Governor Baker’s Reopening Panel Follies

When Governor Charlie Baker made his appointments to the statewide reopening advisory panel it was laden with CEOs and C-suite types, with no workers. We may be tossing around terms like “heroes” for front line workers like nurses, grocery workers, and housekeeping staff but the governor’s reopening panel was No Place for Heroes. Workers are also being almost totally zeroed out on industry specific reopening panels—restaurant and hospitality, higher education, and a special case, the Back to School Working Group Members.

The restaurant and hospitality reopening group was announced the other day. It included the standard Baker array of CEOs and other corner office types, from the CEO of 1Berkshire, to the President of the Saunders Hotel Group, the president and CEO of the Massachusetts Restaurant Association, etc. No barbacks, no wait staff, no one from the kitchen, no cleaners. (Would it be impolite to mention that fair representation of restaurant workers would necessarily include undocumented workers?). The actual front line workers didn’t like the Baker plan. Workers protested at the State House and at Davio’s restaurant, as Davio’s president occupies a coveted position on the reopening panel. This was captured in a Boston Globe story, Black and Latinx Activists Say State is Reopening Too Soon. A protester remarked that workers are not being protected and “Decisions to reopen are rooted in profit.” Al Vega, of the Massachusetts Coalition for Occupational Safety and Health stated that “Our governor is asking the Black and Latino workers to sacrifice themselves for the economy. We are here to honor the dead, but fight like hell for the living.”

On to the Higher Education Working Group, which released its report on Wednesday. Feast your eyes on this exclusive club, each and all a university president:

No faculty, no students, no support staff, no lab workers, no cafeteria workers, no custodians.

But the Department of Elementary and Secretary Education Return-to-School Working Group actually has some worker representation. The presidents of the two teachers unions, Merrie Najimy of the Massachusetts Teachers Association and Beth Kontos of the Massachusetts Federation of Teachers are both on the forty-two member panel. Why? Because the teachers unions in this state are active and have some power.

The Return-to-School Working Group is heavy with representatives of important institutional players—not just teachers unions but superintendents, PTA, school counselors, police, fire, school committees, etc. They all have to have a seat at the table and there is really little room for the governor to play politics. But then there are five parent members and this is where it gets interesting.

One of the five parents is Rodolfo Aguilar. Could this be the same Rodolfo Aguilar who is a founding member and organizer for the Waltons-of-Arkansas front Massachusetts Parents United? If so, that would give the Walton family Massachusetts political team a seat at the table.

Then we come to Natasha Megie-Maddrey, a parent member from Lynn. She ran for Lynn School Committee in 2015 and 2017. She raised around $11,000 in 2015. Let’s meet some of her donors.

Michael Bloomberg        CEO, Bloomberg LP           $1,000

Reid Hoffman                   Greylock (CA)                        $500

Andrew Balson                 Bain                                       $500

Alex Cortez                       New Profit                             $1,000

A. & L. Reim                      Lone Pine Capital (CT)          $1,000

Brian Spector                    Baupost LLC                          $1,000

Liam Kerr                           DFER MA                               $1,000

Who’d have guessed Reid Hoffman with his hands full at Linkedin or Michael Bloomberg busy most every place else would get all civic-spirited over a school board seat in Lynn, Massachusetts? Or Andrew Balson, who skimmed his piggy bank overflow and dropped $400,000 in dark money into the 2016 charters campaign? Or Brian Spector of Baupost, who rustled under the mattress and found $525,000 in dark money for Families for Excellent Schools in 2016?

So the governor was stuck with two union leaders, but managed to leaven them with two (at least) agents of corporate ed reform.

So far as I can tell, school custodians, cafeteria workers, and other frontline workers also get no representation. Full disclosure: I take special note of this because my mother was a custodian and my aunt worked in a school cafeteria. My mother had breathing problems. She’d be cleaning the school. Who is looking out for workers like my mother and my aunt, governor?

The pattern that is coming out of these reopening panels is this: trust the CEOs, the managers, the MBAs. They are beings of superior wisdom who will guide us to the promised land. As for the people who actually do the jobs, what do they know and who cares what they think?

Addendum to original post: Megie-Maddrey ran for Lynn school committee again in 2017. Her contibutors included 2016 dark money givers Balson and Charles Longfield ($650,000 to Families for Excellent Schools), Democrats for Education Reform Massachusetts, DFER MA state director Liam Kerr, and Massachusetts Parents United president Keri Rodrigues. So yes, the governor has placed two MPU/DFER agents on the schools reopen board. In 2019 Megie-Maddre ran for Ward 4 city council, and none of these folks contributed.

Second Addendum: Parent member Raquel Quezada is also from the Walton front Massachusetts Parents United, meaning the Waltons (through MPU and DFER) get three of the five parent members. Still no known representation for custodians or cafeteria workers.

 

 

 

[Full disclosure: as an educator in the UMass system, I am a union member. I write about dark money, not education.]