Big Spending on Privatizing Public Schools in San Antonio by Thomas Ultican

Martinez Photo from San Antonio District

Originally posted at: https://tultican.com/2018/10/19/big-spending-on-privatizing-public-schools-in-san-antonio/?fbclid=IwAR3Ef7diwSNaZMwUIJowcr3dm775y7reIoLn2kMaaiJL_vSQ30vmTrrvuO8

Federal dollars are supplementing deep pocketed Destroy Public Education (DPE) forces in an effort to privatize schools in San Antonio, Texas. The total monetary support for the preferred charter school systems exceeds $200,000,000. One “DPE” publication, The 74, published a lengthy pieceglorifying the attack on San Antonio’s democratically run schools and praised local elites including the school superintendent trained by Arne Duncan and Eli Broad for leading the decimation of public schools in San Antonio’s poorest neighborhoods.

The article cited above ends with this disclosure:

“The George W. Brackenridge Foundation provided financial support for this project to The 74 [local San Antonio money]. The Walton Family Foundation [Walmart money with long history for working to privatize schools] , Bloomberg Philanthropies [Former NY Mayor spends heavily on charter school promotion], Carnegie Corporation of New York [Supports charter schools like Summit], the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation [Paid for Common Core and lavishes money on charter schools], The Eli and Edythe Broad Foundation [Literally wrote a guide to closing public schools], the Doris and Donald Fisher Fund [Biggest and earliest funder of KIPP], the Charles and Lynn Schusterman Family Foundation [Tulsa Foundation that supports privatization friendly school board candidates across the nation], the Karsh Family Foundation [Oaktree Capital Management money from LA – supporters of KIPP], and Jon Sackler [Purdue Pharmaceutical money from oxycontin – supports school privatization school board candidates]  provide financial support to both KIPP and The 74.”

In other words, this article was a paid advertisement selling the privatization agenda. The George W. Brackenridge Foundation from San Antonio made a first time “contribution” to The 74 for this article to be published. An example of the author, Beth Hawkins, shading the facts reads,

“In 2009, a woman named Victoria Rico visited one of what were then KIPP San Antonio’s two public charter schools. A lawyer and the product of a family with a legacy in the city’s philanthropic community, Rico had been appointed to the board of the George W. Brackenridge Foundation, whose sole area of giving was K-12 education.”

“Rico was blown away by what she saw at the school and began visiting other charter schools that were successfully replicating — opening new campuses where students were enjoying high academic growth.”

The message conveyed is a San Antonio elite with no agenda happened to visit a KIPP charter school and what she saw was so wonderful it called her to action. No mention of her having held board seats at three charter management organizations (CMO) Great Hearts Texas, Basis and IDEA. She is still on the IDEA board which seems like a conflict of interest considering she is in charge of grants from the Brackenridge foundation which gives to IDEA.

Victoria Rico’s Anti-Public School Crusade

Rico Picture from IDEA Board Web-Page

Victoria grew up with a family of three sisters in San Antonio. Her father James Lavoy Branton attended the US Air Force Academy and in 1961 earned a Juris Doctorate (JD) from the University of Texas. He and her mother Molly settled in San Antonio where they were very successful both locally and regionally.

Victoria followed in her father’s footsteps. She also achieved a JD from the University of Texas at Austin after earning a bachelor’s degree from Harvard University. Upon completing her education, she returned to San Antonio, married and went to work in the local philanthropic community. Her new husband made a success of his cyber security and online corporate training companies which he founded.

In 2011, Rico published a proposed strategy for San Antonio to replicate charter schools which she believed to be “high-performing.” Victoria also invited leaders of the charitable network Philanthropy Roundtable and representatives of charter school networks to two meetings in San Antonio. Her message was that the city’s private and family foundations could make a greater collective impact if they joined forces to help underwrite new charter schools.

Out of these meetings, Rico founded a new organization, Choose to Succeed, to lead the collective effort to expand charter networks in San Antonio. Her goal was to add four more charter CMO’s to the exiting two currently operating in the city, KIPP and IDEA. The four new CMO’s she planned to court were BASIS Schools, Carpe Diem Schools, Great Hearts Academies, and Rocketship Education.

The 74 article reported on the strategy,

“Cultivating their growth in San Antonio would require more than $50 million in local donations, about $24 million of which has already been raised thanks to hefty pledges from Harvey Najim and his foundation, the Ewing Halsell Foundation, Graham Weston’s 80/20 Foundation and others. Cheering them on are former mayors Henry Cisneros and Phil Hardberger.

“The room oozed money, a point Rico’s husband Martin made when he announced that the software company he owns had pledged $50,000 and challenged others to pledge, too, noting that some there could raise him by a factor of 100.

“Notably absent was H-E-B Chairman Charles Butt, a billionaire well-known for his education philanthropy….

“His office said he was unavailable to comment on the Choose to Succeed initiative.

“H-E-B’s primary area of focus remains on improving and investing in our teachers and our Texas Public Schools,” company spokeswoman Dya Campos said in an e-mail.”

Rico is clearly a talented advocate for her cause. In January of 2013 My San Antonio reported,

‘”We have a real chance here,’ said Victoria Rico, chairwoman and trustee at San Antonio’s George W. Brackenridge Foundation, one of several organizations involved in the effort, called Texans Deserve Great Schools.

“Dan Patrick, the Senate education chairman, joined Rico at the group’s news conference, where he and others pointed to test scores that lag behind other states and nations as evidence that education in Texas needs reform.”

“Patrick said he was excited about the ‘comprehensive, multi-approach (school) choice plan’ put forward by the consortium.”

“Several of the group’s proposed changes favor charter schools, such as lifting the current cap on charters, providing facilities funding for charter schools and strengthening the state’s “parent trigger” law to make it easier for parents to intervene in struggling schools, including turning them into charters.

“’Our purpose as Texans Deserve Great Schools is to be a resource to the leadership of Texas,’ said Caprice Young, vice president of education for Houston’s Laura and John Arnold Foundation.

“Others involved in the effort include the Austin-based Texas Institute for Education Reform and Parent Revolution, a California-based organization that promotes parent trigger laws.”

The leaders at the meeting are some of America’s most well known advocates for the “DPE” agenda. Dan Patrick is the ex-bomb-throwing-conservative talk show host from Houston who is now the Lieutenant Governor of the state. He tries every year to push through a school voucher law that would allow taxpayer money to go to religious schools.

Before working for John Arnold, Caprice Young was the first President of the California Charter Schools Association. She is now the head of the mysterious Tukish Imam, Fethullah Gülen’s charter schools in California.

Rico’s campaign has been very successful in raising money. The 74 article claims they have raised $50,000,000 from local philanthropists. That number seems plausible. Between 2012 and 2016, three relatively obscure foundations contributed almost $20,000,000 to the six preferred CMO’s and Rico’s Choose to Succeed.

Data from Tax Form 990 for Halsell, Najim and Brackenridge

The national spending by billionaire controlled funds for expanding charter schools is stunning. One example is The Charter School Growth Fund, which is under the influence of the Walmart heirs. That fund gifted IDEA Charter Schools $7,515,000 between 2013 and 2016. However, private funds cannot match the US Department of Education’s largesse. Between 2010 and 2018, the Department of Education granted IDEA $108,490,824 and over the same period gave KIPP $238,953,951.

Pedro Martinez Brought in to Sheppard the “DPE” Plan

Martinez is not an educator. He has never run a classroom or studied pedagogy. However, he does have a Masters in Business Administration from DePaul University and got his start in education working for Arne Duncan at the Chicago Public Schools (CPS). Before leaving Chicago, he became the Chief Financial Officer at CPS.

Pedro attended Eli Broad’s faux school administrator academy in 2009. Broad’s theory is that school system leaders do not need an education background because they can hire consultants for that. It also appears that the Broad academy teaches a harsh top down style of leadership.

In 2011, George N. Schmidt reporting for Substance News in Las Vegas wrote, “Pedro Martinez resurrected as ‘instructional’ guru… Broad Foundation places former Chicago finance chief in Las Vegas administration.” In 2012, Martinez was on a short list of two people to become the Superintendent of Schools in Philadelphia. He lost out to fellow Broad trainee, William Hite. That same year he took the Superintendent position in Reno, Nevada.

Martinez was fired after just two years on the job in Reno for reasons that are shrouded in mystery. It seems to have had something to do with his firing the district’s police chief, Mike Mieras. The Reno News Review alluded to a common problem plaguing Broad trained leaders; authoritarianism leading to a disgruntled staff. The report said,

“District sources by the dozen have been leaking information, reluctant to go public—suggesting that Martinez has created an unhealthy climate of fear. Many of those sources have the same view, that Martinez wants only department heads who agree with him, and Mieras did not fill the bill. They also say the talk of departmental “restructuring” is a blind behind which the firing took place.”

After Reno, Martinez got a political appointment to be Superintendent-in-Residence for Nevada’s Department of Education where he was an advisor to the Governor’s office. In less than a year, leaders in San Antonio decided he was the most qualified person in America to be their Superintendent.

Pedro is a favorite of “DPE” groups. On the San Antonio Independent School District (SAISD) internet site, Martinez’s biography says, “He is a member of Chiefs for Change, a nonprofit, bipartisan network of diverse state and district education chiefs.” That is Jeb Bush’s organization dedicated to privatizing schools and selling technology into classrooms.

The 74, article praised Martinez embrace of the phony Relay Graduate School of education created by the charter school industry with no professor’s of education. The report said,

“Martinez’s decision to invite Relay to run schools — and train new district teachers — is something other districts are watching, says Magee. ‘The partnership with Relay is groundbreaking for a variety of reasons,’ he says. ‘One is that Pedro told Relay, ‘“You are going to be training teachers for our system, and we want to embed your training in our district.’”

The Magee quoted above is Mike Magee, a leader for Bush’s Chiefs for Change organization.

Martinez brought in Democracy Prep to take over Stewart Elementary and he has opened two schools to be run by Relay Graduate School.

District enrollment in SAISD is declining and ripping a hole in budgets. Martinez admits that the influx of charter schools is the cause but he embraces them anyway. To compensate for the falling enrollment, he laid off 31 administrators and 132 teachers. Now there are calls for Martinez to be fired; not because of the layoffs but because teachers were laid off on the basis of performance evaluations instead of by the contract rules.

Running Multiple School Districts Costs More

Peter Greene is an education commentator at Forbes. He explains why multiple schools systems drive up costs for education. This is one of his examples:

“Let’s assume that … six districts employ the same number of teachers that the old single district did. They probably don’t, because students don’t leave in neat class-sized numbers, so if five out of twenty-five fifth graders leave the public school, it can’t cut a fifth grade teaching position, but the charter will still have to hire one for those five new students. But let’s assume that the numbers work perfectly, and the exact same number of teachers is employed. Each of the six systems will still need its own superintendent (or CEOs or whatever you want to call your highest muckity-muck), building principals, psychologist, business manager, cafeteria manager– the list can be as long as you like, down to dean of student activities and administrative assistants all around. The six districts will employ more personnel than one did– and many of the “extra” hires will be the priciest personnel.”

Each charter management organization is a school district and the San Antonio plan is to grow six new districts concentrated in the Hispanic neighborhoods of zip code 78207. The residents are told that the public schools are failing and are shown misrepresented testing data as proof. They are promised “high quality schools” from the private sector. It is a lie from upside down world; the public schools which are being stolen are the “high quality schools.”

I will end with the words of a local San Antonio hero of public education, Luke Amphlett. He wrote,

“While school privatization ‘reformers’ are backed by big money donors and corporations, opponents include San Antonio’s Our Schools Coalition of community members, teachers, and parents, the Movement for Black Lives, the Network for Public Education, and the NAACP – the nation’s oldest and largest civil rights organization.

“It’s big corporate money versus civil rights organizations, community groups, and teachers. The choice could hardly be starker. That’s why charter advocates pretend this argument is about teachers’ contracts and unions that are scared of change: if they were to tell the public the truth, they’d lose the argument before it started.”