Welcome Baby Beckles

I'm sure we'd all like to congratulate Yolande on the birth of her third child. It's happy days for any baby born on US territory, as the Constitution guarantees a right of citizenship for such infants. Childbirth is not quite such a happy event for any alien mother deemed to be an illegal immigrant or overstayer, however, as such women may still be deported at short notice. In a clampdown on 'birth tourism' in recent years, Federal appellate courts have upheld the refusal by the Immigration and Naturalization Service to stay the deportation of illegal immigrants merely on the grounds that they have children who are US citzens. In a few extreme cases, children have been snatched from their mothers and placed into foster care, while the mothers have been deported. It's not all bad news, though, as a child who have lived in the US continuously for 10 years and shown good character throughout can invoke the Cancellation of Removal defense in the event of parental deportation. And when a child reaches 21, he or she can sponsor their parents for legal immigration into the US. Marriage offers no automatic protection for unlawful immigrants, of course, as the INS is very keen to investigate fraudulent marriage for the purpose of obtaining a green card. Enough of this meandering diversion. I can't think what caused me to wander so far off track. The point of this post was to welcome the latest addition to the American family and to remind everyone that there is still time to join the baby shower with a gift from Babies "R" Us (Babies are US, lol!)

Click here to find the baby registry and a host of wonderful gift ideas.

Let Battle Commence

Well - apologies are due to Lydia Grant. When the educational activist and board member of Parent Revolution, the billionaire-funded front organisation for privately-owned charter school operators emailed Beckles Watch in the run-up to Christmas to disclose Yolande's threat to sue LAUSD, we quite naturally assumed that this was nothing more than a slap round the head with a handbag for a former partner in protest from whom she had already vociferously disassociated herself and her organisation. It was patently nothing more than a piece of mischievous nonsense. We consigned the story to the LA Christmas yawn charts.

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After all, what degree of insanity would lead someone who had fled her native country to escape assorted creditors and other victims to launch a $2.5bn lawsuit against one of the world's largest education authorities? To take on the might of the education establishment and some of its most powerful overlords when under threat of deportation for immigration irregularities and under investigation for other alleged offences? Even under the protective cover afforded by the imminent delivery of a US citizen? Nobody but nobody in such a delicate position would contemplate launching a suit against Los Angeles schools Superintendent John Deasy and LAUSD Chief of School, Family & Parent/Community Services Maria Casillas. Would they....?

Matters came to a head back in May last year, when the now-disbanded District Advisory Committee of LAUSD co-chaired by Yolande Beckles and Roberto Fonseca held its monthly meeting and revealed controversial district bulletins issued to LAUSD employees. Supposedly responding to the district's budget crisis, the missives announced "major changes" in policy - severely cutting back on expenses and restructuring the DAC, eliminating the vice-chair positions. It was becoming clear that LAUSD was reaching the end of its tether with DAC and it would only be a matter of time before Maria Casillas, Christopher Downing's replacement as head of parent and family services, would axe the organisation altogether. When the chop eventually came it was sudden and, in the opinion of some, brutal. According to reports, DAC offices were closed, staff and volunteers escorted from school premises and some members ejected from meetings and even visited at home by LAUSD officials allegedly issuing threats, including deportation. You'd think that some people would recognise defeat when it stared them in the face. But not our Yolande. Let battle commence...

Lacoe Woebegone Days

Someone here at Los Angeles County Office of Education has been paying a great deal of attention to the past affairs of Ms. Yolande Beckles over the past few days...

How To Avoid Deportation

I can't help wondering what fate awaits #3. Will he be stabbed? Or attacked with a stiletto heel? She's older and wiser now. He'll probably just be served with a restraining order to stay away. Or maybe the fun of attack will prove irresistable...

$2.5bn DAC Suit Against LAUSD Vies With Yolande & Lydia Spat With George For #1 In L.A. Xmas Yawn Charts

It was with some reluctance that the crew of Beckles Watch aborted their Christmas parcel wrapping yesterday and put down the Scotch tape in order to investigate exciting news that had recently arrived in the form of an email from Lydia Grant. For those unfamiliar with this militant Board Member of Parent Revolution, the $1m-funded front organisation for privately-owned charter school operators backed by an assortment of billionaires, Lydia Grant is a long-time community activist from Sunland-Tujunga formerly recognized with LAUSD's 'Beyond the Bell' award and the President's Volunteer Gold Level Service award, as well as being a well-known local slapper (the colloquial acronym for a member of the Saving Los Angeles Project, S.L.A.P.).

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It was exciting news indeed. Lydia was writing to distance herself from just about everyone - the billionaires funding her protest organisation (from whom she claimed to receive not one cent in financial support), LAUSD (an organisation she claimed to have dedicated her life to fighting), Yolande Beckles (whom she described as a "wolf in sheep's clothing") and Arne Duncan heckler George Buzetti from the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) (whom she accused of inaccuracies, misreporting and upsetting behaviour). When we reached the part about a $2.5 billion lawsuit being filed by The District Advisory Committee (DAC) against LAUSD for alleged misuse of funds, after local committees and activists were banished from the city's Parent Centers and other LAUSD premises recently, we were beginning to get excited. Even more so when we learnt that the announcement of this legal challenge had been made to the world's media at a press conference organised by none other than Yolande Beckles. Unfortunately for Yolande, the world's media doesn't appear to have expressed much interest in her announcements. The Los Angeles Times and KPCC both reported that Deasy would be filing a lawsuit against the State of California to prevent mid-year funding cuts, but neither reported the threatened DAC action and nor did LA Weekly, leaving nothing more than the odd blog with virtually no readers to post attorney Robert A. Brown's press release. One sentence in attorney Brown's press release caused raised eyebrows at the BW office, it must be admitted. "In some instances, DAC members were visited at their homes and pulled out of meetings by LAUSD police, while others were threatened by District administrators with deportation." Well, I wonder whose US immigration status might have led to possible threats of deportation? I simply can't imagine.

Gun For Hire

They say that all publicity is good publicity, but I'm not sure that even Yolande Beckles, with a media image as bad as hers, will be welcoming the rabid attentions she's been receiving recently from extreme right-wing anti-union Harvard graduate and all-round nutter Anthony Krinsky.

Writing in one of his blogs under the banner: "Outing Teacher Union Replicants: How To Spot A Fake "Parents" Group, Operative, Or Outfit", Krinsky attacks the teachers' unions for setting up "fake 'parent' groups that waive the banner of parent advocacy but which actually promote the teacher union agenda... and enlisting parents in proxy-armies to fight reforms which are clearly in the parental interest."

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Top of Krinsky's hit list are Carl Campanile and the NYC Parents Union", described by the hysterical anti-union ranter as nothing more than "a teacher union front group". At least he gives Parents Across America credit for having attempted to disguise its true backers, referring to it as "a 'parent' front group... for the Economic Policy Institute", as if the EPA was the Russian SVR, rather than a liberal non-partisan think tank with a degree of union funding.

But our ranter saves some of his most poetic venom for you-know-who: "...in communities like Los Angeles, the teacher unions have allegedly hired 'education activists' like Yolande Beckles to embed themselves into communities. Beckles has already talked her way onto the Greater Echo Park Elysian Neighborhood Council and leads a CTA front-group called 'California Title I Parent Union.' A friend of mine calls her 'quite impressive' personally, which did not surprise me in the least. How many hired guns are sneaking into the fabric of America's neighborhood councils where they will powerfully present teacher union dogma as 'good for families?'"

Wow! It's Clint Beckles - The Woman With No Name. Poor old Krinsky. Eyes so inflamed with the red mist of anti-union loathing that he can't see the self-serving wood for the co-operative trees. Let me explain it to you, Anthony. Yolande isn't a servant of the unions, nor of the multi-billionaire private charter school operators, nor even of the investment bankers and hedge-fund managers of Democrats For Education Reform. Yolande Beckles exists to serve the interests of only one master... or I should say mistress. Yolande Beckles.

Holding Onto Eachother On The Astroturf

"The best thing to hold onto in life is eachother", declared Linda Serrato, Deputy Communications Director of Parent Revolution at her Oak Creek Palo Alto engagement party in May last year. A tender and loving thought addressed to her fiancé Matt, with whom she is pictured here frolicking in the hotel fountains. Not, however, a sentiment that the community activist is aiming at Yolande Beckles these days. In an angry message to this blog a few days ago Ms. Serrato declared: "I wanted to clarify that Parent Revolution has absolutely no affiliation (formal or otherwise) with Ms. Beckles or any of her work in Southern California... We have never had any affiliation with her. We do not currently have any affiliation. We will never want any affiliation with her." So, sounds like the engagement between Parent Revolution and CTIPU arranged by George Buzzetti isn't progressing quite as lovingly. "We are about empowering and educating parents and developing real grassroots organizations", the irate PR manager continued. "She isn't about these things... She doesn't disclose to parents how she is funded or how she has misled parents in the past."

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Quite right. And quite unlike Parent Revolution of course. There's nothing secret or misleading about the funding or commercial motives of Linda Serrato's employers. Parent Revolution is a $1m-funded front organisation for a set of privately-owned charter school operators backed by an unashamedly open bunch of billionaires including Bill & Melinda Gates, Casey Wasserman, Eli & Edyth Broad, William and Flora Hewlett and Sam & Helen Walton.

Behind all of this we find the hand of Democrats For Education Reform, the political action committee run by investment bankers and hedge-fund managers that was responsible for the parent trigger legislation in the first place and an organisation which Linda Serrato came to know through her previous campaign work for Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama. DFER presents its interests as the interests of children, specifically America's mainly urban, non-white public school children. DFER pits the interests of these children against the interests of unionized teachers who, according to DFER, are ultimately responsible for high student dropout rates and abysmal performance on school tests.

DFER refuses to admit that lack of school funding or poverty is an important determinant of academic performance, citing academic outcomes at KIPP and Harlem Children's Zone as evidence of what great instruction can do. DFER's critics point out that the PAC has a stake in undermining the pull of teachers' unions, the largest single source of funding for the Democratic Party, in order to wrest power and political influence in its favour. There is nothing left-wing about this agenda - it was effectively authored by George W. Bush. Such organisations are known in political circles as "astroturf" bodies – groups that adopt the populist guise of a grassroots organization in the interests of parties that are neither populist nor grassroots. Independent bloggers at Solidaridad have been calling Parent Revolution "astroturf" for years. So, where does this leave us? Well, for ordinary parents with kids in public schools in deprived neighbourhoods and for rank-and-file teachers struggling to educate under-privileged students in the face of inadequate and shrinking budgets, there's little choice. American astroturf billionaires or British swindlers on the run. You pays yer money... Here is Linda's email in full: My name is Linda Serrato and I work communications for Parent Revolution. I wanted to reach out personally regarding your most recent post about Yolanda Beckles. I wanted to clarify that Parent Revolution has absolutely no affiliation (formal or otherwise) with Ms. Beckles or any of her work in Southern California. Our organization helps parents organize and form Parent Unions at their local school around various initiatives. Some of our chapters focus on parental initiatives such as improving attendance at their school while others demand changes to their children's schools when the status quo has failed their children. Additionally, we train parents to develop steering committees and help to educate parents about ways that they can take a real role to change their child's educational destiny. I want to make it clear that we do not take any money whatsoever from our parents. While Ms. Beckles stole the Parent Union name, she does not reflect any of this grassroots organizing or knowledge spreading. This year, our organization has been fighting to protect the Parent Trigger that empowers parents to have a real voice in their children's education. Every State Board meeting, Parent Revolution organized parents to take a 6 hour overnight bus up to Sacramento to get parent-friendly regulations passed surrounding the law, in which the parents gave their own time to do. At the July meeting, after seeing how eloquent and successfully Parent Revolution parents were about defending Parent Trigger, Yolanda Beckles organized a bus of parents (funded by CTA) to go up to Sacramento under the Title I Parent Union flag and try to tear down the Parent Trigger law and take power away from parents. The results were disastrous. The Title I parents were unaware of the Parent Trigger law and boarded a bus to talk about school funding. A number of parents were quite confused when they spoke and even at one point the President of the Board had to ask the speaker to address the Parent Trigger law and NOT talk about school funding. In another case, a parent we were working with, got over 300 parent signatures in support of the Parent Trigger law. She gave the petition to Yolanda (without knowing where Ms. Beckles received funding) when Ms. Beckles promised to submit the 300 signatures. At no point did Ms. Beckles submit the signatures. Instead, she betrayed the parents trust and effectively threw away the petition. After the trip, she returned to Los Angeles and lied out right to parents. As a parent recounted to us, Ms. Beckles claimed that our organization offered her hundreds of thousands of dollars to get her to work for us but that she denied our offer. I cannot emphasize enough how false that is. We have never had any affiliation with her. We do not currently have any affiliation. We will never want any affiliation with her. We are about empowering and educating parents and developing real grassroots organizations. She isn't about these things. In fact, we have been following your website and have been trying to make parents aware of her background. She doesn't disclose to parents how she is funded or how she has misled parents in the past. I wanted to email you to clarify the situation and to prevent any instance of her using this as evidence that she works with us. You can learn more about our organizing from this video when we were featured on “Nightly News with Brian Williams.” If you have any other questions, please feel free to reach out to me directly. Thanks, Linda

Follow The Buck

The big news in the world of LA education this month was the much-discussed early walk-out of U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan on parents invited to a meeting at the town hall in Pico Rivera - an event designed to engage community leaders from across the Los Angeles region in meeting President Barack Obama's challenge to lead the world in college completion by 2020.

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Media and bloggers were quick to pick up on the words of heckler George Buzzetti, who followed up on Duncan's exit by shouting: "He has no respect for students, parents or teachers, he is now on his way to get money." Much applause from a frustrated audience of parents and teachers. Having initially declared his outburst to be impromptu, Buzzetti later confessed that he had actually been instrumental in securing invites for much of the audience and setting the agenda for protest through the organisations he chose to engage: "I am the one who originated opening up a closed meeting to all comers through Lydia Grant, Board Member of the Parent Revolution, and Yolande Beckles with the LAUSD Parent District Advisory Council (DAC) and new Parent Union. I am with the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) of California... Monday I called Lydia and Yolande to send in requests on their letterhead, they did. Within several hours both received phone calls, from officials representing Duncan, asking them to bring every student, parent, teacher and community member they can so they can be listened to by the Secretary of Education... From San Diego to the edge of L.A. County they came including a bus load paid for by The California Teachers Association (CTA) who helped parents go to this supposedly important event for the public to be heard." Eagle-eyed readers will have picked up on Buzzetti's description of Ms. Beckles as being with "the LAUSD Parent District Advisory Council (DAC)" (of which I've written at some length on this blog) and the "new Parent Union". Aha. So that's what Yo has been doing during these past months of relative silence.

Yes - Ms. Beckles has been busy setting up yet another organisation, the California Title I Parent Union. The new venture has no office of its own, but shares premises, phone and fax with the CTA (California Teachers Association - the state's largest professional employee organization, representing more than 340,000 public school teachers, counselors, psychologists, librarians and ESPs) at the Wilshire Blvd headquarters of its state affiliate UTLA (United Teachers Los Angeles - the union of professionals representing 45,000 public school teachers and health and human services professionals in LA). Things must be getting tight financially, because not only does CTIPU not have its own office, nor does it yet have its own website. Even the proposed domain name has yet to be purchased, leaving an opportunity for someone more mischievous than Beckles Watch. Still, lack of financial resources didn't prevent Yo organising and funding a bus to Pico Rivera with refreshments on board, as her letter to members confirms. Presumably not the same bus that was hired and paid for by CTA according to George Buzzetti.

So the next question is inevitably about the relationship between CTIPU and Parent Revolution. After all, when noisy George Buzzetti goes looking for troops, he calls both organisations to the barricades. Well, at first glance Parent Revolution looks just the sort of outfit that Yolande would associate herself with. Its mission is "to transform public education rooted in what's good for kids — not grown-ups — by empowering parents to transform their own children’s low-performing schools through community organizing." It organized a massive and successful grassroots campaign to have a law called the Parent Trigger pass through the California State Legislature, empowering parents at any failing school in California to transform their school through community organizing. Just the sort of words that will ring bells with anyone familiar with the preachings of Ms. Beckles. Chair and CEO of Parent Revolution Reverend K.W. Tulloss describes himself as "a leading advocate for children and communities of color throughout Los Angeles". His CV reveals that he was born and raised in South Los Angeles, has taken on countless leadership roles to fight for the members of his community and is the leader of National Action Network Los Angeles, the CEO of the Making a Difference Foundation, a founding member of the Latino/African American Leadership Alliance, Pastor of the Historical Weller Street Missionary Baptist Church in Boyle Heights, a youth mentor, gang mediator and a board member of the Watts Learning Center. Pretty impressive stuff! You'd wonder why any frustrated parent in Los Angeles wouldn't support the parent-power organisation. A clear case of David and Goliath, as previously unrepresented but radicalised parents take on the twin conservative mammoths of the state and the unions.

The contrast between privilege and despair couldn't have been put into sharper relief than last January, when Uprising Radio's Sonali Kolhatkar hosted Gabe Rose, Deputy Director of Parent Revolution in a debate with A J Duffy of UTLA over the Parent Trigger law and the state of public education in LA. Just look at Duffy's crisp Italian suit and tie and compare with Rose's crumpled, open-neck shirt. One of these men is backed by some serious financial interests with hidden agendas.

Yeah - I expect you got it. The Chair and CEO of Parent Revolution back then was one Steve Barr, founder of Green Dot Public Schools, operators of several charter schools in the city of Los Angeles and with virtually inexhaustible funding from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, the Wasserman Foundation, the Eli and Edyth Broad Foundation, the Hewlett Foundation and the Walton Family Foundation. But don't feel sorry for the low-paid former President of United Teachers Los Angeles. He stepped down in June to become Executive Director of Apple Academy Charter Public Schools. Poor Yolande. She made a fortune in her early business ventures, but nowadays she never quite seems to get onto the wonga bandwagon in time.