January 5, 2015 - Leonie Haimson Exposes How NY Post Hides Sharpton/Joel Klein Relationship

...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.  ... Leonie Haimson

Great work by Leonie. Reporters on the NY Post article were Isabel Vincent and Melissa Klein. 

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.

We know editorial controls content at the Post but I still feel reporters have to be held accountable for stuff they put their names to.

http://nycpublicschoolparents.blogspot.com/2015/01/what-ny-post-left-out-how-sharpton-was.html

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.

BloomKlein's Worst Nightmare: PS 197 Protests Democracy Prep Charter Invasion

PS 197 chapter leader and GEMer Antoine Bogard leads the protest at

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iLmGzqQUeDE

Video by Angel Gonzalez (does that guy EVER rest?), who put up this post on you tube:

July 22, 2009 - Harlem Parents, Teachers & Community protested the further privatization of PS 197 now with the Democracy Prep Charter. Already the Harlem Children's Zone Charter operates their afterschool program. GEM, the Grassroots Education Movement in Defense of Public Education, participated. The UFT-AFT leadership has supported privatization with charter schools and thus the union-busting that comes with it! Fight this privatization pushed by the DOE & the UFT!

Note the number of Blacks and Latins in this protest. That is why I said this type of activity is BloomKlein's worst nightmare.

The Grassroots Education Movement (GEM) in alliance with various groups around the city, have been engaging in these type of actions over the past few months since GEM was founded less than 5 months ago (not too shabby).

Until recently, BloomKlein have been staking out the high ground by using the language of civil rights to give the impression that the only people who opposed them were middle and upper class whites who wanted to deny them the control of the schools they needed to meet the needs of the Black and Latin community.

They even hired Al Sharpton to stand with them. But as the black community has begun to rise up in Harlem and other areas of the city, note how Sharpton has shrunk back, even endorsing Thompson for mayor against his buddy Bloomberg. (We think Mike will understand and still funnel the bucks over to Al as he will be of some use in the future after the election.)

When confronted by the possibility that groups led by Sam Anderson and Jitu Weusi and Councilman Charles Barron were going to picket the fancy event he up on with the Educational Equality Project a few months ago, he got all 'fraidy cat and offered Barron a chance to speak to avoid the possible press coverage of black people picketing his event.

See Barron's slap down of BloomKlein and Sharpton

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ntbFiTXD4Og

[Barron video removed to speed up loading. Go directly to You tube to view]

Enjoy the next 4 years of dictatorial control Mike and Joel. Your time is coming.

I'm Not a Crook

Former Chancellor Harold Levy and Al Sharpton. Levy preceded Joel Klein as a corporate no-nothing about education chancellor, both having been granted waivers by the NY State Education Department's Richard Allen and the State Board of regents. The whole gang should be taken out with their coats over their heads.


Leonie Haimson to the NYC Education News listserve:

In today’s Daily news, Juan Gonzalez hits it out of the ballpark again – just in time for Al Sharpton’s big pow-wow this week w/ Klein, Bloomberg, Arne Duncan, Michelle Rhee, and Mayors and charter school advocates from throughout the country – all singing the praises of Mayoral control and the wonders of charter schools. At the same time, according to the column, Sharpton seems to be disavowing his support for mayoral control, and expresses opposition to “privatizing schools and corporate payoffs in education."

Yet at the time when Sharpton joined up with Klein to form the “Education Equality Project”, some of us were rather suspicious, given that he had just come up with $1 million, enough to settle w/ the feds who were about the indict him for tax fraud.

Now it looks like at least half of these funds were provided by Plainfield Asset Management, the hedge fund of former Chancellor Harold Levy. This hedge fund is heavily invested in gambling and is lobbying the city and the state to acquire Off Track betting and Aqueduct race track. The funds for Sharpton were officially donated to a 501C3 organization that promotes charter schools, a “charitable” organization that allows the donors to take a hefty tax deduction, but then apparently funneled to Sharpton’s operation, which is a 501C4 lobbying group, with no tax-deductibility allowed.

At the time EEP was announced, we wrote on the blog the following:

Until recently, Sharpton was under the cloud of numerous investigations. Most prominently, federal officials accused him of owing nearly $10 million in payroll taxes, and threatened him with criminal prosecution. According to news reports, “Sharpton’s civil rights group had failed for several years in a row to file income tax returns, obtain workers compensation insurance, or disclose how much it was collecting in donations or paying its top employees, as required by law.”

Just ten days after launching the Education Equality Project, Sharpton came up with $1 million, which he promptly handed over to the IRS as a downpayment; in turn, the feds agreed to drop criminal charges if he paid back what he owed the government over the next few years.

….So where did he get the $1 million? As Sharpton explained to the Daily News, “"I make money, so I can pay." Another mystery is who is funding the Education Equality Project. Until recently, David Cantor, the chief communications officer of the DOE, was listed as the main press contact on all its press releases; now they are being sent out without any names attached. Is this effort being subsidized by tax dollars that should be going towards improving our schools? Or as Cantor recently announced to our list serv, is the source of funding an “anonymous” donor, but someone other than Bloomberg? If so, who might that be?

Mayoral control = lack of corruption? I don’t think so.

There is still the question of where the other half a million came from that allowed Sharpton to settle with the feds.

See Juan Gonzalez’s dynamite column.
Rev. Al Sharpton's $500G link to education reform

EEP Marches to Denver

The true agenda of the EEP revealed: It's all about politics, not education. Children First, indeed.

Schools in Washington and NYC are about to open. A major contract issue exists in DC. Yet the leaders of those school systems are in Denver trying to get the Democrats to endorse their program:

credit recovery
false graduation rates
over crowded buildings
rote learning
inflaming racial tensions

(thanks to Voice for the list and to David B for the graphic)

The Fourth Amigo

UPDATE
GBN News commentary on the unlikely alliance between Joel Klein and Al Sharpton





Is that guy on the right handing Sharpton a million bucks under the cloak?



Photoshopping by DB as he strikes again

NYC Parents Deconstruct Klein/Sharpton/McCain Farce

....at the NYC public school parent blog.

Where did Sharpton get the million bucks?
Who is funding the Education Equality Project?
Is there a hidden 4th amigo with initials MB?

photoshopped by DB

Credit Recovery: The Civil Rights Issue of Our Time

If the NY Times says education is a civil rights issue, it must be so.

In 10 Things I Learned in Summer School Credit Recovery, Learners Inherit at Chancellor's New Clothes exposes the fault lines in the Sharpton/Klein promotion that they are addressing the achievement gap, which Klein loves to brand as "the civil rights issue of our time."

1. Students are only required to attend 4 out of 10 days to receive a passing grade and full credit.

Obviously, graduating people who show up 4 out of 10 days is a way to fight for civil rights.

When teachers take a few days past their 10 allotted, they get nasty letters in their files. And sometimes, even U-ratings. What kind of message are we sending to our kids when they see that happen to their teachers?

We can't wait to hear from the business comunity when their workers show up 40% of the time.


And they're so interested in quality teachers.

5. Not having posters on the walls of a classroom during a ten day course is cause for receiving “2″ out of “5″ on an evaluation.

Note how the pro-Bloomberg/Klein press in NYC and the pundits nationwide ignore this aspect of raising the grad rates as they report on Klein and Sharpton traipsing around the country promoting the civil rights issue of our time. (Does anyone in the press ever ask Klein and Michelle Rhee how they have so much time to promote a political agenda when they have large school systems to run? I never had all that time as a classroom teacher.)

This is actually racist policy of using a phony system of making it look like kids are being educated when in fact they are unprepared for the job market.

So who will the corporate/business community world blame since the union obstruction is feeble? Watch the BloomKlein spin doctors after they leave start crying how it is not their fault but that political insterest like the union were able to rear their heads once they left.