project staffer who’d already spent months laying the groundwork and joined Waters and Lawson on the bus. And so, for that matter, did DISD administrators. Cynthia Wilson, Superintendent Michael Hinojosa’s chief of staff, told the Observer the following day that the district was supporting the community schools model in general and the Dunbar pilot in particular. “From our perspective, [it’s] a win-win,” she said.
On the bus, Kaplan nodded along as Waters spoke; turning Dunbar into a community school certainly seemed like a no-brainer.
But then, rather abruptly, DISD pulled the plug. Alendra Lyons, a community leader in the Dunbar neighborhood who both works at the school and serves on its site-based decision-making committee, was told at a committee meeting in June that the community schools pilot had been moved elsewhere.
Why, after months of planning and the showy presentation to the VIPs on the DART bus, the Dunbar project had been unceremoniously scrapped, Lyons couldn’t say, only that it definitely wasn’t happening.
DISD’s official explanation is, in a word, bureaucracy.
In a July 25 email, DISD spokesman Andre Riley said the community schools initiative had been moved from under Wilson and into the school leadership department.
Stephanie Elizalde, the chief of school leadership, said in a subsequent interview that she decided that John Neely Bryan Elementary in East Oak Cliff was a better fit for the pilot. Like Dunbar, John Neely Bryan is overwhelmingly low-income and has struggled academically, bouncing on and off the state’s list of failing schools. Last August, it received its second consecutive “improvement required” designation from the Texas Education Agency; a third would mean implementation of a “campus turnaround plan” and potentially drastic changes at the campus.
Unlike Dunbar, however, Bryan is part of DISD’s “Intensive Support Network,” two dozen struggling schools targeted by district administrators for special oversight. It also has a more seasoned principal. Elizalde describes Waters as “likeable, intelligent [but] also relatively inexperienced” – barely 30 with just two years as a principal under his belt. Elizalde felt that Bryan’s principal, DISD veteran Tonya Anderson, was better equipped to make the pilot a success.
For advocates of community schools, the stakes are high. A high-profile failure in the pilot could taint the model in DISD and cripple efforts to expand to other campuses. “That is what I don’t want to have happen,” Elizalde said. "I’ve got to think bigger picture."
But several people familiar with the discussions say Dunbar was the victim less of ordinary bureaucratic machinations but of DISD’s toxic internal politics. Specifically, they point to a long-simmering feud between the Texas Organizing Project and trustee Bernadette Nutall.
The rift dates back to efforts to rescue Dade Middle School, which, thanks to poor planning, sky-high turnover, and heavy-handed interventions by then-Superintendent Mike Miles, spun into chaos soon after it opened for the 2013-14 school year. The Texas Organizing Project was heavily involved in the turnaround effort, mobilizing parents and pushing DISD to make Dade the first of 20 community schools in the district. So, for that matter, was Nutall, who was famously removed from the campus following a confrontation with Miles.
By all accounts, the turnaround effort has been a success. There is much less agreement on whether Dade’s resurgence has more to do with the Texas Organizing Project’s community work, Nutall’s close oversight, or, alternately, a belatedly successful intervention by Miles, whose administration found a hyper-competent principal in Tracie Washington and offered the district’s best teachers a hefty salary bump to teach at Dade.
Nutall has bristled at the Texas Organizing Project’s credit-taking. In response to a KERA story this spring focused on the organization’s efforts to turn Dade and other campuses into community schools, Nutall sent an indignant email to trustee Miguel Solis, who was quoted in the piece broadly endorsing the community schools concept, and several DISD administrators saying Dade’s success had been “hijacked.”
Dade staff and community members had long been trying to have a meaningful role in the school, Nutall wrote, but they were consistently rebuffed by Miles and the previous campus administration.
“However, since the new administration has been in place, the staff, parents, students and community members have been able to implement the very same suggestions that were ignored before,” she wrote. “The results have been tremendous. Yet, they weren’t recognized for their efforts. Instead, they believe that their results have been hijacked in an effort to falsely attribute their success to a concept that had little to do with the results.”
In an interview, Nutall said she supports community schools but that there “has to be buy in from all parties.” That wasn’t present at Dade, and it wasn’t present at other campuses where Texas Organizing Project wanted to implement the model. “I understand them [the Texas Organizing Project] getting upset,” she said, adding that “they wanted the whole Lincoln-Madison feeder pattern.”
“I am not going to force something on principals and teachers,” Nutall said. “That is not good governance.”
At the same time, Nutall distanced herself from the decision to move the community schools pilot from Dunbar. The decision, Nutall said, was a judgment call by Elizalde and other DISD administrators.
Allison Brim, organizing director for the Texas Organizing Project, was also careful to downplay the friction between her group and Nutall.
“Essentially what happened, there had just been turnover in the administration,” Brim said.
In early 2016, former chief of school leadership Robert Bravo, with whom the Texas Organizing Project had been in discussions, was replaced by Elizalde. “She was very supportive of the community school concept but really wanted to reconsider where we were going to do the first pilot, which we were open to in some ways as well.”
John Neely Bryan, in everyone’s view, could benefit as much from the community schools model as Dunbar. Perhaps even more, given the comparative lack of outside resources directed at Bryan by churches and nonprofits.
“We were also interested in having full support from the trustee,” Brim said. She described Nutall as “supportive” of community schools but said that John Neely Bryan’s trustee, Lew Blackburn,”was pretty eager to find a school in his district” for a pilot.
In the end, for the Texas Organizing Project as well as for Elizalde, the most important thing “was really getting the opportunity to prove that this model was an effective, successful model for school turnaround,” Brim said.
All parties – Brim, Elizalde, and Nutall – were quick to say that the idea of turning Dunbar into a community school isn’t dead. Discussions are ongoing, and DISD and the Texas Organizing Project may well get around to implementing the model in the coming years.
Dunbar, after all, is still in sore need of a turnaround. State accountability ratings the Texas Education Agency will release in the coming days will show that Dunbar is on the state’s list of failing schools for the second consecutive year, which has made Elizalde rethink the decision to move the pilot.
“If I had a crystal ball and could have seen that Dunbar was going to wind up in [improvement required]-2 status," she said, "I would have left it there anyway.”
By ERIC NICHOLSON
Source
A Collaboration to Strengthen the United States Federal Reserve System
April 16, 2018 Alexander R. Mehran Chair of the Board Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco Dear Mr. Mehran:...
April 16, 2018
Alexander R. Mehran
Chair of the Board
Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco
Dear Mr. Mehran:
We are writing to offer you our view about the urgency of appointing an individual who deeply understands the economic realities facing working class Americans to serve as President of the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco.
For all of the dynamism and strength of the US economy, it has come to be characterized most fundamentally by enormous disparities in wealth, income and opportunity that strongly correlate to race, ethnicity and geography. Failing to address significant disparities in income and net worth between major segments of our population, and particularly in segments that are driving our nation’s demographic growth, will result in a less globally competitive US economy. This is a significant economic risk for the 12th District and the United States.
The San Francisco Fed will be strengthened by having a President whose experience and expertise better reflect the large segments of our population that are not proportionally experiencing the benefits of our economy. Ensuring that this expertise and perspective is represented within the Fed is a critical way to prepare for the challenges and opportunities in our economic future. This will require considering candidates with more diverse experience including in the fields of community development and philanthropy. We submit that the San Francisco Fed has a historic opportunity to name the first Hispanic, East Asian American or Pacific Islander President of a Federal Reserve Bank.
We applaud Chairman Powell's insightful comments on the necessity for diversity in Federal Reserve System and the larger economics profession. In his testimony before the Senate Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs Committee on November 28th, 2017, he stated, “We make better decisions when we have diverse voices around the table—both at the Board of Governors and at the Reserve Banks…We’ve seen what works. It’s about recruiting. It’s about going out of your way. It’s about bringing people in. Once they’re in, it’s about giving them paths for success. And it’s about having an overall culture and company that is very focused on diversity and sticks with that focus for a long period of time. That works.” This recognition must be coupled with bold leadership and action.
In order to decide the course of monetary policy through an informed assessment of different regional economic conditions from diverse points of view, the Federal Reserve System was designed to be decentralized, independent and include representatives of the public in its governance. The Fed’s mission is undermined when regional Reserve Banks fail to recruit leaders who live up to the mandate to “represent the public.” Selections that fail to allow meaningful opportunities for public input and engagement have tended to result in the elevation of Fed insiders. This insularity undermines the Fed’s public credibility and increases the likelihood that Congress will ultimately intervene to reform the process. The process for selecting the President of the New York Fed perpetuated the status quo. We urge the San Francisco Fed to avoid the same mistake. As a first step, we call on the San Francisco Fed to include the Chair of its own Community Advisory Board in the official selection committee for the next President.
Please accept this letter as an offer of support. We will do anything we can to help identify strong candidates as well as to publicly support actions that the San Francisco Fed takes to ensure progress on diversifying its Board of Directors and executive leadership.
Thank you for your service to the 12th District and our nation.
Respectfully submitted,
California Reinvestment Coalition Center for Popular Democracy Chicanos Por La Causa Community Council of Idaho Greenlining Institute NALCAB – National Association for Latino Community Asset Builders National Coalition for Asian Pacific American Community Development TELACU
cc: Jerome Powell, Chairman, Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve Lael Brainard, Governor, Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve Randal Quarles, Vice Chairman for Supervision, Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve
San Francisco Fed Board Chair Alexander Mehran's April 20 Response to Coalition Outreach re: Collaboration Surrounding San Francisco Fed Presidential Appointment
April 20, 2018
Noel Poyo Executive Director National Association for Latino Community Asset Builders 5404 Wurzbach Rd. San Antonio, TX 78238 Dear Mr. Poyo: Thank you for your letter of April 16, 2018, concerning the appointment of the next President and Chief Executive Officer of the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco. We appreciate your taking the time to reach out and share your perspectives on this important undertaking. As Chair of the Board of Directors for the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco, I know that I speak for all of my board colleagues in saying that the appointment of a Federal Reserve Bank President is among our most important responsibilities and one that we take very seriously. We share your desire to find a qualified candidate to fill this important role that understands and is able to represent the varied needs and interests of the richly diverse people and business communities throughout the Twelfth District. The Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco has a legacy of success with regard to recruiting, developing and promoting women and minorities into leadership positions within its senior ranks. As you are well aware, Janet Yellen served as President and Chief Executive Officer of the Bank from 2004 to 2010 before going on to become Vice Chair and later Chair of the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System. Under President Williams' leadership, the Bank continued to strengthen its focus on diversity and inclusion at all employee levels but particularly an10ng its leadership ranks where women now occupy over 30 percent and minorities over 45 percent of seniorlevel roles. In addition, President Williams established the Bank's Community Advisory Council in 2017 to give even stronger voice to those representing the district's underserved communities and to contribute to his ongoing economic analyses and monetary policy views. The Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco has set a high bar for its executive leadership that we fully intend to uphold. Our board has not yet publicly communicated about the selection committee, job specifications or the processes that we will undertake to gather a list of qualified candidates for this important role. We expect to do so in the near future and will keep you apprised of our progress. For now, please know that we are absolutely committed to gathering input from various community and business leaders like you and your colleagues regarding the appointment of the next President and Chief Executive Officer of the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco. While I appreciate your suggestion to include Mr. Matsubayashi, who chairs the Bank's Community Advisory Council, as part of the official selection committee, the Federal Reserve Act stipulates that only the Class B and Class C directors (those not affiliated with banks or financial institutions) are eligible to participate in the appointment process. As such, Mr. Matsubayashi is unable to serve in this capacity. However, we recognize that he is doing an outstanding job leading the Community Advisory Council, and we would greatly value his input and suggestions, as well as input from you and your colleagues, regarding qualified candidates for this important role. I wish to thank you once again for reaching out and offering your support of this important undertaking. We look forward to continuing this open, constructive dialogue, and with your support, doing all that we can to find the absolute best person from a diverse candidate pool to lead the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco. Sincerely, Alexander R. Mehran Chair of the Board Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco and Federal Reserve Agent cc: Danielle Beavers, Diversity and Inclusion Director, The Greenlining Institute David Adame, President and Chief Executive Officer, Chicanos Por La Causa Irma Morin, Chief Executive Officer, Community Council of Idaho Jerome Powell, Chairman, Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve Jordan Haedtler, Campaign Manager, Fed Up, Center for Popular Democracy Jose Villalobos, Senior Vice President, TELACU Lael Brainard, Governor, Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve Orson Aguilar, President, The Greenlining Institute Paulina Gonzalez, Executive Director, California Reinvestment Coalition Randal Quarles, Vice Chairman for Supervision, Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve Seema Agnani, Executive Director, National Coalition for Asian Pacific American Community Development Coalition's Response to Chair Mehran's LetterMay 4, 2018
Alexander R. Mehran Chair of the Board Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco
Dear Mr. Mehran:
Thank you for your letter dated April 20 and for your commitment to finding a San Francisco Fed president who “understands and is able to represent the varied needs and interests of the richly diverse people and business communities throughout the Twelfth district.”
We appreciate that the San Francisco Federal Reserve Bank has shown its commitment to public representation by strengthening diversity among Reserve Bank staff. Unfortunately, that commitment has not extended to the position of President. Similarly, diversity and public representation on the San Francisco Fed’s governing board remains lacking. The Twelfth District is one of the most demographically diverse districts in the country, yet a recent analysis by the Center for Popular Democracy found that the San Francisco Fed’s board of directors is the least diverse in the Federal Reserve System.
Your letter indicated that it would not be possible to include a Community Advisory Council member on the search committee because “only the Class B and C directors (those not affiliated with banks or financial institutions) are eligible to participate in the appointment process.” We would like to clarify our request regarding Mr. Matsubayashi’s inclusion. Following established precedent, Mr. Matsubayashi can play a critical advisory role on the search committee by suggesting, interviewing, and advising on candidates under consideration. We are not suggesting or expecting that he would have final decision-making authority over which candidate is ultimately chosen.
The Federal Reserve Act clearly designates Class B and C directors as the final arbiters of who serves as president of each Reserve Bank. We do not agree that inclusion of a member of the public on the search committee would in any way violate the law. We have consulted with legal experts on the Federal Reserve Act, and they concur. Whenever a regional Reserve Bank encounters a presidential vacancy, it is customary to hire an executive search firm to identify and vet candidates who can fill that vacancy. We posit that employees of those executive search firms are participating in the search process. In 2014, outgoing Dallas Fed President Richard Fisher solicited the participation of non-Class B/C directors when he reportedly convened an advisory committee consisting of former Dallas Fed chairmen to help choose his successor.2 Freedom of Information Act requests have also revealed that members of the Board of Governors have occasionally suggested candidates to fill Reserve Bank presidential vacancies, thereby going beyond the final approval role that the Federal Reserve Act prescribes for governors. We fail to see how the inclusion of Mr. Matsubayashi on the search committee in an advisory capacity is distinguished from these other examples of involvement by non- Class B and C directors in recent Reserve Bank presidential selections.
In your letter of April 20th, you identified the establishment of the Community Advisory Council as an important step toward giving an “even stronger voice to those representing underserved communities,” in the District. The Council includes individuals selected by the San Francisco Fed itself as credible representatives of diverse communities. If the San Francisco Fed is unwilling to find a way to meaningfully include a leading member of that advisory council in the selection process for the next President, it is difficult to understand how underserved communities are truly gaining a stronger voice.
It is also difficult to be assured that people of color will be given due consideration for the position of President when communities of color and other important segments of the District’s population are not adequately reflected in the selection process. Despite clear calls for consideration of diverse candidates from members of Congress and the public, the last two Reserve Bank presidential vacancies have resulted in the selection of white, male, longtime Fed insiders. Including the Chair of the San Francisco Fed’s Community Advisory Council on the search committee in San Francisco is an essential step to maintain the credibility of the selection process for the next President of the San Francisco Fed.
In light of this clarification, we respectfully request that you consider including the Chair of the San Francisco Fed’s Community Advisory Council in the search process in a manner consistent with the Federal Reserve Act. If the San Francisco Fed chooses not to accept this recommendation, we would appreciate an explanation as to why. Regardless of your decision, we look forward to your continued collaboration as you take on the important responsibility of finding a qualified candidate to fill a policymaking role of crucial importance to the public.
Thank you for your service to the 12th District and our nation.
Respectfully submitted,
California Reinvestment Coalition Greenlining Institute Center for Popular Democracy Community Council of Idaho Chicanos Por La Causa NALCAB – National Association for Latino Community Asset Builders National Coalition for Asian Pacific American Community Development TELACU
cc: Jerome Powell, Chairman, Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve Lael Brainard, Governor, Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve Randal Quarles, Vice Chairman for Supervision, Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve
ermonters to join national protest to 'Kill the Bill, Don't Kill Us'
ermonters to join national protest to 'Kill the Bill, Don't Kill Us'
Following the direct actions of June 28 and July 10, in which 140 Americans, including many with serious health...
Following the direct actions of June 28 and July 10, in which 140 Americans, including many with serious health conditions, were arrested in their senator’s DC offices for civil disobedience, still more constituents plan to flood Capitol Hill Wednesday to stop the repeal of the ACA. Organizers say Vermont residents will also participate in this latest oppostion to "repeal and replace" Obamacare.
People with disabilities and life-threatening chronic illnesses, cancer survivors, Medicaid recipients, Affordable Care Act (ACA) policyholders, registered nurses, doctors, and others directly impacted by the Senate healthcare bill will be traveling from all states represented by Republican senators to descend upon Capitol Hill on Wednesday, July 19, with a strong message: “Kill the bill—don’t kill us!”
Read the full article here.
Ulster County Legislator Calls for Equity and Accountability in School Funding
Mid-Hudson News - December 29, 2014 - It took a 2007 Federal lawsuit to ensure equity in New York State school aid...
Mid-Hudson News - December 29, 2014 - It took a 2007 Federal lawsuit to ensure equity in New York State school aid funding to local districts. Over the course of the past six years, Ulster County school districts received close to $26 million or at least they would have, had the State actually implemented the promised foundation aid. Instead, the foundation aid was frozen as part of the State's budget process.
"Ulster County tax payers have been paying more and more to ensure education for all," said County Legislator David Donaldson (D, Kingston). "Yet, the State has balanced its budget without paying its promised share. The State leadership has to stop talking about supporting the future of our State and actually pay for what they promised."
Over a billion dollars are being given to serve the 3% of student population that attend Charter Schools in New York State for 2014. $54 million is estimated by a Center for Popular Democracy's report to be lost because of charter school fraud and abuse in 2014 alone. Only eighteen of the sixtytwo counties in New York State have a charter school. Ulster County has no charter schools.
"I am all for helping parents to ensure their children receive the quality education they deserve," said Donaldson. 'That quality education starts with the public education system that serves 85% of New York State's children. Until the State leaders provide the funding that will address the educational gaps in public education and ensure the oversight and accountability of private charter school education, no taxpayer dollars - whether State or local taxes - should be spent on privately run schools that are not held to the same standards or expectations as the public school system."
Donaldson wants the County Legislature to consider the measure at their January 9 session.
Source
Is Zara discriminating against people of color?
Dorian Warren talks with researcher Chaya Crowder about her new report on discrimination at major “fast fashion” outlet...
Dorian Warren talks with researcher Chaya Crowder about her new report on discrimination at major “fast fashion” outlet Zara.
Source: MSNBC
7 days ago
7 days ago