Tuesday, October 23, 2007

Fund for the Public Schools Funnels Money for Children to Politics

Updated 10/24 am

Any intrepid reporters out there to check this out?
We got this in the mail.

I was checking out the financial information on the Fund for the Public Schools.org website and I made an interesting discovery. On IRS form 990 return of organization exempt from income tax in schedule A part 3 question 1 it asks, "During the year has the organization attempted to influence national, state or local legislation, including any attempt to influence public opinion or legislative matter or referendum. The Fund for the Public Schools answered "No" to this question. This was a false statement because they are currently running a television campaign urging that mayoral control be continued. Is the fund for public schools violating the law by engaging in a public media campaign, can their tax exempt status be revoked?

Joel Klein, Caroline Kennedy, Mortimer Zuckerman and Wendy Murdock are on board of directors.

Comment: A campaign that costs millions, money that could have gone to the classrooms. Children First, Indeed.

"Workshop model's" comment below (#1) made me wonder if the Evander ad is new and a response to Eduwonkette's exposure of the Evander miracle where she nails BloomKlein by pointing out that the kids in the new small schools are a very different skill level than the kids forced out into other large schools that will be branded as "failures" and closed. We had a follow-up post with comments from Andy Wolf''s column in the NY Sun where he cited Eduwonkette's work and also comments by Leonie Haimson, who has been talking about the sham of the Fund for Public Schools ads.

By the way, UFT members would have hoped the UFT with all its resources would make a point of these possibly illegal ads, but you don't attack your collaborators.

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

Is that the lying and deceptive ad that "interviews" students and teachers from Evander High School who tell us how it's turned around? It's propaganda of monumental proportions. It's time the media stopped looking the other way at the graft and corruption that earmarks the entire Bloomberg administration.

ed notes online said...

Yes. Is that a new one in response to the Eduwonkette exposure of the Evander "miracle"?

Anonymous said...

my personal favorite is the line about how the graduation rate of "the building" has gone up from 30% to 80%. It's like if once there was a Burger King and it was closed and a KFC opened up in it's place. I could here the ads now "Chicken sales are up!".

Unitymustgo!

Anonymous said...

my personal favorite is the line about how the graduation rate of "the building" has gone up from 30% to 80%. It's like if once there was a Burger King and it was closed and a KFC opened up in it's place. I could here the ads now "Chicken sales are up!".

Unitymustgo!

Anonymous said...

Only refer to the NY Sun article but don't comment on the fact that it claims thatthe UFT made out like a bandit with bonus pay program and that Klein and Bloomberg are the real loosers. I guess that doesn't fit into your agenda.