The "Parent Trigger" and its connections to the phony LA Parents Union, Green Dot, Steve Barr, and Eli Broad

NOTE: This entry was updated on 2/24/2010 with an explanation of the relationship between the entities above and the Service Employees International Union (SEIU). h/t to rdsathene.

Originally conceived in Los Angeles by Steve Barr’s (of Green Dot) Los Angeles Parents Union, and largely funded by the Broad Foundation, the "Parent Trigger" has spread east, and here and here. This is an initiative where if enough parents can be convinced, pressured, and tricked to sign a petition, a school will be closed down and replaced with a charter. On each Form 990 from 2005 to 2008, Steve Barr is listed as the CEO/President of the LAPU board.

Eli Broad contributed nearly 50% of the funding for the launch of the LAPU (formerly the Small Schools Alliance, aka the Parent Revolution). The money he supplied helped pay for the propaganda to make it seem like the movement is being generated by "the people," when in fact it is a carefully planned, targeted marketing campaign designed to wipe out the public schools.

It is most important to know is that this organization is not grassroots; it's astroturf!

An absolute lie is being spread that it was "developed by the grass-roots group Parent Revolution in the Los Angeles Unified School District.’ The lie is that group was not a grassroots group by any means. Danny Weil explains its true astroturf nature. Community members in LA have even stated that they were offered monetary compensation [by Green Dot] in exchange for their signature on a petition. But when a potential buyer for the LA Times is Eli Broad, who would there be to investigate?

Broad-supported State Senator Gloria Romero, in the running as State Superintendent of Public Instruction, has been the main pusher at the California state government level.

GRANTS AND CONTRIBUTIONS FROM THE BROAD FOUNDATION Source: Broad Foundation Form 990s (EIN = 954686318) obtained at the National Center for Charitable Statistics
Year	To Green Dot Public Schools/Green Dot Educational Project EIN = 95679811	To the Small Schools Alliance, dba as the Los Angeles Parents Union since 2007 (This organization became the “Los Angeles Parents Union” in 2007 and uses the same EIN = 202207418. The LAPU is the same organization as the “Parent Revolution” and has the web site www.parentsunion.org, making a total of four names for the same organization.)	To the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) Education and Support Fund
2005	$700,000: “To support high-quality public charter schools in Los Angeles” (Total 2005 support in contributions, gifts, grants, etc. to this organization was $5,315,065)	$100,000: General fund (Total 2005 revenue for the Small Schools Alliance was $980,608. Broad supplied 10% of its direct funding)	None
2006	$700,000: “To support more high-quality public charter schools in Los Angeles (Total 2006 Direct Public Support in contributions, gifts, grants, etc. to this organization was $9,524,116)	None (Total 2006 revenue for the Small Schools Alliance was $383,500)	$64,750: “To engage SEIU members in Los Angeles around an education reform package to change the Los Angeles Unified School District”
2007	$1,210,040 total: $9,040 to the Green Dot Educational Project, plus $1,201,000 to Green Dot Public Schools, “To support the scale up of more high-quality charter schools in Los Angeles” (Total 2007 Direct Public Support in contributions, gifts, grants, etc. to this organization was $10,015,000)	$150,000 total: $75,000 “To match SEIU funds to support the Small Schools Alliance launch of the Los Angeles Parent Union” plus $75,000 “To match SEIU funds to support the Small Schools Alliance business plan of the Los Angeles Parent Union” (Total 2007 revenue for the Small Schools Alliance/LAPU was $323,343. Broad supplied 46% of its direct funding)	None
2008	$1,859,000 total: $9,000 to the Green Dot Educational Project, plus $1,850,000 to Green Dot Public Schools, “To support the scale up of more high-quality charter schools in Los Angeles” (Total 2008 Direct Public Support in contributions, gifts, grants, etc. to this organization is not available at this time on 2/21/10)	$25,000: “To match SEIU funds to support the Small Schools Alliance business plan of the Los Angeles Parent Union” (Total 2008 revenue for the Small Schools Alliance/LAPU was $324,628. Broad supplied nearly 8% of its direct funding)	None

QUESTION: What is the relationship between SEIU, Broad, and the Parent Revolution?

A presentation delivered at the Annenberg Institute for School Reform sponsored 2008 Emerging Knowledge Forum was called “Green Dot Public Schools & LA Parents Union.” The presentation team consisted of Steve Barr (Founder & CEO, Green Dot Public Schools), Sandy Blazer (Chief Academic Officer, Green Dot Public Schools), Christine Boardman, (President, Service Employees International Union, Local 73), and Ryan Smith (Executive Director, LA Parents Union). This is from their accompanying report.

“Steve Barr noticed that at one of Green Dots’ high schools, a large proportion of students has parents who were members of Local 1877 of the Service Employees International Union (SEIU). From this observation, a partnership evolved between Green Dot and SEIU’s national organization, as well as its Los Angeles affiliate. While most professional unions have opposed charter schools, SEIU has embraced LAPU’s reform agenda because their members’ children are the main victims of failing urban schools. For almost a year, SEIU has formally worked with Green Dot and LAPU, providing LAPU with both funding and technical assistance from experienced organizers. In turn, SEIU is interested in exploring how Green Dot’s model and LAPU’s organizing efforts can drive school reform in other urban districts across the country.”

Mike Garcia, President, Service Employees International Union Local 1877, is currently listed as a member of Green Dot’s board of directors. Teacher union members beware: the SEIU is not your friend.

Interesting facts from Green Dot’s 2007 Form 990

• Joanne Weiss, who is now running the Race to the Top program for Arne Duncan, is listed as a board member, as well as Kevin Hall of the Broad Foundation
• Steve Barr as Executive Director/CEO was paid $215,467
• Marco Petruzzi as Board President was paid $204,022. His current Green Dot bio says he is also Venice chapter president of the Los Angeles Parents Union.

Also, this is the document which contains the following:

“The Corpoation's [sic] review, which was completed on August 15, 2008, concluded that during the period from January 2004 through September 2007, the Corporation reimbursed Mr. Barr in error a total of $50,866 for charges that were either not reimbursable in nature, or were insufficiently substantiated or documented to qualify for reimbursement.” More information here.

About Ben Austin, the Executive Director of the Parents Union

The section “Compensation of the Five Highest Paid Independent Contractors for Professional Services” shows that Ben Austin, with an address listed in Beverly Hills' Benedict Canyon, was paid $94,475 that year. In April 2008 he became the Executive Director of the Parents Union (aka LAPU/aka Parents Revolution). In his bio, Austin proudly states that he will be sending his two daughters to Warner Avenue Elementary. To demonstrate how exceptional and affluent the families of this school are, in 2007 the Warner Avenue Foundation (EIN 95-4072053) provided the school with an extra $449,022 (or an extra $747/kid).

Parents like Ben Austin provided supplementary funds to pay for "teaching assistants for each classroom, as well as providing all students with access to a physical education, art, computer, science and music specialist" ($330,979), capital improvements and facilities maintenance ($7,223), educational, computer, copy, emergency and cleaning supplies ($49,639), and teacher and principal grants and student scholarships ($27,583). The biggest money making events were the spring auction ($94,844), a Halloween event ($61,470), a walk-a-thon ($40,238), and a holiday boutique ($14,064). Oh, the poor public school attending children of Ben Austin, their LAUSD experience will be just like that of everyone else. By the way, Austin's day job is an assistant city attorney for Los Angeles. He was previously a Deputy Mayor under Mayor Richard Riordan, who is a longtime friend of Eli Broad and another Gloria Romero supporter and have hosted big fundraisers for her.

Read here to find out how Austin/Parent Revolution is trying to distance itself from Green Dot. Good luck with that, folks, especially since Mr. Green Dot is your board CEO/President.

More eye-popping differences between Ben Austin's LA public school and that of everyone else	Warner Avenue Elementary	Los Angeles Unified
African American	2%	10%
Asian	17%	4%
Latino	5%	74%
White	75%	9%
Socioeconomically disadvantaged (	3%	78%
Gifted and Talented Education	25%	12%
English Learners	6%	31%
Students with Disabilities	7%	12%
Average Parent Education Level: "1" represents "Not a high school graduate" and "5" represents "Graduate school."	4.47	2.22
Academic Performance Index	971	694

So now we have the Executive Director of the Los Angeles Parent Union and one of the originators/pushers of the “Parent Trigger” meeting with poor, limited English-speaking parents to convince them to sign school closure petitions and representing himself to them as just another typical LA Unified parent with children heading off to struggling schools, when in fact he resides in one of the most affluent areas of the city and will be sending his kids to one of the public schools which has absolutely no demographic relation to the schools used by his uninformed-about-the-dynamics and easily manipulated parent targets.

As a longtime public school parent who has used schools in my community with demographics much more aligned to my district as a whole, I am wise to the con Ben Austin is pulling off. ¡Qué cojones!

Addendum: Steve and Ben's project is certainly making the rounds. Arranging events and attending meetings must be what Barr has been busy with since he stepped down from his position as CEO of Green Dot last November.

From an email sent to me:

Get Smart Schools is part of a group of non-profits hosting an exciting new speaker series. Please join us at the event described below!

Want to help ensure that all kids in your community receive the very best education? Save the Date to join us for the next speaker in our series.

Speaker: Ben Austin, Los Angeles Parents Union (LAPU) and a Parent Revolution representative.

Thursday March 4, 2010

This is in Denver, Colorado.

GetSmartSchools is a program sponsored by the Piton Foundation. Christopher Scott, a parent and past Denver Public Schools school board candidate warns about Piton in the following statement submitted to the Denver Post last fall. For those of us who have been studying this intense neo-liberal attack on public education which is referred to as "education reform," it's Denver's version of more of the same:

"Secondarily, DPS senior executives have allowed the District to become the domain of special interests. Organizations such as Piton Foundation have unfettered access to District leadership, sitting important District committees like the Application Review Team evaluating charter applications for charters funded by the foundations themselves, providing recommendations to the District for more charter schools, while profiting by these recommendations. Moreover, under Michael Bennet, political action committees were brought to town to shape the school board election. This PAC, Stand for Children, poses as a pro-parent organization, but, in reality, its Chief Executive, Jonah Edelman, is a long time friend of Mr. Bennet, grew up next door to Tom Boasberg, whose sister served on Stand's Board of Directors until this month. According to Mr. Boasberg, he had no idea Stand was coming to Denver, as the decision was made while Bennet was Superintendent."

It is important to know that "The Piton Foundation is a private, operating foundation established in 1976 by Denver oil man Sam Gary. It is funded by the Gary-Williams Energy Corporation to develop and implement programs to improve education, expand economic opportunities for families, and strengthen lower-income communities." On the advisory board of GetSmartSchools are the usual ed deform/school privatization malanthropic foundations, big business interests, and charter-linked suspects:

• Amy Anderson, Donnell-Kay Foundation
• Jill Barkin, JP Morgan Chase & Co.
• Becca Bracey-Knight, Broad Foundation
• Phil Caplan, Urban West Group
• Heather Carroll, Edmonson Foundation
• Yee-Ann Cho, Envision Schools Colorado
• Ami Desai, Denver Venture School
• Wayne Eckerling, Former Assistant Superintendent, Denver Public Schools
• Sandra Elliott, Gnow-How
• Nora Flood, Colorado League of Charter Schools
• Lisa Flores, Gates Family Foundation
• Marcia Fulton, The Odyssey School
• Chris Gibbons, West Denver Prep
• Merlin Holmes, National Heritage Academies
• Rebecca Holmes, KIPP Colorado Schools
• Brooke Johnson, Carson Family Foundation
• Michael Johnston, Mapleton School District
• Rachel Kelley, Teach for America
• Ed Kennedy, Edison Schools
• Kim Knous-Dolan, Donnell-Kay Foundation
• Bill Kurtz, Denver School of Science and Technology
• Cathy Lund, Walton Foundation
• Zach McComsey, Atlas Prep School
• Alex Medler, Colorado Children's Campaign
• Gretchen Morgan, Envision Schools Colorado
• Alex Ooms, West Denver Prep
• Reyna Perez-Oquendo, Donnell-Kay Foundation
• Audra Philippon, AXL Academy
• Jane Shirley, William-Smith High School
• Tim Taylor, Colorado Succeeds
• Sean VanBerschot, Teach for America
• Brian Weber, Stapleton Foundation

To see what I've written previously about Green Dot and Steve Barr, read here and here.

It is most important to know is that this organization is not grassroots; it's astroturf!

The Same Old Mud Pies

It's just another one of the many, now commonly seen, urban public school messes which Jennifer Ward has described in her article posted on A Better Oakland.*

The bold highlights are mine.

Disappearing Behind Them: Phasing Out Failing Small Schools

May 28, 2009 by Jennifer Ward

On a crisp spring California afternoon, long after the echo of the last final bell, 40 parents, students and teachers gathered in a too-warm classroom at Paul Robeson School of Visual and Performing Arts to ask California State administrator Vincent Matthews to reconsider his decision to close the East Oakland school. [Matthews is the third state-assigned and Broad Center-trained superintendent for OUSD].

In articulate and passionate voices, students told Matthews that the school offered important second chances to kids transferring from larger schools.

“I feel Paul Robeson should stay open because it offers a nurturing environment to its students,” said senior Jimonte Johnson, “It’s a smaller school, the teachers actually care and my grade point average has increased from 0.40 GPA to a 3.67.”

Parents called the sudden decision unfair to Robeson students and the East Oakland community. Sheila Clark said both of her girls have thrived at Robeson and that she hopes her son, now 11, can one day attend the school.

“We just need the school to stay here, have a neighborhood visual arts school here in our community.” Clark said. “I just want you to think about it.”

Matthews listened to a student-led presentation on Robeson, answered questions from teachers and promised to look at additional information. Although there was a follow up meeting in late April, no firm lifeline was given to Robeson, a school that is struggling with low test scores and declining student population. Robeson will almost certainly be phased out.

“Our number one goal is that all of our students graduate prepared to succeed in college and the workplace,” Matthews said at the meeting. “And it’s our responsibility as the adults in the system to make sure that’s happening and if it’s not happening across the board then we have to look at other options.”

Next fall, Robeson students will see their school begin a slow fade out where teachers will be reassigned or let go, course offerings will narrow and key student support won’t be available. In the process of closing, many students will transfer out of the school, leaving just a few students to graduate from a disappearing school.

This is all a part of “phase out,” a school shut down process used with increasing regularity by Oakland Unified School District, which gradually winds down schools one grade at a time. Robeson will be completely shut down by 2012.

Before 2003 the district rarely closed any of its schools. Beginning in 2004 after the state took over district operations, phasing out schools that failed to meet key achievement goals became common practice with the Oakland school district. By 2009-2010 the district will have shut down or begun phasing out 28 schools since that time, the vast majority being small schools.

“The alarming thing about phasing out is that the district is closing schools that have just opened,” said Jayeesha Dutta, a co-director at Oakland-based Youth in Focus who has also worked with OUSD over the last several years. “If this is a reform tool we’re never going to make progress.”

Robeson isn’t the only Oakland school on track for phase out beginning next year. Robeson joins Business Entrepreneurial School of Technology (BEST) High School, located on the McClymonds High School campus, in becoming the two small schools scheduled for phase out starting the 2009-2010 school year. Neither school has been open more than five years.

To be sure, many small schools have seen great success and the district has opened a fair amount of new school programs in Oakland.

For example, Matthews pointed to the fact that in 2005, the district opened five small schools - Reach, Rise, Manzanita SEED, Sankofa and Kizmet but closed 6 small schools - Golden Gate, Washington, Rubicon, King Estates, Village Academy and Freemont. The net change was one less small school.

“We’ve seen a number of schools that have done extremely well,” Matthews said “and really where you’ve seen staffs that have taken on the responsibility and said ‘This is what we want to do. If we’re not doing well how can we do better?’ and other places we haven’t seen the successes we’ve wanted from the (small school) movement.”

However, parents, teachers and Oakland education experts worry that the district is providing uneven levels of financial and administrative support to many schools, causing a decline in achievement for some small schools located in the Oakland flatlands. Some educators and parents worry that the district is also putting its cookie cutter achievement standards ahead of supporting new schools that may need extra nurturing.

Robeson is a small school housed on the sprawling Fremont Federation High Schools campus that goes for a good two blocks on Foothill Blvd in East Oakland. The campus, once known as Fremont High School, was carved into four high schools as part of a district wide initiative known as the small school program. Oakland has a total of 110 public schools and about 53 are small schools.

Over the course of its young life, Robeson has struggled in key achievement areas. According to the school’s School Accountability Report Card, an annual summary of key information reported by all California public schools, for 2007-2008, the school’s math proficiency rate was at two percent. In 2006, it was zero. And although 97 percent of students attended class daily, Robeson’s graduation rate was just 48 percent in 2008.

Nevertheless, many students and teachers said they had little time to try and correct problems at the school.

“We were supposed to be engaged in a series of community meetings over the course of a year and into the next before a decision was to be made,” said Robeson Social Studies teacher Craig Gordon.

BEST has a number of trade programs that are considered a success in the community. Local organizations and politicians regularly use the culinary arts program’s catering and the school also has a well known construction trade program that has strong ties to several local businesses including Kaiser Hospitals. BEST is one of two schools at the former McClymonds High School. EXCEL is the other high school on the campus and it is expected to absorb a good portion of former BEST students during the phase out.

BEST also has serious academic challenges. The West Oakland school has a mathematics achievement rate of two percent for 2008, according to its SARC scorecard. BEST’s graduation rate was 52 percent in 2008.

Both teachers and students say the positive work being done at the school is not necessarily reflected in its test scores. Some BEST students said they are still absorbing the news.

“When I heard (OUSD was closing BEST) it was a shock, even though I knew it was coming,” said Ralston Earle, 17, a senior at BEST. “I honestly love this school. I’m going to be an alumnus, but now what am I going to come back to?”

BEST students said they were hoping that a possible phase out would happen further down the line.

“We just didn’t think it was going to happen this soon,” said Michael Huynh, 17, a senior at BEST.

Parents said they are upset about the BEST phase out.

“It’s horrible, it’s very discouraging for the kids,” said BEST parent Ernest Carroll who also attended McClymonds. “They (OUSD) had good intentions in the beginning with the small schools. But they found out that the administrative costs for two principals, double the staff, was too much for them.”

Carroll’s son, Isaiah Carroll said he loves his school.

“I’ll be devastated to see it close,” Carroll said. “I love the teachers here, they work hard for us and they’ve helped me out a lot.”

About seven years ago, the Oakland Unified School District began implementing a new program geared towards creating smaller schools as part of a broader plan to improve test scores, come into compliance with No Child Left Behind, and give students an opportunity to learn in a smaller setting.

Almost overnight new, smaller “academies” and career schools sprang up. Some of these new schools were given their own buildings and some were put in place in the existing large sprawling campuses that had originally been built for the student population boom of the 1950s and 1960s.

“These big comprehensive high schools have were really showing no signs of progress or success in the way they were delivering services to the students,” Dutta said. “Small schools was a move towards a better educational system.”

Oakland Unified School District is a complex, dense public school system that has weathered multiple upheavals over the last few decades, including the financial mismanagement five years ago that led to the state of California taking over the district.

Teachers, administrators and educational organizations said many small schools have also not been given the adequate resources to meet district achievement goals and attract and retain students.

“Right now we have no performance art teacher,” Gordon said. “We’re a performance art school and we have no performance art teacher.”

BEST teachers said they too have not had key support from the district.

“We haven’t had a school counselor since 2006 for the 500 students of EXCEL and BEST,” said John F. Smith, a BEST instructor who teacher who teaches carpentry, welding, masonry and other trade skills. “The district has not supported the programs here at BEST in a way to attract and get more students involved. “

And then there is the issue of the kitchen. BEST teacher Harold A. Le Blanc, who is the director of the Food Science Culinary Arts Academy within the school, said the lack of district support is evident in his program not receiving a promised new kitchen.

“It’s like we were the flavor of the month,” he said.

Jumoke Hinton Hodge, an Oakland Unified School District board member, called the promised kitchen another heart and soul piece that was needed in creating a successful culinary school program.

“It was a viable culinary arts program, that was talking about serving lunches on campuses and would do special events for everyone,” Hinton Hodge said. “I used them as a caterer for community groups.”

Despite this, the school never received the kitchen.

“Once again, how do we prepare our young people in high school to be economically self sufficient? This was a program that was doing it,” Hinton Hodge. “And the huge tool was a kitchen and that kitchen was never provided.”

Matthews said the district is doing everything it can to help students succeed.

“It’s always a difficult decision to either phase out or close a school (PPT),” Matthews said. “It’s not taken lightly.”

Matthews said that the number of small schools being phased out is low and he pointed to other small schools on the Fremont Federation campus with Robeson that are meeting district standards successfully.

“You have three other schools on this campus that are working with those same students yet they are able to get remarkably higher (test) rates, graduate rates, so why is it three of the schools can roll up their sleeves and make it happen?” Matthews said.

Matthews said it’s not just about money.

“Some small schools claim that we need additional or we need more and you have others that are just fine with the budgets as they are established.” Matthews said. “They are able to make do or to do well with the budgets.”

He said the district funding system, called Results Based Budgeting, gives great autonomy to schools in making budgeting decisions. “Around RBB (Results Based Budgeting) the schools make the determination if they’re going to eliminate programs or eliminate positions,” he said.

Matthews also said the district provides a number of tools to help schools in trouble, called focus schools, to help bring up achievement levels.

But Hinton Hodge said actual support during the focus phase for troubled schools is unclear. Many focus school staff have told her they had little help during the process, she said.

“Every school went into this focus phase and no one can describe to you what happened during the focus phase,” she said. “One would assume, that you were getting extra support, that you were maybe getting extra resources, that you were doing consistent assessment, you were doing feedback, you were engaging with people on change that needed to happen, and (yet) no one can speak to what that process looks like.”

Dutta said the district needs to focus on long term strategies for dealing with small schools in trouble instead of phasing out the programs.

“With adequate resources, adequate planning and adequate amount of time, these schools could succeed,” Dutta said. “But they haven’t been given those conditions. And so to say that these schools have failed and to close them before they’ve really been given the opportunity to show their potential I think is a tragedy and a huge waste of resources because so much money has gone into the conversion into small schools. So to go back now and say ‘Oh we’re going to close them and reconsolidate’ seems to me to be a real poor strategy by the district.”

Isaiah Carroll said despite the rapidly approaching end of the school year, many students hold out hope that somehow their school will stay open.

“We’re trying to do everything we can to help,” he said. “We’re working to keep our test scores up and to do whatever it takes to keep BEST open."

This type of rigmarole has been going on for several years now. After the millions of dollars that have been spent, and after all the blood, sweat, and tears which have been shed, would someone please tell me what things are going better for the kids, and for the community in which they live? I watch this stuff closely and reside in the midst of it all, but I just don't see anything improving. Something is definitely rotten in the state of Denmark.

What is being done to urban public school districts which serve a lot of kids from poor black families is some sort of failing social experiment, and it is starting to remind me of Tuskegee.

*The piece was funded by donations through Spot.Us, a Knight Foundation backed experiment in community funded reporting. An audio report on the issue was run on KALW.