Fox Guarding Hen House: Mexican Govt Busts Teachers’ Union Boss for Corruption

The head of the Mexican teachers' union (SNTE), Elba Esther Gordillo, has been arrested for embezzling over $156 million from union funds, according to a recent BBC report. Gordillo allegedly used the funds to purchase private property, private planes and plastic surgery.

If the allegations are true (and there is considerable evidence that they are), this would be an enormous amount of money stolen from the teachers, who earn less than $20,000 per year, on average. However, the prosecution of Gordillo probably has little to do with concern for the plight of the average Mexican teacher, for whom the ruling elite have little compassion (except possibly a few crocodile tears during election time). Rather, it is a strategic move meant to neutralize an individual and an organization that have stood in the way of private financial gain.

Gordillo has been an outspoken critic of the government’s free market reform agenda, thus slowing (ever so slightly) the juggernaut of privatization occurring in Mexico, as in public education systems throughout the world. While Gordillo, like her colleagues in the U.S. and other countries, has been relatively impotent in this endeavor, what little efforts she has made are still considered unacceptable to education profiteers who demand complete unfettered access to education tax dollars.  Her arrest is also likely meant to reduce the political influence of her union (she has repeatedly rallied her 1.5 million members to vote as a bloc and used their dues in political campaigns), and send a message to anyone critical of the government’s privatization agenda.

Had the government truly cared about the wellbeing of its impoverished teachers, it would have prosecuted Gordillo years ago. Indeed, she had repeatedly been accused of fraud and embezzlement over the years, but the government chose to ignore the accusations until now. It is curious that Gordillo was arrested only one day after the government enacted major new reforms to the education system.

According to the union, these new reforms could result in mass layoffs and the further privatization of the Mexican education system. One of the reforms, for example, will require teachers to undergo regular examinations in order to maintain their jobs. Considering that many teachers are poorly trained or under qualified, this clearly could result in massive layoffs.

The new legislation also strips away union influence over hiring and promotions and implements merit-based systems for both. According to Reuters, this was intended to halt a corrupt system in which teaching jobs were passed down through families or sold by the union, while veteran teachers were getting cushy paid positions within the union, calling in substitutes to fill in for them in the classroom, and continuing to receive paychecks for their teaching responsibilities. Gordillo was quoted by Reuters saying “either the government bureaucracy sells them [teaching jobs], or my bureaucracy sells them. . . “

The quality of public education in Mexico is not good. Mexican students perform near the bottom compared with other OECD nations. Reformers blame union corruption for the problem and argue that the new legislation will end this corruption, raise the standards of the teaching profession in Mexico and improve educational outcomes for students. However, without providing good quality free or inexpensive teacher training programs, the new legislation will merely throw people out of work without doing anything to get quality teachers into the classrooms. Furthermore, as in all merit-based programs, even the well-trained, honest teachers who show up every day and do an excellent job will be at risk of losing their jobs if student performance data (which is correlated much more with students’ socioeconomic backgrounds and other outside of school influences than it is with teacher quality) does not improve sufficiently.

NY Mayor Buys LA School Board Race, Starts Arms Race With UTLA

Huck/Konopacki Labor Cartoons

One might well wonder why New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg is spending $1 million of his own hard-(hardly)-earned cash to influence the Los Angeles school board race (the largest donation yet in this hotly contested race). Yet it is not just Bloomberg—several other billionaire outsiders have also ponied up large sums to help their favorite candidates win and it is not because they care about the wellbeing of LA’s children. Los Angeles Unified (like New York) is a battleground school district in the quest by wealthy investors and entrepreneurs to siphon off tax dollars from public education and crush their biggest enemy—the unions. What goes down in LA, they hope, will soon follow throughout the country, aiding their ability to weaken or destroy public sector unions, while increasing their share of the profits.

Bloomberg’s donation to Coalition for School Reform was meant to aid incumbent L.A. school board president Monica Garcia, in District 2, challenger Kate Anderson, in District 4, and Antonio Sanchez, who is fighting for an open seat in District 6. Each of these candidates has been a strong supporter of Superintendent Deasy’s reform agenda and two (Garcia and Anderson) have been vocal critics of the teachers union, United Teachers of Los Angeles (UTLA).

While Bloomberg’s $1 million has been the largest single donation, Coalition for School Reform (CSR) has also raised more than $1.5 million in smaller donations, according to the LA Times, from other billionaires ($250,000 each from veteran free market education “reformer” Eli Broad and former Univision chief A. Jerrold Perenchio). CSR also includes Megan Chernin, who runs a nonprofit formed by Deasy to raise funds for LAUSD schools and who used to head L.A.’s Promise, which managed three LAUSD charter schools. A smaller donation of $10,000 was made by Steven Prough, the current head of L.A.’s Promise.

The coalition has also received six-figure donations from Lynda Resnick, creator of POM Wonderful juice, and journalist Jamie Alter Lynton, who is on the board of Deasy’s nonprofit and who is married to Michael Lynton, chairman and chief executive of Sony Pictures Entertainment. Lynton has used her journalism connections as a bully pulpit to criticize UTLA and its defense of due process rights for its members. Former New York City schools Chancellor Joel Klein has also ponied up $25,000 to support the cause.

The Coalition for School Reform is a pro-charter and pro-accountability outfit that Mayor Villagairosa set up to fund his pro-privatization candidates back in 2011. In that election, the coalition raised over $1 million from right wing billionaire Phillip Anshutz (a “reactionary that makes the fascist-friendly Koch Brothers look moderate” wrote Robert Skeels), as well as billionaires Eli Broad, Jerrold Perenchio and others. Skeels, an education and social justice activist who writes for Schools Matter and Solidaridad, is also running against Garcia, but has raised his comparatively infinitesimal funding entirely through small donations and community organizing.

So who are the candidates the coalition is supporting in this current election and what is their agenda? Let’s start with current Board President Monica Garcia, a raving union-buster, who said that if she were president of UTLA she would go on a rampage and fire all “ineffective” teachers and eliminate seniority. This only shows that she has no clue how school districts actually operate (e.g., the district is the boss, with the power to hire and fire; the union is the employee of the teachers, with the responsibility to defend their interests and no ability to fire teachers). More significantly, it implies that she despises teachers, presuming great numbers of them to be incompetent, or at least an expensive burden, who should be replaced en-masse by lower-paid and more compliant novices.

The coalition’s candidate for District 4, one of LAUSD’s more affluent districts, is Kate Anderson, an attorney who once worked for Munger, Tolles & Olson, a high-powered law firm with members who are currently working in President Obama’s cabinet and who have served (or who currently serve) as CEO’s and directors of large investment firms, like Salomon Brothers and Berkshire Hathaway. One of the coalition’s priorities for District 4 is “stand[ing] up to special interest groups that make it impossible to remove poorly performing teachers.” In other words, they are counting on Anderson to attack collective bargaining and weaken the union by eviscerating teachers’ due process rights. Anderson’s supporters include Ben Austin, founder of Parent Revolution, the astroturf group behind most of LAUSD’s Parent Trigger battles, and another charter school advocate and profiteer.

Anderson, like Garcia, has publicly expressed ignorance about how the school district operates, calling into question her credibility as a future board member. She was quoted in the L.A. Weekly saying “I’m really frustrated by the lack of a teacher evaluation system. . .” though LAUSD does in fact have a teacher evaluation system, one that was negotiated by the district with the union and signed into a contract by both parties. Like Garcia, she, too, is disdainful of teachers, saying “We need a system that. . . when appropriate, helps teachers gracefully exit from the system.” This is essentially a euphemism for, “we need a more efficient way to get rid of teachers.” It is probably safe to presume she is referring to expensive veterans, union organizers, student advocates, charter school critics, and others who stand in the way of CSR’s privatization schemes. Ironically, Anderson’s opponent, Steve Zimmer, is a Teach for America alumnus who is supported by both UTLA and several charter schools.

In response to the large donation by Bloomberg, UTLA has asked for outside funds from the state and national teachers unions to help it support its own favorite candidates for the L.A. school board and has said it planned to spend several million dollars on the election.  As of last week, the NEA was unwilling to get involved, but the California Teachers Association and AFT have left the possibility open, according to the LA School Report. Regardless, it is unlikely that UTLA will be able to keep up the coalition’s spending, as it has no billionaire supporters.

The third candidate being pushed by CSR is Antonio Sanchez, another Villaraigosa ally, who also once worked for the County Federation of Labor, making him seem like a pro-union (rather than pro-privatization) candidate. Indeed, the Daily News reports that several unions have endorsed Sanchez, including UTLA and SEIU. However, despite his labor credentials, Sanchez supports much of Villaraigosa’s “reform” agenda, according to the L.A. School Report, saying that he wants to “break” the divide between unions and school choice and accountability advocates. This ought to give UTLA pause, as “breaking the divide” means getting the union to accept harmful concessions. For example, Sanchez supports the use of student performance data in teacher evaluations.

“Breaking the divide” between teachers’ unions and “reform” advocates is one of the main goals of CSR and its billionaire funders. As the reform movement sees it, the unions’ opposition to evaluation reform, Value Added Measures (VAM) and charter schools is irrational, selfish and meritless—and something that can be whittled away with persistence and finesse. They have good reason to believe this. UTLA—as well as CTU, in Chicago, and UFT, in New York—have all acquiesced to the use of student performance data or actual test scores to evaluate their teachers, despite the fact that such data is inconsistent, unreliable and correlates more strongly with students’ socioeconomic backgrounds than with teacher quality.

Ex-Beverly Hills Superintendent Convicted

Former Beverly Hills schools superintendent Jeffrey Hubbard, was convicted Monday on two felony charges of misappropriation of public funds, the Los Angeles Times reported this week. Hubbard, who is currently superintendent of the Newport-Mesa Unified School District, was convicted of ordering $20,000 in bonuses for an administrator and increasing her car allowance to $500 a month without approval from the school board.

The administrator to whom he gave the bonuses was Karen Anne Christiansen, a former facilities director. During the trial, sexually suggestive emails between the two of them were revealed, suggesting that the misappropriation was no accident, but a deliberate attempt to reward someone with whom he was having a “special relationship.”

Hubbard faces up to five years in prison when he is sentenced Feb. 23. It remains to be seen how his current employer will deal with the news, though state officials have suggested that he will be allowed to keep his education credentials. Newport Beach and Costa Mesa school trustees are meeting in closed session today "to take appropriate action."

The Rise and Fall of Arlene Ackerman

Former Philly school Superintendent Arlene Ackerman gave a $7.5 million no-bid contract to cronies at IBS Communications to install surveillance cameras. IBS was given the no-bid contract despite previous work with the district that involved cost overruns 12 times what they had originally estimated.  She then scapegoated underlings for the scandal and squeezed the Philadelphia school board for a $900,000 buyout package to get her to resign and go away.

Now, in a civil-rights lawsuit, John Byars, the school district’s former head procurement officer, is saying Ackerman personally directed the awarding of the IBS contract and tried to pin it on him, according to Philly.com. He is also accusing the district of suspending him and trying to fire him for speaking to the FBI about the matter. Five other administrators were also disciplined in the scandal. Ackerman continues to deny directing anyone to give the contract to IBS.

While four of the six administrators who had been suspended were ultimately allowed back to work, Philly.com reports that Francis X. Dougherty, former deputy chief business officer, has filed papers indicating that he plans to sue for wrongful termination under the state's whistle-blower law. Augustine Pescatore, a School Safety commander who was suspended and allowed back to work filed documents in Court indicating he also plans to sue Ackerman for slander and libel.

Ackermen’s corrupt and autocratic stint in Philadelphia was no mere aberration in an otherwise stellar career. In San Francisco, Ackerman secured herself a $250,000 salary, plus a $2,000-a-month housing allowance and $375,000 severance package, payable even if she quit, which she was forced to do not long after taking over. As superintendent of SFUSD she pretended to clean up the district’s sloppy financial records and the scandals of the Bill Rojas years, while completely missing Trish Bascom’s embezzlement scheme going on right under her nose. This blunder was no doubt due to her obsession with quashing dissent and getting her underlings to toe the line. “I can’t continue to tolerate the dissension,” she said about her SFUSD staff and teachers.  Part of her strategy for reducing dissent was to spend $400,000 a year of district money on a PR firm to put a positive spin on her leadership, money that should have gone to classroom instruction.