What the NY Post left out: how Sharpton was persuaded to ally himself with Joel Klein & stay mum on term limits

Today, the NY Post ran a story about how Al Sharpton accepts money from corporations in exchange for shielding them of accusations of racism.  It contained nothing very new to report, except for Sharpton having met with Amy Pascal of Sony after the company's embarrassing email breach – though the article offered no evidence Sony has paid him a dime.  

Presumably the Post is targeting Sharpton because of his association with the Mayor: “Sharpton, who now boasts a close relationship with Obama and Mayor de Blasio, is in a stronger negotiating position than ever.”  Yet the main example cited in the article happened years ago, during the Bloomberg administration:

In 2008, Plainfield Asset Management, a Greenwich, Conn.-based hedge fund, made a $500,000 contribution to New York nonprofit Education Reform Now. That money was immediately funneled to the National Action Network [Sharpton’s organization].

The donation raised eyebrows. Although the money was ostensibly to support NAN’s efforts to bring “educational equality,” it also came at a time that Plainfield was trying to get a lucrative gambling deal in New York.

Plainfield had a $250 million stake in Capital Play, a group trying to secure a license to run the coming racino at Aqueduct Racetrack in Queens. Capital Play employed a lobbyist named Charlie King, who also was the acting executive director of NAN.

Left out of this account is the most interesting part of the story.  It's not just that the money for Sharpton was ostensibly for “equity” and funneled through Education Reform Now, the non-profit arm of Joe William’s pro-charter Democrats for Education Reform. The larger context is that ERN was merely a pass-through, and the money was directed to Sharpton through the Education Equity Project, founded by then-Chancellor Joel Klein, in exchange for Sharpton agreeing  to co-chair the group and adopt Klein’s aggressive anti-teacher, pro-charter stance.  Juan Gonzalez extensively reported the tangled story of how these funds went to benefit Sharpton in 2009, and how they helped him stay out of jail when he owed millions in taxes to the IRS.  

Also left out of the Post article is how Bloomberg, the Gates and Broad Foundations also put big money into EEP to Sharpton's benefit, though the DOE flack, David Cantor denied any involvement of either Bloomberg or Gates in emails he sent to our NYC Ed list serv, when I speculated about the involvement of both.  Perhaps he was lied to as well.  See my timeline of events here. In fact, Sharpton’s organization directly received a big portion of the $250,000 donation Mayor Bloomberg gave EEP, the day Bloomberg announced he would try to overturn term limits.  As a result, Sharpton never said a word against Bloomberg’s successful coup. 

Despite big infusions of cash and the coupling of Klein and Sharpton, EEP didn’t last long.  It held a  rally in DC on MLK day in January of 2009, at which Sharpton spoke.  After joining forces with Newt Gingrich, he and Klein met with President Obama.  The organization folded in 2011 when it merged with the similar corporate reform group, Stand For Children.  Sharpton had already left EEP by then, replaced by two Gates grantees, United Negro College Fund President Michael Lomax, and Janet Murguia of the National Council of La Raza. 

Perhaps the Post reporter's omissions are understandable, given that Klein now works for the Post’s owner, Rupert Murdoch, who is also a member of the Billionaire’s Boys Club, pushing for more charters along with his old friend and ally Bloomberg.  But the story should have been told nonetheless. In his new memoir, I highly doubt  Klein explains the full circumstances surrounding his cynical and mutually exploitative partnership with Sharpton.  I certainly didn't read this mentioned in any of the reviews.

Two leaked memos showing how desperate corporate reformers are to retain failed status quo policies after the election

Two leaked memos show how desperately the corporate reformers in the administration and in the private sector want the mayor's failed policies to be

retained after the mayoral election – despite the huge public disgust with the status quo.

The first is a  memo from the Parthenon group, available at the GothamSchools website; showing how the DOE is avidly trying to strategize as to how to keep the network structure in place, and prevent geographically-based district structure to be restored.  Nearly all the Democratic candidates have said the networks make no sense, and parents unanimously agree.  

To this end, DOE has hired Parthenon as consultants for $375,000, paid for by private funds.  FYI, Parthenon is also one of Gates Foundation’s favorite consulting companies, and it is quite possible they are footing the bill for initial phase of project.  

However, as GS notes: “A longer-term phase of the project that Parthenon pitched involves managing the implementation of its vision during the 2013-2014 school year. That phase would cost more than $400,000, but Polakow-Suransky said he anticipated that part of the project being completed in house.”  

This means that the DOE is prepared so spend half a million dollars to make sure this incoherent and pointless management structure remains in place past the elections – one that NO ONE likes, outside of Tweed and the PSO’s , which of course benefit from the steady revenue stream of taxpayer money. The fact that even the principals, who according to DOE are supposed to benefit from the system, detest the networks was evident when Quinn responded at the CSA forum that she was still considering keeping them in place, and was met with boos. 

I have spoken to network staff, who themselves say that they don’t think the system makes any sense and that the districts should be restored – especially as they have to spend most of their time driving from one part of the city to another, wasting time and contributing to global warming.

One of the projects envisioned in the Parthenon strategy to protect the network structure : “Internal communications: Increasing Principal support of the networks to bolster their defense of the aspects of the structure that are most valuable.” 

Expect statements of support to be released with principals pressured to sign on, especially those principals at New Visions schools. New Visions would dearly like to be kept on the gravy train and  was "caught" in 2007 (from another leaked memo) pressuring schools that they had started with Gates money to select them as their PSO. (h/t Lisa Donlan) 

Note also how in the Parthenon memo that conversations with "key stakeholders" exclude parents, teachers, and students. A better example of Bloomberg's oppressive reign of “Educrats first” is hard to imagine.  Why does DOE so intent on keeping the networks?  Going back to districts would allow the connection between neighborhoods, local electeds and schools to be strengthened, diminish their autocracy and their ability to close and privatize schools.  Some of the same thinking is at play in their last inning attempt to dezone elementary and middle schools in many districts throughout the city.

The other leaked memo, reported in Crain’s, from Joe Williams of Democrats for Education Reform, reveals that he doesn't think any of the GOP mayoral candidates  can win, and among the Democratic candidates, he believes that Thompson, Quinn, and Weiner could be expected to be charter-friendly and continue to co-locate charters in DOE buildings.  He asks his hedge fund supporters to “hedge” their bets, and “continue to quietly work with these candidates” behind the scenes.  Here is an excerpt; the full memo is below.

“What is worth noting… is how careful several of the candidates -- including Quinn and Thompson -- have attempted to play nicely with the UFT while not closing the door to being able to work with the education reform coalition later on down the road [what DFER calls the privatizers/hedge funders.]  There has been some serious parsing of words with regard to “moratoriums” on co-locations, for example, or allowing “community input” with regard to the same.  Without specifics, those comments and positions mean little.  The door has been left open to continued relationship-building here….

In the current field, both Quinn and Weiner appear to support co-locations and Thompson and deBlasio have offered adequately confusing responses on the issue….The key objective is …making sure that the run-off election is between Quinn and Someone Good, or at least Someone Not Bad…This hedge … is entirely do-able if we galvanize enough support behind this strategic deployment of effort….”

DFER memo by ahawkins8223

What's the real story behind Black's fall from grace?

The three NYC dailies have conflicting accounts, sometimes within their very same pages, about why Black was fired by Bloomberg, after three short months. Bloomberg usually sticks by his deputies, no matter what their level of incompetence. Despite all the emphasis on "accountability" at the school level, there is generally little accountability at the top at City Hall.

The Daily News claims that the mayor didn’t like her inability to cut the budget:

Two sources said the mayor became increasingly disenchanted with her inability to do the grueling and technical work of cutting the education budget.

Meanwhile, the NY Post says it was because she made decisions to expand programs too slowly:

The Department of Education under Black actually delayed plans to expand citywide an ambitious special-ed pilot program and increase the number of schools containing a high-tech education program. Even when she rolled out a program -- finding $10 million to spend on after-school tutors -- Black drew criticism for bragging about such a paltry expenditure.

These programs – the special ed pilot and expanding the Izone -- are both very controversial, of course, and the latter is going to cost millions of dollars, not less; of course, which doesn't exactly help with cutting the budget.

In a different NY Post article, it says that John White was actually running the department, and when he left, Bloomberg realized he needed someone else in there quick:

Bloomberg admitted the breaking point came earlier that day when Black's most competent deputy chancellor, John White, quit -- the fourth top DOE official to defect since Black took over the nation's largest school system. "White was running the system," a source said. "The mayor felt he needed to make a move."

Yet the NY Times features an account that claims that decisions were being made too slowly, because they were vetted through her two top deputies, as well as Walcott and Wolfson at City Hall, and doesn't even mention John White:

Under Ms. Black, proposals meandered through layers of review: Ms. Black, her two powerful deputies, and City Hall officials, including Mr. Walcott and another deputy mayor, Howard Wolfson. …Ms. Black often deferred to Shael Polakow-Suransky, the chief academic officer, and Sharon Greenberger, the chief operating officer, giving them so much power that education officials jokingly referred to them as “chancellor,” the two aides said.

Meetings were rife with jockeying as senior officials tried to steer Ms. Black toward their view, the aides said. Mr. Polakow-Suransky and Ms. Greenberger served as gatekeepers, deciding which proposals to endorse and which to scuttle.

One of the few named sources in this NY Times article is Joe Williams of DFER, while failing to identify him as a charter school lobbyist:

“Anybody working on any plan for the last two and a half months had no assurance that it would ever get done rather than just having dust gather on top of it,” said Joe Williams, the executive director of Democrats for Education Reform, who works closely with schools and education officials. “Not having a leader there makes them wonder why they are showing up every day to this giant bureaucratic blob.”

Clearly, Joe felt that the DOE under Black was not giving him and his hedgehog friends the sort of access they got when Klein was there.

Here’s another quote from the Times, this one from an anonymous source:

Among some charter school operators, there is also frustration. When new charter schools open, the Education Department guarantees most of them space. But there have been challenges to the space allocations, brought on by flawed plans that needed to be amended due to lack of detail or typographical errors.

The problems have also meant that e-mails and phone calls are not getting returned. “I’m trying to hang a sign on a building, and the czar of signs is not answering his phone,” said the head of a high-performing network of charter schools, who asked not to be named for fear of angering the department.

My guess that this quote is from Eva Moskowitz, who works closely with Joe. Few other charter operators would be so open about their desire to acquire space to admit frustration in "trying to hang a sign on a building".

So charter operators were fed up with the slowness of DOE to respond to their demands, especially as compared to Joel Klein, who was at Eva's beck and call and responded to every one of her innumerable emails.

Is the real explanation, then, that Black was fired because the privatizers complained that they weren’t getting their co-locations quick enough?

Who knows? My guess is that the story is far more simple: Cathie Black was fired because the mayor’s poll numbers were falling fast, down to 27% approval for his handling of education, in spite of the millions of dollars of TV ads he is paying for out of his own pocket. Wolfson, his political guru, probably told him the ads weren't working, and that he had to throw her overboard, fast. Loyalty only goes so far, after all.

Sexy time?

Amazing how sexy the education privateers find each other. In the NY Times , a few weeks ago, Joe Williams of the charter lobby group Democrats for Education Reform said that Joel Klein had made education "sexy" again.

In today’s Times, Joe compares Rhee to a “rock star” and Joel Klein says that “education has become sexy in America, partly because of Michelle.”

What a ménage a trois! ....next thing you know, they’ll be claiming Bill Gates is sexy too.

Funny, I don’t find them sexy at all, though I can see Michelle Rhee as an effective dominatrix.

I guess it takes all kinds….