Charter Schools USA, H4QED, and the Indiana State Board of Ed

By Doug Martin

UPDATE:  Charter School USA, in fact, was one of the sponsors of the school privatization rally at the statehouse today.  See pic at the end of this article:

As I point out in Hoosier School Heist, if it wasn’t for the Bush family, Charter Schools USA (CS USA) would never have been imported from Florida into Indiana.  As my book details, CS USA has been buying Indiana politicians for some time.  And now, they are at it again, out to ask the state board of education for more expansion, which is why people need to see that the battle between Pence, Republicans, and fake Democrats against Ritz over control of the state board is a battle between pro-school privatizing millionaires and everyone else.

CS USA is calling for the state to allow IPS’s Emma Donnan middle school (a state takeover school run by CS USA) to now expand to a K-8 facility.  Hayleigh Colombo, at Chalkbeat Indiana, writes that “under a less direct partnership, the school would still work with IPS and the district could count the school’s test scores under the state A to F accountability system. In return, IPS would help the charter school recruit students in lower grades to the school.”

In other words, CS USA wants to continue to make money from the school, as opposed to giving it back fully to IPS, while IPS recruits the students for the charter school company and takes the heat for bad test scores. 

SOME HISTORY AND AN UPDATE ON THE BUYOUT

Jeb Bush’s buddy (and Bush family friend) Jon Hage owns Charter Schools USA, which now operates Emma Donnan Middle School, Emmerich Manual High School, and the Thomas Carr Howe Community High School in Indianapolis.  

From the looks of recent campaign finance records, Hage and crew want to really expand operations in the Hoosier state.

In 2014, CS USA joined the Amway/Walmart/Hedge Fund PAC (now called Hoosiers for Quality Education, or H4QED, a billionaire front group holding a rally today in Indy) in Indiana, handing the PAC $5,000. 

That same year, CS USA also gave House Education Committee chairperson Bob Behning, who now desires to be an education reform lobbyist, $2,000.

Since 2012, CS USA has given $23,000 to politicians and PACS in Indiana, alone.

But it doesn’t end there.  Red Apple Development, the real estate branch of CS USA, has also given big money:  $17,000 since 2012.  This year they contributed $5,000 to the Hoosiers for Quality Education PAC, which funds David Long, Brian Bosma, and a whole slew of Republicans now attacking Glenda Ritz and teachers.

In total, Jeb Bush friend Jon Hage’s CS USA and Red Development have dropped $40,000 into Indiana campaign funds since 2012.

THIS MY FRIENDS

The school privatizing state board will do what the charter school companies want, plain and simple.  Recently, as Chalkbeat Indiana reported, state board member Dan Elsener (who is a major player in my book Hoosier School Heist) said. “We didn’t say we’re no longer intervening at Arlington and we’re giving it back to IPS. We were careful there. We took responsibility. If we just say, ‘It’s over now, everything’s fine,’ I’m not too sure that’s realistic.

Elsener stressed the school remains under state oversight even if IPS resumes operation of the school.”

Since House Bill 1638 is now in the works for the state to take over even more Indiana schools, Ritz is an obstacle to the billionaires and millionaires. This, my friends, is why Republicans and Wall Street Democrats like Gordon Hendry want Glenda Ritz out of the way.  More people need to understand this and say it loud and clear.

 

 

 

 

 

 

TNTP and Indiana SBOE’s Crony Corporate Teacher Evaluation Agenda

by Doug Martin

Funded by Bill Gates and started by corporate school darling Michelle Rhee, The New Teachers Project  has a big role in my  book Hoosier School Heist.  And this corporate consulting/temporary teacher group is at it again, this time with help from the Indiana State Board of Education.

On Wednesday, February 4, the state board will meet to determine whether or not it will take TNTP’s recommendations from the group's report done over the last two months on Indiana teacher evaluations for the state board, and there’s a very good chance it will, since TNTP has been a part of the school privatization movement in Indiana for years now.  

Since TNTP has partnered with SBOE board member Dan Elsener’s Marian University, so we know he's onboard with the agenda.  And just a few days ago, Eli Lilly agreed to hand out $3.4 million to the Mind Trust to expand TNTP and Teach for America in Indiana.

TNTP’s CEO, Ariela Rozman, is a Mind-Trust board member.  In 2013, Rozman made over $300,000 in total compensation (page 7).  That same year, TNTP made almost $4.8 million in government grants (page 9).  TNTP, then, was active in 30 cities and created 1652 teachers  for its organization (page 30). 

As noted in TNTP report to the Indiana SBOE, The New Teacher Project doesn't like local control and finds it a problem that 90 percent of the teachers in Indiana have been rated good, which makes firing them and hiring temporary recruits from TNTP and Teach for America more difficult and slows down school privatization.

Reporter Megan Trent summarizes TNTP’s recommendations, one of them being test scores:

The New Teacher Project recommendations include setting a range for teacher evaluations. For teachers specializing in an area covered on ISTEP tests, 33% to 55% of the teachers’ evaluations would be based on student test scores. Educators that teach subjects not covered on ISTEP would have a range of 25% to 40% of their evaluations based on test scores.

Praising the evaluation system set up four years ago and criticizing the “obstacles” (like Glenda Ritz?) to implementation that have occurred (see page 8-9), TNTP, of course, wants the SBOE (minus Glenda Ritz as its chairperson, no doubt) to have a major role in the new plan, and this may require new laws (see page 26).  If adopted, TNTP's teacher evaluation plan for Indiana will begin in 2016.

Filled full of corporate language like “stakeholders,” the plan, no doubt, seeks to further dismantle teachers in Indiana.  Hoosiers need to find out how much TNTP was paid to do the SBOE report and if any taxpayer money was used and how much.

For TNTP’s recent and secret school privatization teacher preparation goals at the University of Memphis (which was hidden from department of education professors), read Jim Horn’s piece here.

Doug Martin's Letter to Gordon Hendry and the Indiana State Board of Ed

By Doug Martin

Once again the Indy Star has given space to complete unreality, this time by you, Gordon Hendry, the new state board of education member all goo-goo eyed over your neoliberal heroes Bill Clinton and Bart Peterson.

In fact, your piece, in many ways, is an attempt for Mike Pence and the state board to do damage control over a recent Journal and Courier guest editorial by Dr. Lynn Nelson and his wife Trudy (a retired public school teacher), who both attended the last state board fiasco. 

In an accurate take on that last board meeting, the Nelsons say this:

“With calmness and integrity, [Glenda] Ritz countered their [the state board members] accusations. Had she not done this, she would have been labeled as a weak leader. By defending herself, she is accused of being confrontational. We encourage the readers to view the online streaming of several board meetings to note the confrontational and often juvenile behavior of the board members.”

Deceptively, you claim, in your editorial, Mr. Hendry, that you hope parents will not “despair” when they watch videos of the state ed. board meetings and see how Ritz is so hard to work with, when in reality you hope that most parents don’t even know about the meetings let alone watch them. 

The corrupt-corporate cat is out of the bag, Gordon, and even the newspapers are starting to mention the backlash. 

The Nelsons have exposed the state board for what it truly is, a male dominated-billionaire-wannabee-boys club.  You, as a hedge fund Democrat (as I have detailed before), must be a bit worried, and so is the Star, a newspaper which has carried the dirty water for the assault against public schools in this state since its inception. 

How ironic for you to name Glenda Ritz as Indiana’s education “czar,” when the CECI is a non-democratic war-camp set up by Mike Pence who seeks to be Indiana's first and complete corporate-theocratic ruler. 

You state that since Glenda has been elected, state ed. board meeting have become “grueling get-togethers…more akin to high school student council meetings where 15-year-olds argue about soda machines and lunch menus,” when you know damn good and well that you and your state board school buddies are the real bullies in the cafeteria.

Shame on you, Gordon Hendry.  You have absolutely no background in education.  The Nelsons have devoted their entire lives to it, as has Glenda Ritz.  You and the billionaires are phonies.  Everybody in this state will eventually know it.

 

 

The State Board of Ed, the Uneducated Educated, and the Unelected

By Doug Martin

Despite letter after letter and a strong physical presence in support of our democratically elected supt. of public instruction, the Pence/state board/CECI trio today set the ball in motion to steal more power from Glenda Ritz to carry on the billionaires' corporate-theocratic agenda I detail in my book Hoosier School Heist.

The whole attack against Glenda Ritz is, in essence,  an attack against women who make up the majority of the teaching workforce.  It is the same "Father-Knows Best" mentality that was at play with Mitch Daniels, which I wrote about a few years ago and cognitive linguist and political scientist George Lakoff has described extensively.  Although I do not often see eye to eye with state board member Andrea Neal--who works for the Koch Brothers-associated Indiana Policy Review Foundation--I am glad she stood up and voted against the attack today on Ritz.  Today's male attack against Glenda is very similar to the attack by Tony Bennett (who just received a mere $5,000 slap on the wrist for breaking the law) when he said in an email that his IDOE cronies needed to find ways to call out our supt. of public schools' "stupidity."

Let us talk about "stupidity."   

I spent 6,000 hours, at least, studying this assault on public schools in Indiana and probably another 2.000 on what is going on across the nation.  Even though smart people make the blueprint, those carrying out the orders, even though they are power hungry, greedy, and lapdogs of billionaires, are not very bright.  Ironically, we have unelected members on the state board of education who are highly uneducated.  In other words, "stupid." Stupid to country, stupid to democracy, and stupid to all things sacred.

Has Dan Elsener ever read the Upanishads and does he understand the Bible?  My guess is probably not.  He believes it is God's work he is doing, dragging Jesus from the cross and flipping the Savior on his head to propagate a free-market Christianity beginning in the early part of the 20th century and culminating in the type of Kerns Family propaganda which finds its way into think tanks, universities, the media, and rightwing evangelical borderline fascist TV shows.   

Has Mike Pence read the real research on global warming, where the only debate is when (not if) the human race is going to die?  No, he hasn't.  The progress he promotes is leading us straight to the grave; the so-called jobs he promises by using taxpayer money to train future workers in our public schools have all been shipped overseas.  For the jobs left, the billionaire plan Pence wants to utilize will merely flood the market so that  these over-trained workers can be paid less. 

Does Brad Oliver read Walt Whitman to his wife at night, that compassionate and spiritual poetic line stating that "every atom belonging to me as good belongs to you?"  Don't bet on it.

It is time to tell it like it is.  It is a world with dumb and corrupt people in charge.  Our country's US DOE is run by Bill Gates even though he never graduated from college, doesn't read neuroscience, and lacks creativity, spirituality, and compassion. 

You can't measure creativity, spiritual wellbeing, or the ability to live peacefully with bugs, flowers, and animals by a standardized test score, even though Evan Bayh, now working for the Apollo Global Management private equity firm that owns McGraw-Hill Financial, isn't going to say otherwise.

I have been saying this all along, in every city I visit and on every radio show I do.  There is no sitting at the table with these people.  They are carrying the table out of the backdoor with your head on a platter and setting you house on fire. 

Let us kick the billionaires and politicians to the curb and let us build libraries and labor unions.  Let us put a psychologist in every school and a public worker on every bridge.  Let us create living-wage jobs for parents so that can find time to read books to their sons and daughters at night and give them a good healthy meal in the morning.  Let us support kid and teachers.

Let us support Glenda Ritz and rebel against Pence, the state board, and the unelected CECI.  Sign the petition to have the state board of ed. in Indiana be elected public officials now.

Doug Martin's Letter to the Indiana State Board of Education, July 8, 2014

Dear State Board of Education:

As you seek to dismantle public education and democracy, I want to remind you of my book, Hoosier School Heist, which is becoming quite popular.  Although it's hard to determine (since I don't have billionaires behind me to pay for someone to track the data), my educated guess is at least 250,000 people know about this book. 

The FBI even reads Hoosier School Heist. 

ABC Nightline is working with me and others on a possible show about a rightwing free-market Christian school highlighted in my book that Governor Pence's associate Mark Terrell now runs.  You can see the movie, Kidnapped for Christ, about this school on Showtime on Thursday, so mark your busy calendars. 

But I am not the only voice. 

Things are looking up in the arena of truth here in Indiana.  A strong movement to expose the corporate-theocratic assault on Indiana public schools, kids, and teachers is spreading across the state from Elkhart to Evansville. 

I know.  I have been travelling, and so has the pro-public education movie Rise Above the Mark.  Justin Oakley's Just Let Me Teach radio show draws thousands of listeners every live show.

There are now pro-public education leaders and groups sprouting up everywhere.  I am proud of them.  They are my friends.  Because we speak truth to power, we can sleep well at night, hearing the words of the real Hoosier hero Eugene V. Debs: "Our cause is just, the great public is with us, and we have nothing to fear."

I urge you to use some of that Hoosier "common sense" the Walmart/DeVos/hedge fund politicians in this state like to brag about, and leave Glenda Ritz alone.

Sincerely,  Doug Martin

 

Hedge Fund Operative Gordon Hendry Joins Indiana State Board of Education

by Doug Martin

Jennifer Wagner : "I've heard it's (Diane Ravitch's Reign of Error) a lovely piece of fiction."
 

When Mind Trust board member and Bill Bennett operative David Shane (whose wife is a former Eli Lilly Endowment "education consultant)" recently stepped down from the Indiana State Board of Education, I was not shocked when Mike Pence quickly picked Democrat Gordon Hendry to join the state board. 

Hendry is married to Jennifer Wagner, the former spokesperson for the Indiana Democratic Party. Wagner has been in bed with the rightwing in Indiana for some time.  Her company Mass Ave. PR filmed the corporate-theocratic 2012 Ed Reform Rocks Rally at the statehouse, starring Democrats for Education Reform founder Kevin Chavous, who is also a Bradley, Walmart, DeVos, and Mitch Daniels operative who holds a special place in my upcoming book Hoosier School Heist as doing the dirty work and profiting handsomely from the money of white rich people who hate blacks. Wagner’s PR firm is now doing marketing for the Indiana Democrats for Education Reform (IN DFER) (Page 4 of PDF), and Gordon Hendry donated to IN DFER's Mary Ann Sullivan's campaign.

The Democrats for Education Reform (DFER) is a group of hedge funds managers in NYC that seek to make money from using Bill Clinton's new markets tax credits and loaning to charter schools who use scab workers as teachers. As Muncie Voice’s Todd Smekens recently noted, “Wall Street’s hedge fund managers….are salivating over the potential of steady streams of income tied to each student aka ‘commodity to be traded.’”

Smekens is right.  On average hedge fund managers make $843,000 per hour. In 2010, when DFER was hurling New York educators under the bus and buying out lawmakers to lift the cap on charter schools, “the top 25 hedge fund chiefs made as much as 685,000 teachers who educate 13 million children.” As researcher Ken Libby has noted, it was hedge fund managers and real estate agents out to profit from charter schools that dominated the anti-teacher campaign in NYC. 

Besides being a top advisor to then-mayor Bart Peterson (who hung out with the NYC hedge fund managers when he received their “Education Warrior” award a few years back), Gordon Hendry is a real estate agent specializing in the education sector, so his job at the state board of education is a perfect fit for DFER and Bart Peterson's school privatizing Mind Trust.

As a front group for hedge fund managers, the IN DFER is funded by people who could care less about educating children. 

NYC mayor Michael Bloomberg gave IN DFER $20,000 in 2012 (page 2 of PDF), alongside money from another NYC player Anthony Davis.  Education Reform Now, a Mind Trust supporter and the brother outfit of the Democrats for Education Reform, gave $23,000 in in-kind contributions (page 4 of PDF).  Angela-Smith Jones, who Mayor Ballard hired to help close down the only community run charter school in Indianapolis, The Project School, threw the hedge fund group $100 in 2011, too (page 2), as did David Harris of the Mind Trust (page 3), whose paycheck puts him in the top 2 percent of earners in America.  

In 2011, since the Mind Trust plan to completely eliminate the democratically elected school board of Indianapolis didn’t work out, IN DFER, along with Mitch Daniels' buddy Al Hubbard (one of the architects of the corporate-theocratic overhaul of Indiana public schools) bought out the Indianapolis School board, funding, among others, Caitlin Hannon.  Caitlin Hannon is the Network Coordinator for Teach Plus, the Mind Trust/Bill Gates funded anti-teacher seniority outfit which was started by Mind Trust Education Entrepreneur Fellow Celine Coggin.  Teach Plus hires people to write studies claiming that once Indiana closes down low-performing schools, lazy senior teachers will replace the jobs of younger ones at other public schools in the district, what they refer to as the “Domino Effect.” DFER’s national member, Charles Ledley, Jr. also paid for Hannon’s campaign.  As DFER’s hedge fund star, Ledley runs Cornwall Capital, headquartered in Berkeley, California.

Gene Zink--chief gentrification manager, charter school financer, member of  the libertarian Challenge Foundation Academy, and co-worker with Al Gore’s son at Strategic Capital Partners--  gave $10,000 to IN DFER in July 2011(page 2 of PDF), about the same time the hedge fund managers in NYC threw in $5,000 (page 3 of PDF).

Greater Educational Opportunities’ Rollin Dick has handed out $200 (page 2 of PDF) to IN DFER to help spread more character schools in Indy. Dick  runs charter schools for rightwing school voucher and Walmart John Walton friend Kevin Teasley, a past Ronald Reagan operative whose shady history I have documented before. Although he has lavished Mitch Daniels, Tony Bennett, and Indiana Republican Brian Bosma with campaign money, Rollin Dick (currently of MH Equity Investors) is best known for his involvement with Conseco. As chief financial official for Conseco, Dick along with CEO Steven C. Hilbert resigned in 2000 after the insurance investor went into bankruptcy and handed out $95 million to buy the name of Conseco Fieldhouse, the stadium of the Indianapolis Pacers.  In 2004, the Securities and Exchange Commission sued Dick and Conseco’s James Adams for $5.6 million.

Gordon Hendry may, in fact, be on the state board to carry out the Democrats for Education Reform’s hedge fund agenda for education, since word on the street is the DFER is seeking to buy out the Indiana Democratic Party. There have been signs.   In April of 2013, in order to help hide campaign funding, Larry Grau—Hoosier waterboy for the New York hedge fund managers--filed the papers for an Indiana PAC where the hedge fund money will start rolling. Since the hedge fund managers know that Hoosiers may kick the Republicans to the curb in the upcoming elections, they see this as the perfect opportunity to move in for the kill.  It would be wise for voters to start monitoring the campaign donations of their local Democrats now. Hendry, acting like he cares about Indiana school children, teachers, and parents, has decided to take a “listening” tour across the state.  I personally don’t care what propaganda Hendry has to say when he arrives in town with his hedge-fund and rightwing supported wife. In fact, it is time to make the state board of election an elected board, by and for the children, teachers, and parents of Indiana.  There is a petition online now to do just that.  Please take a few seconds and sign it.

UPDATE:  Jennifer Wagner, in reference to my article above, posted this comment on her facebook page, after being asked how much money she was making doing PR work for IN DFER:

Jennifer Wagner: I was at the very first meeting, and I've mostly volunteered my time. I was paid a few times for some larger projects, but everything else has been pro bono. I have worked with Stand for Children on a contract basis. See? Transparency is neat! I don't do this because I get paid a fantastic amount of money. I do it because I believe in it.

Guess she doesn't realize that we know how hedge fund managers used Stand for Children to buy Illinois Democrats to throw teachers under the bus a while back.

 

Why Daniel Elsener Must Be Removed from the Indiana State Board Of Education Now

Below are more than enough reasons why Daniel Elsener needs removed from the Indiana State Board of Education now.  This information comes from my soon-to-be-released book, Hoosier School Heist.  Below the entry please also read the statement from the Education Community Action Team & Parent Power Indianapolis, and be sure to email the necessary individuals listed below to voice your protest against Elsener and the state board:

v  Daniel Elsener is Indiana governor Mike Pence’s henchman on the Indiana State Board of Education and is trying to take all power away from the democratically-elected superintendent of education Glenda Ritz. Elsener is a Republican.  This means the Indiana State Board of Education has more Republicans onboard than Democrats, which is against Indiana law.

v  Daniel Elsener is the former leader of Christel DeHaan’s Family Foundation.  Former ousted Indiana superintendent of education Tony Bennett resigned in Florida recently for rigging the grade of DeHaan’s charter school while he was in Indiana because she was a big campaign donor.

v  Daniel Elsener is the president of Marian University, a Catholic school which runs the Turnaround Leadership Academy.

v  In order to work with twenty-two so-called “failing” public schools, Elsener and Marian’s Turnaround Leadership Academy used a $500,000 grant from the Indiana Department of Education in 2010 which was rewarded because of political connections.  Elsener was Tony Bennett’s wife’s boss when she worked for Teach for America at the campus and the grant-deal went down.

v  At Elsener’s Turnaround Leadership Academy, Teach for America, the New Teacher Project, Elli Lilly, right-wing think tanks, and Marian University train the corporate leaders who will hire temporary teachers to replace veterans when the state turns over their schools to for-profit companies who all have ties to or are campaign donors of Hoosier politicians.  

v  When first starting Elsener’s Turnaround Leadership Academy, Marian University consulted with Rob Smith, Lilly Foundation’s president and local Teach for America board member, Teach for America’s Jason Kloth (now Indy Mayor Ballard’s deputy mayor of education), and the Christian Right Kerns Family Foundation which paid the Sagamore Institute (formerly run by Mitch Daniels’ sister) to help align Marian and Notre Dame’s principal training programs with the Indiana Department of Education’s MBA-based guidelines.

v  Now managing school voucher money for parents and working hard to get the books of Mitch Daniels’ racist friend Bill Bennett taught in the Indiana schools, the Sagamore Institute is a free-market faith-based pseudo-research group which received state money to work with meth addicts and whose founding chairman was Indiana senator Dan Coats. 

v  For the MBA-shaped training program, the hundreds of millions of dollars-strong, liberal-promoted Teach for America seemed fine with Marian using content from the Center for Catholic Stewardship for its academy curriculum and had no problem being a part of the Christian Right-funded program. 

v  To pump out corporate school leaders to manage public schools like businesses, Elsener’s Marian now also teams with the Bradley Foundation-funded George W. Bush Institute’s Alliance to Reform Education Leadership and hired Steve Farr, from Teach for America’s national office, to its faculty.

^v   Elsener and Marian University teamed with the New Teacher Project and former Indy Mayor Peterson’s the Mind Trust in 2007 to form the Indianapolis Teaching Fellows program, which, according to the New Teacher Project website, has trained 300 temporary teachers for Indianapolis and Northwest Indiana.  Ariela Rozman, the New Teacher Project’s CEO, sits on the Mind Trust board.  From October 2011 to the end of September 2012, Rozman made a hair short of $300,000 in total compensation to plant short-term teachers across the country, even though she comes from the consulting and pharmaceutical industries and has no teaching experience.

v  Charles Schlegel teaches at Elsener and Marian University’s Academy for Teaching and Learning Leadership which houses the Turnaround Leadership Academy.  Ironically, as principal at Wayland Middle School in Massachusetts, Schlegel violated 2008 campaign laws when he sent emails through his school address to parents, begging them to support a local property tax increase to fund the schools.  Now back in Indiana, Schlegel—a Teach for America operative—made $120,000 for running the libertarian Challenge Foundation Academy Indy in the tax year ending in June 2011.  Mindy, Schlegel’s wife, was the senior advisor for teacher quality at the Indiana Department of Education, where she helped rewrite the teacher evaluation method. A Democrats for Education Reform hedge-fund group member, she also sits on the board of the Indianapolis KIPP charter school with Claire Fiddian-Green, who is a former Mind Trust and Indiana Charter School Board leader and now works for Mike Pence to help privatize Indiana public education.  Mindy, too, is a former Teach for America member.

^v   In April 2011, a Teach for America graduate attending Elsener and Marian University’s Academy for Teaching and Learning Leadership was featured in Mitch Daniels’ Aiming Higher PAC’s anti-teacher seniority TV ad.  A Teach for America alumnus and Harshman Magnet Middle School teacher, Pam Heuer protested that although she raised her students’ reading scores, she was laid off from the Indianapolis school district in 2009 because she was the last one hired.  The school district rehired Heuer before the next school year started, but Daniels’ ad producers didn’t mind using Heuer for their mostly out-of-state-funded agenda. Now a manager for Teach for America in Indianapolis, Heuer was invited to the Bill Gates-financed NBC Education Nation, a free promotion week for charter schools, school vouchers, and anti-seniority billionaires, where she elbowed with Arne Duncan and Michelle Rhee.  Heuer has also made videos for Stand for Children, another Mind Trust/Joyce Foundation-funded anti-teacher seniority clique. The Hollywood fantasy Waiting for Superman director, Davis Guggenheim, touted Heuer as one of the top ten teachers in America.

v  Then there’s Marian University student and Indiana Charter School Board member Jamie Garwood.  When the Indiana State Ethics Commission ruled that Garwood could not participate in the authorizing board discussions concerning the Urban League’s charter school application for Fort Wayne, since she was the Urban League’s director of development, the Indiana Charter School Board approved Urban League’s request to allow American Quality Schools to run the charter school anyway, after Garwood promoted it on TV. 

Elsener needs removed from the Indiana State Board of Education, and the board and Mike Pence need to let Glenda Ritz do what the people of Indiana elected her to do: to stop the crony capitalism and government-corporate-theocratic takeover of Indiana public education.

 

*******************************************************************

Statement from the Education Community Action Team & Parent Power Indianapolis

 

Glenda Ritz already has the strategic plan via her campaign platform that Indiana voters approved, Mr. Elsner.  Time for you to resign because you are not representing the people of Indiana, are wasting SBOE resources and tax payer's money!

Daniel Elsner blatantly has disrespected the majority of Indiana voters who have voted Glenda Ritz into the office of Superintendent of Public Instruction in Indiana when he nominated himself as head of a new SBOE committee to come up with the strategic plans for Indiana's education.  In addition, many reports have come forth concerning his disrespectful behavior towards Glenda Ritz in SBOE meetings.  These are not only grabs for power from the Marian University President but are very converse to the University's very own Franciscan Values: dignity of the individual, peace and justice, reconciliation, responsible stewardship.  Doug Martin's upcoming book outlines many of the affronts to Marian University's values in which Elsner has partaken. It is time to demand his resignation from the SBOE and ask the Marion University's Cabinet why they have a leader who does not value their values.

http://www.marian.edu/about-marian/leadership/cabinet

Daniel J. Elsener President president@marian.edu, delsener@marian.edu 317.955.6103	Thomas J. Enneking, Ph.D. Executive Vice President and Provost tenneking@marian.edu 317.955.6010
Daniel Conway Senior Vice President for Planning, Marketing, and Advancement dconway@marian.edu 317.955.6280	Mark Apple Vice President for Marketing Communications mapple@marian.edu 317.955.6775
Kenith Britt, Ph.D. Vice President for Advancement and Marketing Operations kbritt@marian.edu 317.955.6209	Sr. Jean Marie Cleveland, OSF Vice President for Mission Effectiveness jeanm@marian.edu 317.955.6508
Ruth Rodgers Vice President for Student Affairs and Dean of Students rrodgers@marian.edu 317.955.6321	Paul Evans DO, FAAFP, FACOFP Vice President and Dean of the Marian University College of Osteopathic Medicine pevans@marian.edu 317.955.6288
Gregory A. Ginder Vice President for Finance and Business Operations gginder@marian.edu 317.955.6018	Deborah A. Lawrence, J.D. Vice President for Administration and General Counsel dlawrence@marian.edu 317.955.6208
Peter Williams Assistant Vice President and Chief Information Officer pewilliams@marian.edu 317.955.6054