CPD IN THE NEWS

NEA - October 1, 2014, by Brian Washington - A new report charges that Pennsylvania charter school operators have engaged in fraud and abuse amounting to about $30 million.

It was released today by several non-profit groups including the Center for Popular Democracy (CPD), Integrity in Education, and ACTION United. The report is called, Fraud and Financial Mismanagement in Pennsylvania’s Charter Schools.

The report claims that within the past 17 years, charter school operators in Pennsylvania have abused the system of at least $30 million. It also asserts that state agencies, charged with overseeing charter schools, are not up to the job of weeding out fraud and abuse.

While the state has a complex, multi-layered system of oversight of the charter system, this history of financial fraud makes clear that the systems are clearly not up to the task of effectively detecting or preventing fraud. Indeed, the vast majority of fraud was uncovered by whistleblowers and media exposées, not by the state’s oversight agencies.

More than 2 million students attend approximately 6,000 charter schools nationwide. Charter schools were originally intended to serve as centers of innovation that spawn new and improved approaches to teaching and learning that could later be shared with traditional public schools. However, critics charge the rapid expansion of the charter school industry has led to problems concerning oversight, accountability, wasteful spending, and fraud.

Cllick here to view the report.

In May, CPD released a whistleblowing report called, “Charter School Vulnerabilities to Waste, Fraud, and Abuse.”  That report alleges that waste and abuse linked to charter schools nationwide has cost taxpayers an estimated $100 million.

In addition, the Annenberg Institute at Brown University released a report this month calling for higher standards for charter schools regarding accountability, transparency, and equity.

In a statement released today, Lily Eskelsen García, president of the NEA, representing more than 3 million educators nationwide, said it’s time for lawmakers to demand more oversight and accountability from charter operators.

“We’re referring to the same politicians who call for ‘public school accountability’ by piling toxic tests on our students, yet seem to look the other way when it’s time to hold all charter schools responsible for their use of public funds,” said Eskelsen García, a Utah educator.

Meanwhile, despite all the issues surrounding charter schools, in the city of York, an appointee of Governor Tom Corbett who is charged with overseeing the city’s finances, has been linked to a controversial plan to turn every public school into a for-profit charter school. The proposal has sparked public protests involving students, educators, parents, and community leaders, who are all urging York school board members not to do it.

Protesters charge David Meckley is lobbying city school board members to adopt the controversial plan before the November elections. They say it’s because Corbett, who supports the corporate takeover of public education, is way down in the polls and not expected to win re-election.

“Pennsylvania Governor Tom Corbett and other politicians in the state continue to push for privatization, despite compelling evidence of fraud and abuse of taxpayer funds in the charter school industry,” said Eskelsen García. “The CPD report and a recent Annenberg study call for more oversight of the charter schools. Students deserve protection from those fly-by-night charter school operators who are more focused on making money than ensuring that our students receive a quality education.”

Click here to get the latest information on the issues that impact students, parents, educators, and our public schools.

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One of the reasons Mustafa Muhammed finally broke down and bought a smartphone was because he needed to find a job.

The 57-year-old cook was tired of using a library computer to look for work and watching friends get a jump on leads via alerts on their phones. After picking up his first phone about two years ago, he downloaded a mobile app called Snagajob. This summer he landed a gig at a new IHOP opening in Harlem after seeing it pop up in his inbox.

“This is job No. 2,” says Muhammed, who also works in the dining hall at Fordham University. “I wanted to pick up a little something extra for the summer. I don’t like to be lazy.”

Snagajob is one of a slew of apps that have sprung up in recent years to serve the so-called gig economy. This year alone human-resources startups have attracted $1.2 billion in venture capital, with much of the funding going to companies designed to profit from the fluid nature of temporary or contract work, according to research firm CB Insights. In an election year dominated by concerns over economic inequality, Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump are pledging to generate more full-time jobs. But Silicon Valley is betting the gig economy is here to stay.

“Two or three years ago, it was pretty rare to have more than one job” says Snagajob.com Inc. Chief Executive Officer Peter Harrison. “Now it’s really very common. What we are really building our business on is the blurring of the line between snagging a job and snagging a shift.”

Founded in 2000 as an online job board focused on “lightly skilled” hourly work, Snagajob says it has nearly doubled revenue derived from employers in the past three years. It claims 10 million unique monthly users and about 425 employees. In June, the Virginia company unveiled a mobile messaging app that lets employers assign shifts and lets workers trade them.

Snagajob charges employers for the number of clicks, applicants, interviews and hires it lines up. It also sells annual subscriptions for use of its hiring software. Harrison, 53, declines to specify revenue but says Snagajob is breaking even. In February, the startup raised $100 million to develop new features and fund acquisitions. The same month, Snagajob announced a partnership with LinkedIn, which has typically represented salaried professionals, to share research and data on hourly workers.

Similar apps are taking off in Europe, as well. Spain, with a large service sector and 20 percent unemployment, has become a testing ground for startups bringing the simplicity of swipes, geolocation and people-matching algorithms to hourly job recruitment. Three of them -- Job Today, Jobandtalent and CornerJob -- have raised some $87 million combined this year.

Job Today helps restaurants and retail mom-and-pops find and interview waiters, sales associates and drivers. Employers can post as many jobs as they like and have 24 hours to shortlist candidates, after which they use a chat feature to discuss the job and schedule face-to-face interviews. Posting a position on Job Today is gratis for now. Eventually, it plans to sell subscriptions that will let employers browse candidates and post jobs on an unlimited basis. The startup says it has about 100,000 business customers and has processed 15 million job applications since its founding a year ago.

Workforce trends are moving in favor of these apps as more people prefer to choose their own hours. In the U.S., even if they would rather work full-time, government policy has increased the incentive for companies to hire temps and contract workers, Snagajob’s Harrison says. To avoid providing health care as mandated by Obamacare, many businesses deliberately ensure workers toil less than 30 hours a week. They may also prefer temps to avoid paying overtime now that the Obama administration has expanded eligibility to millions more Americans.

According to research from Harvard and Princeton universities, “alternative work arrangements” -- including temp work, on-call work, contractors, and freelancers -- accounted for all the net employment growth in the U.S. from 2005 to 2015. That trend is widely expected to continue.

“These new labor platforms are helping people deal with the volatility of their income and the volatility of work,” says Louis Hyman, a professor of economic history at Cornell University’s ILR School and author of a forthcoming book on the rise of temp work in the U.S. “The tech reflects social reality.” Snagajob’s Harrison says companies are “essentially sharing workers” much the way consumers are sharing car rides and vacation rentals.

A handful of large deals, crowned by Microsoft’s $26 billion acquisition of LinkedIn, has fueled investor enthusiasm. In June, Monster Worldwide Inc. bought San Francisco-based Jobr, which applies Tinder-like matching algorithms to job hunters and employers. Last month, Tokyo’s Recruit Holdings, which controls top-ranked job search site Indeed Inc., bought Simply Hired, which operates a global network of job search engines.

Of course, not everyone is as enamored of the gig economy as the tech industry. “This glorification of flexibility is not in line with the reality of what most working people really want,” says Carrie Gleason, who runs the Fair Workweek Initiative, a network of activist groups that has pushed for laws to support predictable scheduling and guaranteed hours in low-wage industries. Shift-swapping is “a survival tool,” she says. “It is not the ideal.”

By Polly Mosendz

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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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Protesters from the Fed Up group will once again be on hand this year as they campaign for central bankers to focus more on inequality and depressed wages.