Running against the big money opponents
This year’s election for the Los Angeles Unified School Board has set another record for campaign spending with $15.6 million being spent by outside groups on the Los Angeles Unified School Board race, shattering the previous record set in 2017. The most competitive races are District 3 and 7 with the charter school backed candidates, Marilyn Koziatek and Tanya Franklin-Ortiz, versus Scott Schmerelson and Patricia Castellanos who are supported by United Teachers of Los Angeles and SEIU Local 99.
The 2017 school board campaign holds the previous spending record, with outside groups reporting more than $14.8 million in “independent expenditures” during that cycle. If the pace of spending in this year’s races continues, it will either match or exceed the 2017 record.
Tanya Ortiz Franklin spent $94,251 from her own campaign. If the election would have taken place Oct. 23, and assuming Franklin-Ortiz gets at least the same number of votes she got during the primaries, she will have paid $2.36 per vote.
The outside expenditure group supporting Ortiz Franklin, Kids First, spent $2,328,837. If the election would have taken place Oct. 23, Kids First would have spent $58.35 per vote. Kids First is a political action committee put together by Netflix CEO and founder, Reed Hastings and Bill Bloomfield, the former head of commercial laundry equipment company.
Bill Bloomfield contributed $1,369,344 in support of Franklin. If the election would have taken place Oct. 23, Bloomfield would have paid $34.31.
Bloomfield’s contributions represented more than a third of the money spent on the District 7 race. When combined with the contributions of Kids First, the expenditures by pro-charter forces represent more than half all expenditures in the District 7 race.
Patricia Castellanos spent $187,355.98 from funds raised from her own campaign. If the election would have taken place Oct. 23, Castellanos would have paid $4.11 per vote.
Students, parents and educators in support of Castellanos and Scott Schmerelson for School Board 2020, and sponsored teacher unions, including United Teachers Los Angeles, spent $171,758.
Imagine Justice, a political action committee sponsored by Service Employees International, spent $88,316.
Total independent expenditures on behalf of Castellanos totaled $260,074, or $5.70 per vote.
Kids First poured $2,166,694.63 into mailers, nearly half of that was in the form of negative ads at $935,334.92.
Noblesse Oblige
It misses the point to characterize this race as simply a polarized debate between pro- and anti-charter school advocates. Sure, this school board race is a balance-of-power struggle between the two sides and whether charters will face more scrutiny than not going forward. But the challenges the Los Angeles Unified School District faced during the coronavirus pandemic and the coming crisis created by declining enrollment portends more chaos and funding uncertainty than ever before.
What is missed in today’s debate over charter schools versus traditional schools is that today’s robber barons-turned- philanthropists (think Eli Broad, Bill and Melinda Gates or the Waltons) are using their wealth not simply to improve the lot of their fellow man but to engage in a kind of social engineering without the restrictions of democratic processes and regulatory oversight. Bloomfield and Hastings are just two more operating with a sense of noblesse oblige, or the inferred responsibility of privileged people to act with generosity and nobility toward those less privileged.
In 2012, Bloomfield funneled $7.5 million into his own race against the venerable Rep. Henry Waxman, who prevailed despite the spending spree. In 2014 and 2015, Bloomfield bankrolled the campaigns of two state Senate candidates, contributing more than $2 million to help propel them to victory.
Bloomfield has been putting his considerable financial resources behind the charter school movement for more than a decade. He has contributed more than $3.5 million to former charter school executive Marshall Tuck’s failed 2014 campaign to become California’s superintendent of public instruction and has also donated large sums to other pro-charter candidates.
Bloomfield spent big in the 2018 midterm election cycle, giving $5.3 million to the independent expenditure committee EdVoice, which backed Tuck’s second run for superintendent of public instruction. Bloomfield contributed an additional $1.3 million directly to Tuck’s campaign in what became the most expensive race for state superintendent of education in United States history. Tuck’s supporters have built a fundraising advantage of more than two to one over his opponent, Assemblyman Tony Thurmond, whose largest source of support is teacher unions.
Netflix CEO Reed Hastings has given millions of dollars to start charter schools. He’s put millions more into developing education software to personalize learning. But he doesn’t just give money. He makes things change. Hastings, reportedly, is not a fan of school boards.
The high-tech billionaire led and financed a 1998 campaign that forced the California legislature to liberalize its restrictive charter law. He served on the California Board of Education for four years. Hastings provided start-up funding for the Aspire Public Schools charter network and helped start and fund EdVoice, a lobbying group, and the NewSchools Venture Fund, which supports education entrepreneurs.
He’s given money to Sal Khan of Khan Academy to develop teaching videos — and a dashboard to track student progress — technology that’s used across the country. Hastings also supports Rocketship Education, which blends adaptive learning on computers with teacher-led instruction. He’s on the board of the California Charter Schools Association; the KIPP Foundation; DreamBox Learning, an education technology company; and the Pahara Institute, which provides fellowships to education leaders. On the business side, he served on Microsoft’s board until 2012 and is now on Facebook’s board.
Like Gates, Reed Hastings is always looking to launch disruptive innovations. When Hastings does it, he goes big. When he succeeds, he pushes the envelope further. When he fails, he retreats until another opportunity to advance forward presents itself.
The Fight for Balance
Patricia Castellanos admitted that her campaign was operating with a bit of a handicap due to the coronavirus pandemic. She said she and her labor allies are communicating with voters the old-fashioned way, which by the way, didn’t include going door-to-door, at least during the stretch from the primaries to the General Election. This old-fashioned way basically meant phone banking, mass text messages and mailers. Lots and lots of mailers.
The biggest lie Castellanos has had to bat down if not endure is that she has no experience. Castellanos argues that she has had more than 20 years of experience in advocacy work and organizing. She argues that she has been able to execute and create policy as a leader and organizer on the outside and see through the implementation of those policies on the inside as a member of various boards.
“Voters are talking but we’re getting a lot of positive responses and a lot of voters are seeing through a lot of the B.S.,” Castellanos said. “And, they are most turned off by it.”
Another thing Castellanos has going for her is name recognition, such as being a member of the Harbor Commissioners at the Port of Los Angeles and her work for Supervisor Sheila Kuehl.
“Our schools are not profit centers and they are not companies,” Castellanos explained. “Transparency and accountability are what’s missing from charter schools although it’s better now than before through recent legislation.”
Indeed, with traditional schools there are several vehicles through which to demand transparency and accountability. Castellanos admits that it’s not easy, either for a parent or an organizer, to hold our institutions accountable. But there are vehicles to do just that.
Education is more than just about the charter versus non-charter divide. Castellanos knows well that despite how much of a problem the explosion in the number of charter schools has become, it will be very difficult to put that genie back in the bottle.
“Giving local boards more authority over charter schools is critical,” Castellanos said. “My hope is that the board uses that authority aggressively to be able to hold charters accountable with a more scrutinous eye of new charters that are trying to apply.”
Hastings once spoke admiringly of how the New Orleans school district became entirely all-charter after Hurricane Katrina. With the combination of the coronavirus pandemic and already exacerbated declining enrollments, this particular moment has the potential of becoming LAUSD’s Hurricane Katrina and the sharks are circling.
“It’s difficult to break through the noise, especially during this time of COVID,” Castellanos said. “There’s so much more at stake.”
Castellanos notes that distance learning works for no one; not for students, not for teachers, not for families.
“We need to put in place measures that make distance learning as effective as possible,” the long timer organizer and activist said. “There are conversations that need to be had about how to reopen safely. What resources do we need?”
Castellanos noted that Congress and the president are playing politics over COVID relief funding for education.
“My focus would be to manage and regulate the charters,” Castellanos said. “It has to be done and bring some stability to that. Then begin leveling the playing field in our higher needs communities.”
She didn’t want to speak just yet on the direction the district should take next year when COVID-related enrollment declines exacerbate ongoing declines in enrollment.
“We hope that Prop. 15 passes, that the federal government comes through with funding, but these are uncertainties and unknowns,” she said.
Castellanos also noted that it is not known what the enrollment numbers are going to be or what the state’s allocation of resources is going to be based on enrollment.
“The state chose to continue funding school districts at the same level as pre-pandemic, holding school districts harmless,” Castellanos said. “At best we’re going to be back with some hybrid model. “
Rather than thinking about budget cuts, Castellanos prefers to get the state and the federal government to keep funding schools at pre-COVID levels.
“Pre-COVID, we need to look at where we are investing our resources,” Castellanos said. “If we don’t have the funds to invest in our schools then we are not going to be able to make them attractive choices for parents.”