Publish to Newswire
Add an EventFrom the Open-Publishing Calendar
From the Open-Publishing Newswire
Indybay Feature
No More Billionaires Privatization, Union Busting & Racist Attacks
Import event into your personal calendar
Date:
Saturday, August 01, 2020
Time:
10:30 AM
-
1:30 PM
Event Type:
Protest
Organizer/Author:
Stop Police Terror & End Systemic Racism
Location Details:
10:30 AM Oakland Coliseum & Caravan To
GAP Corporate Headquarters Folsom & Embarcadero
San Francisco with rally at 12:00 noon
GAP Corporate Headquarters Folsom & Embarcadero
San Francisco with rally at 12:00 noon
No Privatization Of The Port Of Oakland by A’s Billionaire Owner John Fisher & Defend SFUSD Malcom X Academy Threatened By Doris Fisher’s KIPP School Room Grab.
Join The Saturday August 1 Car Caravan and 12:00 PM Rally
At The GAP Corporate Headquarters at Folsom & The Embarcadero San Francisco
Physical Distancing At Rally
Sponsored by The Committe To Stop Police Terrorism and End Systemic Racism
The attack on Blacks and working people in the bay area and nationally is growing. In Oakland, the A’s billionaire owner John Fisher who also owns the GAP is engaged in a public land grab scheme to take the Howard Terminal in the Port of Oakland and develop it with a new stadium, 3,000 one million
dollar condos and a hotel.
This will massively expand genetrification and ethnic cleansing in West Oakland.
It would also destroy the viability of the working Port of Oakland and threaten the loss of thousands of jobs
of ILWU members and other unionized maritime workers in Northern California. This is also a direct attack on the ILWU Black majority locals in the Bay Area.
John Fisher refuses to keep the stadium at the Coliseum where there is already a stadium and infrastructure including BART.
Fisher also has the support of Democratic politicians Ron Banta and Nancy Skinner who with the support of Oakland Mayor Libby Schaaf passed a State bill that not only allows the privatization of Port land but sets up a tax to pay for the billionaire's land development infrastructure costs.
While thousands are homeless in Oakland, these politicians want a tax to help a billionaire’s development scheme?
In San Francisco, the public Malcom X Academy school in Bayview Hunters Point is under attack by the KIPP
charter school.
This public school was set up to support the Black children and even had a garden that is threatened by this privatization co-location room grab under Proposition 39. GAP owner Doris Fisher, the mother of John Fisher runs the KIPP charter school chain and her chain is suing the San Francisco Unified School District SFUSD to take more rooms at the Malcom X Academy public school to turn over to her privately run KIPP charter school.
The students, teachers and parents have all demanded that Fisher and KIPP leave their school alone and stop stealing rooms at the school.
Doris Fisher and her son John Fisher apparently feel that the billionaires have the right to take public port land destroying union jobs and destroy public schools like Malcom X Academy in the Black community.
It is time to Defend Oakland Port Jobs and Stop The Destruction of The SF Malcom X Academy By The Fisher Family.
Enough Is Enough!
Sponsored by Committee To Stop Police Terrorism and End Systemic Racism
https://www.juneteenthspt.com
SF Bayview School Malcom X Academy Feeling Squeezed by New KIPP Charter
https://sfpublicpress.org/bayview-school-feeling-squeezed-by-new-charter/
malcolmx.jpg
Malcolm X Academy in the Bayview is decorated with brightly colored murals of the school’s namesake, maps of Africa and the motto of both the slain black leader and the school: “by any means necessary.” Photos by Rob Waters // San Francisco Public Press
09.20.2018 | by Rob Waters ROB WATERS |
Malcolm X Academy sits atop one of the peaks that gives the Bayview district its name. It has commanding views of the bay and downtown San Francisco. The front of the school is decorated with brightly colored murals of the school’s namesake, maps of Africa and the motto of both the slain black leader and the school: “by any means necessary.”
That motto is being tested as the school and its 105 students — up from 90 last year — share space with 90 pre-kindergartners, kindergartners and first graders attending a new charter school in the same building, KIPP Bayview Elementary.
Thirty-one years ago — when teacher Gina Bissell began working at Malcolm X, and the district still bused children to achieve racial balance — it had more than 400 students and was ethnically diverse. For the past seven years, its census has fluctuated between 90 and 120, according to former principal Elena Rosen, who left the school in June. About 70 percent of students are African-American.
See: Charters vs. District: The Battle for S.F. Public Schools
On a Thursday morning before summer recess, a group of children in red shirts walked up the path to the school, holding onto a long belt and their teachers’ hands. They came from a neighborhood preschool to get a glimpse of the school they’d soon attend — a way to help them feel comfortable, Rosen explained. She welcomed them and led them down the hall to join a kindergarten class for circle time.
After a few minutes, the kids headed to recess, each kindergartener holding hands with a preschool buddy. While the kids romped on the large school playground, kicking balls, tossing Frisbees and jumping off a climbing structure, Bissell offered a reporter a school tour.
Bissell, a reading recovery teacher, showed off her room, a corner space with bookshelves, posters and a small table for working with kids one-on-one or in small groups. Every day, she pulls 15 to 18 kids who are reading below grade level out of their regular classroom to help them. While this work could happen on the sidelines of classes, that can cause “noise and interruptions — and students less focused on learning,” she said.
Since KIPP moved in and took over six classrooms, Bissell is sharing her space with a Malcolm X resource teacher who helps children with special needs. Their meetings are supposed to be confidential, so Bissell and her colleague must figure out how to manage the space and protect the children’s privacy.
As Bissell talked, a thin 8-year-old boy came in and gave Bissell a hug. He transferred to Malcolm X six months earlier and has since moved up four reading levels. “I get a lot of help from Miss Bissell,” he said. “She’s my favorite teacher.”
At his old school, he said, he had stomachaches and got in trouble for staying too long in the bathroom, ending up with six suspensions. Now, he likes coming to school.
Bissell worries that the strict behavioral rules employed in many charter schools won’t work for kids like the young boy. “It’s too rigid,” Bissell said. “He‘s thriving in a environment where it’s more engaging and activated. He’s built trusting relationships with adults and wants to be here.”
On the second floor, an outdoor education classroom used four days a week was lined with seedlings and potting soil. Two doors down, a therapist worked one-on-one with a child. These classrooms, and others used last year by Malcolm X’s after-school program, have now been turned over to KIPP.
Malcolm X has made progress in recent years. By the end of last year, 72 percent of Malcolm X students were reading at or above grade level, up from 55 percent in previous years, Rosen said, the result of experienced, collaborative staff members providing intensive resources and forging partnerships with community programs.
“We’re seeing systematic growth in our reading data,” she said. “We’re closing the gap.”
The sudden decision in May to place KIPP at Malcolm X left staff, students and parents feeling anxiety and worried that some of their fragile progress may be undermined. “It’s hard to share our space,” said librarian Deirdre Elmansoumi. “But we are trying to be cordial and make the most of it.”
Despite the tension, Malcolm X’s new principal, Marco Taylor, and KIPP Principal Allie Welch each pledge to be cordial, professional and positive. “We are committed to being good neighbors,” Welch said in an email. That may get more difficult in the years ahead as KIPP tries to expand, adding one grade each year for the next three years on the way to becoming a pre-kindergarten to 4th-grade school.
“We are committed to being good neighbors,” said KIPP Bayview Elementary Principal Allie Welch.
SF Bayview School Malcom X Academy Feeling Squeezed by New KIPP Charter
https://sfpublicpress.org/bayview-school-feeling-squeezed-by-new-charter/
malcolmx.jpg
Malcolm X Academy in the Bayview is decorated with brightly colored murals of the school’s namesake, maps of Africa and the motto of both the slain black leader and the school: “by any means necessary.” Photos by Rob Waters // San Francisco Public Press
09.20.2018 | by Rob Waters ROB WATERS |
Malcolm X Academy sits atop one of the peaks that gives the Bayview district its name. It has commanding views of the bay and downtown San Francisco. The front of the school is decorated with brightly colored murals of the school’s namesake, maps of Africa and the motto of both the slain black leader and the school: “by any means necessary.”
That motto is being tested as the school and its 105 students — up from 90 last year — share space with 90 pre-kindergartners, kindergartners and first graders attending a new charter school in the same building, KIPP Bayview Elementary.
Thirty-one years ago — when teacher Gina Bissell began working at Malcolm X, and the district still bused children to achieve racial balance — it had more than 400 students and was ethnically diverse. For the past seven years, its census has fluctuated between 90 and 120, according to former principal Elena Rosen, who left the school in June. About 70 percent of students are African-American.
See: Charters vs. District: The Battle for S.F. Public Schools
On a Thursday morning before summer recess, a group of children in red shirts walked up the path to the school, holding onto a long belt and their teachers’ hands. They came from a neighborhood preschool to get a glimpse of the school they’d soon attend — a way to help them feel comfortable, Rosen explained. She welcomed them and led them down the hall to join a kindergarten class for circle time.
After a few minutes, the kids headed to recess, each kindergartener holding hands with a preschool buddy. While the kids romped on the large school playground, kicking balls, tossing Frisbees and jumping off a climbing structure, Bissell offered a reporter a school tour.
Bissell, a reading recovery teacher, showed off her room, a corner space with bookshelves, posters and a small table for working with kids one-on-one or in small groups. Every day, she pulls 15 to 18 kids who are reading below grade level out of their regular classroom to help them. While this work could happen on the sidelines of classes, that can cause “noise and interruptions — and students less focused on learning,” she said.
Since KIPP moved in and took over six classrooms, Bissell is sharing her space with a Malcolm X resource teacher who helps children with special needs. Their meetings are supposed to be confidential, so Bissell and her colleague must figure out how to manage the space and protect the children’s privacy.
As Bissell talked, a thin 8-year-old boy came in and gave Bissell a hug. He transferred to Malcolm X six months earlier and has since moved up four reading levels. “I get a lot of help from Miss Bissell,” he said. “She’s my favorite teacher.”
At his old school, he said, he had stomachaches and got in trouble for staying too long in the bathroom, ending up with six suspensions. Now, he likes coming to school.
Bissell worries that the strict behavioral rules employed in many charter schools won’t work for kids like the young boy. “It’s too rigid,” Bissell said. “He‘s thriving in a environment where it’s more engaging and activated. He’s built trusting relationships with adults and wants to be here.”
On the second floor, an outdoor education classroom used four days a week was lined with seedlings and potting soil. Two doors down, a therapist worked one-on-one with a child. These classrooms, and others used last year by Malcolm X’s after-school program, have now been turned over to KIPP.
Malcolm X has made progress in recent years. By the end of last year, 72 percent of Malcolm X students were reading at or above grade level, up from 55 percent in previous years, Rosen said, the result of experienced, collaborative staff members providing intensive resources and forging partnerships with community programs.
“We’re seeing systematic growth in our reading data,” she said. “We’re closing the gap.”
The sudden decision in May to place KIPP at Malcolm X left staff, students and parents feeling anxiety and worried that some of their fragile progress may be undermined. “It’s hard to share our space,” said librarian Deirdre Elmansoumi. “But we are trying to be cordial and make the most of it.”
Despite the tension, Malcolm X’s new principal, Marco Taylor, and KIPP Principal Allie Welch each pledge to be cordial, professional and positive. “We are committed to being good neighbors,” Welch said in an email. That may get more difficult in the years ahead as KIPP tries to expand, adding one grade each year for the next three years on the way to becoming a pre-kindergarten to 4th-grade school.
“We are committed to being good neighbors,” said KIPP Bayview Elementary Principal Allie Welch.
Bayview charter school run by GAP billionaire Doris Fisher sues SFUSD for more classroom space At Malcom X Academy
The San Francisco Examiner
https://www.sfexaminer.com/news/bayview-charter-school-sues-sfusd-for-more-classroom-space/
Bayview charter school sues SFUSD for more classroom space
Company calls plan to move to Treasure Island a ‘bad faith offer’
JOSHUA SABATINIJun. 2, 2020 5:50 p.m.NEWSTHE CITY
A charter school operating in the Bayview-Hunters Point neighborhood has sued the San Francisco Unified School District after it tried to force the school to relocate nine miles away to Treasure Island.
KIPP Bay Area Public Schools, part of a chain of 242 charter schools across the country, filed the lawsuit in San Francisco Superior Court against the district and Superintendent Vincent Matthews alleging they have violated a state law to provide sufficient accommodations to charter schools.
The relationship between the school district and the charter school company, which operates three schools in the Bayview District, has been strained since the beginning, when in 2017 the district’s Board of Education voted to oppose KIPP’s opening at Malcolm X Academy. The state Board of Education voted to reverse the denial.
Since 2018, KIPP Bayview Elementary has operated at the district’s Malcolm X Academy, which is where school officials wish to remain to educate a growing student body of 137 next fall. Enrollment for the 2019-20 year was 107 students. The school is expanding next year from a transitional kindergarten to second-grade school to add a third-grade class. There are plans to add a fourth-grade class in the subsequent year.
Instead of agreeing to that request, the school district offered KIPP a new space on Treasure Island, nine miles away, as was first reported by the San Francisco Examiner.
Maria Krauter, a KIPP spokesperson, said Monday that they were “shocked.” The lawsuit calls it a “bad faith offer.”
KIPP rejected it and the district subsequently offered to let them keep using Malcolm X Academy in six classrooms, which they have currently. But they argue they need 10 classrooms. The district had agreed to the charter school’s 10 classrooms when it planned the move to Treasure Island, the lawsuit said, but then “abruptly and illegally retracted” that determination when later saying they could remain at Malcolm X.
The lawsuit alleges the district has violated Proposition 39, a 2000 voter-approved state measure that sets provisions about how school districts must accommodate charter schools, first by trying to relocate KIPP to Treasure Island and then by denying the school the amount of classrooms needed for the number of students they plan to serve.
The lawsuit asks the court to compel the district to provide 10 classrooms at Malcolm X.
The school district declined to comment on the suit.
In Feburary, a school district official said they wanted to move the charter to Treasure Island to address impacts on Malcolm X, as previously reported by the Examiner.
“They would have plenty of space for their ancillary services and the squeeze would not be put on Malcolm X Academy to have to either stunt their growth or retrench and they would still be able to grow their program,” Mike Davis, director of charter schools for SFUSD, said at the time.
Krauter said “we believe there is plenty of room to share.” She said Macolm X at its maximum enrollment had 440 kids and now it’s “just a bit over 100.”
“There is a way to have a mutually beneficial shared campus,” she said. “They deserve a high-quality option in the neighborhood.”
There are strong opinions about charter schools.
Supervisor Shamann Walton was on the school board when he voted against KIPP and he continues to oppose the school at Malcolm X. He represents the Bayview on the Board of Supervisors.
“Obviously I hope that KIPP stops trying to take resources away from a community that needs all the support they can get for our students,” Walton said. “The blatant disregard for protecting precious resources, even during this crisis, is appalling.”
Krauter said, “This is not an us vs. them, and our students vs. their students.”
“Our students are SFUSD students. And our students are Bayview-Hunters Point residents,” she said.
Christy Neasley, who lives in the Bayview, said her adopted 6-year-old niece has attended the charter school since it began, when she enrolled her in transitional kindergarten two years ago.
“She is thriving so much in this school,” Neasley said.
She said she doesn’t understand why there has to be this conflict between the district and the charter school.
“I’m a little angry. But I’m more worried because I really want her to keep on with this path. I don’t want them to break this family up,” she said.
Neasley said she thought the district’s initial offer to send KIPP to Treasure Island was disingenuous and that no one would have sent their kids from the Bayview there, which would have taken about an hour by bus to get there.
“I thought it was an offer just for them to make the school close down,” she said.
Krauter called the lawsuit “a last resort.”
jsabatini [at] sfexaminer.com
Gap Co-Founder Doris Fisher Is Bankrolling the Charter School Agenda – and Pouring Dark Money Into CA Politics
https://www.alternet.org/2016/09/gap-cofounder-bankrolling-charter-school-agenda/
Written by Joel Warner / Capital And Main September 27, 2016
As co-founder of the Gap, San Francisco-based business leader and philanthropist Doris Fisher boasts a net worth of $2.6 billion, making her the country’s third richest self-made woman, according to Forbes. And she’s focused much of her wealth and resources on building charter schools. She and her late husband Donald donated more than $70 million to the Knowledge is Power Program (KIPP) and helped to personally build the operation into the largest network of charter schools in the country, with 200 schools serving 80,000 students in 20 states. Doris’ son John serves as the chairman of KIPP’s board of directors, and she sits on the board herself.
Doris’ passion for charter schools also fuels her political donations. While not as well-known as other deep-pocketed charter school advocates like Eli Broad and the Walton family (heirs to the Walmart fortune), Fisher and her family have quietly become among the largest political funders of charter school efforts in the country. Having contributed $5.6 million to state political campaigns since 2013, Fisher was recently listed as the second largest political donor in California by the Sacramento Bee – and nearly all of her money now goes to promoting pro-charter school candidates and organizations. While often labelled a Republican, she gives to Democrats and Republicans alike, just as long as they’re supportive of the charter school movement. According to campaign finance reports, so far this election cycle she’s spent more than $3.3 million on the political action committees of charter school advocacy groups EdVoice and the California Charter Schools Association (CCSA), as well as pro-charter candidates. (Christopher Nelson, managing director of the Fishers’ philanthropic organization, sits on the board of CCSA, which, along with EdVoice, declined to comment for this article.)
Fisher’s philanthropic and political efforts are not as straightforward as simply promoting education, however. Recent investigations have found that she’s used dark-money networks to funnel funds into California campaign initiatives that many say targeted teachers and undermined public education. It’s why many education activists worry about the impact her money is having on California politics – and on California schoolchildren.
Fisher’s decision to double down on charter school candidates and political action groups this election season comes at a time of increasing backlash against such schools, which operate largely independently of public school systems but still receive public funding. Last month, the American Civil Liberties Union of Southern California and Public Advocates reported that more than 250 California charter schools – more than one-fifth of the state’s total – violated state law by denying enrollment to low-performing and other potentially undesirable students (the report caused more than 50 of the schools to change or clarify admissions policies, leading the ACLU to remove them from its list). This came after a study of charter school discipline by the UCLA’s Center for Civil Rights Remedies in March that found that charters suspended African-American students and students with disabilities at higher rates than traditional schools. And last year, a report by the Center for Popular Democracy, the Alliance of Californians for Community Empowerment Institute and Public Advocates Inc. concluded that in California alone, charter school fraud and negligence had cost state taxpayers more than $81 million.
It’s why in the last couple months, both the NAACP’s national convention and the Black Lives Matter movement have called for a moratorium on charter school growth, noting that the privatization of the nation’s schools was a major social justice concern. As the NAACP noted in its resolution, which has to be formally approved by the NAACP’s national board, “…weak oversight of charter schools puts students and communities at risk of harm, public funds at risk of being wasted, and further erodes local control of public education.”
And even if some of the charter schools Fisher champions have been a success, she’s secretly supported efforts that critics regard as undermining the success of the public school system and teachers. A recent investigation by California Hedge Clippers, a coalition of community groups and unions, found that Fisher was one of a number of wealthy Californians who in 2012 used a dark money network involving out-of-state organizations linked to the conservative Koch brothers to shield their donations to controversial campaign efforts that year. The money was used to oppose Proposition 30, a tax on high-income Californians to fund public schools and public safety, and support Proposition 32, which, among other things, would have severely limited the ability of organized labor, including teachers unions, to raise money for state and local races.
At the time of the campaign, none of these donations were public. In fact, fellow charter-school advocate Eli Broad publically endorsed Proposition 30 while secretly donating $500,000 to the dark money fund dedicated to defeating it. And Fisher herself had close ties to Governor Jerry Brown, a key proponent of Proposition 30. Brown’s wife Anne Gust Brown worked as chief administrative officer at the Gap until 2005 and is credited with helping to improve the company’s labor standards, and the Fishers were major financial supporters of Brown’s 2014 campaign to pass Proposition 1, the water bond, and Proposition 2, the “rainy day budget” stabilization act.
“I would imagine that it caused some domestic strife,” says Karen Wolfe, a California parent and founder of PSconnect, a community group that advocates for traditional public schools. “[Anne likely] thought she had the Fishers’ support on her husband’s crowning achievement, a tax to finally balance California’s budget and bring the state out of functional bankruptcy. This was absolutely his highest priority.”
In total, according to the Hedge Clippers investigation, Fisher and her sons donated more than $18 million to the dark money group. It wasn’t the only time the Fisher family has worked with political organizations known for concealing their financial supporters. In 2006, current KIPP chairman John Fisher gave $85,000 to All Children Matter, a school-privatization political action group in Ohio that was slapped with a record-setting $5.2 million fine for illegally funneling contributions through out-of-state dark money networks. Instead of paying the fine, All Children Matter shut down and one of its conservative founders launched a new group: the Alliance for School Choice, which in 2011 listed John Fisher as its secretary. And last year, Doris Fisher contributed $750,000 to California Charter School Association Advocates, which funneled such donations to a local committee. The names of individual donors wouldn’t be disclosed until after the election.
Despite the dark money group’s best efforts, Proposition 30 passed and Proposition 32 failed. As a result, according to the Hedge Clippers report, KIPP schools in California that Fisher had long championed received nearly $5 million in Proposition 30 taxpayer funding in the 2013-2014 school year.
“What outrageous hypocrisy that she and her cabal profess to be all about the interests of quality education of low-income communities of color, and yet behind the scenes are undercutting one of the most important policies to fund public education we have seen in decades,” says Amy Schur, state campaign director for the Alliance of Californians for Community Empowerment, part of the Hedge Clipper coalition, which is advocating for the extension of the Proposition 30 tax at the ballot box this November.
To critics, such findings suggest that Fisher and other deep-pocketed advocates currently pumping millions into California politics to promote their charter-school agenda are ignoring the sorts of fundamental financial reforms that could make a difference for struggling schoolchildren but would hurt their bottom lines.
“These people are looking at inequality and saying, ‘These people do not have sufficient education,’ when there are other issues regarding the structure of the economy that would more directly impact the poor,” says Harold Meyerson, executive editor of theAmerican Prospect. “It’s nice the Waltons and the Fisher family are concerned about the poor with regards to the quality of their education, but a more direct way to help them would be to give workers at Walmart and the Gap a raise and to give them more hours.”
Photo via Andybis123 via Wikimedia Commons
Photo via Andybis123 via Wikimedia Commons
Born Doris Feigenbaum in 1931 in New York, Fisher and her husband struck modern-day gold in San Francisco when they founded the first Gap store there in 1969. By all indications, Doris and her husband, who passed away in 2009, worked hand in hand building the brand.
The result was a $16-billion business with more than 3,700 stores worldwide. While Gap Inc. recently received attention for being among the first major brands to voluntarily increase the minimum wage of its U.S. workforce, like many global retailers, it has also faced intense scrutiny for its labor practices, such as the poor working conditions of its factory workers overseas.
Even after the company released “Sourcing Principles and Guidelines” in response to such critiques in 1993, the company was publically cited for factory condition violations six times in the following 14 years. Indeed, just two years after the guidelines were issued, New York Times columnist Bob Herbert offered this withering observation:
“The hundreds of thousands of young (and mostly female) factory workers in Central America who earn next to nothing and often live in squalor have been an absolute boon to American clothing company executives like Donald G. Fisher, the chief executive of the Gap and Banana Republic empire, who lives in splendor and paid himself more than $2 million last year.”
2013 report exposed abusive working conditions in a Bangladeshi factory that made clothes for The Gap.
2013 report exposed abusive working conditions in a Bangladeshi factory that made clothes for The Gap.
Stung by the negative publicity, the Gap launched an effort to crack down on labor abuses that won widespread praise. But the problems did not go away. In 2007, the Gap found itself embroiled in a child labor controversyafter the British paper The Observer reported that children as young as 10 were working for up to 16 hours a day to make clothes, including items with Gap labels. To contain the damage, the company announced a set of measures to eliminate the use of child labor. But in 2013, The Gap once again made headlines — this time for selling clothes manufactured in a Bangladesh sweatshop where workers were allegedly made to work 100 hours per week and cheated on wages that averaged 20 to 24 cents per hour.
The Fishers’ experiences with the Gap may well have shaped their involvement in education reform, which began in 2000 when they learned about Mike Feinberg and Dave Levin. The two Teach for America alums had launched the first two KIPP charter schools, one in Houston and one in the South Bronx, designed around high expectations, extended school days and performance-driven results. “[The Fishers] liked the notion that careful training and well-constructed, on-the-job experience, as they had done in their company, could produce better school leaders,” says Washington Post education writer Jay Mathews, author of a book on KIPP, Work Hard. Be Nice.
And it’s why when Scott Hamilton, the charter school expert the couple had hired to find education projects, suggested they work to scale up Feinberg and Levin’s program, they agreed, spending $15 million to create the KIPP Foundation to train people on how to launch new KIPP schools. Soon KIPP was spreading across the country the way Gap stores did in malls from coast to coast. Along with donating more money to KIPP, the Fishers also gave money to Teach for America, which became a major source of KIPP’s teachers. “[Don] used what he learned in growing Gap Inc. to show us what we could do in public education, and tens of thousands of children have benefited from his commitment and generosity,” notes KIPP Foundation CEO Richard Barth in Donald Fisher’s Gap biography.
KIPP is considered by many experts to be a success story. “You can make good arguments that many charters are disappointing, but not KIPP,” says Matthews. “It is the most studied charter school system by far, and all of those independent studies, particularly a big one by Mathematica, show that KIPP raises achievement significantly higher than regular schools for similar kids in similar neighborhoods, even in a randomized study.”
But not everyone is thrilled by KIPP’s approach. In 2012, a study led by Julian Vasquez Heilig, then faculty in the University of Texas at Austin College of Education’s Department of Educational Administration, found that despite KIPP’s claims that 88 to 90 percent of their students went to college, black high school students were much more likely to leave KIPP and other urban charter schools in Texas than they were to leave traditional urban public schools. And in New York City, the other place where KIPP got its start, math teacher and education blogger Gary Rubinstein found that in 2012-2013, the three KIPP schools that have kindergartens posted lower 3rd grade test scores than two-thirds of the other charter schools in the city. And despite KIPP’s public standing, it’s not always transparent about its operations. Earlier this year the Center for Media and Democracy found that the organization claimed information about its graduation and matriculation rates, student performance results and how it would spend taxpayer dollars was “proprietary,” leading the U.S. Department of Education to redact this information from KIPP application documents before they were released to the public.
KIPP has also been criticized for its schools’ tendency to “churn and burn” young teachers because of long, demanding workdays (a third of KIPP teachers left their jobs in the 2012-2013 school year). Similarly, Teach for America, which funnels many of its teachers to KIPP schools, has faced increasing scrutiny for supplanting qualified teaching veterans with poorly trained replacements in struggling communities that are most in need of qualified instructors.
Some critics wonder if the Fishers’ background is in part responsible for such circumstances.
“If you look at the industries where these people made their wealth, you can see why they have this idea that you have to squeeze labor to make your profits,” says Cynthia Liu, founder of K-12 News Network and a charter school critic. “If you have children in India making your clothing, your profit margin is very large. Similarly, if you use automation and low-cost education ‘shock troops’ to minimize the role of teachers, making them the ‘guide on the side rather than the sage on the stage,’ you minimize your education labor costs.”
The result, says Liu, isn’t just poorly trained and overworked teachers, it’s undervalued students. “When charters rely on the churn of an expendable, fungible teaching workforce using scripted curriculum instead of career and authentically-credentialed teachers, it cheapens the learning experience for students and the profession,” she says. “A child’s education isn’t a five dollar T-shirt, it’s an investment in our future collective well-being.”
Plan to relocate Bayview charter school meets with resistance
School district wants to move KIPP elementary to vacant Treasure Island school site
https://www.sfexaminer.com/news/plan-to-relocate-bayview-charter-school-meets-with-resistance/
JOSHUA SABATINI
Feb. 19, 2020 5:00 p.m.
The San Francisco Unified School District wants to relocate a Bayview elementary charter school to Treasure Island to free up space at Malcolm X Academy.
But KIPP charter school is opposed to the idea and wants to remain right where they are to serve those in the low-income neighborhood. And those who serve on the board overseeing the man-made island are also not convinced the school district has it right.
Under state law, the district is obligated to offer space for approved charter schools to operate. In this case, school officials have identified a former elementary school site on Treasure Island to offer to KIPP Bayview Elementary, a charter school that has shared space with Malcolm X Academy since 2018.
The co-location has led to a space squeeze, school officials said.
Treasure Island Development Authority Board of Directors, which oversees the man-made island, would need to approve a lease with the school district, which in turn would then lease out the space to the charter school.
But the TIDA board postponed a vote on the arrangement last week, despite pressure from school district officials who said they had an April 1 deadline to make the deal work with the charter school for the upcoming school year. The proposed lease between TIDA and the school district is for three years and six months.
TIDA board member Linda Richardson, a proponent of charter schools, was the most outspoken critic of the school district’s plan last week.
She said that she has heard from concerned parents that the charter school should remain in the Bayview. “It appears you are kicking them to Treasure Island,” Richardson said.
The district closed the Treasure Island elementary school site down due to low enrollment in 2005 after opening it in the 1960s. But the district plans to eventually reopen as a public school as the island is undergoing a major redevelopment of 8,000 new homes.
“Why subject at-risk kids that are barely making it in their community that is poor to this? It does not seem fair,” Richardson said. “They have to come down to Treasure Island and then kick them out when you are ready with your program. I think is unacceptable.”
However, Supervisor Shamann Walton, who represents the Bayview, told the San Francisco Examiner in a text message Wednesday that he doesn’t support charter schools and “would be ecstatic if KIPP Elementary School (a charter school) left the Bayview.”
“They are taking up space at Malcolm X and basically preventing growth at that school,” Walton said.
Mike Davis, director of charter schools for SFUSD, said that KIPP’s elementary school, kindergarten through third grade, has increasing student enrollment. In its first year, 2018, the school had 60 students and next year it projects an enrollment of 118 students.
SF KIPP Breaking Up Malcom X Academy: Racist Union Busting Fisher Charter In SF Approved By SFUSD
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GWAX0Hzb_JI&t=172s
Students, teachers and family members in San Francisco on May 8, 2018 protested the San Francisco Unified School District to bust up their public school Malcom X Academy which is located in Potrero Hill by placing a KIPP school co-location on their school. This is also part of gentrification and privatization of the city and public services.including the shutdown and privatization the Potrero Hill Health Clinic.
Teachers and parents talked about how the Malcom X Academy has increased testing scores as a community supported school and how this will now be threatened with this billionaires privately run charter school on Potrero Hill.
KIPP is run out of the GAP corporation owned by SF billionaire John Fisher and his family including Doris Fisher who is on the board of KIPP SF. Governor Brown's wife Anne Gust was previously the chief counsel of GAP and Brown has appointed charter owners, operators and privatizers to the California Board of Education which they control. Co-location was also written into Prop 39 which was pushed by the California Charter School Association billionaire Netflix owner Reed Hastings. Proposition 39 passed by a small percentage and was successful because the CTA and CFT both endorsed it since it also lowed the percentage needed to pass school bonds. Now billions of dollars is being spent on privatization and charters in California. The UESF and CTA/CFT leadership continue to support "non-profit" charters which receive public funding and are run by private hand picked boards.These privately run charter schools also have non-union sometimes volunteer staff and do not pay into the CalSTRS pension system undermining all public teachers pension benefits as more than $6 billion is being spent on charter schools in California.
Students, teachers and parents also spoke out at the SFUSD school board meeting.
For more media:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mMXTzrne9aA
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JAeRbh1KVkg
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S_jZAYnrR_Q
http://www.sfexaminer.com/sf-schools-protest-sharing-space-charter-schools/
http://www.mercurynews.com/2017/11/01/kipp-high-school-petition-denied-by-santa-clara-county-school-board/
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/02/22/us/kipp-sexual-misconduct-michael-feinberg.html
http://www.kipp.org/about-kipp/the-kipp-foundation/national-partners
http://www.oakpark.com/News/Articles/8-11-2009/KIPP-school-not-the-answer-to-gap/
http://www.isreview.org/issues/62/feat-charterschools.shtml
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KM5VX8oBQbI
Additional information:
https://actionnetwork.org/petitions/nonewkippmarch
https://www.facebook.com/DefendPublicEducationNOW/
Production of Labor Video Project
http://www.laborvideo.org
SF Malcom X Academy Walkathon To Stop Billionaire Fisher Family KIPP Charter Co-Location Bust-up
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TXz9yg4RfBQ&t=140s
Students had a walkathon in their Hunters Point Bay View neighborhood to stop the KIPP charter school run by the GAP fisher family from co-locating at their public school at the Malcom X Academy. Students and supporters of public education spoke out at the walkathon which took place on May 24, 2018.
The co-location of charter schools has been used to disrupt and bust up public schools in poor and working class communities. The KIPP union busting charter school chain is run by the Fisher family which owns the GAP corporation in San Francisco. Doris Fisher who is on the board of San Francisco KIPP and her sone John Fisher who also owns the A's are leading players in the national charter privatization campaign to destroy public education.
For more media:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GWAX0Hzb_JI
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mMXTzrne9aA
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JAeRbh1KVkg
http://www.sfexaminer.com/sf-schools-protest-sharing-space-charter-schools/
http://www.mercurynews.com/2017/11/01/kipp-high-school-petition-denied-by-santa-clara-county-school-board/
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/02/22/us/kipp-sexual-misconduct-michael-feinberg.html
http://www.kipp.org/about-kipp/the-kipp-foundation/national-partners
http://www.oakpark.com/News/Articles/8-11-2009/KIPP-school-not-the-answer-to-gap/
http://www.isreview.org/issues/62/feat-charterschools.shtml
https://eduresearcher.com/2018/03/13/denykipp/
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KM5VX8oBQbI
Additional information:
https://actionnetwork.org/petitions/nonewkippmarch
https://www.facebook.com/DefendPublicEducationNOW/
Production of Labor Video Project
http://www.laborvideo.org
Join The Saturday August 1 Car Caravan and 12:00 PM Rally
At The GAP Corporate Headquarters at Folsom & The Embarcadero San Francisco
Physical Distancing At Rally
Sponsored by The Committe To Stop Police Terrorism and End Systemic Racism
The attack on Blacks and working people in the bay area and nationally is growing. In Oakland, the A’s billionaire owner John Fisher who also owns the GAP is engaged in a public land grab scheme to take the Howard Terminal in the Port of Oakland and develop it with a new stadium, 3,000 one million
dollar condos and a hotel.
This will massively expand genetrification and ethnic cleansing in West Oakland.
It would also destroy the viability of the working Port of Oakland and threaten the loss of thousands of jobs
of ILWU members and other unionized maritime workers in Northern California. This is also a direct attack on the ILWU Black majority locals in the Bay Area.
John Fisher refuses to keep the stadium at the Coliseum where there is already a stadium and infrastructure including BART.
Fisher also has the support of Democratic politicians Ron Banta and Nancy Skinner who with the support of Oakland Mayor Libby Schaaf passed a State bill that not only allows the privatization of Port land but sets up a tax to pay for the billionaire's land development infrastructure costs.
While thousands are homeless in Oakland, these politicians want a tax to help a billionaire’s development scheme?
In San Francisco, the public Malcom X Academy school in Bayview Hunters Point is under attack by the KIPP
charter school.
This public school was set up to support the Black children and even had a garden that is threatened by this privatization co-location room grab under Proposition 39. GAP owner Doris Fisher, the mother of John Fisher runs the KIPP charter school chain and her chain is suing the San Francisco Unified School District SFUSD to take more rooms at the Malcom X Academy public school to turn over to her privately run KIPP charter school.
The students, teachers and parents have all demanded that Fisher and KIPP leave their school alone and stop stealing rooms at the school.
Doris Fisher and her son John Fisher apparently feel that the billionaires have the right to take public port land destroying union jobs and destroy public schools like Malcom X Academy in the Black community.
It is time to Defend Oakland Port Jobs and Stop The Destruction of The SF Malcom X Academy By The Fisher Family.
Enough Is Enough!
Sponsored by Committee To Stop Police Terrorism and End Systemic Racism
https://www.juneteenthspt.com
SF Bayview School Malcom X Academy Feeling Squeezed by New KIPP Charter
https://sfpublicpress.org/bayview-school-feeling-squeezed-by-new-charter/
malcolmx.jpg
Malcolm X Academy in the Bayview is decorated with brightly colored murals of the school’s namesake, maps of Africa and the motto of both the slain black leader and the school: “by any means necessary.” Photos by Rob Waters // San Francisco Public Press
09.20.2018 | by Rob Waters ROB WATERS |
Malcolm X Academy sits atop one of the peaks that gives the Bayview district its name. It has commanding views of the bay and downtown San Francisco. The front of the school is decorated with brightly colored murals of the school’s namesake, maps of Africa and the motto of both the slain black leader and the school: “by any means necessary.”
That motto is being tested as the school and its 105 students — up from 90 last year — share space with 90 pre-kindergartners, kindergartners and first graders attending a new charter school in the same building, KIPP Bayview Elementary.
Thirty-one years ago — when teacher Gina Bissell began working at Malcolm X, and the district still bused children to achieve racial balance — it had more than 400 students and was ethnically diverse. For the past seven years, its census has fluctuated between 90 and 120, according to former principal Elena Rosen, who left the school in June. About 70 percent of students are African-American.
See: Charters vs. District: The Battle for S.F. Public Schools
On a Thursday morning before summer recess, a group of children in red shirts walked up the path to the school, holding onto a long belt and their teachers’ hands. They came from a neighborhood preschool to get a glimpse of the school they’d soon attend — a way to help them feel comfortable, Rosen explained. She welcomed them and led them down the hall to join a kindergarten class for circle time.
After a few minutes, the kids headed to recess, each kindergartener holding hands with a preschool buddy. While the kids romped on the large school playground, kicking balls, tossing Frisbees and jumping off a climbing structure, Bissell offered a reporter a school tour.
Bissell, a reading recovery teacher, showed off her room, a corner space with bookshelves, posters and a small table for working with kids one-on-one or in small groups. Every day, she pulls 15 to 18 kids who are reading below grade level out of their regular classroom to help them. While this work could happen on the sidelines of classes, that can cause “noise and interruptions — and students less focused on learning,” she said.
Since KIPP moved in and took over six classrooms, Bissell is sharing her space with a Malcolm X resource teacher who helps children with special needs. Their meetings are supposed to be confidential, so Bissell and her colleague must figure out how to manage the space and protect the children’s privacy.
As Bissell talked, a thin 8-year-old boy came in and gave Bissell a hug. He transferred to Malcolm X six months earlier and has since moved up four reading levels. “I get a lot of help from Miss Bissell,” he said. “She’s my favorite teacher.”
At his old school, he said, he had stomachaches and got in trouble for staying too long in the bathroom, ending up with six suspensions. Now, he likes coming to school.
Bissell worries that the strict behavioral rules employed in many charter schools won’t work for kids like the young boy. “It’s too rigid,” Bissell said. “He‘s thriving in a environment where it’s more engaging and activated. He’s built trusting relationships with adults and wants to be here.”
On the second floor, an outdoor education classroom used four days a week was lined with seedlings and potting soil. Two doors down, a therapist worked one-on-one with a child. These classrooms, and others used last year by Malcolm X’s after-school program, have now been turned over to KIPP.
Malcolm X has made progress in recent years. By the end of last year, 72 percent of Malcolm X students were reading at or above grade level, up from 55 percent in previous years, Rosen said, the result of experienced, collaborative staff members providing intensive resources and forging partnerships with community programs.
“We’re seeing systematic growth in our reading data,” she said. “We’re closing the gap.”
The sudden decision in May to place KIPP at Malcolm X left staff, students and parents feeling anxiety and worried that some of their fragile progress may be undermined. “It’s hard to share our space,” said librarian Deirdre Elmansoumi. “But we are trying to be cordial and make the most of it.”
Despite the tension, Malcolm X’s new principal, Marco Taylor, and KIPP Principal Allie Welch each pledge to be cordial, professional and positive. “We are committed to being good neighbors,” Welch said in an email. That may get more difficult in the years ahead as KIPP tries to expand, adding one grade each year for the next three years on the way to becoming a pre-kindergarten to 4th-grade school.
“We are committed to being good neighbors,” said KIPP Bayview Elementary Principal Allie Welch.
SF Bayview School Malcom X Academy Feeling Squeezed by New KIPP Charter
https://sfpublicpress.org/bayview-school-feeling-squeezed-by-new-charter/
malcolmx.jpg
Malcolm X Academy in the Bayview is decorated with brightly colored murals of the school’s namesake, maps of Africa and the motto of both the slain black leader and the school: “by any means necessary.” Photos by Rob Waters // San Francisco Public Press
09.20.2018 | by Rob Waters ROB WATERS |
Malcolm X Academy sits atop one of the peaks that gives the Bayview district its name. It has commanding views of the bay and downtown San Francisco. The front of the school is decorated with brightly colored murals of the school’s namesake, maps of Africa and the motto of both the slain black leader and the school: “by any means necessary.”
That motto is being tested as the school and its 105 students — up from 90 last year — share space with 90 pre-kindergartners, kindergartners and first graders attending a new charter school in the same building, KIPP Bayview Elementary.
Thirty-one years ago — when teacher Gina Bissell began working at Malcolm X, and the district still bused children to achieve racial balance — it had more than 400 students and was ethnically diverse. For the past seven years, its census has fluctuated between 90 and 120, according to former principal Elena Rosen, who left the school in June. About 70 percent of students are African-American.
See: Charters vs. District: The Battle for S.F. Public Schools
On a Thursday morning before summer recess, a group of children in red shirts walked up the path to the school, holding onto a long belt and their teachers’ hands. They came from a neighborhood preschool to get a glimpse of the school they’d soon attend — a way to help them feel comfortable, Rosen explained. She welcomed them and led them down the hall to join a kindergarten class for circle time.
After a few minutes, the kids headed to recess, each kindergartener holding hands with a preschool buddy. While the kids romped on the large school playground, kicking balls, tossing Frisbees and jumping off a climbing structure, Bissell offered a reporter a school tour.
Bissell, a reading recovery teacher, showed off her room, a corner space with bookshelves, posters and a small table for working with kids one-on-one or in small groups. Every day, she pulls 15 to 18 kids who are reading below grade level out of their regular classroom to help them. While this work could happen on the sidelines of classes, that can cause “noise and interruptions — and students less focused on learning,” she said.
Since KIPP moved in and took over six classrooms, Bissell is sharing her space with a Malcolm X resource teacher who helps children with special needs. Their meetings are supposed to be confidential, so Bissell and her colleague must figure out how to manage the space and protect the children’s privacy.
As Bissell talked, a thin 8-year-old boy came in and gave Bissell a hug. He transferred to Malcolm X six months earlier and has since moved up four reading levels. “I get a lot of help from Miss Bissell,” he said. “She’s my favorite teacher.”
At his old school, he said, he had stomachaches and got in trouble for staying too long in the bathroom, ending up with six suspensions. Now, he likes coming to school.
Bissell worries that the strict behavioral rules employed in many charter schools won’t work for kids like the young boy. “It’s too rigid,” Bissell said. “He‘s thriving in a environment where it’s more engaging and activated. He’s built trusting relationships with adults and wants to be here.”
On the second floor, an outdoor education classroom used four days a week was lined with seedlings and potting soil. Two doors down, a therapist worked one-on-one with a child. These classrooms, and others used last year by Malcolm X’s after-school program, have now been turned over to KIPP.
Malcolm X has made progress in recent years. By the end of last year, 72 percent of Malcolm X students were reading at or above grade level, up from 55 percent in previous years, Rosen said, the result of experienced, collaborative staff members providing intensive resources and forging partnerships with community programs.
“We’re seeing systematic growth in our reading data,” she said. “We’re closing the gap.”
The sudden decision in May to place KIPP at Malcolm X left staff, students and parents feeling anxiety and worried that some of their fragile progress may be undermined. “It’s hard to share our space,” said librarian Deirdre Elmansoumi. “But we are trying to be cordial and make the most of it.”
Despite the tension, Malcolm X’s new principal, Marco Taylor, and KIPP Principal Allie Welch each pledge to be cordial, professional and positive. “We are committed to being good neighbors,” Welch said in an email. That may get more difficult in the years ahead as KIPP tries to expand, adding one grade each year for the next three years on the way to becoming a pre-kindergarten to 4th-grade school.
“We are committed to being good neighbors,” said KIPP Bayview Elementary Principal Allie Welch.
Bayview charter school run by GAP billionaire Doris Fisher sues SFUSD for more classroom space At Malcom X Academy
The San Francisco Examiner
https://www.sfexaminer.com/news/bayview-charter-school-sues-sfusd-for-more-classroom-space/
Bayview charter school sues SFUSD for more classroom space
Company calls plan to move to Treasure Island a ‘bad faith offer’
JOSHUA SABATINIJun. 2, 2020 5:50 p.m.NEWSTHE CITY
A charter school operating in the Bayview-Hunters Point neighborhood has sued the San Francisco Unified School District after it tried to force the school to relocate nine miles away to Treasure Island.
KIPP Bay Area Public Schools, part of a chain of 242 charter schools across the country, filed the lawsuit in San Francisco Superior Court against the district and Superintendent Vincent Matthews alleging they have violated a state law to provide sufficient accommodations to charter schools.
The relationship between the school district and the charter school company, which operates three schools in the Bayview District, has been strained since the beginning, when in 2017 the district’s Board of Education voted to oppose KIPP’s opening at Malcolm X Academy. The state Board of Education voted to reverse the denial.
Since 2018, KIPP Bayview Elementary has operated at the district’s Malcolm X Academy, which is where school officials wish to remain to educate a growing student body of 137 next fall. Enrollment for the 2019-20 year was 107 students. The school is expanding next year from a transitional kindergarten to second-grade school to add a third-grade class. There are plans to add a fourth-grade class in the subsequent year.
Instead of agreeing to that request, the school district offered KIPP a new space on Treasure Island, nine miles away, as was first reported by the San Francisco Examiner.
Maria Krauter, a KIPP spokesperson, said Monday that they were “shocked.” The lawsuit calls it a “bad faith offer.”
KIPP rejected it and the district subsequently offered to let them keep using Malcolm X Academy in six classrooms, which they have currently. But they argue they need 10 classrooms. The district had agreed to the charter school’s 10 classrooms when it planned the move to Treasure Island, the lawsuit said, but then “abruptly and illegally retracted” that determination when later saying they could remain at Malcolm X.
The lawsuit alleges the district has violated Proposition 39, a 2000 voter-approved state measure that sets provisions about how school districts must accommodate charter schools, first by trying to relocate KIPP to Treasure Island and then by denying the school the amount of classrooms needed for the number of students they plan to serve.
The lawsuit asks the court to compel the district to provide 10 classrooms at Malcolm X.
The school district declined to comment on the suit.
In Feburary, a school district official said they wanted to move the charter to Treasure Island to address impacts on Malcolm X, as previously reported by the Examiner.
“They would have plenty of space for their ancillary services and the squeeze would not be put on Malcolm X Academy to have to either stunt their growth or retrench and they would still be able to grow their program,” Mike Davis, director of charter schools for SFUSD, said at the time.
Krauter said “we believe there is plenty of room to share.” She said Macolm X at its maximum enrollment had 440 kids and now it’s “just a bit over 100.”
“There is a way to have a mutually beneficial shared campus,” she said. “They deserve a high-quality option in the neighborhood.”
There are strong opinions about charter schools.
Supervisor Shamann Walton was on the school board when he voted against KIPP and he continues to oppose the school at Malcolm X. He represents the Bayview on the Board of Supervisors.
“Obviously I hope that KIPP stops trying to take resources away from a community that needs all the support they can get for our students,” Walton said. “The blatant disregard for protecting precious resources, even during this crisis, is appalling.”
Krauter said, “This is not an us vs. them, and our students vs. their students.”
“Our students are SFUSD students. And our students are Bayview-Hunters Point residents,” she said.
Christy Neasley, who lives in the Bayview, said her adopted 6-year-old niece has attended the charter school since it began, when she enrolled her in transitional kindergarten two years ago.
“She is thriving so much in this school,” Neasley said.
She said she doesn’t understand why there has to be this conflict between the district and the charter school.
“I’m a little angry. But I’m more worried because I really want her to keep on with this path. I don’t want them to break this family up,” she said.
Neasley said she thought the district’s initial offer to send KIPP to Treasure Island was disingenuous and that no one would have sent their kids from the Bayview there, which would have taken about an hour by bus to get there.
“I thought it was an offer just for them to make the school close down,” she said.
Krauter called the lawsuit “a last resort.”
jsabatini [at] sfexaminer.com
Gap Co-Founder Doris Fisher Is Bankrolling the Charter School Agenda – and Pouring Dark Money Into CA Politics
https://www.alternet.org/2016/09/gap-cofounder-bankrolling-charter-school-agenda/
Written by Joel Warner / Capital And Main September 27, 2016
As co-founder of the Gap, San Francisco-based business leader and philanthropist Doris Fisher boasts a net worth of $2.6 billion, making her the country’s third richest self-made woman, according to Forbes. And she’s focused much of her wealth and resources on building charter schools. She and her late husband Donald donated more than $70 million to the Knowledge is Power Program (KIPP) and helped to personally build the operation into the largest network of charter schools in the country, with 200 schools serving 80,000 students in 20 states. Doris’ son John serves as the chairman of KIPP’s board of directors, and she sits on the board herself.
Doris’ passion for charter schools also fuels her political donations. While not as well-known as other deep-pocketed charter school advocates like Eli Broad and the Walton family (heirs to the Walmart fortune), Fisher and her family have quietly become among the largest political funders of charter school efforts in the country. Having contributed $5.6 million to state political campaigns since 2013, Fisher was recently listed as the second largest political donor in California by the Sacramento Bee – and nearly all of her money now goes to promoting pro-charter school candidates and organizations. While often labelled a Republican, she gives to Democrats and Republicans alike, just as long as they’re supportive of the charter school movement. According to campaign finance reports, so far this election cycle she’s spent more than $3.3 million on the political action committees of charter school advocacy groups EdVoice and the California Charter Schools Association (CCSA), as well as pro-charter candidates. (Christopher Nelson, managing director of the Fishers’ philanthropic organization, sits on the board of CCSA, which, along with EdVoice, declined to comment for this article.)
Fisher’s philanthropic and political efforts are not as straightforward as simply promoting education, however. Recent investigations have found that she’s used dark-money networks to funnel funds into California campaign initiatives that many say targeted teachers and undermined public education. It’s why many education activists worry about the impact her money is having on California politics – and on California schoolchildren.
Fisher’s decision to double down on charter school candidates and political action groups this election season comes at a time of increasing backlash against such schools, which operate largely independently of public school systems but still receive public funding. Last month, the American Civil Liberties Union of Southern California and Public Advocates reported that more than 250 California charter schools – more than one-fifth of the state’s total – violated state law by denying enrollment to low-performing and other potentially undesirable students (the report caused more than 50 of the schools to change or clarify admissions policies, leading the ACLU to remove them from its list). This came after a study of charter school discipline by the UCLA’s Center for Civil Rights Remedies in March that found that charters suspended African-American students and students with disabilities at higher rates than traditional schools. And last year, a report by the Center for Popular Democracy, the Alliance of Californians for Community Empowerment Institute and Public Advocates Inc. concluded that in California alone, charter school fraud and negligence had cost state taxpayers more than $81 million.
It’s why in the last couple months, both the NAACP’s national convention and the Black Lives Matter movement have called for a moratorium on charter school growth, noting that the privatization of the nation’s schools was a major social justice concern. As the NAACP noted in its resolution, which has to be formally approved by the NAACP’s national board, “…weak oversight of charter schools puts students and communities at risk of harm, public funds at risk of being wasted, and further erodes local control of public education.”
And even if some of the charter schools Fisher champions have been a success, she’s secretly supported efforts that critics regard as undermining the success of the public school system and teachers. A recent investigation by California Hedge Clippers, a coalition of community groups and unions, found that Fisher was one of a number of wealthy Californians who in 2012 used a dark money network involving out-of-state organizations linked to the conservative Koch brothers to shield their donations to controversial campaign efforts that year. The money was used to oppose Proposition 30, a tax on high-income Californians to fund public schools and public safety, and support Proposition 32, which, among other things, would have severely limited the ability of organized labor, including teachers unions, to raise money for state and local races.
At the time of the campaign, none of these donations were public. In fact, fellow charter-school advocate Eli Broad publically endorsed Proposition 30 while secretly donating $500,000 to the dark money fund dedicated to defeating it. And Fisher herself had close ties to Governor Jerry Brown, a key proponent of Proposition 30. Brown’s wife Anne Gust Brown worked as chief administrative officer at the Gap until 2005 and is credited with helping to improve the company’s labor standards, and the Fishers were major financial supporters of Brown’s 2014 campaign to pass Proposition 1, the water bond, and Proposition 2, the “rainy day budget” stabilization act.
“I would imagine that it caused some domestic strife,” says Karen Wolfe, a California parent and founder of PSconnect, a community group that advocates for traditional public schools. “[Anne likely] thought she had the Fishers’ support on her husband’s crowning achievement, a tax to finally balance California’s budget and bring the state out of functional bankruptcy. This was absolutely his highest priority.”
In total, according to the Hedge Clippers investigation, Fisher and her sons donated more than $18 million to the dark money group. It wasn’t the only time the Fisher family has worked with political organizations known for concealing their financial supporters. In 2006, current KIPP chairman John Fisher gave $85,000 to All Children Matter, a school-privatization political action group in Ohio that was slapped with a record-setting $5.2 million fine for illegally funneling contributions through out-of-state dark money networks. Instead of paying the fine, All Children Matter shut down and one of its conservative founders launched a new group: the Alliance for School Choice, which in 2011 listed John Fisher as its secretary. And last year, Doris Fisher contributed $750,000 to California Charter School Association Advocates, which funneled such donations to a local committee. The names of individual donors wouldn’t be disclosed until after the election.
Despite the dark money group’s best efforts, Proposition 30 passed and Proposition 32 failed. As a result, according to the Hedge Clippers report, KIPP schools in California that Fisher had long championed received nearly $5 million in Proposition 30 taxpayer funding in the 2013-2014 school year.
“What outrageous hypocrisy that she and her cabal profess to be all about the interests of quality education of low-income communities of color, and yet behind the scenes are undercutting one of the most important policies to fund public education we have seen in decades,” says Amy Schur, state campaign director for the Alliance of Californians for Community Empowerment, part of the Hedge Clipper coalition, which is advocating for the extension of the Proposition 30 tax at the ballot box this November.
To critics, such findings suggest that Fisher and other deep-pocketed advocates currently pumping millions into California politics to promote their charter-school agenda are ignoring the sorts of fundamental financial reforms that could make a difference for struggling schoolchildren but would hurt their bottom lines.
“These people are looking at inequality and saying, ‘These people do not have sufficient education,’ when there are other issues regarding the structure of the economy that would more directly impact the poor,” says Harold Meyerson, executive editor of theAmerican Prospect. “It’s nice the Waltons and the Fisher family are concerned about the poor with regards to the quality of their education, but a more direct way to help them would be to give workers at Walmart and the Gap a raise and to give them more hours.”
Photo via Andybis123 via Wikimedia Commons
Photo via Andybis123 via Wikimedia Commons
Born Doris Feigenbaum in 1931 in New York, Fisher and her husband struck modern-day gold in San Francisco when they founded the first Gap store there in 1969. By all indications, Doris and her husband, who passed away in 2009, worked hand in hand building the brand.
The result was a $16-billion business with more than 3,700 stores worldwide. While Gap Inc. recently received attention for being among the first major brands to voluntarily increase the minimum wage of its U.S. workforce, like many global retailers, it has also faced intense scrutiny for its labor practices, such as the poor working conditions of its factory workers overseas.
Even after the company released “Sourcing Principles and Guidelines” in response to such critiques in 1993, the company was publically cited for factory condition violations six times in the following 14 years. Indeed, just two years after the guidelines were issued, New York Times columnist Bob Herbert offered this withering observation:
“The hundreds of thousands of young (and mostly female) factory workers in Central America who earn next to nothing and often live in squalor have been an absolute boon to American clothing company executives like Donald G. Fisher, the chief executive of the Gap and Banana Republic empire, who lives in splendor and paid himself more than $2 million last year.”
2013 report exposed abusive working conditions in a Bangladeshi factory that made clothes for The Gap.
2013 report exposed abusive working conditions in a Bangladeshi factory that made clothes for The Gap.
Stung by the negative publicity, the Gap launched an effort to crack down on labor abuses that won widespread praise. But the problems did not go away. In 2007, the Gap found itself embroiled in a child labor controversyafter the British paper The Observer reported that children as young as 10 were working for up to 16 hours a day to make clothes, including items with Gap labels. To contain the damage, the company announced a set of measures to eliminate the use of child labor. But in 2013, The Gap once again made headlines — this time for selling clothes manufactured in a Bangladesh sweatshop where workers were allegedly made to work 100 hours per week and cheated on wages that averaged 20 to 24 cents per hour.
The Fishers’ experiences with the Gap may well have shaped their involvement in education reform, which began in 2000 when they learned about Mike Feinberg and Dave Levin. The two Teach for America alums had launched the first two KIPP charter schools, one in Houston and one in the South Bronx, designed around high expectations, extended school days and performance-driven results. “[The Fishers] liked the notion that careful training and well-constructed, on-the-job experience, as they had done in their company, could produce better school leaders,” says Washington Post education writer Jay Mathews, author of a book on KIPP, Work Hard. Be Nice.
And it’s why when Scott Hamilton, the charter school expert the couple had hired to find education projects, suggested they work to scale up Feinberg and Levin’s program, they agreed, spending $15 million to create the KIPP Foundation to train people on how to launch new KIPP schools. Soon KIPP was spreading across the country the way Gap stores did in malls from coast to coast. Along with donating more money to KIPP, the Fishers also gave money to Teach for America, which became a major source of KIPP’s teachers. “[Don] used what he learned in growing Gap Inc. to show us what we could do in public education, and tens of thousands of children have benefited from his commitment and generosity,” notes KIPP Foundation CEO Richard Barth in Donald Fisher’s Gap biography.
KIPP is considered by many experts to be a success story. “You can make good arguments that many charters are disappointing, but not KIPP,” says Matthews. “It is the most studied charter school system by far, and all of those independent studies, particularly a big one by Mathematica, show that KIPP raises achievement significantly higher than regular schools for similar kids in similar neighborhoods, even in a randomized study.”
But not everyone is thrilled by KIPP’s approach. In 2012, a study led by Julian Vasquez Heilig, then faculty in the University of Texas at Austin College of Education’s Department of Educational Administration, found that despite KIPP’s claims that 88 to 90 percent of their students went to college, black high school students were much more likely to leave KIPP and other urban charter schools in Texas than they were to leave traditional urban public schools. And in New York City, the other place where KIPP got its start, math teacher and education blogger Gary Rubinstein found that in 2012-2013, the three KIPP schools that have kindergartens posted lower 3rd grade test scores than two-thirds of the other charter schools in the city. And despite KIPP’s public standing, it’s not always transparent about its operations. Earlier this year the Center for Media and Democracy found that the organization claimed information about its graduation and matriculation rates, student performance results and how it would spend taxpayer dollars was “proprietary,” leading the U.S. Department of Education to redact this information from KIPP application documents before they were released to the public.
KIPP has also been criticized for its schools’ tendency to “churn and burn” young teachers because of long, demanding workdays (a third of KIPP teachers left their jobs in the 2012-2013 school year). Similarly, Teach for America, which funnels many of its teachers to KIPP schools, has faced increasing scrutiny for supplanting qualified teaching veterans with poorly trained replacements in struggling communities that are most in need of qualified instructors.
Some critics wonder if the Fishers’ background is in part responsible for such circumstances.
“If you look at the industries where these people made their wealth, you can see why they have this idea that you have to squeeze labor to make your profits,” says Cynthia Liu, founder of K-12 News Network and a charter school critic. “If you have children in India making your clothing, your profit margin is very large. Similarly, if you use automation and low-cost education ‘shock troops’ to minimize the role of teachers, making them the ‘guide on the side rather than the sage on the stage,’ you minimize your education labor costs.”
The result, says Liu, isn’t just poorly trained and overworked teachers, it’s undervalued students. “When charters rely on the churn of an expendable, fungible teaching workforce using scripted curriculum instead of career and authentically-credentialed teachers, it cheapens the learning experience for students and the profession,” she says. “A child’s education isn’t a five dollar T-shirt, it’s an investment in our future collective well-being.”
Plan to relocate Bayview charter school meets with resistance
School district wants to move KIPP elementary to vacant Treasure Island school site
https://www.sfexaminer.com/news/plan-to-relocate-bayview-charter-school-meets-with-resistance/
JOSHUA SABATINI
Feb. 19, 2020 5:00 p.m.
The San Francisco Unified School District wants to relocate a Bayview elementary charter school to Treasure Island to free up space at Malcolm X Academy.
But KIPP charter school is opposed to the idea and wants to remain right where they are to serve those in the low-income neighborhood. And those who serve on the board overseeing the man-made island are also not convinced the school district has it right.
Under state law, the district is obligated to offer space for approved charter schools to operate. In this case, school officials have identified a former elementary school site on Treasure Island to offer to KIPP Bayview Elementary, a charter school that has shared space with Malcolm X Academy since 2018.
The co-location has led to a space squeeze, school officials said.
Treasure Island Development Authority Board of Directors, which oversees the man-made island, would need to approve a lease with the school district, which in turn would then lease out the space to the charter school.
But the TIDA board postponed a vote on the arrangement last week, despite pressure from school district officials who said they had an April 1 deadline to make the deal work with the charter school for the upcoming school year. The proposed lease between TIDA and the school district is for three years and six months.
TIDA board member Linda Richardson, a proponent of charter schools, was the most outspoken critic of the school district’s plan last week.
She said that she has heard from concerned parents that the charter school should remain in the Bayview. “It appears you are kicking them to Treasure Island,” Richardson said.
The district closed the Treasure Island elementary school site down due to low enrollment in 2005 after opening it in the 1960s. But the district plans to eventually reopen as a public school as the island is undergoing a major redevelopment of 8,000 new homes.
“Why subject at-risk kids that are barely making it in their community that is poor to this? It does not seem fair,” Richardson said. “They have to come down to Treasure Island and then kick them out when you are ready with your program. I think is unacceptable.”
However, Supervisor Shamann Walton, who represents the Bayview, told the San Francisco Examiner in a text message Wednesday that he doesn’t support charter schools and “would be ecstatic if KIPP Elementary School (a charter school) left the Bayview.”
“They are taking up space at Malcolm X and basically preventing growth at that school,” Walton said.
Mike Davis, director of charter schools for SFUSD, said that KIPP’s elementary school, kindergarten through third grade, has increasing student enrollment. In its first year, 2018, the school had 60 students and next year it projects an enrollment of 118 students.
SF KIPP Breaking Up Malcom X Academy: Racist Union Busting Fisher Charter In SF Approved By SFUSD
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GWAX0Hzb_JI&t=172s
Students, teachers and family members in San Francisco on May 8, 2018 protested the San Francisco Unified School District to bust up their public school Malcom X Academy which is located in Potrero Hill by placing a KIPP school co-location on their school. This is also part of gentrification and privatization of the city and public services.including the shutdown and privatization the Potrero Hill Health Clinic.
Teachers and parents talked about how the Malcom X Academy has increased testing scores as a community supported school and how this will now be threatened with this billionaires privately run charter school on Potrero Hill.
KIPP is run out of the GAP corporation owned by SF billionaire John Fisher and his family including Doris Fisher who is on the board of KIPP SF. Governor Brown's wife Anne Gust was previously the chief counsel of GAP and Brown has appointed charter owners, operators and privatizers to the California Board of Education which they control. Co-location was also written into Prop 39 which was pushed by the California Charter School Association billionaire Netflix owner Reed Hastings. Proposition 39 passed by a small percentage and was successful because the CTA and CFT both endorsed it since it also lowed the percentage needed to pass school bonds. Now billions of dollars is being spent on privatization and charters in California. The UESF and CTA/CFT leadership continue to support "non-profit" charters which receive public funding and are run by private hand picked boards.These privately run charter schools also have non-union sometimes volunteer staff and do not pay into the CalSTRS pension system undermining all public teachers pension benefits as more than $6 billion is being spent on charter schools in California.
Students, teachers and parents also spoke out at the SFUSD school board meeting.
For more media:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mMXTzrne9aA
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JAeRbh1KVkg
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S_jZAYnrR_Q
http://www.sfexaminer.com/sf-schools-protest-sharing-space-charter-schools/
http://www.mercurynews.com/2017/11/01/kipp-high-school-petition-denied-by-santa-clara-county-school-board/
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/02/22/us/kipp-sexual-misconduct-michael-feinberg.html
http://www.kipp.org/about-kipp/the-kipp-foundation/national-partners
http://www.oakpark.com/News/Articles/8-11-2009/KIPP-school-not-the-answer-to-gap/
http://www.isreview.org/issues/62/feat-charterschools.shtml
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KM5VX8oBQbI
Additional information:
https://actionnetwork.org/petitions/nonewkippmarch
https://www.facebook.com/DefendPublicEducationNOW/
Production of Labor Video Project
http://www.laborvideo.org
SF Malcom X Academy Walkathon To Stop Billionaire Fisher Family KIPP Charter Co-Location Bust-up
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TXz9yg4RfBQ&t=140s
Students had a walkathon in their Hunters Point Bay View neighborhood to stop the KIPP charter school run by the GAP fisher family from co-locating at their public school at the Malcom X Academy. Students and supporters of public education spoke out at the walkathon which took place on May 24, 2018.
The co-location of charter schools has been used to disrupt and bust up public schools in poor and working class communities. The KIPP union busting charter school chain is run by the Fisher family which owns the GAP corporation in San Francisco. Doris Fisher who is on the board of San Francisco KIPP and her sone John Fisher who also owns the A's are leading players in the national charter privatization campaign to destroy public education.
For more media:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GWAX0Hzb_JI
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mMXTzrne9aA
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JAeRbh1KVkg
http://www.sfexaminer.com/sf-schools-protest-sharing-space-charter-schools/
http://www.mercurynews.com/2017/11/01/kipp-high-school-petition-denied-by-santa-clara-county-school-board/
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/02/22/us/kipp-sexual-misconduct-michael-feinberg.html
http://www.kipp.org/about-kipp/the-kipp-foundation/national-partners
http://www.oakpark.com/News/Articles/8-11-2009/KIPP-school-not-the-answer-to-gap/
http://www.isreview.org/issues/62/feat-charterschools.shtml
https://eduresearcher.com/2018/03/13/denykipp/
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KM5VX8oBQbI
Additional information:
https://actionnetwork.org/petitions/nonewkippmarch
https://www.facebook.com/DefendPublicEducationNOW/
Production of Labor Video Project
http://www.laborvideo.org
For more information:
https://www.juneteenthspt.com
Added to the calendar on Fri, Jul 24, 2020 8:10PM
Add Your Comments
We are 100% volunteer and depend on your participation to sustain our efforts!
Donate
$75.00 donated
in the past month
Get Involved
If you'd like to help with maintaining or developing the website, contact us.
Publish
Publish your stories and upcoming events on Indybay.
Topics
More
Search Indybay's Archives
Advanced Search
►
▼
IMC Network