NATIONAL GROUPS CALL FOR DNC TO CAN SUPERDELEGATE SYSTEM
NATIONAL GROUPS CALL FOR DNC TO CAN SUPERDELEGATE SYSTEM
Fourteen national organizations boasting more than 10 million members are calling on the Democratic National Committee...
Fourteen national organizations boasting more than 10 million members are calling on the Democratic National Committee to end the use of superdelegates to elect the presidential nominee.
The move to end the use of superdelegates was pushed vigorously during the campaign by Sen. Bernie Sanders but many of those supporting the effort include backers of Hillary Clinton, the presumptive Democratic nominee.
DNC Rules Committee member and Rhode Island State Representative Aaron Regunberg has pledged to introduce language to end superdelegates, and several other Rules Committee members have agreed to support the effort at the Democratic National Convention at the end of July.
The organizations said in a joint letter that the superdelegates, who are typically party officials, are not elected by voters and can skew the nominating process. They say the superdelegates carry as much as the combined weight as pledged delegates from 24 states, the District of Columbia and four territories.
Organizations signing on to the letter include: Courage Campaign, Credo, Daily Kos, Demand Progress/Rootstrikers, Democracy for America, Center for Popular Democracy, MoveOn, National Nurses United, NDN, The Other 98%, Presente.org, Progressive Change Campaign Committee, Progressive Democrats of America, and Social Security Works.
Simon Rosenberg, the president of NDN and a former DNC staffer, who supported Hillary Clinton during the primary, said the use of superdelegates is âdiscordant with broader and vital efforts by Democrats to modernize and improve our democracy. If we want the voice of everyday people to be louder and more consequential in our nationâs politics, it must also be so in our Party.â
Another Clinton supporter, Joe Trippi, who ran Howard Deanâs unsuccessful presidential campaign in 2004, said a key party goal is to âempower voices from the bottom up. The top down idea of superdelegates is obsolete and is a good place to start.â
Sandersâ supporter Rep. Tulsi Gabbard, a superdelegate and former DNC official, also condemned the practice.
âThe nominee of our party should be decided by who earns the most votes ânot party insiders, unelected officials, or the federal lobbyists that have been given a vote in our nominating process. The current system stands against grassroots activists and the will of the voters,â she said. âWeâve seen a historic number of new voters and activists join our political process in the past year, many of whom are rightly upset at how rigged the political system can seem at times. If we want to strengthen our democracy and our party, we must end the superdelegate process.â
By MARK JOHNSON
Source
Education âReformersââ New Big Lie: Charter Schools Become Even More Disastrous
Salon - March 2, 2015, by Jeff Bryant -What fun we had recently with North Carolinaâs recently elected U.S. senator,...
Salon - March 2, 2015, by Jeff Bryant -What fun we had recently with North Carolinaâs recently elected U.S. senator, Republican Thom Tillis, who insisted we didnât need government regulations to compel restaurant employees to wash their hands in between using the toilet and preparing our food.
His solution to proper sanitation practices in restaurants â âthe market will take care of thatâ â was roundly mocked by left-leaning commentators as an example of the way conservatives uphold the interests of businesses and moneymaking above all other concerns.
Fun, for sure, but itâs no laughing matter that the Tillis plan for public sanitation appears to increasingly be the philosophy for governing the nationâs schools.
Rather than directly address what ails struggling public schools, policy leaders increasingly claim that giving parents more choice about where they send their children to school â and letting that parent choice determine the funding of schools â will create a market mechanism that leaves the most competent schools remaining âin businessâ while incompetent schools eventually close.
Coupled with more âchoiceâ are demands to increase the numbers of unregulated charter schools, especially those operated by private management firms that now have come to dominate roughly half the charter sector.
As schools lose more and more students to the charter schools, parents then âvote with their feet,â choice advocates argue, and the market will âwork.â
Why the âTillis Ruleâ that seems so wrong for public health has been declared the wave of the future for the nationâs schoolchildren and families seems to hardly ever get questioned.
Tarheel School Choice Extravaganza
The Tillis Rule is certainly now the driving force behind new education policy in North Carolina, as rapid charter school expansions and a new voucher plan have opened up public schools to various âmarket forces.â
Howâs that working out?
So far, not so hot. For instance, in Charlotte, at least three charter schools abruptly closed down this year alone, some after having been in operation for only a few months. The most recent shutdown was particularly noticeable.
That school, Entrepreneur High, focused on teaching students job skills, so they could be financially independent when they graduated. Turns out the school had its own financial problems with only $14 in the bank and $400,000 in debt. In fact, the school never even really had a financial plan at all.
In other news from the front of âschool choiceâ in the Tarheel State, left-leaning group N.C. Policy Watch recently reported about a state auditor who checked the books of a Kinston charter school and found the school overstated attendanceâthereby inflating its state funds by more than $300,000.
The school shorted its staff by more than $370,000 in payroll obligations, according to reports, while making âquestionable payments of more than $11,000âł to the CEO and his wife. And the CEOâs daughter was being paid $40,000 to be the schoolâs academic officer even though she had zero experience in teaching or school administration.
When the reporter, Lindsay Wagner, tried to contact the schoolâs CEO to question him about the auditorâs findings, she discovered he had left his position and was working elsewhere in the state â running a different charter school.
Meanwhile, the state has rolled out another school choice venture: vouchers, called Opportunity Scholarships, that allow parents to pull their kids out of public schools and get taxpayer funding to enroll the kids in the schools of their choice. Wagner, again, wondered where the money was heading and found 90 percent of it goes to private religious institutions.
More recently, Wagnerâs account of this money found âmore than $4,000,000 worth of taxpayer-funded school vouchers have now been paid out to private schools.â Of the top 12 private schools benefiting from this money, all are religious schools.
Also, Wagner reported, voucher funds come with âvirtually no accountability measures attached ⊠Private schools are also free to use any curriculum they see fit, employ untrained, unlicensed teachers and conduct criminal background checks only on the heads of schools. For the most part, they do not have to share their budgets or financial practices with the public, in spite of receiving public dollars.â
Itâs unfair, however, to single out North Carolina for school choice shenanigans.
Charter Corruption Spreads, Grows
In Ohio, for instance, a recent investigation into charter schools by state auditors found evidence of fraud that made North Carolinaâs pale in comparison. The privately operated schools get nearly $6,000 in taxpayer money for every student they enroll, but half the charter schools the auditor looked at had âsignificantly lowerâ attendance than what they claimed in state funding.
One charter school in Youngstown had no students at all, having sent the kids home for the day at 12:30 in the afternoon.
This form of charter school fraud is so widespread, according to an article in Education Week, many states now employ ââmysteryâ or âsecret shopperâ services used in retailâ that pose as inquiring parents to call charter schools to ensure theyâre educating the students they say they are.
Enrollment inflation is not the only form of fraud charter schools practice. In Missouri, a federal judge recently fingered a nationwide chain of charter schools, Imagine, for âself-dealingâ in a lease agreement that allowed it to fleece a local charter school of over a million dollars.
âThe facts of the case mirror arrangements in Ohio and other states,â the reporter noted, âwhere Imagine schools pay exorbitant rent to an Imagine subsidiary, SchoolHouse Finance. The high lease payments leave little money for classroom instruction and help explain the poor academic records of Imagine schools in both states.â
A charter school manager in Michigan is about to go on trial for steering nearly a million dollars in public funds targeted to renovate his charter school into his own bank account.
In Washington, which was late to the game of charters and choice, the stateâs first charter school is already under investigation for financial and academic issues.
Investigators in the District of Columbia, recently uncovered a charter school operator who âfunneled $13 million of public money into a private company for personal gain.â
A recent report from the Center for Popular Democracy looked at charter school finances in Illinois and found â$13.1 million in fraud by charter school officials ⊠Because of the lack of transparency and necessary oversight, total fraud is estimated at $27.7 million in 2014 alone.â
One example the CPD report cited was of a charter operator in Chicago who used charter school funds amounting to more than $250,000 to purchase personal items from luxury department stores, including $2,000 on hair care and cosmetic products and $5,800 for jewelry.
The report made specific policy recommendations, including financial reviews and a moratorium on new charters, to increase the transparency and accountability of these schools â the type of policy recommendations charter and school choice fans continue to fight at every turn.
Voucher Ventures Expand Across the Country
While charter school operations continue to waste public money on scandals and fraud â all in the name of âchoiceâ â newly enacted school vouchers divert more public school dollars to private schools.
In parts of Ohio, âthe state-sponsored voucher program has increased or even doubled enrollment at some private schools.â
In Indiana, which has the largest taxpayer-funded school voucher program in the country, according to a local source, virtually all of the participating schools, 97 percent, are religiously affiliated private schools.
In Louisiana, over a third of students using voucher funds to attend private schools are enrolled schools âdoing such a poor job of educating them that the schools have been barred from taking new voucher students.â
In parts of Wisconsin, âprivate schools accepting vouchers receive more money per student than public school districts do for students attending through open enrollment.â
Despite the obvious misdirection of taxpayer money, more states are eager to roll out new voucher plans or expand the ones they have. As the Economist recently reported, âAfter the Republicansâ success in state elections in November, several are pushing to increase the number and scope of school voucher schemes,â including Wisconsin, where probable presidential candidate Scott Walker has proposed to remove all limits on the number of schoolchildren who could attend private schools at taxpayer expense.
Of course, not all voucher-like schemes are called âvouchers.â According to a report from Politico, some states are considering voucher-like mechanisms called Education Savings Accounts that allow parents to pocket taxpayer money that would normally pay for public schools to be used for other education pursuits, including private school and home schooling. Two states â Florida and Arizona â already have them, but six more may soon follow.
Vouchers Hit the Hill
Support for vouchers extends to Congress, as another Politico article reported, where Republican, and some Democratic, lawmakers are âproposing sweeping voucher bills and nudging school choice into conversations about the 2016 primaries.â
According to a report from Education Week, congressional Republicans leading the effort to rewrite the nationâs federal education policy, called No Child Left Behind, are âintent on drafting the most-conservative version of the federal K-12 law possible,â which would include a voucher-like scheme allowing federal money designated as Title I funds, the program for schools with low-income students, âto follow those students to the school of their choice, including private schools.â
In fact, working its way through the U.S. House of Representatives currently is a bill called the Student Success Act that would provide for this âTitle I Portability.â In the U.S. Senate, according to Education Week, Title I Portability is also included in a draft bill to rewrite NCLB introduced by Sen. Lamar Alexander of Tennessee.
âEveryone should care and learn about Title I Portability,â warns public school advocate Jan Resseger on Public School Shakedown, a blog site operated by the Progressive magazine.
Resseger points to a statement by the National Coalition for Public Education stating, âThis proposal would undermine Title Iâs fundamental purpose of assisting public schools with high concentrations of poverty and high-need students.â Resseger also cites, from the Center on American Progress, a brief opposing Title I Portability. âAccording to CAP,â Resseger explains, Title I Portability would be âRobin Hood in Reverse ⊠taking from the poor and giving to the rest,â ignoring the long-known fact that socioeconomic isolation has a devastating impact, as, on average, âschool districts with highly concentrated family poverty would lose $85 per student while more affluent school districts would gain, on average, $290 per student.â
Despite the damage that Title I Portability could do to public schools serving our most high-needs students, charter school advocates appear to back the measure, according to a recent post at Education Week. âBy and large, we feel that when the dollars follow children to the school that they select, you create a better marketplace for reform,â the president of the National Alliance for Public Charter Schools Nina Rees is quoted.
What about those charters that continue to commit waste and fraud while they funnel public money into privately operated businesses? Will âthe market will take care of thatâ?
Where Choice Fails
Back to the Tillis Rule, consider another example of leaving public health policy up to individual choice: the recent measles outbreak.
That outbreak made it abundantly clear that where parents have the good fortune to be âsafe in the herdâ of vaccinated children, they often donât feel an obligation to vaccinate their own offspring.
One can be sympathetic to parents with religious beliefs, or parents who simply hate seeing their babies being stuck with needles, and still justifiably point out to those parents that their âprinciplesâ come at the expense of other peopleâs potential inconvenience, expense and, possibly, suffering.
If those parents lived in a very different country that didnât provide safety in the herd â or, in the case of Sen. Tillis, didnât provide for basic sanitation â theyâd probably feel quite differently about imposed health regulations.
Certainly comparing healthcare policy to education is not a false equivalency. The two policy arenas are strongly interrelated. The positive correlation between numbers of years of education to healthcare outcomes is well documented.
Further, parents clustered around schools often may share the same information and attitudes, which also can affect health outcomes.
In the case of the recent measles outbreak in California, University of Maryland sociologist Philip N. Cohen took numbers initially crunched by Duke University sociology professor Kieran Healy and found, âRunaway vaccine exemptions are problems of the private and charter schools ⊠The average charter school kindergartner goes to school with classmates almost five times more likely to be non-vaccinated; and charter school kids are more than 3-times as likely to be in class with 5 percent or more kids exempt.â
As Cohen revealed, charter schools he examined have âfewer kids eligible for free-lunch than regular public schools (43 percent versus 55 percent). ⊠Rich charter schools on average have the highest [vaccine] exemption rates, while poor schools â charter or not â are heavily clustered around zero.â
Cohen concluded, âBecause they are more parent-driven, or targeted at certain types of parents, charter schools are more ideologically homogeneous. And because anti-vaccine ideology is concentrated among richer parents, charter schools provide them with a fertile breeding ground in which to generate and transmit anti-vaccine ideas.â (H/T Ron Wile.)
Better Than Choice: A Guarantee
Tillis Rule notwithstanding, most people understand that public health policy should be guided not by desires to maximize personal choice but by the need to guarantee public safety and wellbeing. That guarantee, rather than the maximization of choice, is what makes it possible to have the freedom to conduct commerce, live and work safely in our communities, and move about freely in society.
Why should that guarantee we insist on for public health be any different from what we insist on for public education?
Instead, with todayâs school choice crowd, childrenâs guaranteed access to high-quality public education appears to be no longer the goal â either by policy or practice.
Under the Tillis Rule, itâs assumed some schools will be allowed to remain lousy at least for some substantial period of time (how long is anyoneâs guess), while âthe money follows the child,â âpeople vote with their feetâ and âthe market works.â
Any negative consequences to those students and families unlucky or unfortunate enough to be stuck in the not-so-good schools â after all, itâs impossible for every family to get into the âbest schoolâ â seem to not matter one whit.
And thatâs really sick.
Source
Tax reform stumbling block
Tax reform stumbling block
Donât look for a tax reform roll-out as soon as Congress comes back despite the aggressive timetable laid out by White...
Donât look for a tax reform roll-out as soon as Congress comes back despite the aggressive timetable laid out by White House legislative director Marc Short. Part of the reason is that it probably wonât be ready yet. But it also has to wait until after the GOP congress passes a budget resolution, people close to the matter tell MM.
Because if Republicans lay out their tax reform plan beforehand, Democrats could use the budget vote-a-rama process in the Senate to try and attack individual pieces of the plan.
Read the full article here.
Pressures mount on Wells Fargo following fake-accounts scandal
Pressures mount on Wells Fargo following fake-accounts scandal
Pressure mounted on Wells Fargo & Co. Friday following its fake-accounts scandal, as the bank faced new calls to...
Pressure mounted on Wells Fargo & Co. Friday following its fake-accounts scandal, as the bank faced new calls to allow affected customers to file lawsuits and for the board of directors to rescind the pay of a key senior executive.
The demands came just one day after Chief Executive John Stumpf resigned from a Federal Reserve advisory panel.
Senators had pushed for Stumpf not to be reappointed, saying it was inappropriate for someone who presided over improper sales tactics to be giving advice to an agency involved with bank regulation.
Stumpf has been under intense fire since the bank this month agreed to pay $185 million to settle investigations by Los Angeles City Atty. Mike Feuer, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency into an aggressive sales culture that led bank employees to open as many as 2 million accounts that customers didnât authorize.
The Justice Department is investigating possible criminal charges, and some senators have called for a Labor Department investigation into whether the bank failed to pay employees overtime when they worked late nights and weekend to meet sales quotas.
A group of Senate Democrats continued to attack Wells Fargo on Friday, publicly calling on Stumpf to stop enforcing mandatory arbitration clauses in the agreements for customer accounts that were not authorized.
Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio) had pressed Stumpf on the matter at a Senate Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs Committee hearing Tuesday, arguing that it was unfair not to allow those customers the ability to file lawsuits against the bank.
Stumpf said at the time that he would have to âtalk to my legal team.â
Brown said Friday that he and his colleagues want relief for bank customers and more answers from Wells Fargo.
âIf Wells Fargo really does want to look out for the customers, if they really are in fact sorry, as the CEO said, for these unauthorized accounts, they ought to let the court system work if these people who were wronged want to bring suit,â he said.
Wells Fargo's collateral damage: customers' credit scores
Wells Fargo's collateral damage: customers' credit scores
The Democrats sent a letter to Stumpf on Friday, requesting more information about the arbitration clauses, including how many customer complaints about fake accounts were forced into arbitration proceedings.
Brown was among those writing to Stumpf, along with Patrick Leahy of Vermont, Richard Durbin of Illinois, Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut, Al Franken of Minnesota and Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts.
A spokeswoman for Wells Fargo did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Also on Friday, an activist investment group that is part of the Change to Win union federation wrote to Wells Fargoâs board, asking it to rescind at least part of the compensation earned by the executive who oversaw the employees who opened unauthorized customer accounts.
The letter from CtW Investment Group, which is a Wells Fargo shareholder, adds to the pressure on the bank to claw back some of the approximately $100 million earned by Carrie Tolstedt, the companyâs former head of community banking.
Wells Fargoâs stock has declined by about 8% since the settlement was announced on Sept. 8.
On Thursday, five senators called for Stumpf not to be reappointed to the Federal Advisory Council, a 12-member body that meets four times a year with the Fedâs Board of Governors to discuss banking and economic matters.
Stumpf had represented the Fedâs San Francisco district, where Wells Fargo is based, since 2015.
He âmade a personal decision to resignâ and notified the Fed on Thursday, Wells Fargo spokeswoman Jennifer Dunn said.
âHis top priority is leading Wells Fargo,â she said.
Sen. Angus King, an independent from Maine, organized the letter to the head of the board of directors of the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco asking that Stump not be reappointed to the advisory council when his term expires on Dec. 31.
âIt would be ironic if the Federal Reserve, a key federal banking regulator tasked in part with ensuring the fair and equitable treatment of consumers in financial transactions, continued to receive special insights and recommendations from senior management of a financial institution that just paid a record-breaking fine to the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau for âunfairâ and âabusiveâ practices that placed consumers at financial risk,â they wrote.
The letter also was signed by Warren and Democratic Sens. Maria Cantwell of Washington and Jeff Merkley and Ron Wyden, both of Oregon.
Their call was backed by Fed Up, a coalition of labor, community and liberal activist groups that has pushed to reduce the influence of bankers on Federal Reserve policies.
âCommercial banks already have too much influence within the Federal Reserve System,â the coalition said Thursday. The coalition also asked its members to sign a petition calling for Stumpâs âimmediate dismissalâ from the advisory panel.
âStumpf, as the CEO of a bank accused of âunfairâ and âabusiveâ practices, should have no role advising the Federal Reserveâs Board of Governors on policies affecting working families,â Fed Up said.
By Jim Puzzanghera
Source
Report Shows Illinois Has One of the Nationâs Highest Black Unemployment Rates Despite an Improving Economy
Report Shows Illinois Has One of the Nationâs Highest Black Unemployment Rates Despite an Improving Economy
Across the country, the economy is supposed to be slowly picking up, but the unemployment rate for Blacks is still...
Across the country, the economy is supposed to be slowly picking up, but the unemployment rate for Blacks is still about twice the rate of whites. A report by Progress Illinois said the stateâs Black unemployment rate is one of the worst in the nation.
According to analysis by the Economic Policy Institute (EPI,) only two other states, New Jersey and South Carolina have higher Black unemployment rates than Illinois. D.C. had the highest Black unemployment rate at 14.2 percent, while Tennessee had the lowest at 6.9 percent. Illinoisâ Black unemployment rate declined to 11.5 percent in the second quarter of 2015, according to Progress Illinois.
The nationwide unemployment rate has fallen to about 9 percent. However, the Black jobless rate is twice the white unemployment rate of 4 percent, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
âAfrican Americans are still unemployed at a higher rate than their white counterparts in almost every state,â said EPI economist Valerie Wilson, who conducted the unemployment analysis. âWe need policies that look beyond simply reducing unemployment to pre-recession levels as an end goal.â
In a press release, Connie Razza, director of strategic research for the Center for Popular Democracy (CPD), said, contrary to the improving economy, âBlack America is still in the middle of a Great Recession.â
According to Progress Illinois, EPI and the Center for Popular Democracy both called on the Federal Reserve to support policies that would help Black America.
âWhen [Fed] Chair [Janet] Yellen and other Fed officials talk about raising interest rates in 2015, they are talking about intentionally slowing down the economy and job growth, which would make it harder for most Americans, and particularly Black workers, to find good-paying jobs,â Razza said. âThe direct consequences of the Fedâs projected interest rate hikes would harm millions of workers.â
A tight labor market, which we have now, benefits employers since there are more people looking for fewer jobs. This allows employers to keep labor costs low and easily fire workers, because there are hundreds of people lined up to replace them. Razza said the Fed needs to support policies that would move towards a full employment economy.
âA full-employment economy, as we saw in the late 1990s, shrinks racial inequity and will bring particular benefits to Black workers, who are disproportionately unemployed, underemployed, underpaid, and endure more difficult scheduling circumstances in the workplace,â Razza said.
Black unemployment has been a long-standing problem. The Labor Department began tracking employment figures by race in 1972 and since then the Black jobless rate has stubbornly remained at twice the white rate. Employment experts say its not just a matter of training and education. Studies have shown Black men with college educations have higher unemployment rates than white men with just a high school education.
However, economists say the improving economy is making it easier for all Americans, including Black people, to find work.
âNow, youâre starting to see a broad recovery which is reaching groups with high unemployment rates like African-Americans and teens,â said Michael Madowitz, an economist at the American Center for Progress in a CNN article.
This issue was also brought up during the last Republican debate.
âOnce you have economic growth, itâs important we reach out to people who live in the shadows⊠which includes people in our minority community and people who feel they donât have the chance to move up,â said Ohio Gov. John Kasich, a Republican presidential candidate.
Source:Â Atlanta Black Star
Report: Millions of Dollars in Fraud, Waste Found in Charter School Sector
The Washington Post - April 28, 2015, by Valerie Strauss - A new report released on Tuesday details fraud and waste...
The Washington Post - April 28, 2015, by Valerie Strauss - A new report released on Tuesday details fraud and waste totaling more than $200 million of uncovered fraud and waste of taxpayer funds in the charter school sector, but says the total is impossible to know because there is not sufficient oversight over these schools. It calls on Congress to include safeguards in legislation being considered to succeed the federal No Child Left Behind law.
The report, titled âThe Tip of the Iceberg: Charter School Vulnerabilities To Waste, Fraud, And Abuse,â was released jointly by the nonprofit organizations Alliance to Reclaim Our Schools and the Center for Popular Democracy. It follows a similar report released a year ago by the same groups that detailed $136 million in fraud and waste and mismanagement in 15 of the 42 states that operate charter schools. The 2015 report cites $203 million, including the 2014 total plus $23 million in new cases, and $44 million in earlier cases not included in last yearâs report.
It notes that these figures only represent fraud and waste in the charter sector uncovered so far, and that the total that federal, state and local governments âstand to loseâ in 2015 is probably more than $1.4 billion. It says, âThe vast majority of the fraud perpetrated by charter officials will go undetected because the federal government, the states, and local charter authorizers lack the oversight necessary to detect the fraud.â
The report makes these policy recommendations:
â Mandate audits that are specifically designed to detect and prevent fraud, and increase the transparency and accountability of charter school operators and managers. â Clear planning-based public investments to ensure that any expansions of charter school investments ensure equity, transparency, and accountability. â Increase transparency and accountability to ensure that charter schools provide the information necessary for state agencies to detect and prevent fraud.
It also says:
State and federal lawmakers should act now to put systems in place to prevent fraud, waste, abuse and mismanagement. While the majority of state legislative sessions are coming to an end, there is an opportunity to address the charter school fraud problem on a federal level by including strong oversight requirements in the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA), which is currently being debated in Congress. Unfortunately, some ESEA proposals do very little reduce the vulnerabilities that exist in the current law. If the Act is passed without the inclusion of the reforms outlined in this report, taxpayers stand to lose millions more dollars to charter school fraud, waste, abuse, and mismanagement.
The charter school sector has expanded significantly in the last decade and now educates about 5 percent of the students enrolled in public schools. The Obama administration has supported the spread of charter schools; President Obamaâs proposed budget for fiscal year 2016 includes $375 million specifically for charters, a 48 percent increase over last yearâs actual budget.
Proponents say charters offer choices for parents and competition for traditional public schools. Critics say that most charters donât perform any better â and some of them worse â than traditional public schools, take resources away from school districts, and are part of an effort to privatize public education.
The report says that any âeffective, comprehensive fraud prevention systemâ should include:
â Taking proactive steps to educate all staff and board members about fraud; â Ensuring that one executive-level manager coordinates and oversees the fraud risk assessment and reports to the board of directors, oversight bodies, and school community; â Implementing reporting procedures that include conflict disclosure, whistleblower protections, and a clear investigation process; â Undergoing and posting a fraud risk assessment conducted by a consultant expert in applicable standards, key risk indicators, anti-fraud methodology, control activities, and detection procedures; and â Developing and implementing quality assurance, continuous monitoring, and, where necessary, correction action plans, with clear benchmarks and reporting
The report details cases across the country, among them:
 The District of Columbia In February 2015, the DC Public Charter School Board unanimously voted to revoke the charter of the Dorothy I. Height Community Academy Public Charter School. The DC Attorney General is suing the founder, Kent Amos, for diverting public education funding to a private company for his personal profit. That private management company paid Amos more than $2.5 million over the last 2 years. Over the past 10 years, the school has paid the private entity more than $14 million and, while costs to the private company declined over that time, management fees rose. The charter boardâs oversight report showed âno pattern of fiscal mismanagement.â Members of the DC Public Charter School Board have described their limited ability to oversee for-profit management companies, which face no requirement to disclose salaries or other pertinent information.
Michigan In April 2014, Steven Ingersoll, founder of Grand Traverse Academy, was convicted on federal fraud and tax evasion. He did not report $2 million of taxable income in 2009 and 2010. The schoolâs audit revealed a $2.3 million prepayment to Ingersollâs school management company. The schoolâs later decision to write down $1.6 million of the loan put the school in a deficit position for the first time. Ingersoll then used half of a $.8 million loan for school construction to pay down some of his debt to the school.13 After the founderâs ouster, his daughter-in-law continued to handle the finances of the school.
Ohio In January 2015, the state auditor released a report of the results of unannounced visits by inspectors to 30 charter schools. In nearly half of the schools, the school-provided headcount was significantly higher than the auditorsâ headcount. Schools are funded based on headcount, so these inflated figures amount to taxpayer dollars siphoned away from students. Among the seven schools with the most extreme variances between reported head count and the auditorsâ headcount, almost 900 students were missing, at a cost of roughly $5.7 million.16 Auditors identified eight other schools with troubling, but less significant variances. In June 2014, a grand jury indicted the superintendent and 2 board members of Arise! Academy in Dayton of soliciting and accepting bribes in exchange for awarding a âlucrativeâ consulting contract to a North Carolina-based company. The contract was worth $420,919 and the charter personnel received kickbacks in the form of cash, travel, and payments to a separate business.
California In July 2014, the Los Angeles Unified School District performed a forensic audit of Magnolia Public Schools. They found that the charter-school chain used education dollars to pay for six nonemployeesâ immigration costs and could not justify $3 million in expenses over four years to outsource curriculum development, professional training, and human resources services that the school itself reported doing.
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CORRUPT CONGRESSMEN DEMAND DIVERSITY FROM FEDERAL RESERVE
CORRUPT CONGRESSMEN DEMAND DIVERSITY FROM FEDERAL RESERVE
Do you know what our divided and divisive political system needs? More tribalism. And who would know that better than...
Do you know what our divided and divisive political system needs? More tribalism.
And who would know that better than Cherokee Senator Elizabeth Warren who has a letter out complaining that there are too many white men on the board of the Federal Reserve. The letter is co-signed by the usual clown show of the Congressional Black Caucus and the Progressive Caucus.
The first signature belongs to John Conyers whose wife pleaded guilty to a conspiracy to commit bribery. Also present are the likes of Maxine Waters and Frederica Wilson, Gwen Moore, former Nation of Islam supporter Keith Ellison, Bernie Sanders, Al Franken, Bernice Johnson and Alcee Hastings, who was impeached for bribery.
Bernice Johnson had her own ethical issues.
Longtime Dallas congresswoman Eddie Bernice Johnson has awarded thousands of dollars in college scholarships to four relatives and a top aide's two children since 2005, using foundation funds set aside for black lawmakers' causes. Eddie Bernice Johnson
The recipients were ineligible under anti-nepotism rules of the Congressional Black Caucus Foundation, which provided the money. And all of the awards violated a foundation requirement that scholarship winners live or study in a caucus member's district.
What's This?
And Maxine Waters? She's got a record.
The influential congresswoman has helped family members make more than $1 million through business ventures with companies and causes that she has helped, according to her hometown newspaper.
A few years ago Waters was investigated by the House Ethics Committee for steering $12 million in federal bailout funds to a failing Massachusetts bank (that subsequently got shut down by the government) in which she and her board member husband held shares.
Waters has also come under fire for skirting federal elections rules with a shady fundraising gimmick that allows her to receive unlimited amounts of donations from certain contributors. For years the veteran Los Angeles lawmaker has raked in hundreds of thousands of dollars in short periods of time by selling her endorsement to other politicians and political causes for as much as $45,000 a pop instead of raising most of her campaign funds from individuals and political action committees.
Then there's Alan Grayson who has his own hedge fund.
Rep. Alan Grayson manages hedge funds that use his name in their title, a practice prohibited by congressional ethics rules designed to prevent members from using their elected post for financial gain.
The specific ethics provisions tied to the funds Grayson manages, two of which are based in the Cayman Islands, sit in a sort of gray area and have never been examined by the House Ethics Committee.
Sure. Let's let these people dictate diversity at the Fed.
By Daniel Greenfield
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âLlevaron a cabo vigilia contra Trump por el huracĂĄn MarĂaâ
âLlevaron a cabo vigilia contra Trump por el huracĂĄn MarĂaâ
Los oradores incluyeron a Jaime Contreras , vicepresidente del sindicato 32BJ , Mary Cathryn Ricker , vicepresidenta...
Los oradores incluyeron a Jaime Contreras , vicepresidente del sindicato 32BJ , Mary Cathryn Ricker , vicepresidenta ejecutiva de la Federación de Maestros de EE.UU. , Jordan Haedtler , director de campaña del Centro para la Democracia Popular, y Tatiana Matta , puertorriqueña que aspira al Congreso por el distrito 23 de California.
Lea el artĂculo completo aquĂ.
Thanks to York School Board for Rejecting Charter Takeover
York Daily Record - November 4, 2014, by Rev. Aaron Willford, Sandra Thompson and Clovis Gallon - Over the past few...
York Daily Record - November 4, 2014, by Rev. Aaron Willford, Sandra Thompson and Clovis Gallon - Over the past few months, something remarkable happened in York. Parents, teachers, students, neighbors and faith leaders united to send a clear message that the education of York's children is more important than the profit margin of an out-of-state charter operator.
On behalf of that community, we would like to thank the York City School Board for standing up for our students, making sure their education comes first, and rejecting a charter takeover of our schools.
When the school board met on Oct. 15, Chief Recovery Officer David Meckley pressured board members to vote on an incomplete, poorly researched charter plan that was rolled out less than a week before. With so little time to review the plan and so many unanswered questions about it, the community urged the board to cast a no vote.
Rejecting the charter plan was not an easy decision for the school board, but it was the right decision â and we applaud their courage. If the plan had been enacted, money that should support students in the classroom would have flowed to a for-profit management company instead. City school children would have been treated like guinea pigs in a radical experiment, and their parents would have lost any say in how their neighborhood schools are run.
Perhaps the school board was looking into a crystal ball when it cast that vote. Just a week later, a federal judge appointed a receiver for Mosaica Education Inc., one of the two charter companies initially in the running to take over York city's schools. The heavily indebted Mosaica was sued by its primary lender in September after defaulting on its debt.
AdvertisementImagine where York's students would be if a charter operator took over their schools and, right out of the gate, found itself under enormous financial pressure for "a series of bad business decisions," as lender Tatonka Capital Corp. claims in its lawsuit against Mosaica.
The case against Mosaica followed a string of troubling studies questioning charter school oversight and accountability in Pennsylvania. A spring report from Auditor General Eugene DePasquale found that a lack of state oversight of charters was creating problems â with some observers comparing the current charter environment to the "wild, wild west."
A blistering report from the Center for Popular Democracy this fall revealed more than $30 million in proven or alleged fraud, waste, or abuse in Pennsylvania's charter school system over the past 17 years.
Giving Meckley a blank check on charterization in York would have been a big mistake.
Fortunately, the school board recognized how fraught with risk this plan was and chose to maintain local control of all the city's schools.
Now, it is critical for the school board to work in partnership with York's educators to improve the city's schools and give every child a shot at success.
Educators and administrators are already implementing a road map to fiscal recovery that will strengthen educational programs. We are glad that the school board is giving this "internal option," as it is known, an opportunity to work before taking any action that will negatively impact our schools, our students, or our community.
York city schools, like many other districts across the commonwealth, face a funding crisis created by deep cuts in state funding for public schools. All Pennsylvania school children deserve better from Harrisburg. It is high time our elected leaders reverse those cuts and put our schools back on track.
Until that happens, York's children should not be treated any differently than other Pennsylvania students. They shouldn't be guinea pigs in a charter experiment. And they shouldn't be deprived of the opportunity to attend their neighborhood schools.
Our school board agrees, and now it is up to all of us to take responsibility for the future of our city's public schools and the students who learn there.
We have no doubt that the York community is strongly committed to making our schools the best they can be. Working together, we can achieve truly remarkable things.
Rev. Aaron Willford is a member of York Concerned Clergy. Sandra Thompson is president of the York NAACP. Clovis Gallon is a teacher and York Education Association member.
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Why Texans Are Fighting Anti-Immigrant Legislation
Why Texans Are Fighting Anti-Immigrant Legislation
Austin, Tex. â Iâm a member of the Austin City Council, and this month Texas State Troopers arrested me for refusing to...
Austin, Tex. â Iâm a member of the Austin City Council, and this month Texas State Troopers arrested me for refusing to leave Gov. Greg Abbottâs office during a protest against the anti-immigrant Senate Bill 4.
The bill, which Mr. Abbott signed May 6, represents the most dangerous type of legislative threat facing immigrants in our country. It has been called a âshow me your papersâ bill because it allows police officers â including those on college campuses â to question the immigration status of anyone they arrest, or even simply detain, including during traffic stops.
Read the full article here.
1 month ago
1 month ago