Tag Archives: James Sutton

GOP Activist Attacks Teachers’ Contract

16 Jul

By Thomas Ultican 7/16/2023

On June 12 2023, San Diego Unified School District (SDUSD) ratified a new 3-year contract with the teachers and paraeducators unions (San Diego Educators Association (SDEA) – California School Employees Association Paraeducators Chapter 759). Before the month ended, Todd Maddison of the conservative Parents Association placed a scathing indictment of the new contract in the Voice of San Diego. This relentless GOP led disparagement of teachers and public schools has become the standard operating procedure throughout America.

It is not obvious what Maddison wants. The headline for his opinion piece says “San Diego Unified Is Putting Adults First, Not Students.” It is incongruent with the new contract. He apparently thinks teachers are overpaid and a 15% pay raise is a theft of public money.

Contract Details

SDEA had been negotiating this 3-year deal with the district for more than a year. The last contract expired June 30, 2022. They demanded an 18% pay raise and settled for 15%.

Several other issues were also negotiated.

SDEA Chart Negotiated Pay Raise

The contract was ratified on June 12th by a 98% positive vote from SDEA members. Board Trustee Richard Barrera said, “With the agreement, we’re on our way to being able to tell young people you can pursue a career as an educator and still be able to raise a family in a place like San Diego at the same time.” He said that first-year teachers can make $64,000 a year, those in the middle of their careers $105,000 and veterans, up to $124,000.

Other issues agreed to included:

  1. Community schools require a part-time community school coach at each campus
  2. Elementary schools, with more than 250 students, get a counselor three days a week, those with more than 375 students get one four days a week and schools with more than 500 students get a full-time counselor
  3. Full-time nurses remain in every comprehensive high school
  4. Middle and high school physical education classes capped at 50 students, down from 60
  5. Middle and high schools add a part-time restorative-justice position
  6. Transitional kindergarten classes are capped at 24 students and first grade through third-grade capped at 29 – all were previously capped at 35
  7. Every transitional kindergarten classroom will have an early-childhood teacher and a teacher with multiple-subject credentials
  8. Paid maternity leave doubled to six weeks

This negotiation ended with a substantial pay raise for teachers. Students got smaller classes throughout the K-12 system and improved staffing ratios in kindergarten. Both administration and teacher negotiators actually paid considerable attention to improving the plight of students.

Yet, Maddison claimed, “San Diego Unified Is Putting Adults First, Not Students,”

More Maddison Assertions…

He opened by saying:

“Anyone who follows K-12 education will tell you we’re facing a crisis. The latest National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) numbers expose declines in academic performance to unprecedented levels …”

I follow K-12 education closely and do not see a crisis because the 2022 test scores wiggled down a few points. We just came through a pandemic and test preparation was not a priority. Give the children a chance to recover from the recent trauma and they will be fine unless faux educators convince us to do crazy things like high intensity tutoring, double math and mandatory summer school.

Maddison, the data analyst for Transparent California said:

“From SDUSD’s own payroll records, obtained using a legal public records request and posted for anyone to see on the Transparent California website, data show in 2022 the median total pay of a full time certificated employee was $102,024. For comparison, the latest U.S. Census Bureau data shows private workers with equivalent education in San Diego County made $87,784.”

His teacher salary data seems reasonable but professionals with “equivalent education” and time on the job are generally paid more than teachers.

San Diego is very expensive. Multiple rent tracking web sites report that the average two-bedroom apartment rents for over $3,200 a month. To attract and retain quality educators, a living wage is required to support more than bare survival.

Maddison writes:

“Last year, teachers had 27.8 percent of their pay contributed to their retirement. That’s a whopping 17.6 percent more than private workers, where total retirement contributions typically average 10.2 percent.”

This is disingenuous.

California teachers are not part of the Social Security system. They and their employers pay into the California teachers’ retirement system and have to contribute more to match the amount non-teachers accumulate.

He concludes his editorial claiming that SDUSD is financially unsound and quotes from the County Board of Education July 2022 response to the district’s budget proposal: “[T]he district will need to make budget reductions of approximately $129 million by fiscal year 2024-25 and an additional $53 million in 2025-26 in order to remain fiscally solvent and meet the required minimum reserve.”

On the same issue, he ignores the County’s September 2022 comment:  

“The Adopted Budget shows the district will be unable to meet its multi-year financial commitments in subsequent fiscal years without additional budget solutions; however, the district’s adopted budget was developed prior to adoption of the 2022-23 state budget. Actual state budget data should be incorporated into the district operating budget and multi-year projection during the First Interim Report process. Any necessary budget reductions should be detailed and approved by the board along with submission of the First Interim Report.”

The County was not concerned with the district’s solvency. They merely stated that under the current revenue stream, the budget needed to be adjusted for future requirements. As of September 2022, without knowing how much money was coming from the state, once enrollment was finalized and state contribution known, the district was directed to make any necessary budget adjustments and report.

The Parent Association

Todd Maddison’s biography says, “Todd is also a founding member of the Parent Association and is the San Diego County Chair of the California School Choice Foundation.”

Parent Association apparently grew out of the loud, right-leaning, pandemic protest movement. They were responding to President Trump and Education Secretary DeVos who were calling for schools to be opened in person. Maddison immediately joined in the call. In 2020, a July 12th Union Tribune article on the protest quoted him extensively.

It is true that children are less susceptible to COVID-19 infections but not immune. People working in schools, especially teachers, would be at risk, as would the children’s adult family members. On July 12 2020, with the first vaccines more than six months away, San Diego County reported 508 new infections with 2 more deaths. By November, the number of new cases was more than 1,000 per day.

On April 21 2021, the IRS granted the Parent Association tax exempt status as a charity under the 501-c3 rule (EIN 87-1693090), meaning donations are tax deductible. In July, their sister organization, the Parent Advocacy Center, was granted 501-c4 status (EIN 87-1487817). This means they don’t pay taxes but because they are a political action group, donations to them are not tax deductible.

Both organizations are registered in San Francisco, care of the James Sutton law firm, the campaign lawyers. The executive director of the Parent Association is Ginny Merrifield, a very connected operator in San Diego Republican circles and trustee of the E3 Civic High. She was also co-founder and trustee of the private and pricey Pacific Ridge School in Carlsbad, California and boardmember of governors for the $750 million San Diego Foundation. Her husband, Marshal, ran for San Diego city council as a Republican but was not elected.

When billionaire, Arthur Rock, put up hundreds of thousands to remove the San Francisco school board, Sutton and hedge fund founder Patrick Wolff of Grandmaster Capital, took the lead. Wolff founded Grandmaster Capital with seed funding from his billionaire friend, Peter Thiel. According to the hedge fund journal, they were initially brought together by a common interest in chess.

As county chair of the California School Choice foundation, Maddison campaigns for Education Savings Accounts, another name for vouchers. He writes about not being able to make the changes that failing public schools need and realized “The best way to give parents real power over school districts is to have the ability to take their money somewhere else.”

Are you sure that is not taxpayer money?

Observation

Research paper after research paper have over the last more than a decade consistently found terrible results from voucher schools. Last year, Professor Joshua Cohen wrote in the Hechinger Report, “After two decades of studying voucher programs, I’m now firmly opposed to them.”

Todd Madison and the wealthy right want to privatize public education and undermine teacher professionalism.

That is a mistake.

Public schools have been under assault by a well-funded group of oligarchs for more than 40 years. We have the best school system in the world. They are not now nor ever have been “failing.”

It is the height of foolishness to diminish this national treasure, the bedrock of American democracy. 

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San Francisco Public Schools under Attack

5 Jan

By Thomas Ultican 1/5/2022

San Francisco Mayor London Breed is leading a recall effort to replace three of the city’s seven school board members. Her neoliberal supporters would prefer to replace all seven but the four board members elected in the last election cannot be recalled. If they are successful, Mayor Breed will appoint the replacements. Along with board member Jenny Lam who Breed appointed previously, these new appointments would make four of the seven school board members Breed appointments rather than elected representatives.

The excuse for the recall is that the board did not open schools for face to face instruction in the spring of 2021. An open schools now campaign was initiated by the former president in May 2020 and became a winning Republican issue. In her ongoing effort to wrest control of public schools from the elected school board which was established in 1851, Mayor London Breed sued the school board to open schools. The February 3, 2021 suit claimed a “violation of administerial duties,” for not preparing for a return to school.

Replacing democratic control of schools with mayoral control is a neoliberal and anti-democratic agenda. In February, 2021, a new PAC – “Campaign for Better San Francisco Public Schools” – was formed with Democratic activist Seeyew Mo as its executive director. The principal officer listed on their declaration form was hedge fund founder Patrick Wolff and the treasure cited was San Francisco lawyer James Sutton. The PAC claimed, “The election process for choosing the Board of Education is not meeting the needs of San Francisco.” They called for a mayor appointed board and cited as evidence supporting their appeal a 2013 Center for American Progress (CAP) article that was sponsored by the Edythe and Eli Broad Foundation and reviewed by the Thomas B. Fordham Institute.

Another group calling for the end of elected school boards in San Francisco is the conservative Briones Society. In a recent opinion piece they urge a charter amendment to make school board members appointed not elected. In addition, they state, “We propose a new path forward for our school system based on what some education scholars call the “portfolio model.”  The model is a path to privatization that has caused major disruptions to schooling wherever it has been implemented.

The Recall

School district parents, Autumn Looijen and Siva Raj, filed a school board recall petition. Looijen and Raj are tech workers who moved to the city in December 2020. After less than three months in the city, they submitted the February 19, 2021 filing to establish a committee called “Recall School Board Members Lopez, Collins & Moliga.” The filing names Looijen treasurer and her husband Raj principal officer.

Seventeen days later (3/8/2021), their filing was amended and the lawyer for the “Campaign for Better San Francisco Public Schools,” James Sutton, was named treasure, Looijen was named principal officer and her husband was cited as additional officer. James Sutton’s Law firm bio says,

“Notable professional affiliations include Past President of the California Political Attorneys Association and former Member of the State Bar’s Nonprofit Corporation Committee. Notable current and past community involvement includes the San Francisco Parks Alliance, Friends & Foundation of the San Francisco Public Library, Tennis Coalition of San Francisco, Friends of the Bancroft Library, Enterprise for High School Students, San Francisco School Alliance Advisory Board and San Francisco Olympic Club.”

In other words, Sutton is a very connected local lawyer in San Francisco and expensive. The Sutton Law Firm’s web site address is “campaignlawyers.com.”

Big money soon came in support of the recall. Silicon Valley billionaire  Arthur Rock was an early venture capitalists in the technology industry. His winners include Apple, Intel, Scientific Data Systems and several more. During the last 20-years, he has been very busy working to privatize public schools. Rock gifted $49,900 to the recall committee.

However, Rock’s investment was second in size to probable billionaire David Sacks’s $74,500 contribution. Sacks is an immigrant from South Africa who Peter Theil hired to be the PayPal COO. He was the founder of Yammer and now is general partner in a successful venture capital fund. While in college in 1995, he co-authored The Diversity Myth: ‘Multiculturalism’ and the Politics of Intolerance with Peter Thiel. Both Sacks and Thiel were significant Trump supporters in 2016.

A second committee called “Concerned Parents Supporting the Recall of Collins, Lopez, and Moliga” was legally formed on October 13, 2021. Arthur Rock’s $350,000 contribution to “Concerned Parents…” is by far the largest single contribution in the recall. In fact Rock’s total of $399,500 contributed to the recall represents 30 percent of the total recall contributions of $1,133,390.

Race Based Attack

After the former President of the United States persistently called the Covid-19 virus the “China virus,” many Asian Americans began experiencing physical attacks. San Francisco is 34 percent Asian and it was in this atmosphere that someone at the “Recall School Board Members Lopez, Collins & Moliga” committee found a string of tweets putting Collins in a bad light with the Asian community.

In 2016, two years before Collins an African mother ran for the school board she had fired off tweets that some people found offensive to Asians. After the tweets became an issue Collins posted a letter of apology to the community on medium also stating,

“A number of tweets and social media posts I made in 2016 have recently been highlighted. They have been taken out of context, both of that specific moment and the nuance of the conversation that took place. President Donald Trump had just won an election fueled by division, racism and an anti-immigration agenda. Meanwhile one of my daughters had recently experienced an incident in her school in which her Asian American peers were taunting her Latinx classmate about “sending kids back to Mexico” and the KKK. It was a time of processing, of fear among many communities with the unknown of how the next four years would unfold.”

Mayor Breed called for Collins’s resignation as did all of the Asian American city council members as did both of Breed’s appointments to the school board; Jenny Lam and Faauuga Moliga. The school board stripped her of the vice-presidency and all of her committee assignments.

Collins has been accused repeatedly in both local and national media of posting a series of anti-Asian racist attacks. It is a very effective political attack in a heavily Asian community. However, the tweets are relatively innocuous. They do not get much worse than,

The attack is BS. It is more about the recall and this report from KCBS Radio, “After a long, contentious debate, the San Francisco Board of Education has voted to do away with Lowell High School‘s merit-based admissions process after students say it is partially to blame for the school’s racist atmosphere.” Collins was a driving force behind the decision.

Gentrification

Patrick Wolff the principal officer of the “Campaign for Better San Francisco Public schools” founded Grandmaster Capital with seed funding from his billionaire friend Peter Thiel. According to the hedge fund journal, Wolff and Thiel were initially brought together by a common interest in chess. “Thiel is a serious chess player and Wolff began his career as a full-time, professional chess player, twice becoming US champion, hence the Grandmaster name.” 

The Wolff-Thiel and Sacks-Thiel connections along with Mayor Breed’s appointment of Sonja Trauss to the “Regional Planning Committee of the Association of Bay Area Governments” should have people worried about gentrification. Szeto and Meronek referenced Tory Becker the director of the anti-gentrification group LAGAI when writing about Trauss,

“Entrenched online in the libertarian strongholds of Reddit and TechCrunch, and in the real world through real estate- and tech-sponsored nonprofits like SPUR and YIMBY Action, Trauss’s followers live by the neoliberal belief that deregulation and building more housing, even if it’s only affordable to the richest of the rich, will trickle down and eventually make housing affordable for all. Her vision is Reagonomics ‘dressed up in a progressive sheep’s costume,’ according to Becker.”

The third largest contributor to the recall effort is the “California Association of Realtors Issues Mobilization Political Action Committee (IMPAC).” They kicked in $55,900.

Conclusion

A combination of neoliberal politicians, deep-pocketed public school privatization advocates and real estate developers are making a major push to gain control of San Francisco’s public schools. This is an ongoing effort that became crystal clear in 2017 when Vincent Mathews was chosen to be Superintendent of Schools.

Mathews is a 2006 alumnus of the Broad Academy for school administrators known for its manual on how to close schools. Broad graduates have a track-record of developing financial deficits in the systems they manage.

Mathews served as Educator in Residence at the NewSchools Venture Fund. In 2001, he was principle of the for-profit Edison Charter Academy. His close relationship with school privatization groups made him an odd choice for “progressive” San Francisco.

Mathews came to San Francisco from Inglewood, Ca. The LA Times noted about his tenure there,

“A recent report by the state’s Fiscal Crisis and Management Assistance Team found that, under Matthews, Inglewood had left day-to-day tasks to consultants, hadn’t monitored its budget and had underestimated its salary costs by about $1 million. The district had also overestimated its revenue, in part by incorrectly counting the number of students.”

It is not surprising that San Francisco’s school district is facing a $125 million deficit.  

Now Mathews is retiring leaving the district in financial distress.

It is very sad to see the once capital of progressive thought in America turning into a bastion of neoliberalism and opposing democratically run public schools.

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San Francisco “Progressives” Promote Gentrification Undermine Democracy

16 Apr

By Thomas Ultican 4/16/2021

A new political PAC, “Campaign for Better San Francisco Public Schools,” demands that schools be opened for in person classes immediately. They also make two dubious claims, “The election process for choosing the Board of Education is not meeting the needs of San Francisco” and “Many large cities successfully use an appointment process to choose a Board of Education.”

San Francisco Democrats Embrace the Open Schools Now Agenda

Neoliberal forces especially from the Republican Party have been campaigning for schools to be opened immediately for more than a year. Republicans see it as a wedge issue that could help them win back suburban women. Carl Hulse’s New York Times article noted that “congressional Republicans have begun to hammer relentlessly on President Biden, Democrats and teachers’ unions to open schools quickly.”

Surprisingly, San Francisco Democrats have joined with the former president’s open-schools-now campaign. Mayor London Breed has even sued the school board trying to force them to reopen schools. Breed explained,

“Families right now aren’t able to plan for their futures. They can’t decide whether to accept a job offer because they don’t know when they’re going to be able to once again have their kids returned to the classroom. This is paralyzing our city and our residents, and I know that this is a drastic step, but I feel we are out of options at this point.”

Seeyew Mo, a computer scientist who uses his skills to develop political campaign tools, is the executive director of the Campaign for Better San Francisco Public Schools. In a recent bid for a seat on San Francisco’s Democratic County Central Committee, he was endorsed by Nancy Pelosi, London Breed and YIMBY among others. YIMBY is the yes in my Backyard advocates for safe, affordable housing in California often accused of advancing a gentrification agenda.

The Campaign for Better San Francisco Public Schools’ background article claims that school boards should be appointed not elected citing a 2013 article from the Center for American Progress (CAP) as evidence. The CAP article was sponsored by the Edythe and Eli Broad Foundation and reviewed by Thomas B. Fordham Institute. Both entities are infamous for promoting school privatization.

Political Action Committees must file a statement of purpose to legally spend money. When the Campaign for Better San Francisco Public schools filed their form, the treasure named was James Sutton a prominent San Francisco Lawyer and the principle officer named was hedge-fund founder Patrick Wolff. 

Wolff founded Grandmaster Capital with seed funding from his billionaire friend Peter Thiel. According to the hedge fund journal, Wolff and Thiel were initially brought together by a common interest in chess. “Thiel is a serious chess player and Wolff began his career as a full-time, professional chess player, twice becoming US champion, hence the Grandmaster name.” 

In 2018, Wolff wrote commentaries on education for the San Francisco Examiner. In one piece he declared,

“California is failing. San Francisco is failing. The status quo is unacceptable. The fate of our children’s education is literally our future.”

“But in the interest of full disclosure, I will report that I have met several times with Marshall Tuck and he has greatly impressed me with his knowledge, his passion, and his ideas. And Marshall Tuck has the full-throated endorsement of Arne Duncan, who was US Education Secretary under President Obama.”

Gentrification

The Wolff-Thiel connection and Mayor Breed’s appointment of Sonja Trauss to the Regional Planning Committee of the Association of Bay Area Governments has people worried.

Szeto and Meronek referenced Tory Becker the director of the anti- gentrification group LAGAI when writing about Trauss,

“Entrenched online in the libertarian strongholds of Reddit and TechCrunch, and in the real world through real estate- and tech-sponsored nonprofits like SPUR and YIMBY Action, Trauss’s followers live by the neoliberal belief that deregulation and building more housing, even if it’s only affordable to the richest of the rich, will trickle down and eventually make housing affordable for all. Her vision is Reagonomics ‘dressed up in a progressive sheep’s costume,’ according to Becker.”

San Francisco Supervisor Gordon Mar opposed Trauss’s appointment noting that the appointee must be able to bridge divisions across neighborhoods and ideologies. Mar claimed, “Sonja Trauss has a history of inflaming these divisions, rather than working across them” citing “the declaration that ‘gentrification is what we call the revaluation of black land to its correct price’” and “forcefully shouting down Chinatown community elders.”

Recall the Board

School district parents, Autumn Looijen and Siva Raj, filed a school board recall petition. They wanted to recall the entire board but the two members elected in November cannot be recalled this year.  Looijen and Raj are tech workers who moved to the city last December. They claim the school board was too busy with school name changes instead of getting schools open.

In the original filing, Looijen is listed as treasure and Raj is listed as principal officer. In an amended filing, Looijen is listed as principal officer and the new treasure is James Sutton the same high priced San Francisco attorney as the PAC, Campaign for Better San Francisco Public Schools, used. One of Sutton’s junior lawyers, Dale Bellitto, is listed as Assistant Treasure. In 2015, she was a Teaching Fellow at KIPP Infinity charter school in New York City.

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