An Aspire primer

Aspire Public Schools is a major California Educational Management Organization based in Oakland. The Gates Foundation just recently secured Aspire’s continued growth by backing its “efforts to secure $93 million in tax-exempt bonds to help them expand,” as well as providing “$8 million in unfunded guarantees to Aspire Public Schools to back the charter organization's bond financing for new school buildings.”

Of course, it didn’t hurt Aspire that its co-founder, Don Shalvey, started working for the Gates Foundation in March 2009.

So Bill Gates, a Washington state resident, is pumping his money into making my state get more and more charters. And he lives with his family in a state which won’t even permit them!

Here’s the piece about Aspire. Additional information about the EMO’s schools in Oakland is below:

Foundations help Aspire charter network expand (AP) – May 6, 2010

SEATTLE — The Gates and Schwab Foundations announced Thursday they will back a California charter school network's efforts to secure $93 million in tax-exempt bonds to help them expand and serve more than 4,000 new students. The unique financing arrangement is known as a Program Related Investment.

Both the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and the Charles and Helen Schwab Foundation have provided $8 million in unfunded guarantees to Aspire Public Schools to back the charter organization's bond financing for new school buildings.

The nonprofit charter school network operates 25 schools educating more than 7,600 students in grades K-12 in six California communities, East Palo Alto, Modesto, Oakland, Stockton, Sacramento, and Los Angeles By 2020, the organization hopes to have more than 60 public schools in its network.

Aspire was founded in 1998 and focuses on communities with a large percentage of low-income and minority students. In state test scores, Aspire schools went up 30 points on average this past year, the charter organization said. California's growth target for Aspire students is 3 points a year.

Aspire is one of five California-based charter management organizations that worked as a team to win a $60 million grant from the Gates Foundation for a new teacher training initiative.

Allan Golston, president of the U.S. Program at the Gates Foundation, notes that state and local governments do not provide buildings for public charter schools, so expansion was difficult even before the economic situation tightened credit markets.

"Access to facilities financing is a critical barrier for even the highest-performing, most creditworthy charter schools," Golston said in a statement.

The foundations' credit support helps Aspire access the bond market at more favorable terms.

Golston said the bond guarantee will deepen the impact of the foundation's investment in Aspire by lowering the cost of expansion.

NCB Capital Impact, a nonprofit lender to charter schools, will act as a financial intermediary and program facilitator for the Program Related Investment. The Gates Foundation is giving NCB a $959,000 three-year grant and the lender is contributing $1 million in a funded guarantee.

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More about Oakland’s Aspire-operated charter schools (currently enrolling nearly 2000 students)

Monarch Academy (K-5): Located at 1445 101st Avenue (site formerly ?)‎. Monarch opened in 2000 and was the first Aspire school in Oakland. Its charter expires in 2012.

Lionel Wilson College Preparatory Academy (6-12): Located at 400 105th Avenue (site formerly ?)‎. Lionel Wilson opened in 2002 and was the second Aspire school in Oakland. Its charter expires in 2012.

Millsmont Academy (K-5): Located at 3200 62nd Avenue (site formerly St. Cyril’s School)‎. Millsmont opened in 2004 and was the third Aspire school in Oakland. Its charter expires in 2014.

Berkley Maynard Academy (K-7 + expanding): Located at 6200 San Pablo Avenue (site formerly OUSD’s Golden Gate Elementary)‎. Berkley Maynard opened in 2005 and was the fourth Aspire school in Oakland. Its charter was renewed this year.

CA College Prep Academy (moved): CA College Prep was a middle school that opened in 2005 as the fifth Aspire school in Oakland. In 2008 it closed, moved over the border into Berkeley, and was granted a new charter by the Alameda County Office of Education. While in Oakland, it was co-located with the Berkley Maynard campus.

Millsmont Academy Secondary (6-11 + expanding): Located at 8030 Atherton Street (site formerly St. Benedict’s Academy)‎. Millsmont Secondary opened in 2008 and was the sixth Aspire school in Oakland. Its charter expires in 2013.

ERES Academy (K-8 + expanding): Located at 1936 Courtland Avenue, the site of the former Dolores Huerta Learning Academy charter school. Huerta surrendered its charter in February 2009 and the school closed in June 2009. Aspire submitted its petition for its school in March 2009 and it was approved in late May 2009. ERES’s charter expires in 2014.

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Aspire’s Board of Directors

Since Aspire is privately-operated using public money and foundation grants, positions on its board are acquired via personal connections (rather than as with public schools where the board members are elected by the community). Therefore, Aspire’s board members are not necessarily members of the communities in which their schools are located.

Don Shalvey: Co-Founder and Board Co-Chair, Aspire Public Schools. Prior to starting Aspire with Reed Hastings (CEO of NetFlix and major supporter of Green Dot), Shalvey was Superintendent of the San Carlos School District (approximately 2,600 students and six elementary schools). Shalvey also worked in the Merced School District, a rural district of approximately 11,000 students, and in the Lodi Unified School District, a district of approximately 28,000 students that includes a portion of Stockton. Shalvey co-founded Californians for Public School Excellence, the organization that sponsored the California Charter School Initiative that raised the cap on the number of charter schools.

Bill Hughson: CEO of Noah’s Bagels, President of AG Ferrari Foods, President of ePlast.com and his current position as President of DaVita Rx. He is also a Director of two medical technology firms, Sensurtec and Fulfillium, and is Managing Member of Silicon Valley Investment Partners.

Beth Hunkapiller: President, San Carlos School District Board of Trustees. She’s probably Shalvey’s friend from Shalvey’s San Carlos days.

Bill Huyett: Superintendent, Lodi Unified School District. He’s probably Shalvey’s friend from Shalvey’s Lodi days.

Melvin J. Kaplan: CEO of Wellington Financial Group, an entity that invests in commercial real estate nationally.

Steven L. Merrill: Venture Capitalist, most recently Partner with Benchmark Capital. Currently, Steven is devoting more time to civic and non-profit activities as well as his private investments. Steven is also a past president of the Western Association of Venture Capitalists and a past director of the National Venture Capital Association, and has been a director of numerous privately held companies.

Louise Muhlfeld Patterson: HR executive and trustee of college-preparatory schools. She was Vice President of Human Resources for American Express.

Richard C. Spalding: Founder, Thomas Weisel Healthcare Venture Partners. This company focuses on life science investing. Prior to joining ABS Ventures, Dick was a Chief Financial Officer of public and private companies, an investment banker with Alex Brown, and a co-founder of the Palo Alto office of Brobeck, Phleger & Harrison.

NOTE: Joanne Weiss, former Partner and COO of the NewSchools Venture Fund and another business person/non-educator , was on Aspire’s Board of Directors until Duncan tapped her to be his senior staff person as Director of Race to the Top.

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A story

My teacher-friend visited an Oakland Aspire school as part of a school assignment. She told me the kids were on task filling in worksheets, and that from room to room to room the teachers (almost all young, white females) were using the exact same curriculum and behavioral approach. Also, the principal complained to her about having high teacher turnover.

My friend told me the environment felt to her like something out of the Stepford Wives and couldn't imagine herself, or any middle-class parents, wanting to subject their children to such bland instruction.

Along with KIPP, this seems to be the cutting edge model of education that's now emerging as being best for low income kids.

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Just a little extra funding to give the Aspire schools that extra competitive edge...

	Broad Foundation	NewSchools Venture Fund	Gates Foundation	Walton Family Foundation
1999		$500,000
2000			$3,200,000
2001
2002	$1,800,000 (part of the Foundation’s $4,680,000 commitment)	$2,255,295	$845,000
2003	0	$1,620,000	?	$1.75 million
2004	0	$260,000	0
2005	$1,800,000	0	?
2006	$450,000	$475,000	$200,000
2007	$145,000	0	$600,000
2008	?		$2,354,650
2009	n/a	$2.9 million over three years	see article above

In 2003-04, Aspire’s total enrollment was 2294 students. By this time the EMO had received $7,685,295 from the above four foundations. This works out to be an extra $3350 per pupil. Aspire also receives additional funding from other sources.

To me this seems like an awful lot of money to give an EMO that’s serving so few students (at this point estimated at about 7,600 kids). Where’s it all going?

As you can see, the plutocrats’ main interest is investing a lot of start-up money in their pet charters, so a critical mass of families get wooed away from the chronically-underfunded less sparkly, more financially-stressed public schools. They sometimes refer to this as “whole systems change” and it is a strategy to bring about the demise of the public school system. It is very telling that the venture philanthropists, all of whom exited the public system long ago, express no serious vision of a bigger picture that would help the 5,966,394 remaining non-charter/public school students in California.

Education For Change?

Education for Change is an Oakland charter management organization which was started under Randy Ward, OUSD’s first Broad-trained state administrator. EFC was given two traditional public school sites to takeover: Cox Elementary in East Oakland and Hawthorn Elementary in the Fruitvale district. EFC has one school at the old Cox site (Cox Academy) and two schools at the old Hawthorn site, World Academy (K-3), and Achieve Academy (4-5).

This is the total enrollment for the three schools:

• 0405 = 879
• 0506 = 1282
• 0607 = 1317
• 0708 = 1234
• 0809 = 1222

Charter management organizations are structured much like school districts. Controlling the schools are top managers and a non-elected board of directors, with sometimes an advisory board. EFC, with only three elementary schools so far, is like a “mini-district.” The CEO holds a position similar to OUSD’s superintendent.

Salaries and benefits (from EFC's available 990s, EIN 20-2204424, from NCCS). The other expenses our tax dollars are paying for (legal fees, computer support, architects, etc.) are listed in the 990s.

CEO

• 2005 – $174,586
• 2006 – $189,437
• 2007 – $194, 850

VP/Chief Operating Officer

• 2005 – $148,398
• 2006 – $147,317
• 2007 – na

Chief Academic Officer

• 2005 – $120,000
• 2006 – $137,478
• 2007 – $140,725

Controller

• 2005 – na
• 2006 – $109,124
• 2007 – $128,981

Site Director

• 2005 – $110,000
• 2006 – $124,487
• 2007 – $127,735

Top principal (one of three)

• 2005 – $107,198
• 2006 – $110,956
• 2007 – $113,663

In lieu of an elected school board, like OUSD's current Directors Yee, Dobbins, London, Kakishiba, Gallo, Spearman, & Hodge), Education for Change has a Board of Directors. Here are the four members:

1. Desten Broach, President of the Board, a group product manager at Sun Microsystems. He is responsible for the complete life cycle and business success of several Sun software products. Prior to joining Sun, he held similar positions at America Online, Netscape Communications, and Intuit, Inc.

2. Joanne Weiss, Vice President of the Board, Partner and Chief Operating Officer at NewSchools Venture Fund, where she oversees the organization's operations, as well as investment strategy and management assistance for many of NewSchools' ventures nationally and on the West Coast. As part of this work, she serves on the boards. Prior to joining NewSchools Venture Fund, Joanne was CEO of Claria Corporation, an e-services recruiting firm that helped emerging-growth companies build their teams quickly and well.

Of course, last May Arne Duncan appointed Joanne Weiss as Director of Race To The Top so she may be on a hiatus from her position at EFC.

3. Jonathan Garfinkel, member, Vice President at Texas Pacific Group, a private investment fund with $15 billion under management. Prior to joining Texas Pacific Group, he worked as a financial analyst at Newbridge Latin America and at Lehman Brothers. Mr. Garfinkel has also worked at NewSchools Venture Fund.

4. Harold Jones, member, the Deputy Director of External Affairs for the Port of Oakland. Prior to his appointment, he served as Manager of Government Affairs for the Port.

Below is EFC’s current management team. Keep in mind that this is the district level administration which oversees only three schools (= 1222 students). What a piece of cake!

1. Kevin Wooldridge, Founder and Chief Executive Officer, was most recently an Executive Director in the Oakland Unified School District supervising 13 elementary schools. He has been a bilingual educator for 26 years, working in three Bay Area school districts at school sites, including 12 years as a site administrator and several years as a senior central office administrator

2. Jessica Evans, Chief Academic Officer, was formerly the Director of Elementary Education for the Oakland Unified School District (OUSD).

3. Fabiola Harvey, Director of Finance & Operations, came to EFC after serving as the Area Financial Manager for the Las Vegas Cluster of Edison Schools. She led start-up and business operations for 7 schools with over 6000 students and 500 employees in Clark County School District. This was the first time that the district awarded a cluster of schools to be managed by one Charter Management Organization.

NOTE: EFC's former COO is James Willcox. Willcox is now the Chief Executive Officer of Aspire Public Schools (headquarters are in Oakland with schools in the Bay Area, Central Valley, and LA region). Prior to his appointment as CEO, Mr. Willcox was Aspire’s Chief Operating Officer. Willcox follows Founder Don Shalvey as Aspire’s second Chief Executive Officer. When Shalvey went to work for the Gates Foundation last spring, the Foundation gave Aspire $2.9 million.

"Mr. Willcox has also served as a Principal at NewSchools Venture Fund, where his work focused on the evaluation of investment opportunities, the on-going support of management teams within the investment portfolio, and the design and implementation of NewSchools’ charter school facility investment strategy. Prior to NewSchools Mr. Willcox was a nonprofit consultant with the Bridgespan Group, and served as a U.S. Army officer for over seven years."

As you can see, all of the players are in a very cozy and connected group.

FYI, this is a typical profile of the CMO/EMO model which is busy establishing charter schools that are steadily squeezing out the traditional American public schools (those overseen by public school districts and elected school boards), but only in the school districts in urban areas that are largely inhabited by low-income, brown-skinned kids. Also, none of the teachers, classified staff, or service workers of the replacing charter schools are members of unions.

The whole point of lifting the charter school cap is to make it inevitable for charter schools to claim a bigger and bigger share of the schools in any given area.