What The Heck?

Yesterday I went to a dinner for a non-profit that works with our non-profit to fight discrimination. I scheduled a 30 minute drive to the banquet. My route was up Maple Ave. to Washington, by the Capitol  and through Bushnell Park on Trinity St to Jewell St. to Trumbull St. and then down Asylum Ave. to the Bond Hotel.

But all came to a grinding stop at the Capitol. It was gridlock! There had to be over two dozen buses, some of them coaches and others school buses with kids in lime green tee shirts all over the place. Trinity through the park was closed and Elm St. was backed up all the way to Pulaski Circle.

So what the heck was going on?

This morning I combed the news and found out… it was lobbying by the Charter Schools!

Aggressive charter school campaign descends on the Capitol
CT Mirror
By: Jacqueline Rabe Thomas and Alvin Chang
May 7, 2015

Legislators are being bombarded with emails informing them every time a student applies to a charter school that the state has yet to agree to fund.

And when they turn on the television, they see advertisements warning that thousands of students will be trapped in failing schools unless state lawmakers spend millions more to expand enrollment in charter schools.

On Thursday, charter school groups bused an estimated 1,500 students, parents and supporters to the state Capitol to “demand that state legislators save our schools.”

You got that? Fifteen hundred students!

Behind this push at the state Capitol for charter schools is Families for Excellent Schools, Coalition for Every Child, a nonprofit led by investment firm executives that last year took on New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio — and won.

When de Blasio tried to block the opening of three new charter schools, FES spent $3.6 million over three weeks attacking the action, the New York Daily News reported, citing a source. The New York General Assembly in the end appropriated funds for the charters and adopted increased restrictions on what the city can do to limit the growth of charter schools, The New York Times reported.

And in Connecticut they are also spending vast sums of money to block the funding freeze. So far they spent over $300,000 on lobbying.

All this spending is starting to raise questions…

With FES promising to host rallies and launch a "multimillion-dollar TV ad campaign" in Connecticut, some prominant [sic] legislators are questioning where the money is coming from, why it isn't being spent on the schools and the negative tone of the advertisements.

One of the problems is the lack of transparency with the charter school, they are maintaining that they are private companies and are not subject to state oversight.

In this era of tightening budgets is that non-profits are seeing their funding shrink and are fighting to defend their funding and I have to ask, where did the money come from for all those busses? Who is paying for all the staff and teachers that accompanied them on the lobbying trip? Did the students take time off from school to attend the lobbying day? Was any federal or state funding used for the lobbying?

Here is an example of the ads that are saturating the airwaves,