The Boston Herald ran a fine editorial Who’s Funding the Search for BPS Superintendent calling for transparency about any foundation funding for the search for a new superintendent of the Boston Public Schools. Transparency isn’t enough. The foundations are interest groups and interest groups shouldn’t be funding such a sensitive public obligation.
If you want to geek out on this professors Jeffrey M. Berry and Kristin Goss edited an entire issue of the journal Interest Groups & Advocacy on Foundations as Interest Groups. “Foundations are traditionally viewed as civic-minded but politically neutral organizations. Yet foundations, if they choose, can become involved in a wide variety of activities aimed at influencing public policy. Here we lay out the rationale for thinking about foundations as interest groups in the American political system.”
According to the Herald for the Cassellius search the Shah Family Foundation donated $25,000 and for the Chang search, the Barr Foundation invested $50,000, and the Boston Foundation $25,000. The Herald wrote of the Cassellius search, “Parents and community members expressed concerns that private foundations paying the search firm (Isaacson Miller) could influence the superintendent choice.”
Well, yeah. Of course.
Shah has partnered with the Massachusetts Parents United, the Walton front that has taken up the mantle of school privatization from the collapsed-in-corruption Families for Excellent Schools, Inc. FESI was also heavily funded by the Waltons. The Waltons installed FESI’s former state director Keri Rodrigues, a communications specialist and political consultant (Estrella Group, LLC), as president of Massachusetts Parents United. The Boston Foundation has given at least $138,000 to MPU from FY 2018-2020 (the last year that America’s inadequate disclosure system allows a look inside). From FY 2015-2017, the Boston Foundation gave $2,660,000 to Families for Excellent Schools, Inc. The Barr Foundation gave $420,000 to MPU in 2020 and also funds such other privatizer operations as Education Reform Now (aka Democrats for Education Reform), Educators for Excellence (phony teachers group), and Massachusetts Business Alliance for Education (which has been about 50% funded by the Waltons since 2017).
Barr also picks up a $600,000 tab to support the Globe’s education coverage.
Remember Families for Excellent Schools Advocacy, the political arm linked to Families for Excellent Schools, Inc.? It ran an illegal dark money scheme that fueled the Great Schools Massachusetts ballot committee in the 2016 charter schools ballot campaign. Voters rejected charters, 62%-38%. The Office of Campaign and Political Finance investigated and forced FESA to disclose the true sources of over $15 million in dark money contributions. It was an array of Boston oligarchs including billionaire Amos Hostetter, who also is the money behind the Barr Foundation. Hostetter donated $2,025,000 in dark money to FESA, the fifth largest giver.
Barr wasn’t the largest dark money donor to FESA, nor was Seth Klarman ($3,340,000) nor the Jacobsons ($2,540,000) nor the Bekensteins ($2,040,000). No, the largest dark money donor to Families for Excellent Schools Advocacy was Families for Excellent Schools, Inc. for $3,830,930. But we’ll likely never know who the real check writers were behind the FESI deep dark donations. (FESI was also heavily funded by the Waltons).
So sure Boston, take the philanthro-interest dollars. Let the fox in the hen house.
Addendum: I understand that the Wu administration will not following prior practice of accepting philantho-interest dollars to help fund its search. That is a very good thing. We need more of that.
My book, Dark Money and the Politics of School Privatization, is now available.]
“Big Philanthropy is definitionally a plutocratic voice in our democracy. . . . an exercise of power by the wealthy that is unaccountable, non-transparent, donor-directed, perpetual, and tax-subsidized.” Rob Reich, author of Just Giving: Why Philanthropy Is Failing Democracy and How It Can Do Better.
[Full disclosure: as a (now retired) educator in the UMass system, I am a union member. I write about dark money, democracy, and oligarchy.]