Big Win Over KIPP in California Privatization Fight

Big, big victory in Los Angeles over proposed KIPP mega-charter:

By Jared Hamil |

April 8, 2019

 

Centro CSO press conference announcing defeat of KIPP charter school, victory for public education (Fight Back! News/staff) 

 

Los Angeles, CA - Centro CSO (Community Service Organization) along with teachers, parents and students from several East Area schools announced a historic victory, April 4. After months of struggle, corporate KIPP Promesa Charter school will not be building a new mega-charter school in Boyle Heights, at the location of the former Lincoln Hospital near 4th and Soto Street.

Rosario Bonilla, a mother who lives next to proposed site said, “I’m excited we obtained the victory against KIPP that I know would have affected the lives of my children and my community. Also, I feel proud to say that billionaires can't teach our kids!”

KIPP, which is the United States’ largest charter school corporation, operates in multiple states. In Los Angeles, like many other cities, charter schools are promoted in poor working-class neighborhoods that are primarily Chicano and African American. With the backing of real estate billionaires like Eli Broad, they build new private charter schools that pull students from already existing public schools. As student enrollment from public schools declines, funding also declines, causing layoffs for teachers and support staff. Those jobs are almost always unionized, with good benefits. Charter schools are also a part of the wave of gentrification responsible for rent hikes, evictions and displacements. With a population of over 100,000 who reside in Boyle Heights, there are currently over a dozen charter schools. KIPP Charter Schools already have one school in Boyle Heights and three in East LA.

When word spread that KIPP was trying open up another school the community sprang into action. On January 4, Centro CSO supported a lawsuit filed by Boyle Heights Neighborhood Association and longtime activist and resident Carlos Montes. The lawsuit against KIPP Promesa and LA City was based on the environmental damage to the already existing bad conditions and failure to conduct an Environmental Impact Report.

Carlos Montes, of Centro CSO said, “The proposed mega-project would have an adverse impact by adding more pollution, traffic and noise to the already harmful conditions.”
Centro CSO, along with teachers from nearby schools like Breed St. Elementary and the groups like East LA Padres Contra Privatizacion, went to LA city hall and through the planning commission’s long process demanding they not build the new charter school. But the LA city council voted to approve the project, with the urging of Councilmember Jose Huizar.

KIPP also got letters of support from LAUSD Board member Monica Garcia, LA County Supervisor Hilda Solis and Maria Brenes of Inner City Struggle, which the community strongly criticized. Centro CSO led protests several times at the proposed site, demanding an end to privatization of public education.

In late January, Los Angeles teachers, overworked with huge classroom sizes, lack of support services, plagued with charter school co-locations and budget cuts went on a historic week-long strike. Over 30 thousand teachers fought against the attacks on public education, as more and more public funding went to private charter schools. The attacks were led by billionaires like Eli Broad, the Waltons of Wal-Mart and the Gates Foundation with their sellout lackeys on the LA school board like Monica Garcia and former board member and money-launderer Ref Rodriguez. During the strike, the United Teachers of Los Angeles led a protest on the headquarters of the California Charter Schools Association demanding a moratorium on charter schools within the district.

After the strike, teachers and parents in Boyle Heights continued the fight against privatization. They continued with protests, and on February 28 they went to KIPP Promesa offices demanding, “No new mega-KIPP!”

On the afternoon of April 4, at Mariachi Plaza, mothers, students and teachers of Boyle Heights and East LA announced the huge victory. Lupe Torres, an ELA resident, teacher and UTLA Chapter Chair at Marvin Avenue Elementary school, fired up the crowd, chanting “No mega KIPP!” CSO announced that the LA City Planning Department issued a termination letter on the proposed project.

Eloisa Galindo of Eastside Padres Contra Privatizacion said, “The people united will never be defeated! The power and money will never defeat people united!”

Carlos Cerdan, a teacher from nearby Breed Street Elementary said, “This win was a huge victory for the community. Centro CSO’s commitment to Boyle Heights is clear yet again, defeating a corporate charter behemoth. The fight doesn’t end here. We need to continue to inform and mobilize the community because privatizers are not going away easily. Charter schools serve to divide communities at an early age in order to destroy unity through false pretenses of choices. Schools not profits!”

This historic victory shows that the wave of charter schools can be stopped if communities stand up and fight back. Teachers, parents and community members will continue to struggle against co-locations and the invasion of private charter schools on the Eastside. Community leader Carlos Montes states, “This victory against KIPP will inspire others to fight back against privatization.”

Open Letter to the Tennessee State Board of Education Regarding MNPS Charter Company Appeals

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Open Letter to the Tennessee State Board of Education Regarding MNPS Charter Company Appeals

On August 18, the Nashville Metro School Board voted to deny new charter applications from KIPP, Inc. and Rocketship, Inc. These companies are representative of the proliferating “No Excuses” charter chains that provide the kind of harsh, economically segregated, and paternalistic total compliance school experience that white philanthropists prefer for poor children of color.  

I strongly urge the State Board of Education to sustain the majority vote by the MNPS school board and to uphold the right of elected and local education agencies to determine the direction of public schools for the tax-paying communities they serve.

When two of the Metro school board members voted against the “no excuses” charter expansion based on what the Tennessean described as “perceived practices of the schools,” they were voting for children’s rights.  I am talking about the basic right to have a voice in school and to have resources that other public school children take for granted, rather than being forced into all-day silence, single file marching, zero tolerance discipline catechisms, constant test prep, and the behavioral straightjackets that keep “no excuses” charter children locked down at school. 

These school board members who oppose further charter expansion were voting for disadvantaged children to have a more integrated education with children of other racial and class backgrounds, rather than the kind of apartheid “no excuses” schooling that middle class parents would never, ever allow for their own children. 

They were voting for the children of poor parents to have the opportunity to participate in their education, rather than receiving it from marginally prepared and inexperienced teachers who are clueless about the many challenges and needs of children living in poverty. 

We applaud these school board members for standing up for parents who want public choices for their children, rather than the one-size-fits-nobody corporate reform schools that benefit hedge fund managers and the corporate charter school industry.

We support, too, those school board members whose votes against charter expansion are based on fiscal realism.  The present commitments to charter schools in Nashville Metro represent a massive, annualized siphoning of public resources that could be used to improve public school facilities, add science labs, re-hire librarians, improve student-teacher ratios, and to provide art and music education where none exists. 

Nashville-Metro is already underfunded in comparison to other urban districts in the South, and the district cannot possibly improve its current public school system while transferring hundreds of millions every year into the pockets of corporate charter school operators with minimal program oversight or fiscal accountability.

KIPP’s Director in Nashville, Randy Dowell, was furious following the MNPS board vote to deny his application.  He declared that KIPP had “done what the district has asked of us every single time,” and he argued further that the new applications followed the same template that KIPP had used when the Board had previously approved four KIPP schools in Nashville.  Dowell went on to protest that the Board’s recent vote to deny KIPP’s expansion plans in Nashville had been for “ideological reasons rather than on their merits.”

I suspect that Mr. Dowell’s billion-dollar company did, indeed, cross every “t” and dot every “i” in its application for KIPP expansion in Nashville.  Having a completed application does not entitle Mr. Dowell, however, to determine the outcome of his application, as any college freshman knows. 

Having a perfect application is not enough to get even the most eager student into Yale or the University of Virginia (Mr. Dowell’s alma mater). Whether college application, job application, or charter application, sometimes those evaluating your package decide that what you bring does not fit with the mission of the organization, or that the liabilities you bring with you outweigh any potential benefit. 

I agree with Mr. Dowell, too, that the Metro Board’s rationale for rejecting KIPP expansion is based on ideology if, by “ideology,” he means, as Webster’s defines it, “a system of ideas and ideals, especially one that forms the basis of economic or political theory and policy.” 

Mr. Dowell’s case is weak for this very reason, as the policies of Nashville Metro Schools are intended to benefit first and foremost the taxpayers’ and the voters’ interests, along with the interests of our community’s children.  These are the same Nashville voters and taxpayers who decided most recently to turn down recent ballot appeals paid for by hedge fund managers, real estate moguls, and billionaire philanthropists. 

In short, I think the majority of Nashville citizens believe that the “no excuses” charter schools are not a good fit, and they introduce liabilities that far outweigh any claimed benefit.

Just a few days ago the national research firm, Mathematica, released the final part of an eight-year study that concluded that KIPP’s impact on test scores has dropped steadily since 2007, and that its brutal, dehumanizing practices do nothing to improve any of those behaviors or traits that KIPP has largely based its reputation: 

"Across grade levels, we generally find no impacts of KIPP schools on measures of students’ motivation, engagement, educational aspirations, or behavior. . . . At all three grade levels, KIPP did not significantly affect measures of motivation and engagement related to student self-control, academic motivation, academic confidence, grit, school engagement, or effort in school, including student reports of the time spent on homework" (p. xxii)

http://www.mathematica-mpr.com/~/media/publications/pdfs/education/kipp_scale-up_vol1.pdf

Finally, I think it is prudent for anyone hearing the “no excuses” charter appeals to keep in mind the sound reasoning by Board member, Jo Ann Brannon, who voted against corporate charter expansion for the most pragmatic of reasons.  How can anyone disagree with her when she points out that the District needs to “come up with a plan for charters before approving additional operators.”

Thank you for your kind attention.

Sincerely,

Jim Horn, PhD