Families for Excellent Schools busted - Pro-charter school group pays state’s largest campaign finance penalty

A wealthy New York organization that poured $15 million into last year’s unsuccessful ballot question to expand charter schools in Massachusetts was hit Monday with the largest fine in state campaign history after officials found the group was illegally hiding the identities of its donors.

Families for Excellent Schools-Advocacy, a nonprofit that was the single largest funder behind Question 2 in Massachusetts, was slapped with a $426,466 fine, the largest in the 44-year history of the state Office of Campaign and Political Finance.... Boston Globe

Chair of the board overseeing charter schools gives half a million to promote charters? Bald blatant corruption! Prosecute! Fire! If a Democrat did that the GOP would be totally on fire! ... Comment on Boston Globe story on FES

The shit hit the fan on the actions of the slime ball astro turf Families for Excellent Schools on their actions in Massachusetts.
The list of donors is here: http://files.ocpf.us/pdf/guides/fesacreport.pdf

Check out this story and please share in NY threads. Note that the Chair of the MA Board of Elementary and Secondary Education gave - in secret- $500k to support the charter ballot question last fall.

a small but meaningful victory
solidarity
Barbara Madeloni 

Jia Lee writes:
The Massachusettes Teachers Association, under Barbara Madeloni's leadership and EDU's (their social justice caucus) organizing, worked successfully against millions in dark money to fight a charter ballot question AND now this!

The outrage is that the press, especially Chalkbeat, acts like FES is a legit grass roots org. This quote from the story:

Maurice Cunningham, a political scientist at the University of Massachusetts Boston, said the cloak of secrecy helped Families For Excellent Schools-Advocacy project an image as a grass-roots organization focused on helping urban youth.
“You can’t say, ‘We’re Billionaires for Excellent Schools,’ ” said Cunningham.

Leonie Haimson:

The list of donors is here: http://files.ocpf.us/pdf/guides/fesacreport.pdf

The only NY donor at first glance was Kenneth Langone of Home Depot.

Problem is there is about $3M listed from FES - which means the money is still dark and probably from NY as well.  Wonder if anyway we can get identities of those donors.  If not, perhaps there should be a letter to the NY AG and/or legislators, demanding action on the dark money issue similar to the disclosure laws they have in MA.

Also troubling is that while FES is barred from campaigning in MA for 4 years, their major donor the Walton Foundation has now set up another fake AstroTurf org in MA apparently called Mass Parents United.

See Ravitch on the story:

Massachusetts: State Fines Dark Money Group $426,000 in Charter Battle

Here is the complete Boston Globe Story  where you should read the comments. Also below the page break.

#E4E Gets Big Unwelcome at Chicago School - What You Can Do In NYC if they come to your school

Watch out for this group. They are not to be trusted! Have they come to your schools? Sarah Chambers added 7 new photos.

Sarah helped organize her school to resist the #Educators for Excellence  Astroturf message disguised as supporting teachers.

 

Educators for Excellence, the AstroTurf group, came to my school and boy, did we give them a run for their money!
When they walked into the staff cafeteria, it was covered in flyers about who they really are, union busters!
Our contract action team members also went into action when we found out they were in the building. They spoke with their team members about E4Es corrupt agenda.
We also made it clear that we are a union school and we don't support their agenda.
90% of the teachers completely boycotted their lunch, but the ones that came by refused to sign their cards or give their info. Some teachers interrogated them.
An e4E staffer made a Freudian slip and said, "We are pro public school and pro charter, I mean pro union, not pro charter."

Watch out for this group. They are not to be trusted! Have they come to your schools?