According to a recent Boston Teachers Union newsletter, Educators for Excellence “has been hosting free lunches at schools.” Let’s look at who’s picking up the tab. I won’t make you hang in suspense—E4E is a puppet of billionaire privatizers, Alice Walton’s fantasy of what a well-behaved teachers’ union should be.
Remember Banned in Boston (Globe): the Walton Family’s 2021 Political Team? Here’s what I wrote:
Mea culpa, mea culpa, mea maxima culpa! Because I’ve been leaving Educators for Excellence out of these equations. E4E is a billionaire funded “teacher” house operation intended to undermine real democratic unions. Diane Ravitch explains E4E here: “It is funded by the reactionary anti-union Walton Family Foundation, the Rightwing William E. Simon Foundation, the anti-union Bodman Foundation, and the Arnold Foundation, which wants to eliminate pensions.” From 2017-2021 E4E took in $5,495,000 from the Waltons, some of which probably found its way to Boston.
It got me to thinking about something I learned researching my book Dark Money and the Politics of School Privatization, that when Families for Excellent Schools came to Boston in 2014 it required major local investments. So in chapter 4 “Oligarchs United” I ran this table of philanthro-interest group investments in FES and Stand for Children:
TBF=the Boston Foundation, CJP=Combined Jewish Philanthropies, FICGF=Fidelity Investments Charitable Gift Fund, SGP=Strategic Grant Partners.
Why not do a similar table for E4E, same donors, 2017-latest available information?
tBF 2017-2022 $ 965,000
CJP 2017-2020 $ 400,000
FCIGF 2017-2021 $2,871,230
SGP 2017-2021 $1,421,678
TOTAL $5,658,408
Hold on though. Strategic Grant Partners took the lead in the years leading up to the 2016 ballot fight. I show in Dark Money and the Politics of School Privatization that several members of SGP were behind not only the FES and SFC spending going back to 2009, but the 2009-2010 and 2011-2012 ballot question attacks on teachers’ unions. Since the embarrassing 2016 defeat and humiliating revelation of their dark money schemes in, SGP has somewhat backed off its philanthro-interest giving.
SGP’s head was Joanna Jacobson and she and her husband (mega 2016 dark money donors) through their own One8 foundation stayed hot on E4E, giving $1,000,000 in both 2017 and 2018 before cooling to $100,000 in 2019 and not donating to E4E in 2020.
Then there is the Barr Foundation, whose sole donor is Amos Hostetter, who was revealed by Office of Campaign Finance to have joined in with the SGP members in the 2016 dark money bacchanalia, for $2,000,000. Barr’s total to E4E from 2017-2021 is $1,575,000.
But who knows really? tBF, CJP, and FICGF are donor advised funds, meaning that oligarchs can run their money through them and not be identified as the true donors. Combine that with the tax break and it’s a sweet deal for the wealthy.
It looks like the attack on public education is being conducted from 2017-present by the same tiny band of oligarchs that started the war back in 2009 (at least).
As for E4E, it’s the usual creation story. A handful of teachers get together and decide what’s needed is a voice for teachers! They happened to be Teach for America alum. Humble effort that emerged from those discussions, they were nonetheless able to cobble together many millions of dollars over the years, over $12,000,000 in 2021. National donors include the Waltons, Gates, and Broad foundations. E4E’s cofounders both make just shy of $210,000 each, pretty good pay for two years in the classroom.
No PB&Js for you, Boston teachers! When Educators for Excellence is footing the bill, demand Five Star cuisine!
Money never sleeps. Follow the money.
For more on DFER I have an entire chapter on it in my book Dark Money and the Politics of School Privatization.
We must make our choice. We may have democracy, or we may have wealth concentrated in the hands of a few, but we can’t have both.” – Louis Brandeis
[Full disclosure: as a (now retired) educator in the UMass system, I am a union member. I write about dark money, democracy, and oligarchy