You don’t know Jack

When crticisms of Alameda Community Learning Center (ACLC) comes up, inevitably someone will point to State Superintendent Jack O’Connell visit to ACLC and say, “See, he thinks it’s terrific, so you all should too.”  One of the sites I like to read is SFSchools which, while it focuses on San Francisco school issues, sometimes branches out a bit, one of the authors there pointed me toward a blog — The Perimeter Primate — written by a former staff person with the Oakland Unified School District and parent of children who attended Oakland schools.   She had reposted an excellent “My Word” that she had written for the Oakland Tribune and I recall enjoying it when I had read it on SFSchools but couldn’t find it.  (Bear with me folks, there is a reason behind this huge set-up)   What made the Perimeter Primate interesting is that the author had recently been let go from her position at the OUSD and she attributes it (in Caroline’s words on SFSchools):

…She’s quite certain she was fired in retaliation for her writings speaking out about the current state of Oakland Unified, which has basically been turned over to billionaires whose hobby is school reform, to experiment with those oddly named “boutique schools” and whatever other whims strike their fancy. Sharon writes that when outsiders swoop in to renovate a school district, they throw out babies like community and history with the bathwater.

And in fact on the Perimeter Primate on the left hand column of the blog she relates one of her conversations with a district official leading up to her termination.  So my interest was piqued and not knowing a whole lot about the state of OUSD I kept reading the Perimeter Primate to figure out what the heck was going on.  Turns out, her criticisms mirror those that were catalogued in the East Bay Express about billionaire Eli Broad’s (as in Kaufman and) machinations in the business of OUSD.   One of the things that was really interesting was how the story kept coming back to Jack O’Connell and his ties to the charter school advocacy community.   One of the things EBX loves to do is tie an issue to campaign funding and this time, they hit the pay dirt.  Many thanks to Robert Gammon and the EBX for compiling Jack O’Connell’s 2002 campaign finance report into an easy to use Excel spreadsheet.

While Gammon reported that Reed Hastings, CEO of Netflix, was at the top of the list of contributors with two checks totaling $250K, it was actually three checks totalling $260K, but what’s $10K amongst friends?  Hastings is an ardent charter school supporter, from an article in the Wall Street Journal:

…Mr. Hastings has funded ballot initiatives designed to increase school choice. He’s headed California’s board of education. And he led a successful effort to lift the cap on charters in the state. At the grass-roots level, he has funded several networks of charter schools that are now serving thousands of children, and he currently sits on the board of KIPP Academy, one of the nation’s most successful charter school networks…

John Doerr brought in $205K to the O’Connell campaign and, according to Gammon, is a cofounder of NewSchools Fenture Fund, which is:

…a major supporter of charter schools, shares Broad’s vision of using business strategies to solve problems in public education. Doerr, who ranks 271 on the Forbes list, is a good friend of Eli Broad. And Broad and Hastings rank among NewSchools’ biggest donors…

Eli Broad, of which the story is largely about, gave $100K to the O’Connell campaign.

For some reason, Gammon ignored the $90K contribution made by Doris Fisher, as in Gap, who along with her husband ($7500 to the campaign) are also hard core charter school advocates.  Both were awarded the Hart Vision Award by the California Charter School Association, Jack O’Connell was also a Hart Vision Award receipent one year.

And another notable contributor is Stephen T. Kirsch, who gave $75K and change (about $300 worth of change) to the O’Connell campaign, and through his private foundation has given money to a local Charter School.

All these financially committed charter school advocates giving money to Jack O’Connell’s election campaign, and the result a continuing commitment on the part of Jack O’Connell to charter schools and their advocates.   Is it any wonder that Jack O’Connell thought that ACLC was the best thing since sliced bread?   Three guesses of what will happen if the County Board of Education denies the ACLC appeal and it heads straight up to Jack O’Connell’s office?