Indy Corporate School Complex Gearing Up for IPS School Board Buyout

by Doug Martin

Even though the filing deadline is not until the end of the month, the Indy Chamber has already handpicked candidates to elect to the IPS school board to completely turn the city’s schools over to the greedy.

Readers who have read Hoosier School Heist know exactly what this means and are well aware of the group of billionaires and lapdogs who desire to turn Indianapolis into New Orleans, where no true public schools exist now. Indianapolis didn’t have a hurricane to take advantage of, but it did have Bush Family friend Al Hubbard, NJ hedge funder Alan Fournier, and others who bought the candidates last election to help privatize IPS.

The Indy Corporate School Complex includes the Indy Chamber, the Mind Trust, the DFER hedge funders, Amway/DeVos, and others, and in Indianapolis, the Chamber has officially announced it is gearing up for the heist starting with its September 4th "Politics Never Looked So Good" Hobnob event, where it will roll out its red carpet for its IPS corporate board candidates at a VIP reception.

The first Chamber candidate is Kelly Bentley, who sat on the IPS board for years before she went to work for the hedge fund group DFER in Indianapolis.  

LaNier Echols, a veteran corporate school member in the city, is the second candidate the wealthy are supporting.  A transplant from Jeb Bush’s Florida and a Marian University/Teach for America alumnus, Echols is famous for appearing in Mitch Daniel’s Aiming Higher PAC’s anti-teacher seniority ad.  She went on to work for the Indiana Public Charter Schools Association and has even testified at the statehouse for merit-pay based on student testing. She now is the dean at Indy's Carpe Diem school, ran by a national outfit supported by Jeb Bush, Tony Bennett, Mike Pence, Pence's CECI, and the Friedman Foundation.

Even though Mary Ann Sullivan hasn’t even filed the paperwork to run for the IPS school board or the officials at the clerk’s office haven’t posted the filing yet, she is a shoo-in, the corporate school leaders believe.  Sullivan’s husband Brian is on the board at the Indy Chamber, as is Hoosier School Heist legend Charles Garcia.  Sullivan has been a longtime operative for the DFER hedge fund managers in NYC and was loaded with money from mayor Michael Bloomberg for one of her campaigns (see page 143 in Hoosier School Heist), as was Stand for Children, DFER, and Tim Delaney.

Sullivan is a serious threat to public schools now.  In May she joined the national board of DFER, along with Indiana-born Kevin Chavous, the founding father of the Black Alliance for Educational Options front group and DFER whose appearance in my book is one of its most despicable sections.

In 2013, Sullivan climbed aboard DFER's Speakers Bureau, a fancy term meaning former legislators willing to spread hedge fund propaganda to the media and anyone else duped into listening. 

Unfortunately, no campaign finance records have been recorded yet on these candidates, but look for them here when they do.  I can almost tell you now who will be mentioned. 

Word on the street is the Chamber didn’t endorse any IPS board candidates last election until October and even interviewed some.  But there’s no need to interview candidates you have handpicked to carry on the school privatizing agenda.  The Chamber knows they will be good little lapdogs and do what the billionaires say.