The charter industry has set its sights on Texas, since the state has a rightwing Governor and Lieutenant Governor and Republicans control the state legislature.
So charter money is flowing to candidates for State Board of Education. In El Paso, board member Georgina Perez decided not to run again, so the charter industry is backing a charter school leader to take her place. Perez is a charter critic who recently joined the board of the Network for Public Education.
The charter industry has donated more than $200,000 to Omar Yanar. Yanar leads a small charter called the El Paso Leadership Academy.
The money behind the money: billionaires Reed Hastings and Jim Walton.
Charter Schools Now reported spending more than $1 million on various primary candidates throughout the state from Jan. 21-Feb. 19. That includes a $1,000 donation to state Sen. César Blanco, D-El Paso, who is unopposed in the March 1 primary, according to the PAC’s Feb. 22 filing.
The PAC gave to three Republican incumbent SBOE members’ reelection campaigns in addition to three Republican primary candidates and five Democratic primary candidates.
Charter Schools Now is heavily funded by two well-known charter advocates: Netflix co-founder and CEO Reed Hastings and Jim Walton, a member of the Walmart family.
Hastings is on the board of directors of KIPP Public Schools, a national charter school chain with campuses in Austin, San Antonio, Houston and the Dallas-Fort Worth area. He was previously on the national board of Rocketship Public Schools, which is opening its first Texas campus in August in Fort Worth.
Hastings gave $1.5 million to Virginia-based Educational Equity PAC on Feb. 15, the same day that PAC gave $570,000 to Charter Schools Now. Days earlier, Educational Equity gave Charter Schools Now $70,000.
Walton gave Charter Schools Now $450,000 in December 2021. The Walton Family Foundation has invested millions over the years to support public charter schools across the country.
One way to win elections is to buy them.
Reed Hastings lives in California.
Jim Walton lives in Arkansas.
Neither lives in Texas but they arrogantly assume that their money gives them the power to buy seats on the Texas Board of Education.
The charter industry wants to eliminate public schools or keep them as dumping grounds for students the charters don’t want.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
The biggest unreported story in the US today is how much it costs to pretend that private funding of elections is not a siphon to the public tax dollar. Those “contributors”, in this case Hastings and Walton, expect a return on their “investment” in the billions (years ago, the standard rule of thumb was 10:1, but as corruption has soared, the cost to the taxpayer has gone way up). And, by the way, those two and the whole donor class generally do have the right, the way our election campaign finance laws work, to buy school boards, legislatures, governors, representatives, senators, and even Presidents.
add in: the way “what is legal” has been strategically maneuvered in our nation so that election campaign finance laws favor manipulating school boards, legislators, governors…etc.
El Paso County is already inundated by charter schools. IDEA, Harmony as well as a number of small independent private charter schools are already operating. El Paso is being targeted because its students are largely Latino. A year and a half ago my daughter and her family moved to El Paso. When she moved in, her property taxes were about $3500, but this year her taxes have been increased to $5500 in just one year. It many not seem to be so high compared to taxes in the Northeast or West, but it is a lot of tax for a blue collar, working class community.
There should be a limit on the number of charter schools that can invade an area. Students should have a right to attend a well funded public school. Privatization is a a run away train of profiteering that destroys the public schools that are an essential in a democracy. When charters invade a community, the community either must raise taxes or cut services to public schools. Researchers should examine the economic impact of charter expansion on taxes and public schools The public remains largely unaware that an array bad choices are not better than a well funded public system.
I do not think communities should be forced to destroy their own public schools while they underwrite other people’s private profit.
No story like this post is complete without identifying background and history- Bill and Melinda Gates, Susan Rice, Edelman’s Stand for Children,…
Center for American Progress
$$$ = Free Speech
The more $$$, the more speech.
Privatizers understand that they can buy politicians. As long as we allow money to equal free speech, we cannot have a functioning representative democracy. It’s a sham!
Here is my question: where are the savvy populist politicians who can win by pointing out the dirty money flooding American politics today? It seems that populism today has been reduced to complaints on the right about social issues or gun rights. Populism on the left used to a whimper in the voting public. Someone should amplify the negative role of money in both local and national politics.
As a presidential candidate, Bernie Sanders tried to point that out. The MSM ignored him for as long as they could. But once Sanders was attracting crowed, the MSM and leading Democrats responded – with contempt, belittling and derision.
Sanders still continues to point out the effects of dirty money today – yet the MSM ignore him at every turn. Mr. Biden, who rode in on those Bbig donor coattails, has been relatively silent on the issue. The MSMs are corporate-owned and addicted to all that Big PharMa ad revenue.
Deep-pocketed donors, whether it is those charterizing our public school system or those gunning to reap record profits off the privatization of the rest of traditional Medicare via DCE’s, are licking their chops at the prospects.
The concerns of us common folk matter little. Not an ounce of compassion in our system, whether we are talking innocent first-graders or vulnerable seniors needing patient-centered (not profit-centered) health care.
That is the reality of where we are today.
“crowed” s/b “crowds. Sorry.
There’s a lot of grassroots and union organizing here against Yanar. Usually, the teachers unions can prevail because so few people vote. I pray that happens. I knew the big money was coming for us some day!
The harmful impact of so many charters would be amplified in El Paso with a population of 750,000 than in a bigger city of two or three million.
Update on Robin Chait. You may recall her husband, Jonathan, was a high profile media voice that advocated for charter schools. (Ohio taxpayers lost $1 bil. to just one charter school operation -ECOT- other losses followed from different charters)
Robin is at WestEd…manages their work in the National Charter School Resource Center…develops tools and resources…for charter management organizations. I wonder how much she makes a year. If WestEd receives government funding- sad.
Wikipedia described Jonathan as “ostensibly liberal.”
WestEd solicits government contracts for research.
$174,000,000 cited as revenue at the site.
More than 700 employees.
Linda, you must be pleased with Biden’s choice for the Supreme Court.
Yes, Diane, as long as the clerks KBJ selects are from state universities.
The newly formed Grievance U. (University of Texas at Austin) is already funding media in Texas- so says a note to that effect added as a disclaimer to a political article in the Texas Tribune (one of the recipients).