Cathy Antunes: Dark Money in Local Politics (video)

Click image above to play video of Cathy Antunes giving her Dark Money speech on November 7, 2017.  See description here.

POPS Education Forum

Protect Our Public Schools (POPS) held its first public forum at the Fogartyville Peace and Action Center.  Presenters included Sarasota School Board member, Shirley Brown; Opt Out Florida Network Manatee leader, Bridget Heffernan Mendel and POPS leader, Carol Lerner.  POPS leaders, Sandra Danu moderated and Rhana Bazzini gave the welcoming and opening remarks.  The forum focused on the growing threat of school privatization, nationally, statewide and locally.

Carol Lerner opened the forum providing an overview of the history of school privatization and showing how so called school reformers are implementing the agenda of large corporations and billionaire hedge funders who see school privatization as a key part of their economic game plan and a good way to extract billions of dollars from the 1.5 trillion dollar education industry.  She explained that the two primary vehicles for school privatization have been the rapid expansion of corporate-managed charter schools and education vouchers or tax credit scholarships to private schools.  Florida, Lerner explained, is the most advanced state in the nation in terms of school privatization, having both the highest percentage of students attending charter schools and the most students attending private schools with vouchers or tax credit scholarships.  As Florida Governor, Jeb Bush made school privatization a central part of his agenda. This effort continues with his ExcelinEd Foundation. Betsy DeVos served on its Board before becoming U.S. Secretary of Education.  In addition, most of the leadership of the Florida State legislature has direct personal ties to the charter school industry. They have pushed through draconian legislation, such as the recently passed HB-7069, that will rapidly expand corporate-managed charter schools and voucher-supported private schools at the expense of public school districts.