Charter school advocates making massive financial investments in legislative races

[eridani]

http://slog.thestranger.com/slog/archives/2012/08/02/the-bezos-familys-charter-schools-pac-shell-game

At first it was a bit remarkable to see four separate charter school PACs—Stand for Children WA PAC, Democrats for Education Reform WA PAC, Revising the Status Quo PAC, and Education Voters Political Action Fund—all spending money in a handful of Seattle area legislative primaries. Remarkable, that is, until I peeked behind the PDC curtain and pretty much found one PAC masquerading as four.

Stand for Children, the best financed of the three, has raised $163,800 from just 17 contributors, with almost half its money coming from Jeff Bezos' dad. Education Voters has raised $75,190 from just four contributors, almost all of it coming from Bezos' parents. Democrats for Education Reform comes off as only slightly more democratic, raising $55,450 from 20 contributors, including $15,000 from Bezos' parents. And Revising the Status Quo has raised $8,915 from 21 contributors, $6,000 of which came from Stand and Democrats for Education Reform.

Of the $297,355 raised across the four PACs, $165,000 came from the Bezos family. And of the handful of other contributors, many of them have contributed to two or more of the PACs.

On the expenditure side, all four PACs have contributed to Sylvester Cann and Stephanie Bowman, and Stand, Education Voters, and Democrats for Education Reform have all done independent expenditures in support of Cann and Bowman. Further more, all of these IEs were done by the same direct mail house, Amplified Strategies, a firm that proudly boasts its work on the No on I-1098 (High earners income tax) a campaign to which the billionaire Bezos family contributed $150,000.

[HiPointDem]

1. It's the 4th try. They just keep putting up initiatives until they get what they want.

I wish they would all just drop dead.

[eridani]

2. Bowman is out, Cann is way behind in the primary

Another of their targets, Rosemary McAuliffe in the 1st LD, seems to have done well in the primary also.

[eridani]

3. The Washington State PTA says it won’t support the charter school measure, Initiative 1240

http://www.thenewstribune.com/2012/08/18/2259823/state-pta-wont-back-charter-schools.html#storylink=cpy

The decision comes despite the fact that the parent volunteer organization has previously endorsed the concept of charter schools.

Charters, already authorized in 41 states, are publicly funded schools that allow significant decisions to be made at a school level, rather than by a school district or state officials. Three times in the past 16 years, Washington voters have turned down charter proposals.

“This wasn’t a decision about the value of charter schools,” state PTA President Novella Fraser said in a news release. “This was a decision about whether this initiative met our criteria.”

PTA’s governing board made its decision Aug. 10, criticizing I-1240 for what it characterizes as a lack of citizen involvement and oversight in charter schools that could result if the initiative passes.