Stoner Elementary community to hold protest against charter school co-location that has taken resources from home school

Press release – Stoner Elementary community to hold protest against charter school co-location that has taken resources from home school.

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
On Monday, August 17, 2015, the first day of school, from 7:30-8:30AM, the Stoner Elementary School Community and local Del Rey neighborhood will be holding a protest against the co-location of ICEF Vista Charter School on the Stoner ES campus. Stoners parents are upset that the co-location has taken resource rooms including: music, special education, and language therapy among others. Local residents are upset because the co-location will bring traffic and safety issues to their neighborhood.

WHAT: Stoner Elementary Community is holding a:
      RALLY TO SUPPORT STONER ELEMENTARY AND OPPOSE THE CO-LOCATION
WHEN: Monday, August 17, 2015 at 7:30 – 8:30 AM
WHERE: on the corner of Stoner Avenue and Lindblade Street, 90230.
[map]

Media is invited to attend.

There will be speakers. There will be signs. There will be chanting and drums.

Most importantly, there will be calls for better schools, a safer neighborhood, and unity in the community.

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ICEF Vista Elementary, a neighboring school that is located two blocks from Stoner on the campus of the defunct St. Gerard Majella Elementary School, has taken classroom space at Stoner.  To many people in the neighborhood, ICEF is seen as ‘the school at the church’ and many ICEF families take pride that their school provides benefit to the local parish.  However, ICEF wants to expand and that means leaving the church grounds. Part of ICEF’s expansion plan includes co-locating at another campus to open up space at the St. Gerard campus.

ICEF is “stealing from Peter to Give to Paul”

Stoner ES parents are outraged that ICEF Vista’s will be co-locating this year and has taken set aside rooms that are used for music, art, parents center, and computer lab at Stoner so that ICEF can open up space on the St. Gerard campus to have room for an art room, parents center and computer lab.  ICEF is literally taking away resources from Stoner ES to give those same resources to the ‘school at the church.’

The Stoner parents and local residents are mad about the colocation and are fighting back

In February 2014 when the proposed co-location was announced, Stoner community leaders addressed the ICEF board and asked them to reconsider their co-location plans.    In March 2014, Stoner families and local residents sent over a hundred letters and emails to ICEF and LAUSD Boards urging them to not have the co-location at Stoner.  In April 2014, when a final offer was made for the co-location, the Stoner and local community held a protest in front of the ICEF Vista campus urging them to not co-locate.

The Stoner and local community will be holding a protest on the morning of the first day of school Monday August 17 to let ICEF families know about our concerns with the co-location. More protests are planned for later in this school year.

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WHAT DO WE WANT:

We want to let the ICEF community know the damage this co-location is causing and the harm it is bring to our community children. The Stoner parents are asking family of ICEF Vista to not support the co-location by selecting another educational option. We are encouraging the families of the 20 ICEF students who pertain to Stoner to consider sending their children to their local community school. We are asking parents from outside the area to consider their local schools or choose a non-colocated charter.

Adam C. Benitez
President, Friends of Stoner Avenue Elementary School
www.friendsofstoner.org

Open letter to Ellie Herman, or how Green Dot's Marco Petruzzi's special education policies hurt everyone including their own administrators

"It is not legally or morally acceptable that these so-called "schools of choice" that are concentrated in urban communities and supported with public funds, should be permitted to operate as segregated learning environments where students are more isolated by race, socioeconomic class, disability, and language than the public school district from which they were drawn." — COPAA

Wall Street privatization darling Marco Petruzzi (above) led a beleaguered Green Dot through charges of racism, embezzlement, poor performance, and even cheating. He has claimed that his lucrative charter chain doesn't receive money from rich guys, meanwhile foundations give them millions. He has gone beyond denying that Green Dot discriminates against special needs students, he takes pride in it.

July 11, 2014

Ms. Herman:

I occasionally read your posts with skepticism. Typically, even when you seem to almost reach the correct conclusion about an education topic, you find a way to ignore your own evidence. In the end nearly all your pieces cheerlead for the lucrative charter industry, and provide cover for the biggest enemies of public education.

My interest was piqued today with a piece you wrote on a Green Dot Corporate Charter principal stepping down from one of the schools they seized from the public system. Here is the passage that caught my eye:

Nat was taken aback to find that 18% of the students were in Special Ed. "We thought they were overidentified. Turns out they were underidentified." When I ask why there were so many kids with special needs, he's not sure. Part of it, he thinks, is that the number of kids in foster care may be a factor, because foster kids are often moved from school to school, not staying long enough for their issues to be identified. "It's just conjecture, but kids in foster care, they're often in foster care because their parents were on drugs or couldn't take care of them, well, are you more likely to be unable to take care of a kid with special needs and behavior problems?"

For years those of us engaged in social justice activism have criticized the corporate charter chains—Green Dot Corporation has always been a particularly egregious example—for under-identifying special needs children. I've spent years advocating for families struggling for Special Education (SPED) equity, working closely with the former chairperson of the LAUSD SPED Community Advisory Committee. Marco Petruzzi, the erstwhile hedge fund manager running Green Dot Corporation, has gone as far as to attack those of us that have brought up this issue. He has called us liars (among other things), and gone on to say that Green Dot's SPED percentage are low because LAUSD somehow over-identifies SPED. The mendacious corporate executive stated that the entities' outside of Green Dot "over identifying" SPED children is—this will be hard to comprehend for any reasonable person—is a "civil rights" issue. That's right, the wealthy CEO of Green Dot is on record saying just that. Here's one instance of Petruzzi's convoluted corporate thoughts on the matter [1]:

our track record serving kids speaks for itself for those who want to look at the real numbers, but is a very technical issue and this is not the forum for it. For example, the special Ed issue is fraught with misunderstanding and manipulation of data. LAUSD has high numbers because it over identifies African American and Latino boys relative to many other urban Districts, a civil rights issue, not something to be proud. It also has high numbers because it doesn't serve kids well and thus exits them from special Ed in the typologies of special Ed that can be addressed. It serves special Ed kids in over restrictive environments. Anyway, I realize we will never agree with certain folks, particularly those employed by the current system and that view us as a job threat.

Ms. Herman, I appreciate your post as it bears testament to what many of us have always said about Green Dot and other corporate charter chains. Public schools also under-identify SPED as well, but unlike the well heeled executive quoted above, nobody boasts about underserving them. Petruzzi seemingly makes it a point of pride that Green Dot SPED IEPs are significantly lower than that of public schools. Green Dot has a long record of avoiding obligations to SPED students [2]. Moreover Petruzzi has a long record making outrageous statements, like when he told the families of Animo Justice that Green Dot Corporation doesn't get any money from "rich guy[s]". [3] Must have been all those years he worked for Mitt Romney's sister company, Bain & Company, Inc.

I agree with you and Mr. Pickering on the SPED issue. Since Green Dot Corporation, like all corporate charters, is about bottom lines rather than education, that will never change. Ironically Petruzzi is right to frame the issue in terms of students' civil rights, but he and his fellow six-figure profiteers are the ones violating them.

Advocating Public Education and Social Justice

Robert D. Skeels ****@ucla.edu

"Problem posing education does not and cannot serve the interests of the oppressor" — Paulo Freire

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[1] http://venice.patch.com/groups/schools/p/space-for-a-new-building-at-walgrove-elementary-likel839b5a4cd8
[2] http://www.scribd.com/doc/100558792/Green-Dot-SPED-Binder
[3] http://rdsathene.blogspot.com/2010/04/advocating-public-education-roundup.html the video in which Petruzzi claims Green Dot gets no outside funding is here: http://youtu.be/kbtUUBS3eO0 the transcribed quote is "We have no money. We're a nonprofit. We don't have a rich guy that gives us extra."

CECI Email Reveals Charter School Chains: Or What Mike Pence and the Jonas Brothers Have in Common

by Doug Martin

Besides seeking to dethrone Indiana supt. of public education Glenda Ritz from the state board of education, Mike Pence and his Center for Education and Career Innovation (CECI)–in the recently leaked email from James Betley to Claire Fiddian-Green—reveal the government/theocratic/corporate school complex's plan to allow Carpe Diem, Rocketship, and Christel House  to “pool or share funds” and set up a public-private entity to quickly hand empty school buildings to charter schools.

By lending a helping hand to networks of Walmart-type for-profit charter schools in Indiana, the governor will carry on the crony capitalism these charter school chains are known for nationwide. Let us examine the big players.

 

CARPE DIEM: THE MIKE PENCE/JEB BUSH/TONY BENNETT/FRIEDMAN NETWORK

With all the nonsense about parental choice and high-quality schools coming out of the governor’s office, Betley's email proves that what Mike Pence really has up his sleeve is to make it easier for the Tony Bennett-recruited blending learning charter corporation Carpe Diem, among others, to expand in Indiana.  Carpe Diem has political ties in the Hoosier state and even with Pence himself.

Along with the Friedman Foundation’s Robert Enlow and Robert Sommers (a member of the Jeb Bush/Tony Bennett circle), Daryle Doden's family's Ambassador Enterprises got involved in the attempt to land Carpe Diem in Fort Wayne. Daryle gave Pence $10,000 for his campaign for governor. 

Daryle’s brother Eric—who sends his kids to a Christian school where his wife is a board member—heads the Indiana Economic Development Corporation, where he rakes in $149,000 yearly, as Karen Francisco has discovered.  A Christian Hillsdale College grad, Doden used to work for Ambassador Enterprises.

Along with Robert Enlow, Jason Bearce helps run Carpe Diem in Indianapolis.  Bearce is the associate commissioner of the Indiana Commission for Higher Education, run by queen school privatizer Teresa Lubbers, whose campaign was funded by Enlow.  For his role at the ICHE, Bearce is paid almost $94,000 annually.

Carpe Diem didn’t invade Fort Wayne (just yet), but close to the same board members manage the group’s school in Indianapolis.

Carpe Diem fits perfectly the Pence/CECI school privatization agenda: one corporate board to oversee dozens of for-profit charter schools in the state.

 

THE JONAS BROTHERS/BILL GATES/NETFLIX/SILICON VALLEY CHARTER SCHOOL CHAIN

Mike Pence and CECI are praying for a Jonas Brothers/Bill Gates/Silicon Valley for-profit charter school on every block in Indiana, too, since the leaked email discussion highlights Rocketship, another blended learning charter chain.  Given that Bill Gates funds Indiana’s Education Roundtable, this is not surprising.

As Daily Censored's Adam Bessie has noted, Rocketship’s national board has Bill Gates written all over it. Besides Don Shalvey, deputy director for the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation’s US Program Education Initiative, Rocketship’s leadership includes Jonathan Chadwick from Microsoft’s Skype and Menlo Ventures’ Shawn Carolan, managing director of the company which invests in Microsoft’s Hotmail.

Rocketship also has tech business moguls from Silicon Valley that are close to Microsoft, including Microsoft board of directors member and Netflex CEO Reed Hastings, whose online company DreamBox Learning profits from selling its programs to Rocketship.

Although it’s not possible to determine how much Rocketship pays DreamBox, John Danner, in an advertisement for DreamBox says that “there are tremendous cost savings associated with the Learning Lab—about half a million dollars a year—be­cause students are coached by community members rather than teachers, allowing us to run our schools with fewer teachers (see p 4 in PDF)."

No one wants Rocketship around.  Period.  Parents in Milwaukee won’t enroll their kids in a for-profit school that chains their children to computers, ignores the arts, and hires unqualified teachers. A poverty-stricken community in San Jose is so tired of being prey to Rocketship it has set up a website to stop the school chain’s expansion.  The San Jose Unified School District sued Rocketship a few backs back, too.

But Rocketship has been busy marketing to the teen-crowd.  At the grand opening of a Santa Clara Microsoft school, Rocketship used “Joe Montana, one of the Jonas Brothers, and [a] special performance by rock band the Black Keys” to raise funding for more corporate schools.

 
HELPING TONY BENNETT’S MEGA-MILLIONAIRE DONOR’S CHARTER SCHOOL OUTFIT

And yes, the leaked Pence/CECI memo mentions none other than Christal DeHaan’s Christel House as a possible outfit to "network" across the state.  The fact that Tony Bennett changed the grade of DeHaan’s charter school because she was a campaign donor doesn’t faze Pence in the least. 

When DeHaan broke ground for high school students a few years back, naming that section of the charter school after a former Eli Lilly exec., Mitch Daniels (wanting to keep the Indiana GOP campaign funds rolling), Indy Mayor Greg Ballard, and Ambassador Randall Tobias, were there for the photo-op.

Tobias, then Eli Lilly’s chairman emeritus, is best known for his role in George W. Bush’s administration promoting a religious right anti-AIDS and anti-prostitution public policy while he himself was sleeping with prostitutes.  Tobias, for the charter school, went a step further, chairing with DeHaan a $4 million “capital campaign” to raise corporate money for the school.

The school did draw in private investors for a couple of years after Tobias’ “capital campaign,” but the money they gave is chump-change compared to the millions taxpayers are giving.  The mega-millionaire’s charter school got $6 million recently for just one year.  This money isn’t going to paying janitors, since the school outsources those jobs.

The corporatists who donated to the Christel House Academy are the regular suspects: Eli Lilly (deep into the assault on students, teachers, and public schools in Indiana), JP Morgan (making interest on charter school loans in the Hoosier state), Klipsch Audio Technologies (owned by Betsy DeVos’ front man Fred Klipsch),  banks, banks, and more banks, and more corporations.

Finally, as I detailed when the grading scandal broke, the Christel House Academy has spent over $70,000 the last few years travelling.  For the 2009 calendar year, the school spent $12,000 on travel expenses (see page 10). In the 2010 calendar year, the Christel House Academy wasted another $20,500 on travel (see page 10). Even as the Christel House Academy paid out $15,000 on advertising for the 2011 calendar year, it dished out a staggering $40,000 on travel alone (see page 10 in PDF).  No details are given in tax records as to where this travel took place, and it is unclear if this money is coming only from taxpayers or from school fees or other revenue.

We will probably never know.  For the attorney general and the public access counselor in Indiana are too busy ruling against Glenda Ritz to do their jobs and give the people of Indiana some real answers for a change.

 

Thieving charter charlatan-scoundrel Juan Rangel steps down from UNO! He was a darling of the AEI

Thieving charter charlatan-scoundrel @JuanRangel steps down from #UNO! He was a darling of @AEIeducation http://t.co/svdm81drB5

— Robert D. Skeels (@rdsathene) December 6, 2013

Via Professor Diane Ravitch: Powerful Chicago Charter Leader Resigns in Wake of Financial Scandal

My commentary: Thieving charter charlatan-scoundrel Juan Rangel was a darling of the fringe-right American Enterprise Institute (AEI). In addition to their loving his stuffing of public money into his private pockets, AEI gushed about Rangel and UNO's systematic program of right-wing indoctrination.