Monday, December 31, 2018

YouTube video of the day: AVALANCHE OF CASH THREATENS TO SUFFOCATE LOCAL CONTROL – #DPS

Adela Richard Blogger Adela Richard Blogger Adela Richard Blogger Adela Richard Blogger Adela Richard Blogger Adela Richard Blogger Adela Richard Blogger Adela Richard Blogger AVALANCHE OF CASH THREATENS TO SUFFOCATE LOCAL CONTROL – #DPS
from 2011 but still key… http://bit.ly/2LCoc9d Local control. For years the phrase has resonated throughout the West, particularly when it comes to schools.   In its simplest form, it means that people who live "here," determine what happens "here." For some, that formulation that particular meaning with schools and school districts, as the ability for parents to shape decision-making in their children's school has long been a paramount value. In Denver, that long-held belief is today being shredded as record-breaking sums of corporate money have flooded the school district in the form of campaign contributions, fake grassroots organizations and grant money. For decades, running for unpaid, non-partisan job of school board required modest fundraising. The teacher's union was a big player, but their candidates lost with some frequency  Many candidates who won with union support felt free to oppose union agenda with impunity. It was a low-stakes affair, and policy was made largely collaboratively, with an emphasis on constituent desires outcomes. But a few years ago, insiders say, Senator Michael Bennet, then Denver Public Schools Superintendent, went to Republican oilman Bruce Benson. What followed was unprecedented campaign contributions from large Republican donors into school board races in Denver. The big contributions changed the face of Denver's school board races. Two years later, a so-called "grassroots" group based out of Portland, Oregon called Stand for Children came to Denver. It's first organizer, Johnny Merrill, was open about the intent of the group: to impact the Denver school board races, and that Bennet had invited the group to Denver. Make no mistake about it: this group, with an avowed agenda to undermine teachers, is specifically designed to siphon dollars from Wall Street and the Chicago investment community into local races across the country. In 2010, for instance, Stand for Children spent unprecedented sums in Illinois in legislative races last election cycle, outflanking the supporters of traditional public education, resulting in legislation that killed basic protections for teachers in the state. The group's executive director subsequently bragged that in spending such huge sums of money, "individual candidates were essentially a vehicle to execute a political objective" - one aiming to fundamentally undermine traditional public education. He also bragged that "luckily it never never got covered that way" as "the press never picked up on" what they were doing. In other words, this organization fully acknowledges that it's whole r'aison d'etre is to secretly buy education policy. And now this very same organization has joined with the biggest of big money donors to dump massive amounts of corporate cash into the Denver School Board elections. The key question is why - why is this confluence of cash and outside special interest groups so interested in buying Denver's 2011 election? Why are diehard Republican operatives like Benson and oil company CEOs like Henry Gordon underwriting the likes of Ann Bye Rowe and Jennifer Draper Carson with tens of thousands of dollars? Are they writing these huge checks because of their allegiance to Republicans' long held advocacy for vouchers to fund private and religious schools? Have these big donors been given assurances by these candidates that, if elected, they will work to privatize public education through charters schools? Or is it just a long-held antipathy toward teacher unions’ past contributions to Democratic campaigns? What else could prompt a politically motivated group of oil company executives and Fortune 500 CEOs to write $10,000 and $25,000 checks for a school board race in a community where they neither live nor have school children? Denver voters have not just a right but a need to know the answer to these questions before casting their votes for school board. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7jyTD20i23Q https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7bQ156YM710
via https://youtu.be/SG2Ahf0-qHg

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