Death and democracy: How a dying activist is spending his final days
Death and democracy: How a dying activist is spending his final days
Diagnosed with ALS in 2016, activist Ady Barkan is living on borrowed time. As his body deteriorates rapidly, he’s...
Diagnosed with ALS in 2016, activist Ady Barkan is living on borrowed time. As his body deteriorates rapidly, he’s spending his last moments fighting for the causes he believes in, hoping to leave the world a better place for his young son.
Watch the video here.
Despite Shocking Reports of Fraud at Charter Schools, Lawmakers Miss Opportunity to Increase Oversight
The Nation - May 9, 2014, by Zoë Carpenter - Between 2003 and 2008, a Minnesota charter school executive named Joel...
The Nation - May 9, 2014, by Zoë Carpenter - Between 2003 and 2008, a Minnesota charter school executive named Joel Pourier embezzled more than $1.3 million from his school, the Oh Day Aki Charter School. While students at Oh Day Aki went without field trips and supplies for lack of funds, Pourier bought houses and cars and tossed bills at strippers. Because his school received federal funding—charter schools are privately run but many receive significant public financing—taxpayers were, in effect, subsidizing his lavish lifestyle.
Pourier’s case is just one of many collected in a new report by the Center for Popular Democracy and Integrity in Education that documents shocking misuses of the federal funds being funneled into the poorly regulated charter industry. The report examined fifteen states with large networks of charter schools and found that more than $100 million in public money had been lost to fraud, waste and other abuse. “Despite rapid growth in the charter school industry, no agency, federal or state, has been given the resources to properly oversee it,” the report says. “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.”
On Friday, lawmakers in the House largely missed an opportunity to strengthen oversight of charter schools, passing a bill to encourage charter school growth by boosting federal funding without including several amendments that were offered to increase transparency and accountability. The bill, called the Success and Opportunity through Quality Charter Schools Act, increases federal funding for charters from $250 million to $300 million. The bill received wide bipartisan support—it passed by a overwhelming 360-45— although it is being championed by GOP leaders, who tout charter expansion and “school choice” as a central part of their anti-poverty agenda. “This legislation is about upwards mobility,” said majority leader Eric Cantor, who also took the opportunity to bash New York City mayor Bill di Blasio for his position on charter school co-locations.
Very few Democrats pushed back on the legislation, in part because it includes a few provisions sought by charter critics, including allowing charters to prioritize special-needs students and English language learners in the admissions process. Still, this is the first reauthorization of the federal charter program since 2001, and the charter sector has vastly changed and expanded since then. The fact that Democrats did not rally around bids for better oversight indicates how murky the party’s education platform has grown. Charter advocates are increasingly vocal on the left, helping to secure new federal resources; meanwhile, financial and political support for traditional public schools is quietly eroding.
“We’ve essentially agreed to almost all of the elements that were in the original Republican bill and made almost no effort to level the playing field” between charters and traditional public schools, Arizona Representative Raúl Grijalva told me on Wednesday. Grijalva was one of the three Democrats who voted against the charter bill in committee. “Incrementally, more and more of the resources are going to the public charters. There are no additional resources going to the traditional public schools. They’re getting poorer and darker, in terms of the complexion of the kids that are going there.”
“Why is it that we think this is such a valid method of instruction and structure that we are willing to invest nine figures worth of federal money in those programs when we’re starving programs like Title 1 and IDEA?” asked Representative Tim Bishop of New York. Title 1 provides funding for schools with a high proportion of low-income students; IDEA supports services for special needs children. Both have seen sizable cuts in recent years.
On Thursday, the House Rules Committee refused to allow debate on amendments from Grijalva regarding open board meetings, public audit requirements and conflict of interest guidelines—regulations that traditional public schools work under. Before the full vote on Friday, lawmakers rejected an amendment to enforce conflict of interest guidelines for people affiliated with federally funded charters, and another from Democratic Representative Gwen Moore, which would have put aside 2 percent of federal grant money for charters and given it to states to use for oversight. “We often say, ‘Oh yeah, they’re going to audit themselves,’” Moore said on the floor. “With what? Audits cost money.”
Though charters receive federal funding, they are run like private businesses, and in general are not subject to the same kind of oversight as traditional public schools are. “Charter schools are public schools, so they should be held to the same accountability standards as traditional public schools, including those in the [the Elementary and Secondary Education Act] and other federal requirements,” the National Education Association wrote in anticipation of the House vote.
The Center for Popular Democracy report serves as a timely warning against using federal dollars to convert public education into an industry with inadequate regulation. “Without sufficient regulations to ensure true public accountability, incompetent and/or unethical individuals and firms can (and have) inflict great harm on communities,” says the report, which references the damage done recently by allowing industries like banking and lending to expand rapidly without an adequate safety net. The report follows a memorandum from the Department of Education’s Office of the Inspector General that states that state officials are failing “to provide adequate oversight needed to ensure that Federal funds [were] properly used and accounted for.”
Supporters of increased oversight point out that issues of transparency and accountability are distinct from larger ideological debates about charters. Grijalva told me that oversight provisions would not have interfered with the original intention of the bill, which he characterized as encouraging the expansion of charters across the country. “I think public charters are going to be difficult if not impossible to uproot, and that’s not the intention,” Grijalva said. “But if we’re playing on the same field and if this is…a philosophy of market-driven education where competition will produce the best results in our institutions, then let’s make the competition equal. Let’s make disclosure fair and open, let’s make sure that there’re no inside deals.”
Florida Representative Frederica Wilson, who has sharply criticized the charter movement in the past, explained that she voted for the bill because it offered a few minor improvements, and because defeating it would not strike a serious blow to charters. Still, she expressed frustration with the overall lack of support for traditional public education among her colleagues. “This is wrong, what we’re doing. We should be investing in public education, and not investing in charters. And I am frustrated with the White House as they step out to support charters,” she said.
President Obama and his education secretary Arne Duncan have both issued strong praise for the charter movement. Although Duncan has chastised charters for allowing bad actors to flourish among their ranks, instead of pressing for oversight he instead has encouraged charters to clean up their own act.
“The education department, from that administrative side, has been a promoter of this market-driven public education system,” Grijalva said. Referring to his colleagues on the Hill, he continued, “I think there’s been a reluctance to criticize that from some people.”
A similar bill has been introduced in the Senate, with the backing of senators from both parties. However, Senator Tom Harkin, the chair of the Education Committee, has said he is committed to overhauling No Child Left Behind through a reauthorization of the full Elementary and Secondary Education Act—which includes the federal charter program—instead of a piecemeal approach. The ESEA is long overdue for an update, and with Republicans using their unambiguous support for privatized education as a campaign platform, sooner or later Democrats will have to confront the growing chasm within their ranks.
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Fed, Rates and Sun
New York Times - August 22, 2014, by Victoria Shannon - Sun and a little fun mixed with speeches are the hallmarks of...
New York Times - August 22, 2014, by Victoria Shannon - Sun and a little fun mixed with speeches are the hallmarks of the annual retreat of central bankers in Jackson Hole, Wyo.
But today was the first time participants could remember demonstrators showing up.
Protesters with green T-shirts reading “What Recovery?” were organized by the Center for Popular Democracy, a nonprofit group, to greet the bankers at their resort hotel.
“The demonstrators want to remind Fed officials, who tend to deal in abstractions, that real people are affected by their decisions,” says our Fed correspondent, Binyamin Appelbaum.
“Their presence has been mentioned repeatedly by Fed officials and speakers, suggesting that it has made an impression.”
Notably, the Fed chairwoman, Janet L. Yellen, stopped by to express sympathy. In a speech today, she said the central bank needed more evidence of growing employment before deciding when to raise interest rates.
“Historically, particularly during the 1980s, the Fed faced a lot of public pressure as it raised interest rates,” Mr. Appelbaum says, “so this may be the first sign of things to come.”
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State legislators clash over the rights of charter schools
State legislators clash over the rights of charter schools
To state Sen. Owen Hill, the issue is simple. "We [should] treat all public school students equally within a district...
To state Sen. Owen Hill, the issue is simple.
"We [should] treat all public school students equally within a district," the Colorado Springs Republican says.
Hill, chair of the Senate Education Committee as his second four-year term begins, says that's not happening right now because charter schools don't always get an equal share of mill levy increases approved by school district voters.
The money from those taxes isn't divvied up automatically based on pupil counts. Instead, it's distributed based on contracts that charters agree to when approved by a school district. Some districts might give charters a large share of those funds; some may not give them any.
Hill is co-sponsoring Senate Bill 61 — similar to a bill of his that failed last session — trying to change that system. The bill would require school districts to distribute mill levies on a per-pupil basis, starting in the 2017-18 school year, to charters and traditional public schools.
Some exceptions exist. If a mill levy was passed to fund something that a charter doesn't offer (like school buses), the charter won't get the money. If a charter school was authorized by a school district other than the one it was located within, then the authorizing district would only owe it the per-pupil amount for kids who reside in its boundaries. Charter schools authorized by the state's Charter School Institute would be compensated by the Department of Education based on a calculation of mill levies collected by "the charter school's accounting district."
To Hill, the bill aims to correct an unfair situation. Currently, he says, "[Parents have] got this situation where they go to one school on one side of the street and that school receives $10,000 for that child, or if they go to the school on the other side of the street, the school board will basically say, 'Well, all you get is $2,500 if your child goes there.' So now we're picking winners and losers among our kids."
But Hill's view isn't shared by all legislators or education workers.
What Hill leaves out, they say, is that charters aren't equal in any other way — they don't follow the same rules or meet the same standards. So why, they say, should they be treated the same only when it comes to funding?
When Colorado legalized charters in 1993, it was hoped they would foster innovation, serve different needs and give options to families in struggling areas.
Many specialize. In Colorado Springs, for instance, two new charters were recently authorized: Landmark Community School, a sober high school, and the Colorado Military Academy, a military-style K-12.
Charters may not get all the district funds they desire, but they receive no less than 95 percent of state per-pupil funding, often get a portion of district funding, and can apply for a variety of federal and private funds.
Back in 2014, for instance, Philanthropy News Digest reported, "Denver-based DSST Public Schools [a system of charter schools] has announced a $7 million pledge from cable television entrepreneur John C. Malone and the Malone Family Foundation." The Walton Family Foundation announced last year that it would give $1 billion over the next five years to expand charters and school choice.
Charters are not forced to abide by all laws and standards that apply to traditional public schools. According to the Colorado Department of Education, charter schools are automatically granted waivers to 17 state laws. Among them are "local board duties concerning competitive bidding" and "local board powers — accepting gifts, donations and grants." Unlike traditional schools, charters are not required to hire licensed teachers nor must they follow many employment rules that apply to firing and paying teachers.
What's more, charters can ask the State Board of Education to waive other laws. Charters are eligible to have all but three sections of laws waived. What that means, says Sen. Mike Merrifield, D-Colorado Springs and a former high school music teacher, is that charters get a pass on many expensive requirements, but are free to raise money in ways that are difficult or impossible for traditional public schools.
"I would be more inclined to be supportive [of Senate Bill 61] if [charters] would adhere to all the same requirements that local public schools do," Merrifield says.
Another critic: the state's largest teachers' union, the Colorado Education Association. CEA President Kerrie Dallman has a litany of complaints about SB61. Chief among them: "We have a chronically underfunded system, and what Owen Hill's bill does is pull money out of classrooms in order to direct it to these charter schools. What we ought to be doing is talk about growing the pie."
The charter system in general also has its detractors. A statewide poll of 500 registered voters in January 2016 found that "voters overwhelmingly favor charter school reform proposals."
The GBA Strategies poll, performed for In the Public Interest and the Center for Popular Democracy, found, for instance, that 88 percent wanted to "require state officials to conduct regular audits of charter schools' finances to detect fraud, waste or abuse of public funds"; 76 percent wanted to "require charter schools to publicly disclose they are exempt from some state or school district laws including the law requiring public school teachers to be licensed to teach"; and 74 percent wanted to "require companies and organizations that manage charter schools to disclose outside funding including gifts, grants, and donations." The margin of error was plus or minus 4.4 percentage points.
Last summer, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People and the Movement for Black Lives (which includes Black Lives Matter organizers) both came out against charter schools. The groups expressed concerns ranging from the privatization of the public school system to segregation based on perceived abilities, to lack of transparency and accountability. That's notable, because charters, remember, were originally seen as a better way to educate underserved communities.
Cheyenne Mountain School District 12 Superintendent Walt Cooper says his district has long had a great relationship with its charter, The Vanguard School, which is actually located just outside D-12's boundaries. D-12 authorized it agreeing that Vanguard would get a per-pupil portion of D-12's mill levies — but only for Vanguard students living within D-12's boundaries. Cooper says the agreement was fair, and it actually wouldn't change should SB61 pass (a key change from last year's version of the bill). But he opposed Hill's first bill, and he's not keen on SB61 either.
Cooper says he's a fan of local control, adding, "A one-size-fits-all approach does not work."
What's more, he says, there are differences between charters and traditional schools — and that's fine. But, he says, "Let's either all play by exactly the same rules ... or recognize [charters] for the fact that they are different and let's not try to make them the same."
Hill has a counter to the "charters are different" argument. School districts can apply for waivers to state laws too, he says.
That's true. Districts can apply for waivers for "innovation schools" with specific, approved plans. But they don't get automatic waivers, and aren't eligible for as many waivers as charters. Plus, Cooper says, the state board seems less inclined to grant waivers for traditional schools.
He recounts D-12's recent waiver application for its kindergarten program. Cooper says he worked with Vanguard, whose application for the same waiver was approved immediately, to produce his own application. But Cooper's proposal wasn't rubber-stamped. It took three months, three tries and appearing before the state board to get his application approved, with a three-year sunset.
"Basically, we copied their [Vanguard's] homework, and they got an A and we got a D," he says. "We were asking for exactly the same thing."
By J. Adrian Stanley
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Lange, unregelmäßige Arbeitszeit: Starbucks weiter in der Kritik
Die Kritik vieler Mitarbeiter an den Arbeitsbedingungen bei der Kaffeehauskette Starbucks hat für einen neuen...
Die Kritik vieler Mitarbeiter an den Arbeitsbedingungen bei der Kaffeehauskette Starbucks hat für einen neuen Begriff im Wortschatz vieler US-Amerikaner gesorgt: "Clopening". Für viele Mitarbeiter ist das späte Schließen und das morgendliche Öffnen der Filialen durch ein und dieselbe Person eine hohe Belastung. Im vergangenen Jahr gelobte Starbucks Besserung, nachdem die "New York Times" ausführlich über Praktiken wie das "Clopening" berichtet hatte. Die Kritik richtete sich gegen die unregelmäßigen und zum Teil überlangen Arbeitszeiten, die den Mitarbeitern nur sehr kurzfristig mitgeteilt würden.
Hat sich seither etwas gebessert? Nein, schreibt die NGO Center for Popular Democracy in einer ausführlichen Analyse. Zuvor wurden Mitarbeiter befragt. Diese bemängeln nicht nur die weiterhin vorkommenden "Clopenings", sondern auch die Schwierigkeit, bei Krankheit Ersatz zu finden – ein Mitarbeiter bezeichnet es als anstrengender, selbst so lange durchzutelefonieren, bis er einen Springer gefunden hat, als einfach selbst krank zur Arbeit zu gehen. Problematisch sei auch die chronische Unterbesetzung der Filialen, die sich wiederum auf die Arbeitszeit auswirke.
Missstände auch in Europa
Starbucks ist nicht die einzige Kette, die ihren Mitarbeitern einiges abverlangt. Die Kritik findet in den USA deswegen so großes Echo, weil Starbucks seine Mitarbeiter als "Partner" bezeichnet und die Philosophie verfolgt, "den menschlichen Geist zu inspirieren und zu nähren". Es ist nicht das erste Mal, dass die sozial und umweltbewusst wirkende Unternehmensphilosophie (Fairtrade, Aktionen gegen Rassismus, bezahlte Ausbildung, Krankenversicherung) auf die Kaffeehauskette zurückfällt.
Beschwerden gab es in den vergangenen Jahren einige – auch außerhalb der USA. 2010 schleuste sich ein ZDF-Reporter in eine Starbucks-Filiale auf dem Frankfurter Flughafen ein und wurde Zeuge eines harten Arbeitsalltags: Abmahnungen gebe es teilweise wegen falscher Sockenfarbe, fiebrige Mitarbeiter durften nicht nach Hause gehen.
Dass sich bei Arbeitszeit und Dienstplänen nichts zum Positiven geändert hat, sieht man in der Führungsebene von Starbucks naturgemäß anders: "Wir sind die Ersten, die zugeben, dass wir viel Arbeit vor uns haben", sagte Unternehmenssprecherin Jaime Riley der "New York Times". Alle Angestellten würden ihre Dienstpläne mittlerweile mindestens zehn Tage im Voraus bekommen. In alle Filialen durchgedrungen sei diese Praxis aber noch nicht, heißt es in der Analyse des Center for Popular Democracy. (lhag, 25.9.2015)
Untersuchung des Center for Popular Democracy zu Dienstplänen
"New York Times"-Enthüllungen 2014
"New York Times"-Status-quo-Bericht 2015
Kooperation zwischen Starbucks und der Arizona State University
Source: derStandard.at
JPMorgan CEO Jamie Dimon: 'I'm a patriot' so I'll help Trump
JPMorgan Chase Chairman and CEO Jamie Dimon highlighted several critical issues confronting the United States during...
JPMorgan Chase Chairman and CEO Jamie Dimon highlighted several critical issues confronting the United States during the bank's annual shareholder meeting Tuesday and urged the business community and the Trump administration to come together to find meaningful solutions to these problems.
During Q&A with shareholders, Dimon was asked multiple questions related to his willingness to support President Trump. The CEO is on Trump's Strategic and Policy Forum.
Read the full article here.
Influence, the power to change
Clad in a “Stand With Black Women” shirt, Mercedes Fulbright, the Texas State Coordinator at Local Progress, commanded...
Clad in a “Stand With Black Women” shirt, Mercedes Fulbright, the Texas State Coordinator at Local Progress, commanded attention during her engagement entitled, Deserving and Entitled; Engaging in Public Policy to Empower People, as part of the annual Speaking Truth To Power community activism seminar at Friendship West Baptist Church, June 29.
Read the full article here.
NYC pagará por abogados en casos de deportación
El Diario - July 18, 2013, by Claudia Torrens - Nueva York se prepara para dar otro paso en su tradición de ayuda a...
El Diario - July 18, 2013, by Claudia Torrens - Nueva York se prepara para dar otro paso en su tradición de ayuda a inmigrantes: planea pagar los abogados de oficio que necesitan cuando se encuentran en una corte de inmigración y enfrentan la deportación.
Algunos inmigrantes con o sin papeles en la ciudad que enfrenten la expulsión de Estados Unidos podrán a partir de finales de este año o el 2014 presentarse frente al juez de inmigración con un abogado de oficio pagado con fondos municipales, reduciendo así sus posibilidades de ser deportados porque ya no estarán solos en la corte. Activistas, un magistrado federal y funcionarios locales planean anunciar el viernes que la ciudad ha destinado $500,000 a financiar un programa piloto que ofrecerá representación legal a inmigrantes.
Brittny Saunders, de la organización Center for Popular Democracy, dijo a The Associated Press que esta es la primera vez que un programa así se implementa en una municipalidad de Estados Unidos.
"La intención que tenemos a través de este programa piloto es lograr información sobre los beneficios que la representación legal supone tanto para un individuo en detención y enfrentando la deportación como para su familia, su comunidad y la ciudad entera", dijo Saunders. "Esperamos que este programa sea un modelo para otras comunidades alrededor del país".
Inmigrantes que acaban en las cortes de inmigración y que enfrentaban la deportación no tienen derecho a ser defendidos por un abogado de oficio. Pueden contratar a un abogado privado pero muchos inmigrantes no tienen el dinero para pagar por ese servicio. Es por ese motivo que la ciudad, varios activistas y un juez federal interesado en el tema llamado Robert Kaztmann han unido esfuerzos para ofrecer ayuda a inmigrantes en esta situación.
Saunders dijo que en el estado de Nueva York una media de 2,800 inmigrantes se encuentra anualmente en proceso de deportación sin acceso a asistencia legal.
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In $15's Wake, Fair Scheduling Gains Momentum
Worker movements have had tremendous success in blue cities and states in securing higher minimum wages and access to...
Worker movements have had tremendous success in blue cities and states in securing higher minimum wages and access to paid sick leave. Now those wins are blazing a trail for another critical policy for low-wage workers: the right to a fair workweek. After enacting a $15 minimum wage and paid sick leave in recent years, two cities are now leading the way on granting workers the right to a sane and predictable schedule.
Last week, New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio announced his support for legislation currently pending in the city council that would give Gotham’s fast-food workers the right to more predictable work hours. On Monday, the Seattle City Council passed a comprehensive fair workweek law that advocates hope can serve as a model for other cities.
These policy developments come at a time when many workers say that service-sector employers’ scheduling practices make it impossible for them to live their lives. On-call scheduling—in which workers can be told to report to work with little advance notice—make it hard for employees to schedule parenting, school, doctor visits, and much else. Scheduling software aimed solely at efficiency can lengthen or eliminate their shifts at the last minute. On top of that, the prevalent practice of “clopening”—where a worker has a closing shift followed just a few hours later by an opening shift—often leaves workers with little time to rest. Meanwhile, workers are on the hook for the costs of uncertainty, like a last-minute taxi ride to work or unexpected child-care costs.
In one nationwide survey, four out of five early-career adult workers said that their weekly hours fluctuated by an average of 87 percent compared with their usual hours; 45 percent of hourly workers who are parents said they have no input on their schedules.
Fair-scheduling advocates say it's time for employees to have more say in scheduling practices—and for employers to finally pay their workers for the costs that their flexible schedule imposes on employees (like those taxi rides and child care). They are also demanding that companies stop hiring more and more workers to maximize flexibility while cutting hours for existing workers.
In 2014, San Francisco became the first jurisdiction in the country to mandate fair-scheduling practices with its unprecedented “Retail Workers Bill of Rights.”
In 2014, San Francisco became the first jurisdiction in the country to mandate fair-scheduling practices with its unprecedented “Retail Workers Bill of Rights.” The new Seattle law will build on that by requiring that employers give workers two weeks advance notice on shift schedules—any changes made to schedules after that requires additional compensation for the worker, including half-time pay for any hours an employer cuts or cancels. Workers will have the right to request flexible scheduling without fear of retaliation.
Workers will also have protections against “clopening.” The proposed law would be the first in the country to require an employee’s consent for shifts that allow less than ten hours of rest, and to mandate that “clopening” workers get paid time and a half. Additionally, employers would be required to offer available hours to part-time workers before hiring additional workers. Companies that have been found to consistently under-schedule workers and make last-minute shift changes would be subject to fines.
“These are critical steps forward. If you don’t get that many hours, earning $15 only goes so far.”
On the opposite coast, the New York City legislation focuses on the 65,000 workers in the city’s fast-food industry. As such, it follows the pattern set by Fight for 15 organizers, who first convinced Governor Andrew Cuomo to convene a wage board for fast food last year, later to be followed by a general increase in the state minimum wage. “We are in a battle to restore dignity and decent living to retail and service workers in industries where that really has been badly eroded in recent years,” New York City Councilmember Brad Lander told the Prospect in an interview. “These are critical steps forward. If you don’t get that many hours, earning $15 only goes so far.”
As in the Seattle legislation, New York fast-food employers would be required to give workers two weeks advance notice on expected shifts, mandate additional compensation for last-minute changes to a worker’s schedule, and provide protections for workers who are “clopening.” However, as of now, the proposed policy gives employers a week of wiggle room after setting the schedule to make changes before locking it in.
The policy initiative is in the beginning stages, Lander stresses, and the city council may push for any number of changes, including broadening the law to include the entire service industry. As of now, the policy is aimed at the same group of fast-food employers that Cuomo’s wage board dealt with—chains with 30 or more locations nationwide. It’s those bigger chains that already utilize sophisticated scheduling software to minimize labor costs. They can use that same software, Lander says, to ensure that workers have a predictable and secure workweek.
To date, fair-scheduling laws have lagged behind wage hikes and paid sick-day ordinances in city halls and statehouses.
To date, fair-scheduling laws have lagged behind wage hikes and paid sick-day ordinances in city halls and statehouses. At the federal level, in 2014, Representative Rosa DeLauro and Senator Elizabeth Warren introduced the Schedules that Work Act, which protects hourly workers from scheduling abuses—though with Republican control of Congress, the bill hasn’t gone anywhere.
But fair workweek policies now appear primed to become the next front in the low-wage worker movement.
But fair workweek policies now appear primed to become the next front in the low-wage worker movement. In response to pressure from SEIU’s Local 32BJ, a powerful force along the Eastern seaboard, policy-makers in Connecticut, Washington, D.C., and Jersey City may soon pass new rules that mandate 30-hour workweeks for service workers, like security guards and janitors, in large commercial and residential buildings. In November, voters in San Jose will decide on a ballot measure that would require companies with 35 or more workers to offer additional hours to part-timers before taking on new employees.
Washington, D.C., and Minneapolis are also considering fair-scheduling measures for retail and fast-food chains, though both efforts have run into heavy resistance from the business lobby. Workers and organizers are also pushing for a fair-scheduling law in Emeryville, a small city between Berkeley and Oakland that is a major retail-shopping destination for the east Bay Area.
“The momentum with the Fight for 15 has opened up this new space where policy-makers are starting to listen to the real needs that the country’s workforce has been talking about for a long time,” says Carrie Gleason, director of the Center for Popular Democracy’s Fair Workweek Initiative, which is assisting with local fair-scheduling efforts. “This isn’t a new issue,” Gleason adds. But “the accelerated pace in which these types of work-hour policies have taken off is a demonstration of the moment we’re in.”
By Justin Miller
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More on How Charter Schools Profit from Tax Dollars and Undermine Host School Districts
More on How Charter Schools Profit from Tax Dollars and Undermine Host School Districts
Recent weeks have brought a lot of press about the way charter schools are undermining public school districts and...
Recent weeks have brought a lot of press about the way charter schools are undermining public school districts and diverting tax dollars allocated for education too often to for-profit companies. Capital & Main in California just published a week-long expose explaining how rapid expansion of charters threatens the financial stability of the Los Angeles and Oakland school districts. The Salt Lake Tribune editorialized against for-profit charters after that newspaper’s scathing investigation explained how, “A handful of private companies have banked more than $68 million from Utah taxpayers over the past three years.” And in Ohio, after the legislature ended its spring 2016 session without considering an excellent law that would have required the notorious cyber charters to prove that the students the state is paying for are actually participating in the online program, the Columbus Dispatch editorialized: “The idea was that if student outcomes improved in charter schools, then the schools would continue… But the straightforward experiment went off the rails when some clever operators figured out how to get rich by sponsoring charter schools. And to keep the gravy flowing, they began making major political contributions to the lawmakers who control the gravy.”
This is the context in which the Center for Popular Democracy has just released its third annual report, Charter School Vulnerabilities to Waste, Fraud, and Abuse: “Two years ago, the Center for Popular Democracy issued a report demonstrating that charter schools in 15 states—about one-third of the states with charter schools—had experienced over $100 million in reported fraud, waste, abuse, and mismanagement since 1994. Last year, we released a new report that found millions of dollars of new alleged and confirmed financial fraud, waste, abuse, and mismanagement in charter schools had come to light, bringing the new total to $203 million. This report offers further evidence that the money we know has been misused is just the tip of the iceberg. With the new alleged and confirmed financial fraud reported here, the total fraud, waste, abuse, and mismanagement in charter schools has reached over $216 million.”
The new report examines fraud and mismanagement across the states and explains that, “State oversight systems are currently reactive by design. While states do require that charter schools submit budgets, financial reports and independent financial audits, most do not proactively monitor for fraud, waste, mismanagement, or other financial abuses.” The Center for Popular Democracy recommends that charter schools be required to institute internal fraud risk management assessments and that oversight agencies like state comptrollers’ offices should regularly audit charter schools.
Of course a huge problem is that charter schools are established and regulated in state law, and experience tells us that political pressures and financial contributions to state lawmakers have exacerbated the states’ failures to oversee charter schools in the public interest. It is for this reason that the Center for Popular Democracy recommends that the U.S. Department of Education should make the awarding of enormous federal grants to states for the expansion of charter schools contingent on states’ passage of laws to strengthen oversight: “Taxpayers invest billions of education dollars in charter schools, yet states offer too few protections to ensure that those taxpayer dollars are benefitting students. Therefore, we recommend that federal funding for charter school education should flow only to states that have… taxpayer protection provisions in place for their charter schools.”
The new report once again points to failed federal regulation of the federal Charter Schools Program. “The federal government alone has contributed over $3.3 billion through several grant programs specifically designed to increase the number of charter schools in the United States. With the recent passage of the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA), the federal government has signaled its plan to spend another $3.3 billion over the next 10 years, which would double the federal investment in charter schools.”
And yet, according to Center for Popular Democracy’s new report, “In 2010, the U.S. Department of Education’s Office of Inspector General (OIG) issued a memorandum to the Department of Education’s Office of Innovation and Improvement. The OIG stated that the purpose of the memorandum was to ‘alert you of our concern about vulnerabilities in the oversight of charter schools.’… In September of 2012, the OIG audited the Department of Education’s Office of Innovation and Improvement’s (OII) Charter Schools Program and found that OII did not adequately monitor the federal funds. Specifically, the audit report states that: ‘We determined that OII did not effectively oversee and monitor the SEA (State Educational Agencies) and non-SEA grants and did not have an adequate process to ensure SEAs effectively oversaw and monitored their subgrantees. Specifically, OII did not have an adequate corrective action… process in place to ensure grantees corrected deficiencies noted in annual monitoring reports, did not have a risk-based approach for selecting non-SEA grantees for monitoring, and did not adequately review SEA and non-SEA grantees’ fiscal activities.'”
In other words, the U.S. Department of Education has been giving billions of dollars to states to promote the expansion of charter schools and to other charter school sponsors without any kind of adequate tracking of how the money is being used. This allegation is certainly consistent with the findings of a new report released in Ohio last week by Innovation Ohio and the Ohio Education Association. Ohio has been a big recipient of federal Charter Schools Program Grants over the years, receiving CSP grants of $99.6 million since the 2006-2007 school year. Belly Up: A Review of Federal Charter Schools Program Grants explains that in Ohio, “At least 108 of the 292 charter schools that have received federal CSP (Charter Schools Program) funding (37 percent) have either closed or never opened, totaling nearly $30 million.” “Of those that failed, at least 26 Ohio charter schools that received nearly $4 million in federal CSP funding apparently never even opened and there are no available records to indicate that these public funds were returned.”
By janresseger
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