Charter School Strong-Arming Where No One Wants Charters: A Case Study

The Emerald Academy Charter School Application submitted to and approved by the Knox County Board of Education is signed by Steve Diggs, who is the Executive Director of the Emerald Youth Foundation (EYF), a Christian ministry with some of Knoxville’s and the State’s highest rollers onboard.  This effort represents a prime example of corporate missionaries being joined by Christian missionaries to force-feed charters where no one wants them.  

2013 Board of Trustees

Doug Kennedy, Chair	CEO, Johnson & Galyon General Contractors
Tim McLemore, Vice-Chair	Attorney, Gentry, Tipton & McLemore
Sam Anderson	Retired, City of Knoxville
Mike Campbell	Board of Directors Chair, Regal Entertainment Group
Steve Diggs	Executive Director, Emerald Youth Foundation
Doug Harris	Member, Knox County Board of Education
Dee Haslam	CEO, RIVR Media
Richard Johnson	Special Advisor to Governor, State of Tennessee
Jon Lawler	Executive Vice-President, Johnson & Galyon General Contractors
Bill Haslam (Honorary Member)	Governor, State of Tennessee
Larry Martin (Honorary Member)	Special Advisor for Human Resources, State of Tennessee
James Swanson, Sr. (Honorary Member)

When the Board met on June 4, there was no subtlety in the message the superintendent and Broad Foundation stooge, Jim McIntyre brought:  you can vote down the Emerald Charter School if you want, but the application will go the state, where the Governor will make sure that the charter gets, uh, chartered.  Note above the Gov is an honorary member of the Board of Trustees for Emerald, as is his wife, Dee, who is also the owner of the Cleveland Browns.  The discussion started with four for the charter, and the final vote was 7-1 for Emerald.  Imagine that.

The Emerald Charter School is somehow supposed to function as a non-sectarian branch of the Emerald Youth Foundation (EYF).  Here’s how their website explains it:

As a faith-based ministry, Emerald Youth Foundation will continue its Christian mission of helping urban Knoxville youth grow as leaders. However, in its role of launching a public charter school, Emerald Youth Foundation will begin a new, separate, non-sectarian organization to manage the public charter school.

 Imagine Christian proselytizing mixed with cultural sterilization.

Now the EYF knew nothing about starting a charter school until, by some unexplained intervention, a small and lucrative chain from Cleveland was chosen to be the model for the Emerald Charter Schools (ECS).  Note the plural: there is only one so far, but be assured that there are more in the works if ECS can grind out higher test scores than the local high-poverty public schools.  They plan to do just that by following the KIPP Model, with selective retention, longer hours, fewer special ed and disabled, a chain gang zero tolerance pedagogy, total focus on tests, and corporate infusions of more cash. 

But KIPP is not in the consulting business for knock-offs, so with the help of some Cleveland connections (perhaps the owner of the Cleveland Browns could help), a little-known outfit known as EPrep—itself a KIPP knock-off—became the inspiration for and partner with ECS.  Here is a clip from the Cleveland Plain Dealer on EPrep:

. . . E Prep, which recently moved to East 36th Street and Superior Avenue, is in session from 8 a.m. to 4 p.m. five days a week, 10 months a year. Students receive an hour of instruction every day in each of five subjects: reading, math, writing, social studies and science. Those who lag sometimes have to go to school on Saturday.

And the rules are draconian. Shoving another student triggers expulsion. Even an inadvertent jostle draws a scolding to be more careful.

Students wear uniforms that include black blazers bearing the school crest. A child who is missing something as little as a belt ends up in the office until someone delivers the item from home.

Parents are warned upfront about the rigor, at their three-hour mandatory orientation. Recruiting director Temeka Brantley gets out the message even earlier, at community events and gathering places.

"The majority of my time is spent talking about the commitment," she said. "I try to be explicit and say, 'You have to be committed to send your children here.' " . . .

The founder of EPrep and its variously titled Cleveland charters is John Zitzner, whose small empire is now known as Breakthrough Schools.  Zitzner is also the principal officer of another nonprofit corporation, Friends of Breakthrough Schools (FBS), which was set up for raising corporate cash for his venture.  The amount that Zitzner collects from his schools directly is not known, but he pays himself $142,000 a year for raising money for his own enterprise. FBS collected over $3 million from the feds in 2012, and Zitzner now has over $16 million in non-profit in his bank account for Breakthrough operations. 

One of Zitzner’s strategies has been to collect and share the wealth, shall we say, through close ties to Cleveland’s business elites.  Zitzner is now at work in Knoxville to create a similar network of business, church, and public elites to push forward the same agenda of chain-gang charter schools that he got up and running in Cleveland. 

The chart below that is copied from the charter application includes the Emerald’s collection of new charter board members (asterisks indicate board members): 

The charter application also includes scores from one of Zitzner’s Cleveland schools, Village Prep—the one, of course, with the least flaws to talk about:

Can’t imagine why Zitzner had nothing to say about some of his other operations:

School Name	Indicators Met	Performance Index	Progress Bottom 20 Percent	Progress Students w/Disabilities	Annual Measurable Objectives
E Prep Woodland Hills	D	C	A	A	F
Citizens Lead. Academy	A	B	B	F	F
Citizens Academy	A	B	C	F	A
E Prep Cliffs	A	B	NR	NR	A

Knoxille’s alternative paper, MetroPulse, did a good story last January of some of Zitzner’s school performances.

Meanwhile, the budget for public schools and teachers was axed the same night that Emerald was approved.  The $5 million that was cut happens to be in the same ballpark as the amount that KNS will lose to pay corporate toadies to get fat operating a chain gang school that no white parents in Knoxville would ever consider for their own children :

The school board also passed an amended budget, which withdraws an initial proposal for a 3.5 percent raise for teachers across the district. Knox County Mayor Tim Burchett's initial budget proposal only funded $427.8 million of the school system's $432,335,000 request. Funds for the school system were further reduced when the state cut basic education program (BEP) funding for the schools.

"All students are not equal; some are more profitable than others" --Parthenon Group

If you want to find some savvy teachers who are not afraid to speak out against their Broadie superintendent and corporate foundations that have bought Tennessee schools and the nation's schools at bargain basement prices, go to Knoxville.  

Here is special ed teacher, Robert Taylor, taking his five minutes at the Feb. 5 board meeting, and making it  count.  This is what free speech looks like--use it!



And here is the link the powerpoint presentation by Parthenon Group's Robert Lytle in 2009.  The quote in the title of this post is on page 13, which is below.

Parthenon is a chief consulting service and investment advisor for philanthrocapitalists, corporate foundations, and the online profiteers.  Why is their advice so reliable?  Because they are also advising the politicians and administrative stooges who are owned by the corporate foundations.  

McIntyre Pushes Forward in Knoxville with Proven Failures

Despite a summer smackdown on a planned budget increase for teacher bonus pay based on test scores, and despite the Vanderbilt study that demonstrated that perf pay is a divisive waste of time and money, Eli Broad's poodle superintendent, Jim McIntyre, forges on.  

The question Knox County taxpayers should be asking:  Which legitimate programs are being neglected to fund this bonus pay plan with a demonstrated track record of failure in Nashville, Chicago, and New York?  When will Knoxville voters demand the Board get a superintendent with children's interest in mind, rather than kowtowing to the oligarchs who want to control public education across the country?

Broadie PerfPay Plan Gets Smacked Down

by Jim Horn and Anonymous Knoxvillian


The Broad Agenda for Tennessee public schools was crippled last evening when Knox County Commissioners rejected the McIntyre school budget increase to fund a meritless performance pay plan for teachers.


For months now the Broad Machine, steered in Knoxville by Supt. Jim McIntyre, has been on a non-stop PR campaign to waste public dollars on a tried-and-failed merit pay plan.  Despite unerring support by the TN Business Roundtable, the local Chamber of Commerce, the local corporate media (print and non-print), and untold millions in behind-the-scenes funding of astroturf groups pretending to be education advocates, the $35 million dollar plan did not even make it to the floor for a vote at last evening's County Commission meeting.


Numerous commissioners and the mayor all went on record stating that they had been contacted by hundreds of teachers who were against the budget but feared for their jobs by saying so.  Although KNS spun the story to make it look like "school employees" were speaking in favor of the plan prior to the meeting, 90% of those speaking were from the Support our Schools astroturf group and their Chamber of Commerce cronies.  The few legitimate school employees (maybe 5) who spoke in favor were either "dead ended" principals looking for a Central Office slot or well-meaning but naive classroom teachers who fell for the constant bullying from McIntyre's board to "be seen" or else.


Time will tell as to how McIntyre proceeds from here.  As the KCS budget HAS been funded well in excess of "maintainence of effort" for FY2013,  any threat of additional teacher layoffs, pay freezes, or program cuts will obviously be seen as unnecessary - and disingenuous and manipulative on McIntyre's part.  As for PerfPay, McIntyre set that as policy in August 2011 on the assumption that it WOULD be funded.  Now that it is NOT funded, who knows what will happen?  


It has been discovered through some good detective work by local bloggers that one of McIntyre's local Broad Residents, Nokia Townes (formerly of Wachovia Bank) purchased the "APEX" perfpay plan last summer from Battelle for Kids, Inc.  How many school board members knew this??


In a letter to school employees today, McIntyre does not mention the crushing defeat of the de-funded perfpay scheme.  Instead, he claims victory for the $7 million increase that Commissioners did approve, mainly for parrot learning direct instruction programs for Knoxville's poorest children (do follow the link if you don't know what this brand of bare-knuckled mind scrubbing is about).  


Perhaps Broad will find a new home for his loyal stooge, one where the citizenry doesn't mind having its schools run an ancient oligarch three time zones away.

"Support Our Schools" Astroturf Group Rallies With Letter Writing Campaign to County Commissioners

The shenanigans going on this spring in Knoxville, TN, offer a powerful case study of corporate control of schools in action.

A few weeks before Eli Broad's East TN transplant, Jim McIntyre, delivered his State of the Schools speech in January of this year, a new grassroots astroturf group was formed to push the Broadie budget plan once it was presented by McIntyre.

The group, Support Our Schools, is headed by Virginia Babb, who is one of three paid staffers for a corporate foundation in Knoxville known as Great Schools Partnership, which has a disproportionate number of Pilot Oil surrogates (including Governor Haslam) and a short list of other Business Roundtable corporate mainstays on its partner list:

AHB Foundation

Bill and Crissy Haslam

B&W Y-12

Choice Data

Clayton Family Foundation

Clayton Homes

Cornerstone Foundation

Covenant Health

Elgin Foundation

First Tennessee Foundation

Haslam Family Foundation

Home Federal

Jimmy and Dee Haslam

Knoxville News Sentinel

KUB

Steve & Mary Ellen Brewington

Pilot Oil

Pro2Serve

ProVision

Regal Entertainment

Rich Ray

Scripps Networks Interactive

Sherri Lee

Thompson Charitable Foundation

Tim Williams

The first public meeting of Support Our Corporations, er, Schools on January 11 was prominently covered, before and before and after by the Knoxville News-Sentinel, which is a Great Schools partner, too.  Imagine that!  In fact, the KN-S editor-in-chief, Jack McElroy, was in attendance on January 11.  

Now the astroturf Support our Schools is flooding Knox County Commissioners with form letters in support of the Broad budget plan sent over from LA and delivered by McIntyre.  The same astroturf group posted an op-ed on April 22 at, where else, the News-Sentinel, which enumerated all the potential beneficiaries of the requested budget increase.

However, the op-ed does not mention the fact that 27 of the 35 million dollars will go to pay for a bonus pay plan based on test scores, a plan that has a proven track record of failure in Chicago, Nashville and New York. 


When will the real public start calling County Commission and the School Board?  


Has the School Board been bought with Broad money, too?


Contact the County Commission and let them know that the McIntyre plan is unacceptable until the $27 million dollar pay for test scores plan is stripped out and replaced with budget items that have a proven research record of success, rather than demonstrated records of failure.

Eli Broad's Jim McIntyre Goes After More Tax Dollars to Fund Broad Initiatives

Knoxville's Branch Office of the Billionaire Boys Club has a new campaign to come up with $35,000,000 over the next five years to push forward the corporate reform agenda in East Tennessee.  Local Broadie, Supt. Jim McIntyre, has placed the first bug in the ear of Knox County taxpayers at a televised meeting at Fulton High School:

"You get that raise one time, but (it) continues in your base salary," he said during a community forum held at Fulton High School. "Knox County Schools is asking for a raise of $35 million and that's probably the simplest way to put this."  

So if Knox County children and parents are the recipients of this $35,000,000 raise, they, too, are also the ones to pay for that raise. Simple, indeed.  Or simple-minded? 

What is Slim Jim planning to do this "raise?"  Well, the biggest chunk and the largest increase by far will go to "strategic compensation," which is to say bonus pay for test scores.  (Knox County citizens should go here to download the research report from Vanderbilt University that shows no positive effect of bonus pay for raising achievement as measured by test scores.) That amount goes from $0.00 in FY13 to $11,000,000 in FY17, for a total of $27,000,000 over five years.  Another big increase will go to "technology," which means in Broadie talk, getting all schools wired to do year-round testing online, as envisioned by Broad/Gates and the rest of BBC.  And then there is the huge increase for instructional time, which translated means longer school days and/or school year.  That goes from $500,000 to $7.25 million over five years, for a total of $23 million. 

If my math is right, these increases alone have just eaten up about $58 million.  Wonder what programs will be cut to pay for the amount in excess of the 35 million dollar "raise."  Stay tuned for announcements on the next public forum.  (Click chart to enlarge)

McIntyre's Austerity Plan for Cutting $7M Ignores $27M in the Bank

Last Fall Eli Broad's Tennessee transplant, Supt. James McIntyre, laid out his wish list for slashing teachers and privatizing services in Knoxville, Tennessee Schools, all based on a purported shortfall of $7 million from a $384+ million dollar budget:

Facing a looming budget deficit of at least $7 million, Knox County Schools' Superintendent Dr. Jim McIntyre is outlining a number of drastic cuts.

In a memo to the Board of Education, McIntyre said outsourcing custodial services, closing small schools, and adjusting school start times are areas in which significant savings could be realized. He also said adjustments to high school staffing levels and re-evaluating the policies for community use of school facilities would help eliminate the deficit.

"None of the areas analyzed present options that are without significant impact on one or more segments of our population, and most of the options in each analysis would require changes not just in operations but to what may be seen as a philosophy of support or service," McIntyre wrote. . . .

Looming, I tell you!  Now with this find by Knoxville blogger, Mike Donila, one must ask if McIntryre was unaware of school assets or was he determined to create a false crisis in order to save his Club LeConte cronies a few tax dollars.

Below is page 202 of Knox County's last Comprehensive Annual Financial Report for 2011, which shows a $27,000,000 unassigned fund balance (click to enlarge):

Knoxville Native Offers Firsthand Account of Life Under Broad's Most Vanilla Corporate Boss

Broad Foundation stooge, Jim McIntyre, is in the news again, at least in the alternative news, since the corporate media of Knoxville has never printed a story that could reflect badly on the Haslam/Chamber of Commerce's pick for school superintendent.  The Metro Pulse says in a solid piece of reporting that McIntyre is having another go at privatizing KCS's janitorial services, an effort that failed last spring.

Could this be a precursor to privatizing the teacher corps of Knoxville--or the entire state?  Don't think I'm joking, for an effort is underway by Michigan's fascist governor, Rick Snyder,  to do just that.  This development puts McIntyre's refusal to acknowledge KCEA as a bargaining collaborating unit until the State makes clear its legislative intent into a whole new light.  Perhaps the Broadies know what is on the planning board for Tennessee parents and teachers if the Oligarchs have their way.

Meanwhile, Knox County parents led by Kari Hancock are challenging the local policy of using student TCAP scores to determine grades and student placements.  The grades part follows on a state law passed by the right-wing TN Legislature, but the student placement business reflects McIntyre's own tilt toward using racist and classist tests to sort children. This is a lawsuit waiting to happen.

It should be an interesting year for McIntyre, whose new contract continues to pay him over $222,000 per year, more than the Vice-President of the United States makes.  Especially interesting if the cowed teachers of Knoxville begin to speak out, as this lifelong Knoxville native and veteran teacher did an email to me:

. . . . In my own experience, every special education staff person was required to attend a mandatory meeting in which we were told by the SPED director that it was the superintendent's expectation that all KCS staff were to demonstrate "alignment" with his "vision" and policies (although any "vision" or "policy" had yet to be stated) , that we were to make no statements to friends, neighbors, or community members which expressed any doubt regarding or disagreement with his as-yet unstated policies and "vision", and that Knox County was moving in a "new direction" and we could either "get into alignment ("alignment" is one of his favorite buzzwords) or be "left behind" (there was no doubt that this meant "fired").

Our spineless Central Office bureaucrats at the AJ [Andrew Johnson] building downtown scrambled to be the first to kiss the ring of our newly anointed corporate-backed leader so as to protect their own positions as well of their personal fiefdoms which they had established for their friends, relatives, and cronies over the years.  Front-line staff became expendable cannon fodder in show-trial disciplinary actions as Central Office supervisors sacrificed veteran and novice teachers alike to demonstrate their "alignment" with the new regime.

Of course, staff morale plummeted and continued to do so as McIntyre kicked his PR machine into overdrive and ingratiated himself with the local media who were all to eager to serve as his personal echo chamber, hosting him repeatedly on local news programs to field banal, soft-pitch questions from starry-eyed "reporters" whom he regaled with buzzwords and platitudes in his carefully-cultivated and obnoxiously obsequious public persona.  All the while, front-line staff were reminded by their supervisors to remain quiet and "in alignment" as questionable actions were taken to keep themselves and their departments below the new superintendent's radar.  Heaven and earth was moved - regardless of  preexisting KCS policy or even existing state and federal law - to avoid unhappy parents, any threat of  lawsuits, or any negative public discourse for fear it would reflect badly upon the bureaucracy and run counter to McIntyre's PR policy.  Incidents of violence or illegal activities occurring in individual schools were hushed up and glossed over by administrators lest word get out that such things were occurring under McIntyre's leadership.

Meaningful, individualized, and appropriate  programming for SPED students fell by the wayside in favor of a "please all parents at all costs" phony feel-good policy of "inclusion for all" as a beginning move toward reducing the amount of veteran SPED teachers on the payroll   Staff members who dared speak out found themselves facing professional disciplinary action on random "allegations" of wrongdoing with their pending disciplinary action often reported to the press by McIntyre's PR people before the employee was even aware of it - only to be followed by placement on unpaid leave for the duration of an endless "investigation" in hopes of simply starving the offending staff person into exiting the system.   Dog and pony shows were hastily arranged by principals as McIntyre's office, in his much-touted promise to "visit every school" called individual schools to inform them of his intent to "visit"  that day with his entourage of HR staffers and the occasional school board member with the local press corps obediently in tow.

Not surprisingly, our own KCEA stood mute in McIntyre's first years here even as their rank-and-file members felt the full force of his top-down, unilateral, anti-teacher,  pro-business policies - responding only with platitude-filled newsletters advising teachers to eat healthy and get plenty of sleep to help manage work-related stress and, more often than not, failing to mount any meaningful defense for front-line members who found themselves "out of alignment" with McIntyre's policies.

McIntyre's first year bled into his second and third as our star-struck elected school board continued to eat out of his Broad-trained hand while the local media continued to report each press release from his office spokesperson as factual "news"  to a public caught up in a teacher-bashing frenzy while our educators stood silent out of fear for their  jobs.   He received one glowing review after another from the school board, citing "widespread support" for his policies and leadership style among teachers and parents while praising the public "visibility" afforded him by his cadre of professional PR people and spokespersons.  His contract was extended before it even neared the point of expiration much to the surprise and disgust of the very same people the school board, in their endless naivete', credited with being among his staunchest supporters.

Even as teacher layoffs were deemed an inevitable result of budgeting realities during the recession, funding was found within the budget  for the establishment of a "Leadership Academy" for corporate-minded aspiring principals within the system.  As school budgets for basic necessities such as paper and toner were slashed to the bone, and as programs of all types were downsized, reduced, and eliminated altogether, money was found to open new facilities owned by politically-connected businessmen and investors hungry for a slice of public money - such as an alternative school opened in a failed shopping mall and a STEM school opened in a turn-of-the-century train station, privately owned  previously underutilized as office and banquet space.  Race To The Top funds "awarded" to the county as a result of McIntyre's policies were used to create an entirely new level of bureaucracy consisting of dozens of new "consultants", "liaisons", "coaches" and "coordinators" who contribute nothing to student achievement.

Even as McIntyre continued to use the current economic situation as political capital and to exploit the national trend of teacher-bashing to sway public opinion to his ends with his push toward laying off teachers, outsourcing services to corporations, and attempting to erode the rights of  established (AKA higher-paid) teachers to due process and fairness in the workplace,  he added two more Broad-trained corporate hacks to his already bloated Central Office management team, creating new positions with meaningless titles out of thin air.

When finally queried during a budget meeting by an astute county commissioner on how such a large central office staff could be considered justifiable in light of the current fiscal reality, McIntyre produced a document outlining the results from a study conducted in 2001 (long before his tenure here), which described the Central Office staffing as numbering 85 positions and as being "adequately staffed".  What McIntyre did NOT divulge, however, was that Central Office staff at the time of that budget meeting was that his Central Office staff  had grown by 400 positions since the 2001 study!  Of course, the KCS organizational chart was quickly reorganized after this false presentation in order to appear "in alignment" with McIntyre's lie.

McIntyre overplayed his hand last year, however, with his attempt to use the pretense of  an "emergency budget crisis" to unilaterally cancel the contractually-obligated annual step-raises of certified staff during a meeting of the school board.  When a lone school board member questioned the appropriateness of this action in light of the intentions not being made public as well as the unilateral nature of his proposal, McIntyre pushed the remaining members to override her in an "emergency" ruling. 

Ultimately, he did not get his way as the school board allowed a referendum to be held by KCEA members regarding this proposal prior to it's adoption into the budget.  Despite McIntyre's PR machine using the local media as a bullhorn to trumpet threats of widespread teacher layoffs if the measure was not passed, the measure found no support amid the rank and file who saw it for the shameless  power play it was.  With McIntyre's hand being slapped away from the cookie jar for the first time, he again took to the press and tapped into the national anti-teacher sentiment to paint the educators whe refused to support his proposal as "not willing to do what is right for students.".

Ultimately, ZERO layoffs occurred, with the only casualty of this fiasco being the revocation of  downtown parking fee reimbursement for McIntyre's central staff  at the insistence of  the County Commission.  And this event is EXACTLY why McIntyre is leveraging the current political and legislative climate in TN to marginalize and render impotent the KCEA.

And today the local media is already reporting glowing reviews from the School Board on his annual evaluation, with yet another early extension of his contract all but certain at the conclusion of tonight's meeting.

I'm sure Eli is proud.