Monthly Archives: March 2019

The New Politics of the Retirement Crisis

Originally published in the April 2019 issue of The New Republic magazine.
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In 2014, 64-year-old Jim Whitlock was earning a good salary as an inspector at Boeing, where he planned to work for another six years. His wife, Cheri, who was 54, was investigating public records for a title insurance company. Then Jim’s diabetes, sleep apnea, and chronic fatigue dramatically worsened. In May of that year, he was forced to retire early, and Cheri found herself serving as his primary caretaker in addition to working full-time. “The financial hit of it all was quite frankly pretty hard,” Cheri told me. Some months, she had to choose between making her next car payment, purchasing groceries, or paying the electric bill.

Two years later, when Jim was diagnosed with early onset dementia, small luxuries the Whitlocks had long taken for granted—like going to a movie or buying yarn for knitting—began to feel out of reach. Caring for her husband taxed Cheri, too. Her doctor worried about her skyrocketing blood pressure and how little sleep she got every night.

Cheri assumed she would never be able to retire. “All of Jim’s retirement funds were going to his care, we were looking at the potential of losing our house, and I was looking at a very destitute future for myself,” she recalled.

As dire as their financial situation was, Cheri and her husband were still better off than many Americans. Jim had an employee pension from Boeing, and when he passed away last July, after a rapid decline, he had a life insurance policy that doled out just enough money to keep Cheri out of poverty—and will, one day, allow her to retire. Very few Americans can say as much. Today, almost half—​45 percent—have $0 saved for retirement. Roughly the same number don’t simply worry about being financially insecure when they retire; they actually expect it. Indeed, just within the last few decades, retirement and senior care have become some of the most intimidating and untenable costs people face in their lifetimes, a burden more crushing than paying for college or buying a house.

Our modern system for dealing with the elderly emerged during the New Deal, when very different social and economic conditions reigned. The average life expectancy was 61 years old, most women didn’t work outside the home, and many workers had pension plans that provided them with a steady source of income in their old age. Private pensions were themselves a relatively new invention. In 1875, American Express offered the first such plan to employees who had been “injured or worn out” working its rail, barge, and horseback delivery lines. At the turn of the century, railroad barons implemented them, eager to remove aging workers from their ranks without political blowback. Many of those pension funds went bust during the Great Depression. Observing the decimation of millions of dollars in life savings, the federal government recognized that it needed to step in, and created the Social Security Act of 1935.

Over the next 30 years, life expectancy rose, the economy boomed, and in 1965, with flush federal coffers, the government passed Medicare to aid the growing elderly population. Both Social Security and Medicare, however, were designed to be supplemented by other sources. Benefits were nothing if not modest​—enough to keep people out of poverty but hardly enough to live on. Lawmakers had assumed that people would be able to draw on individual savings to augment their government subsidies. And for much of the twentieth century, they were right. Between World War II and the 1990s, most of the middle class earned enough from their jobs to enjoy a fairly comfortable retirement. But during that same period, an ideological shift was underway, as employers began scaling back the benefits workers relied upon to provide for themselves in their old age.

In 1982, when Social Security almost went bankrupt, some of the new think tanks that were establishing themselves in Washington at the time—like the Heritage Foundation and Cato Institute—pressed President Ronald Reagan to privatize the program. But when they realized doing so would be politically perilous, given Social Security’s strong support among seniors, strategists decided to promote a different approach. Politicians would assure seniors their Social Security benefits would remain the same, tell young people they could expect no benefits to be left when they retired, and convince current workers that private investment was a safer, more lucrative option.

The retirement vehicles known as 401(k)s first appeared in 1978, and within five years, nearly half of all large firms were offering them. Advocates made rosy projections, promising things like 7 percent annual compounded returns. “There was a complete overreaction of excitement,” Bank of America’s head of retirement services recalled in a 2017 Wall Street Journal article. But when recessions hit in the 2000s, millions lost their savings. Today, these early enthusiasts admit their analyses failed to account for a trifecta of factors: the large swings in the stock market, the ordinary investing mistakes people routinely make, and the huge fees charged by money managers. (For the typical worker, fees can easily eat up 20 percent of a retirement fund over time.)

A century after railroad companies introduced some of the nation’s first pension programs, employers have all but relinquished their sense of obligation to care for their workers in their old age. Today, pensions are nearly gone, and most small businesses don’t even offer 401(k)s. In 2013, just 28 percent of large companies in the United States provided retiree health coverage, down from 66 percent in 1988.

 

It’s no surprise, then, that 46 percent of Americans expect to be financially insecure when they retire, anticipating their government and employers will do next to nothing to help them. But these grim fears also open up a political opportunity. In the last election cycle, Democrats campaigned heavily on health care (by mid-October, 55 percent of their television ads centered on the issue). It’s this focus, many suspect, that helped them improve their margins among elderly voters, with seniors casting their ballots almost evenly between the two parties—a marked shift from years past.

There are signs that retirement will play a significant role in the 2020 race. In February, Bernie Sanders reintroducedthe Social Security Expansion Act, with sponsorships from three other leading Democratic presidential contenders: Cory Booker, Kirsten Gillibrand, and Kamala Harris. They belong to a congressional caucus dedicated to increasing Social Security benefits. Formed last fall, it already has more than 150 Democratic members, and Sanders and Elizabeth Warren, another presidential candidate, are its co-chairs in the Senate.

The party has come a long way from its stance a decade earlier, when few liberal politicians would endorse the expansion of Social Security. In the early 2000s, the boldest promise most Democrats would make was to “preserve” benefits or “fight cuts.” Their rhetoric only began to change after 2010, when advocacy groups like Social Security Works were launched to help transform the conversation.

Congress has signaled a willingness to consider policy proposals beyond Social Security, too. Representative Pramila Jayapal’s new Medicare-for-All bill includescoverage of long-term care, and just last year, with Republicans controlling both chambers, Congress expanded Medicare coverage to seniors with multiple chronic illnesses. The success of that bill suggests real bipartisan support exists for strengthening the national insurance program.

Encouragingly, the states have also begun to propose solutions. In 2017, Hawaii launched a program to reduce the cost of senior care, dispensing $70 a day for up to 365 days to family caregivers. In 2018, Maine voters considered a ballot measure that would have established the nation’s first universal home care program. The proposal suggested taxing Maine’s highest earners to pay for caregiving for any adult aged 65 and older who wanted it. It didn’t pass (powerful groups like the Maine Hospital Association and the Maine State Chamber of Commerce torpedoed the effort), but similar ideas will likely surface elsewhere. This year, legislators in Washington state are voting on a bill to provide residents with up to $36,500 for costs like nursing home fees, in-home care, and wheelchair ramps—assistance of a kind that Cheri Whitlock and her family would no doubt have eagerly welcomed.

Politicians who address retirement understand they can reach not only the elderly, but those who care for them. More than 40 million people provide unpaid caregiving, spending on average 20 percent of their incomes each year on expenses like mortgage payments and medical bills. The home health and personal care sector, meanwhile, employs some three million people nationwide and is one of the fastest growing in the economy. Most aides are women, who earn very little and work unpredictable hours. For them, and for families who rely on their services, a plan for universal long-term care would surely represent a welcome change. Few issues in American politics cut across so many constituencies, and affect the lives of so many.

On Beto O’Rourke and Charter Schools

Originally published in The Intercept on March 27, 2019.
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WHEN BETO O’ROURKE ran for Senate in 2018, he highlighted the importance of public education and consistently said that he stood squarely in support of teachers. Given that his opponent was Republican Sen. Ted Cruz, that was more than enough to secure endorsements from both the Texas State Teachers Association and its parent union, the National Education Association. Teachers across the country helped fuel his small-dollar donor machine.

There was little reason, then, to probe Beto O’Rourke on charter schools. In the Democratic presidential primary, he is unlikely to get the same gentle treatment — particularly given his wife Amy O’Rourke’s deep ties to the charter community.

Education in general was not a top priority for O’Rourke on the Texas campaign trail, nor did he have a robust record of tackling education issues during his three terms in Congress. Voters had a general sense of where he stood on K-12 education issues: He supported a rollback of standardized testing; he opposed the advent of private school vouchers and Education Secretary Betsy DeVos; he believed teachers should be paid more and that the federal government should fully fund the Individuals with Disabilities Act.

But O’Rourke stayed conspicuously silent on the topic of charter schooling during his Senate campaign, and his backers in the education establishment decided not to press him on it.

This is not because charter schools are not a growing issue in the state of Texas. Just this year, the Texas American Federation of Teachers called for a pause on the publicly funded, privately managed schools until the state legislature agrees to pass a series of reforms. “We’ve always been against charter expansion and school privatization, but this is the first time we’ve said, ‘Let’s take a time out,” said spokesperson Rob D’Amico.

Clay Robison, a spokesperson for the Texas State Teachers Association, told The Intercept his union is “very concerned” about charter growth in Texas, “especially the national charter chains that have been zeroing in on the state.” A recently commissioned TSTA poll found 73 percent of respondents statewide said there should be a halt on charter expansion until there’s more evidence of success. The two state teachers unions also filed a lawsuit last summer against a Texas law that encourages school districts to turn struggling schools over to charters or outside operators. That case is pending.

FOR THE LAST couple of years, the Democratic Party has been grappling with voters’ changing views on charter schools. In 2016, the party’s platform, which maintained its support for providing parents with “great neighborhood public schools and high-quality public charter schools” articulated, for the first time, an opposition to for-profit charter schools, which are a small but politically powerful segment of the movement. Other elected officials, and presidential candidates like Hillary Clinton, also began that year adopting this compromise-seeming position.

In 2016, charter advocates also suffered an expensive loss in Massachusetts, when voters across the blue state rejected a ballot initiative to lift the state’s charter school cap. The measure failed 62 percent to 38 percent, and while the initiative was being led Democrats for Education Reform, the state’s Democratic party had come out against it.

In 2017, with Donald Trump in office and GOP mega-donor Betsy DeVos appointed to lead the Education Department, the politics around charters continued to grow more thorny for liberal school choice supporters, many of whom who had long been hostile to teacher unions. That year, Gallup reported a growing partisan divide on charters, with Democratic support at 48 percent, down from 61 percent in 2012. Republican support held steady over the five years, at 62 percent. Public support for unions, meanwhile, continued to climb — climbing from 56 percent in 2016 to 61 percent in 2017, and reaching 62 percent — a 15-year high — in 2018.

Charters were further thrust in the spotlight in the 2018 midterms, as many Democratic candidates campaigned on reserved or qualified support for charters. Newly elected Democratic governors in Illinois, California, and New Mexico all said they’d back a pause on charter school expansion, and other Democratic officials grew more forthright with their critiques. The teachers strikes that swept the nation also elevated concerns around charter schools, particularly when Los Angeles educators went on strike for six days at the start of 2019.

While most Democratic candidates are likely to face questions about charter schools on the trail to the White House, that likelihood is greater for Beto O’Rourke’s than most, given his wife’s stature in the charter school movement. Amy O’Rourke is a former charter school leader and currently sits on the board of a local education reform group that supports expanding charter schools in El Paso.

“Amy is free to work wherever she chooses, that’s her choice, but I think at some point Beto is going to be asked about that and he’s going to be asked about his position on public schools and charters,” said Norma De La Rosa, the president of the El Paso Teachers Association. “He was asked during his campaign about the more pressing issues like immigration and the wall, but I can assure you, he will be asked about charters now.”

Amy O’Rourke began her education career as a kindergarten teacher in Guatemala, where she worked for one year after graduating college. When she returned to El Paso in 2004, she connected with a local community organization, Centro de Salud Familiar La Fe, and helped them launch a dual-language charter. She served as superintendent of the school, La Fe Preparatory School, from 2007 to 2012. In her application to open the school, she wrote that the local school district “failed to create an educational system that can generate true success for all students in the community” and promised to offer “a drastically different educational experience” for Segundo Barrio children. She also noted that “innovation and creativity are the backbone of charter schools” and praised other Texas charters for their commitment to “seeing the underprivileged succeed through hard work.”

Now, Amy O’Rourke serves on the board of the Council on Regional Economic Expansion and Educational Development, or CREEED, a business-backed organization that launched in 2014 to help push education reform initiatives in El Paso. Amy O’Rourke also directs CREEED’s “Choose to Excel” initiative, aimed at boosting college-readiness and which focuses, in part, on expanding charter schools in El Paso. In 2017, CREEED hosted a two-day summit, funded in part by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, to strategize on how to advance education reform. Several days later, a local philanthropic group, the Hunt Family Foundation, donated $12 million to CREEED, specifically to help boost charter school enrollment El Paso. The foundation’s chair, Woody Hunt, who also serves as vice chair on CREEED’s board, told the El Paso Times that he hoped the big donation “will show large charter school backers, like the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, that the education community in El Paso is committed to school choice.”

The donation was slammed at the time by local teacher unions, and De La Rosa of the El Paso Teachers Association told The Intercept that her organization has been upset with the way CREEED has operated in the city. “If they are as concerned about public education and the kind of education we are providing for our students, then why did they not get involved within the public school system and work with administrators and teachers to see how they could help us change direction here in El Paso and providing those resources we desperately need?” she asked. “We’ve made it clear that their philosophy does not mesh with our philosophy of what a good public school and a good public education for all our students looks like.”

One of CREEED’s focuses over the last several years has been to bring the fast-growing charter network IDEA Public Schools to El Paso. IDEA is one of the largest nonprofit charter networks in the country; it opened 18 new schools this past fall. It’s a “no excuses”-style network, with school uniforms, longer school days, a focus on enrolling in college, and strict discipline rules.

According to Chalkbeat, the IDEA charter network hopes to educate 100,000 students in the next four years and to hit 250,000 students in the next 10. In El Paso specifically, IDEA aims to run 20 schools by 2023, with the first two campuses having opened this past year. CREEED has pledged at least $10 million to help IDEA meet their growth goals.

The Intercept contacted CREEED to speak with Amy O’Rourke about public education and charter schools, and a spokesperson said they forwarded the request to the Beto O’Rourke campaign, which did not return request for comment. Beto O’Rourke’s spokesperson, Chris Evans, also did not return multiple requests for clarification on the candidate’s position on charter schools.

Randi Weingarten, the president of the American Federation of Teachers, met with the O’Rourkes recently in Texas. In an interview with The Intercept, Weingarten said Beto O’Rourke asked her “some really good questions” about schools and emphasized that the “value statements he’s been saying and said during the campaign [about schools] are important.” Weingarten said they discussed the educators he met on the campaign trail who had to use their own personal funds to pay for classroom supplies and that they discussed the importance of community schools with wraparound social services.

She demurred on whether they talked about charter schools specifically. “I’ve been very careful to not repeat the content of conversations I’ve had with the candidates,” she said. “But the whole context of how austerity and competition have really hurt public school opportunities is something that he was very aware of, let’s just put it that way.”

Weingarten acknowledged that education issues weren’t so central to the 2018 Senate race, but she expects things to be different in the months ahead. “A lot of issues did not get the same kind of airing that they will in the 2020 presidential,” she said. “And education issues will get an airing.”

A Federal Civil Rights Office Wants To Limit Access To Emotional Support Animals That Can Help With Depression

Originally published in The Intercept on March 18, 2019.
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The Department of Housing and Urban Development is moving forward with a proposal that could limit people’s right to live with so-called emotional-support animals under the Fair Housing Act.

As the landmark civil rights law that protects against discrimination in housing currently stands, individuals can keep emotional-support animals in their homes free of cost, provided that a trained professional certifies that the animal could help them cope with mental or physical issues. (A separate federal law, the Air Carrier Access Act, permits passengers to travel with their emotional-support animals on planes.) These laws have grown increasingly controversial in recent years, as a result of news reports about healthy pet owners exploiting legal accommodations to bring their pets on flights and into restaurants. Many landlords have also grown skeptical of those requesting to bypass “no pets” policies, suspecting that fraud is afoot.

As a result, housing industry groups have been lobbying HUD to crack down on suspected animal abuse, and they complain that the existing set of rules is too difficult for the average housing owner to understand. Civil rights groups meanwhile have pushed back, conscious that many landlords would love to keep their buildings animal-free however possible and recognize that many individuals struggle as is to have their right to an emotional-support animal taken seriously.

The National Apartment Association is “strongly supportive of disabled persons’ right to reasonable accommodations,” said Nicole Upano, the group’s director of public policy, but they have been asking HUD for clarity on how to handle these requests. “We would like for the average on-site staff person to be able to navigate this issue, but right now you really have to have a law degree,” she said.

As The Intercept reported last year, Anna Maria Farías, the federal assistant secretary for fair housing and equal opportunity at HUD, decided to prioritize cracking down on alleged emotional-support animal fraud. For at least the last year, HUD has been working on new administrative guidance on emotional-support animals, which would essentially be a document laying out the agency’s expectations for how the law should be interpreted and applied. Federal guidance does not carry the same legal power as laws or regulations, but, in this case, it would send a strong signal to landlords and tenants about how the federal government intends to enforce the Fair Housing Act.

“The guidance is probably going to make it a little harder for someone who wants to verify the need for animals, and they will probably cut back a little on some non-domesticated exotic animals,” said Ken Walden, a disability rights attorney with the Chicago-based Access Living.

Brian Sullivan, a spokesperson for HUD, said that the agency is currently circulating the proposed guidance among other relevant agencies, like the Department of Justice, for review. The next step would be to submit it to the Office of Management and Budget for approval. This would be at least the second time the Trump administration’s HUD tries to get guidance on emotional-support animals through OMB. In November, HUD submitted a different version of the guidance to OMB, titled, “Applying the Fair Housing Act to Decide Whether a Person’s Request to Have an Animal as a Reasonable Accommodation Should Be Granted,” but quietly withdrew it in late February. Sullivan said the guidance was removed to do more interagency vetting.

Unlike service dogs, which are permitted under the Americans With Disabilities Act and can be taken to most public places, emotional-support animals under the Fair Housing Act and the Air Carrier Access Act do not have to be trained to perform specific tasks and can only be kept at home or brought on planes. They are considered a legitimate coping method for physical and mental health issues, including anxiety, depression, and post-traumatic stress.

Civil rights advocates say that cracking down too harshly on phony service animals can further stigmatize mental health issues, while also reinforcing the idea that medication is the only appropriate response to mental illness. As of 2019, 24 states already have laws on the books criminalizing the misrepresentation of pets as service animals, and advocates worry that more restrictions from the federal government could deter individuals who have a legitimate need from seeking assistance.

WHEN CIVIL RIGHTS advocates first learned that HUD was considering this measure last year, they requested meetings with agency officials and their requests were ignored, even though HUD was meeting with representatives from the housing industry about the issue. Last spring, however, they finally got through. In May, Walden and his Access Living colleagues Marca Bristo and Mary Rosenberg held a phone call with HUD representatives to spell out their concerns. They followed up with a detailed letter to HUD, laying out a number of fears, including that HUD might impose unfair restrictions against certain breeds of animals, that HUD might make it too difficult for tenants to verify that they have a legitimate need for an animal, and that HUD might treat certain protected classes differently, such as veterans.

Following that letter, a coalition of national disability rights groups organized to present a more unified front to HUD on these issues. The groups also requested to see the draft guidance HUD was working on, but were denied. The new guidance is expected to replace an older guidance HUD issued in 2013, which concerned what housing providers’ legal obligations are in connection to the Americans With Disabilities Act. More than halfof all fair housing complaints concern individuals with disabilities, and nearly half of those involve animal-related issues.

In October, HUD convened a meeting in Washington, D.C., between civil rights advocates and Farías, the assistant HUD secretary; Timothy Petty from HUD’s Office of General Counsel; Lynn Grosso, the director of enforcement for the Office of Fair Housing and Equal Opportunity; Ashley Ludlow, the senior HUD adviser for congressional relations; and members of Democratic Illinois Sen. Tammy Duckworth’s staff. “Senator Duckworth from our state was instrumental in setting the meeting up,” said Walden of Access Living.

Representatives from the National Association of the Deaf, the Seeing Eye, the National Fair Housing Alliance, the National Council on Independent Living, the Autistic Self Advocacy Network, Rise Phoenix Rise, Paralyzed Veterans of America, the National Association of Mental Illness, the American Council of the Blind, and the National Council on Disability were in attendance.

The conversation left the advocates feeling somewhat optimistic. “I’m hopeful that it’s not going to be as bad as we feared last year, but it’s hard to know without seeing the actual guidance,” said Walden.

One area of particular concern for advocates is whether HUD will further restrict the categories of people and groups that can validate an individual’s need for an emotional-support animal. Current guidance requires the verification of “a doctor or other medical professional, a peer support group, a non-medical service agency, or a reliable third party who is in a position to know about the individual’s disability.” Advocates worry that under pressure from housing industry groups, HUD may limit this to only a doctor or medical provider, which they say would be too restrictive, especially for low-income people. Advocates have stressed to HUD that other providers who aren’t in the medical field, like social workers, case managers, counselors, and even dog trainers can reliably testify to an individual’s need.

Industry groups have been pushing HUD on this very issue. Upano, of the National Apartment Association, told The Intercept that her members believe there should be a “legitimate treatment relationship” between a provider and the person requesting verification of need. Upano, of the National Apartment Association, told The Intercept that her members believe there should be a “legitimate treatment relationship” between a provider and the person requesting verification of need. Her group’s members believe that the best way to cut down on abuse is “to require that there be a therapeutic relationship between the person who is writing the note and the person requesting the reasonable accommodation,” she said. This wouldn’t necessarily need to be a medical doctor or psychologist, she added.

Civil rights advocates had concerns at one point that HUD would treat veterans who require emotional-support animals differently than other individuals with disabilities, but they said HUD officials assured them that this would likely not be the case. “We had heard there may be different standards for veterans with PTSD than other protected classes, and it would be easier for them to get verification, but we’re pretty confident at this point that they will have the same standards,” said Rosenberg.

Another takeaway from their October meeting was that HUD will likely not differentiate between types of housing or animal breeds. “We do not expect HUD to issue separate rules for condos versus apartments versus dorms,” said Rosenberg, who added that they also expect there will be consistency applied toward animal breeds.

ADVOCATES DO EXPECT HUD to take steps to address the online cottage industry that has cropped up for the sale of cheap documentation to pet owners who then falsely identify pets as service dogs or emotional-support animals — a move that, while justified, also holds risks. Critics of these websites rightly note that this type of documentation can be useful for someone who is living in an apartment building with no disability, but wants to skirt their building’s no-pet policy or its monthly or annual pet fee. Tenants and plane passengers can’t be charged for their emotional-support animals, though regular pets can incur a fee. Cultural fears abound of individuals taking advantage of these sites. One New Yorker article from 2014 identified that the “National Service Animal Registry,” which sells certificates and badges for helper animals, signed up 11,000 emotional-support animals in 2013, up from 2,400 in 2011.

While disability advocates agree that using phony documents to bypass pet rules and faking a disability is wrong, they also caution that there is no concrete evidence of widespread fraud. Still, this is a talking point that industry groups use. “By our count, there are 20 websites that spread misinformation about who should really qualify for an emotional-support animal, and they’re also providing access to a mental health professional and it’s not clear they’ve been licensed anywhere or from where they’re providing treatment to that patient,” said Upano, who noted that sometimes the letters come with a money-back guarantee.

Morgan Williams, general counsel of the National Fair Housing Alliance, cautioned in an interview last year that not everyone who seeks out online documents lacks a legitimate need or even knows that they’re wrong to use.

“Just because someone uses one of these websites doesn’t mean they don’t have a disability,” Williams told The Intercept. “They may have no concept that they’re using a website that other people might deem problematic.”

Walden said he and other advocates have tried to stress to HUD that while there may be a cottage industry of pay-for-play licensing, at the same time, technology has advanced and many people truly do have online and remote relationships with medical providers, especially in rural areas. Outlawing all online verification, they warn, would go too far.

Upano said her organization would not argue with the perspective backed by the American Psychiatric Association that telemedicine is a low-cost, affordable option for people who need mental health services. Still, she said, housing groups would like clearer guidelines on how to verify the documentation they’re presented with.

“We understand this is a sensitive issue; we understand the housing provider shouldn’t be asking any questions about diagnosis, medical records, but being able to ask the person if they did in fact write the note, and getting that very basic information, is what we heard from our members is the best deterrent to parse out legitimate and illegitimate requests,” she said.

Upano acknowledged that there can be gray areas, in which a doctor will say someone doesn’t need an animal, but they could benefit from having one. While Farías’s team looks at this issue, the federal housing agency has continued to go after landlords who deny tenants their legal accommodations. That’s where HUD’s energy should be focused, advocates say, even if they debate whether the agency has been aggressive enough.

If HUD publishes a guidance that advocates think goes too far, Rosenberg says there are a number of ways to challenge that.

“Depending on what the guidance says, we could look and say, well, this should have gone through rulemaking,” said Rosenberg. “Or we can see if what the guidance says conflicts with what the actual Fair Housing Act and associated regulations say, which hold more weight.”

This Ward 8 High School Had Its Charter Revoked. Now It’s Fighting Back

Originally published in DCist on March 14, 2019.
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When the D.C. Public Charter School Board voted in December to initiate revocation proceedings for National Collegiate Prep, a Ward 8 charter high school founded 10 years ago that educates about 250 students, few could say they were really surprised.

The PCSB has closed 26 charter organizations or campuses/programs across the city between 2012 and 2018—primarily for academic reasons. Given that National Collegiate Prep has one of the lowest graduation rates in D.C., and ranked as a Tier 3 school for the last three years on the PCSB’s Performance Management Framework, the decision to shutter the school was heartbreaking for its families and staff, but not exactly unexpected. In January, the PCSB board members voted officially to revoke the school’s charter, with NCP set to close for good at the end of the 2019-2020 school year. The PCSB promised to have its staff assist students and families in finding new schools to attend.

But now, in an unexpected turn of events, National Collegiate Prep has launched a new campaign to fight its closure, and to fight the PCSB, which organizers say is unfairly targeting black-led charter schools in the District. Under the banner of “Save Our Students, Save Our School, Save Ourselves” and backed by local clergy, community organizations, and Ward 8 City Councilmember Trayon White, National Collegiate Prep staff and students have taken the unusual step of refusing to accept the PCSB’s decision.

The school is making several arguments to bolster its case against closure: its 100 percent graduation rate in 2018, that there’s no history of fiscal mismanagement, that it’s the only charter school east of the river to offer the International Baccalaureate program, and that it’s a safer, more academically distinguished school than the traditional public schools in the area where NCP students will likely go. And while NCP staff acknowledge they have some work to do, they argue the school hit eight of its nine performance goals, put forth a reasonable turnaround plan to address its weaknesses, and deserve the chance to see it through.

The campaign kicked off at a press conference organized at National Collegiate Prep on Wednesday. “Community-based schools, schools started by people located within our community for the benefit of those who have been the most underserved and the most underrepresented, are the very same schools that are being target by the Public Charter School Board for closure,” said Yohance Maqubela, the former executive director of Howard University Middle School and a current charter consultant. “Now is a chance for the community to say we will not be looked over anymore, our voices do count, and from this day forward we’re going to take a stand.”

Rev. Graylan Hagar, the senior pastor of Plymouth United Church of Christ, and Pastor O. Jermaine Bego of Centerpoint Baptist Church pledged to rally their faith-based leaders and constituents in support. And Councilmember Trayon White, who noted he has several family members who attend NCP, said he also stands in full solidarity with the school.

“Is the school perfect? No, but to my judgment about where we are, we’re in a good place,” White told the audience. “I’m concerned about other schools like this, especially schools of color [that] are facing closure, or reprimand without just cause.”

Jennifer Ross, the founder and CEO of National Collegiate Prep, said her school has been wrongfully accused, and that they have appealed to the city council and the mayor. She says she knows they could face repercussions for the campaign, but characterizes the effort as standing up to intimidation.

“Back in 2015, we had a meeting as black school leaders to say we were very concerned with the direction of the black-led schools,” Ross told DCist. “That was held at Kent Amos’s house, and right after that, Amos’s school was closed.” Amos’s charter network, the Dorothy I. Height Community Academy Public Charter Schools, was closed amid allegations that Amos illegally diverted funds to a private company.

“You know, I’m sure there are things most charter leaders will only tell you off the record, but everyone is very afraid and bullied, and I just realized it was up to me to say something,” Ross continued. “The charter school board is led by a lot of ego and personality and things are very personal.”

The D.C. Public Charter School Board did not respond to allegations that it has unfairly targeted small, minority-led charters, but in a statement provided to DCist, PCSB Chairman Rick Cruz said, “We closed this school because it was the lowest performing public charter high school and declined year after year. No one ever wants to close a school, but we’re focused on the quality of education for all students.” The PCSB board is comprised primarily of people of color, and its staff executive director is white.

As part of its campaign, National Collegiate Prep is working to highlight what makes the school unique, including its international trips, focus on STEM, and a formal cotillion offered during students’ senior year. The school also invests in restorative discipline and trauma-informed teaching.

In a report released in December, PCSB staff charged National Collegiate Prep with low performance in math, a low re-enrollment rate of 71 percent—re-enrollment is a measure the PCSB uses to gauge family satisfaction—and noted that no student who took the school’s IB courses actually earned an IB diploma. The school dropped to Tier 3 status during the 2015-16 school year, and the PCSB says it gave National Collegiate Prep ample warning over the last few years that its declining status could be grounds for closure.

National Collegiate Prep disputes many of the PCSB’s conclusions, and defended the benefit of giving students exposure to advanced curriculum offerings, insisting it can help instill confidence and success in college regardless of if they earned the IB diploma. NCP said its already hired a new math department to drive improvements in that area, and is working with Blueprint, a charter consulting firm based in Boston, to help craft a school turnaround plan. PCSB board members said NCP’s proposed interventions seemed like too little, too late.

Supporters of National Collegiate Prep acknowledge the fight ahead won’t be easy. According to the PCSB, the charter board does not even have the authority to reverse its January decision, and NCP would have to apply for a new charter, or appeal the decision in court.

At the press conference, Kamilah Wheeler, a parent, urged the NCP students to make their voices heard. “You need to get your friends together and stop this madness,” she said. “You may not understand it now but I promise you it’s going to make a difference.”

On Friday afternoon, National Collegiate Prep students plan to protest the decision at the D.C. Public Charter School Board.

Senate Bill Proposes Smaller Class Sizes for High-Poverty School Districts

Originally published in Next City on March 14, 2019.
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Following a year of teacher strikes where educators in West Virginia, Los Angeles, Denver and beyond called for wage increases and reduced class sizes, Sen. Jeff Merkley (D-OR) has introduced a new bill to incentivize smaller class sizes in kindergarten and first, second and third grades. The legislation, which would allocate $2 billion for competitive grant funding, primarily to high-poverty school districts in the United States, is co-sponsored by Democratic Sens. Kamala Harris (CA), Kirsten Gillibrand (NY), Elizabeth Warren (MA), Cory Booker (NJ) and Michael Bennet (CO). The bill is also endorsed by the American Federation of Teachers, the National Education Association, the National Parent Teacher Association, and First Focus Campaign for Children.

Merkley says his bill is not a direct response to the teacher uprisings, but rather a reaction after discovering his son’s surprisingly large first-grade class. “My memory of my first-grade class was there was about 20 kids in it,” he says. “When I saw my son’s class I thought, how is the teacher ever going to be able to do this with 34 5- and 6-year-olds? We are the wealthiest nation on earth and can afford to do better.”

Class size reduction has long been a popular policy among parents and educators, but in state and federal government, interest in the issue has waxed and waned over the last two decades.

To fund smaller class sizes, states and school districts have been able to use Title II-A money, which is an annual pot of federal funds available for teacher quality initiatives. In the early 2000s, 57 percent of all Title II-A funds indeed went for this purpose. But by 2015, just 25 percent of those dollars were going to class size reduction, with far more dollars now spent on things like professional development.

One reason cities and states began to turn away from class size reduction was basic purse-string tightening. Nineteen states began eliminating or loosening their class size limits following the 2008 recession to save money. But class size reduction also began to fall out of favor with policymakers and education wonks, as interest in alternative reform policies, like evaluating teachers based on student standardized test scores, ticked up.

Advocates for class size reduction as an evidenced-based reform point to studies showing a link between higher academic achievement and fewer students per class. The most reputable study, known as Project STAR, is from the mid-1980s, when researchers randomly assigned students and teachers in Tennessee elementary schools to classes with an average of 15 students or 23 students. The study found students in the smaller classes tested better, with the improvements particularly significant among disadvantaged children. Later research found that the smaller class sizes also increased the probability of attending college, with the effects more than twice as large among black students.

Other influential research has suggested that setting the class size cap below 20 students will yield the greatest benefits, and Merkley’s bill caps class size at 18.

Some experts object to class size reduction — arguing it’s a cover for district bloat, and less effective than other reforms for similar or even lesser costs. Prominent critics include journalist Malcolm Gladwell and former Education Secretary Arne Duncan. Others point to implementation challenges: In California, when the state legislature passed a $1.6 billion measure in 1996 to incentivize reduced class sizes in grades K-3, it was universally adopted very quickly. Researchers later found that the rapid statewide reduction in class size led to an influx of new, inexperienced teachers, and many teachers working in poorer schools in Los Angeles and Oakland left to fill the new vacancies in wealthier districts. While the researchers found that smaller classes boosted student achievement when all else was held equal, the rollout of the policy was tumultuous, and appeared to negatively impact some students and schools it was aimed to help.

Leonie Haimson, executive director of Class Size Matters, a nonprofit that advocates for smaller classes, says Merkley’s bill is “very important” and targets a major problem in public education. “As the teacher strikes reveal, and data shows, class sizes have increased across the country since the recession, and even though we’re a decade past that point, school budgets and class sizes still haven’t recovered,” she says. “Increases in class size have severely damaged the quality of education for all children in affected schools, but especially disadvantaged students and students of color, who see twice the benefit from smaller classes than the average student.”

Haimson praises Merkley’s bill for its requirement that districts report how smaller class size affects teacher retention and turnover rates, as well as student discipline and chronic absenteeism. Haimson says the bill could be improved by more explicitly defining how grant recipients should report the number of new teachers hired, how many new classes are added and by how much class sizes went down. “In the past, state and city audits have shown that at least half of the districtwide class size reduction that the New York City Department of Education claimed was a result of a state grant class size reduction program was due instead to falling enrollment,” she explains.

Regarding policy criticisms around class size reduction, Merkley says he agrees “other things need to be done” to improve schools, but he emphasizes his conversations with child experts lead him to believe that investments in smaller class size for the early grades can “make such a profound difference for everything that goes forward.”

Would he want smaller class sizes for middle and high school, too? While most studies have focused on K-3, conceivably fewer students per class would have an impact in more advanced courses as well.

“The studies we’ve looked at say K-3 is where it matters the most, but if we start here, we can evaluate the impact and decide,” he says. “If we do this right, evaluate it, and find out it doesn’t have an impact, then that will be information worth having and can change how we allocate our resources.”

New Bill Would Subject Charters to Same Transparency Rules as D.C. Public Schools

Originally published in Washington City Paper on March 13, 2019.
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On Wednesday morning, Ward 6 Councilmember Charles Allen led a press conference for a bill he will introduce next week, the Public School Transparency Amendment Act of 2019. This bill would bring D.C. charter schools under the same transparency requirements as traditional public schools, and comes on the heels of the DC Public Charter School Board proposing its own transparency reforms for the charter school sector. Ward 1 Councilmember Brianne Nadeau, Ward 3 Councilmember Mary Cheh, and At-Large Councilmember Elissa Silverman have joined Allen in co-sponsoring the legislation.

Allen’s new bill would subject all D.C. charter schools and their boards of trustees to public records requests and open meetings laws, and require that the DC Public Charter School Board help individual charters comply with these new rules. The charter sector currently receives more than $800 million in taxpayer dollars annually.

“This is not exactly a cutting-edge idea,” said Allen on the front steps of the Wilson Building. “Thirty-nine states already include both our traditional and public charter schools under their open government laws. D.C. is frankly playing catchup with the rest of the country.”

He pointed to California, where just earlier this month, the state’s new governor Gavin Newsom signed a bill that would subject all of California’s 1,300 charter schools to open meetings laws and public records requests. Allen also pointed to the National Association of Charter School Authorizers, and the National Alliance of Public Charter Schools, which both endorse charters complying with these rules. Last month a senior vice president at the National Alliance for Public Charter Schools told the Washington Post that D.C’s charter sector was unusual on this front compared to the rest of the country.

Allen said one of the most common arguments he hears from charter schools is that complying with FOIA would be a significant administrative burden. In light of this, he wrote into his bill that the DC Public Charter School Board would serve as a resource to help individual schools handle requests, and the legislation would also require the PSCB to report to the Council how many FOIA requests were received by individual charter schools, and how much it cost them to comply. Allen emphasized the bill could be adjusted in future years if schools do in fact encounter major challenges. “We’re trying to make sure that we’re respecting that concern and understanding that,” he said.

As it stands now, the DC Public Charter School Board is not being flooded with FOIA requests. Between October 1, 2017, and September 30, 2018, according to the city’s annual FOIA report, the DC Public Charter School Board received 74 requests for information, with 59 processed within 15 days, eight processed in 16 to 25 days, and two processed in over 26 days. The total cost for the agency to comply with FOIA requests last year was $22,600.

Other items in Allen’s bill include requirements that a charter school’s annual report include the amount of money donated by anyone who contributes more than $500, that schools publish all employees’ names and salaries, that each charter school include two teachers on its board of trustees, and that a student representative serve on the board of a charter high school or adult learning charter. Lastly, the bill would require a charter’s annual report to list all contracts awarded by the school, regardless of amount, as is required for D.C. Public Schools.

The bill was developed in close consultation with EmpowerED, a D.C. teacher activist group, which has been leading, over the last nine months, a campaign on public school transparency and increasing teacher, parent, and student voice in school decision-making. In January, EmpowerEd launched an online petition to bring charters under the same transparency requirements as D.C. Public Schools, which as of Wednesday had garnered 545 signatures. Scott Goldstein, the executive director of EmpowerED, says the majority of those signatures have come from D.C. charter school teachers and charter school parents.

“Nothing in this bill should be controversial,” says Goldstein. “Far from being a burden, community engagement is what makes schools stronger and more sustainable.”

Allen’s bill is likely to face opposition from some leaders in the charter school sector.

Last month, Irene Holtzman, the executive director of Friends of Choice in Urban Schools, a local charter advocacy group, testified before the Council against the kind of measures proposed in Allen’s bill, and defended the level of transparency currently existing in the charter school sector.

Josh Henderson, the executive director of the D.C. chapter of Democrats for Education Reform, tells City Paper that Allen’s bill “prioritizes paperwork over performance” and notes that D.C.’s charter sector is “already one of the most tightly regulated, and importantly, highest-performing in the country.” He says he hopes the Council will focus on issues like mental health supports and suitable facilities, “rather than adding additional layers of bureaucracy.”

DFER DC, Henderson adds, would support new measures like the Council requiring charters to hold at least two open meetings per year, “including the meeting at which they set their budgets and any meeting that would close, shrink or otherwise reconfigure a school’s campuses.” He also says his group would support requiring charters to report data about teacher tenure and attrition, which is currently only reported on a voluntary basis.

Education Committee Chairman David Grosso was not at the press conference and his spokesperson says Grosso does not have any comment on the bill at this time.

Council Chairman Phil Mendelson, who announced in late December that he would be joining Grosso in leading oversight on the Education Committee, tells City Paper that he understands charter schools are not in support, and that he plans to “look at the bill carefully and understand why we have always treated the charter schools differently.” He says he does worry that FOIA can be a burden on agencies, noting that the amount of money the Council had to spend on answering FOIA requests jumped significantly last year.

In 2015, some local advocates tried to push for greater charter school transparency measures, but charter leaders successfully blocked their efforts, and the Public Charter School Fiscal Transparency Amendment Act included only modest reforms. Allen said at Wednesday’s press conference that he’s hopeful the Council will have a hearing and pass this bill, and he hopes even more co-sponsors will join them in the next few days.

The DC Public Charter School Board, meanwhile, has been deliberating on some of its own transparency policy changes. The PCSB first opened its transparency rules to public comment in December, and extended the comment period for another month given the high volume of feedback it received. In February during the extended public comment period, this reporter submitted a comment in favor of bringing charters under FOIA and open meetings laws, and publishing board meeting minutes online.

On March 18, board members will be voting on the DC Public Charter School Board’s proposed transparency changes, which would require individual schools to publish, among other things, which meetings are open to the public, board meeting minutes, the salaries of the five highest-compensated individuals, employee handbooks, and funding plans for at-risk students. Some of the information that the DC Public Charter School Board is proposing schools publish on their own websites is already available on the DC Public Charter School Board’s so-called Transparency Hub, which launched last April.

Scott Pearson, the executive director of the DC Public Charter School Board, calls Allen’s legislation “misguided” and says it “fails to take into account the extraordinary transparency measures already taken by the Public Charter School Board.” Pearson criticized the bill for not addressing issues like closing the achieving gap, reducing the number of students living in poverty, or reducing truancy.  “We support a smart, reasonable approach that provides the transparency parents need, but does not divert school efforts, attention, and funds away from educating students,” he says. “We urge the D.C. Council to include parents, local board members, students, and school leaders in this process.”

Strategies for a Post-Roe America — and for Post-Roe American Women

Originally published in The American Prospect on March 11, 2019.
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Independent journalist Robin Marty, one of the nation’s top reporters covering reproductive rights, has published a new book—Handbook for a Post-Roe America—with practical advice for women who might actually need to terminate a pregnancy in the future and for people who support abortion rights. While reproductive choice is at risk regardless of what happens at the Supreme Court, there’s little question in Marty’s mind that the landscape will soon look different in a world where Roe is overturned. The faster people accept that, she argues, the faster people can start preparing. This conversation has been edited and condensed.

Rachel Cohen: So, to get started, do you think we are headed for a post-Roe America?

Robin Marty: I am so certain at this point that I will even tell you it will be overturned in 2021. Abortion opponents already have all the cases they need, I’m fairly certain at this point it will be a case on banning D&E [dilation and extraction, a surgical abortion procedure typically performed during the third trimester or the later part of the second trimester] and that will be the case they use to overturn Roe. We know the Fifth Circuit is looking at it right now, and we’re pretty sure that court is going to say it’s not unconstitutional for Texas to do a D&E ban. And that would leave a split circuit decision, which would let the Supreme Court weigh in.

The Supreme Court will pick a case where lawyers can be extraordinarily gruesome. Abortion opponents love D&E bans because they’re so grotesque and no one can defend them without saying you have to pull out a limb.

I expect 2021 because they won’t have a case before the next presidential election, they know that’s the only way they can get the same evangelical voters out to get Trump re-elected. Once the election is over, they will go ahead and move as quickly as possible.

You’ve notably said you think the end of Roe would be a good thing.

I’m quite excited. Roe being overturned is the best thing that could happen to our movement. We’ve been treading water since 2010, we’ve seen all these red states that have been chipping away at access, but it took until Trump was elected and Roe was in honest-to-God jeopardy for all the really privileged and white people to understand that abortion could be cut off for everyone, not just the people who have already lost access. Ending Roe will put everyone on the same level.

Does that mean you supported Gorsuch’s and Kavanaugh’s confirmations?

Oh God, no! They are such a disaster for civil rights and more, even beyond just abortion.

Don’t you think privileged women in states like Massachusetts, New York, and California will continue to feel like the rollback in access doesn’t mean much for them personally?

But they will still be able to see the impacts more directly. Just being able to see people put in jail for accessing their own care—I mean people will get abortion pills, people will get caught, and there will be stark consequences—I think that will be the turning point. It’s like [in 2012] in Ireland when Savita [Halappanavar] died from a septic miscarriage after having been denied an abortion. That was a turning point for the country.

When we go post-Roe, what we’re going to have to decide as a movement, and as activists in general, is what is our new standard? What is accessible? Why does it have to be at a clinic? Why does it have to cost $500 out of pocket at a minimum? We’ve been so busy trying to protect this right that honestly isn’t that great. Is it worth protecting anymore? I don’t know that it is.

Would you say this is a mainstream view among pro-choice leaders?

It’s not a mainstream view, per se, but it’s something that I’ve been talking to audiences about as I’ve done my book tour. Everyone’s first thought is: How could you say Roe coming to an end is a good thing?! And then we talk about it, how now everyone will be in the same position as these marginalized communities that have one clinic in their state and a 72-hour waiting period, and once people understand that abortion is already inaccessible, and maybe it’s time to just get rid of Roe and start fighting for the human right to decide, people get it.

National organizations don’t like any of this, it would be dismantling the power of national organizations and effectively redistributing those resources to local groups. A lot of my work is about why we need to take abortion outside of clinics.

You mean to do more abortions at home?

Yes. In some way, what we’re seeing is the same debate we saw around home births and midwives. This isn’t very different from that, but there’s a resistance to the idea that we don’t need to do this procedure at a clinic, that we don’t have to have formal medical intervention. A lot of this can be left up to us. If we’ve already proven it’s not dangerous—which we have at this point, over and over—then we should be more forceful in pushing for that.

Your book was very practical and concrete. Can you talk about some of the specific suggestions you laid out for emergency contraception?

Emergency contraception was actually how the book started. As soon as [Justice Anthony] Kennedy announced his retirement, I saw a ton of people saying online they were going to give money to Planned Parenthood and stock up on emergency contraception. And my first thought was, “Whoa, now.” That led to a Huffington Post piece where I tried to say how you can do things like that in a more responsible way, which turned into this book.

Sterilization came up in your book as one way women could prepare for a post-Roe America. I was a bit surprised to see that. In your research, are you finding that’s already happening?

Yes, I am finding that women who have already decided they would not be interested in having children, or more children, are looking at this. The problem is it’s quite difficult to get sterilized—doctors don’t like to do it. It’s kind of a paternalistic thing, like saying you surely haven’t met the right man, or you’ll regret not being a mother. There are also a lot of rules—like you have to give consent for the procedure two weeks before you get it done. I have kids and I’ve also been sterilized.

In a chapter focused on organizing, you urged readers to focus on city councilmembers. I feel like the conversations around abortion restrictions has been focused heavily on state legislators and the U.S. Supreme Court.

The reason this book exists is to help take our attention off the bigger picture—which we’ve been paying attention to for a really long time. But national solutions are just not the best place for us to use our resources right now. My book is about drilling down as local as you can get, investing in your state, in your city, and in your local clinics.

One thing we’ve noticed about how power works is the more directly you’re involved in the area in which you can have real power, the more exponentially powerful that is. So for city councils, we’ve seen they are often the last bastion of protecting or ending access to abortion. We saw that when Whole Woman’s Health was trying to open a medication abortion clinic in Indiana. At first it was the city council that tried to block it, then the mayor overrode it, and then the city council tried to block it again. It’s now still going through lawsuits.

City councilmembers have say over things like zoning and noise ordinances, ensuring that buffer zones can be upheld. If there is a city council that is friendly toward abortion rights, that often impacts how the police will deal with people who protest and attend clinics.

Can you talk about the Pregnant Women’s Dignity Act?

The one thing we really need to do is get abortion out of the criminal code. One way to do that is through this law, the Pregnant Women’s Dignity Act, which is promoted by the Public Leadership Institute. It says if a person has any kind of poor birth outcome—it’s not her fault, it’s not something that should be investigated, this is not something that has a place of blame. It doesn’t matter if she did it on purpose, if it was by accident—it’s just a personal medical thing that has occurred and it does not involve the police or the courts.

You explore the idea of creating a new kind of infrastructure of housing, transportation, safety, and financial support for women who need to travel to get abortions in a post-Roe America.

I’ve been thinking about this a lot. Say that Roe is overturned and in Kentucky the state makes abortion completely illegal, and there’s just one remaining clinic. What happens to that clinic? Would that be a good place that you can then set up a hostel for women who need to then travel out of state to get an abortion? If Roe is overturned there will be no abortion in the entire Gulf area, no abortion in most of the Rust Belt. We’re talking about humongous chunks of the country. People are talking about how to make states like New York and Colorado these safe havens where people can go, but what’s the best way we can get people together so they can actually do it efficiently?

Can we bring all the people in the state of Kentucky together so they can all take a bus to Chicago together? Then none of them will have to worry about needing to drive. We have to think about how to work with systems that will be left, and how best to use it especially for those who aren’t going to have the funds to do long-distance travel.

Do you think we’ll increase the number of clinics in the future?

I’ve heard some people say, “Okay, we should build abortion clinics next to airports, so people can get off, get the procedure, and go right back home,” and my first thought was: Have these people tried to open a clinic lately?!

Just last [month] there was a piece in The Austin Chronicle about Whole Woman’s Health losing their Austin office, and they had spent months trying to find a new place they could move into. And this is in liberal Austin! There’s just so much pressure, no one wants to sell or lease their property to an abortion clinic.

I think for the most part what we have for clinics is as much as we’re going to get. And I don’t think that matters—I don’t think we should need as many abortion clinics. If people could just do it at home, as they should be able to especially with telemedicine, then we just need to have enough clinics that people can do follow-ups for later abortion or for people who can’t do it.

But haven’t studies shown that women prefer surgical abortion if they have the choice?

I totally understand why people would choose surgical abortion—you don’t have to worry about the follow-up, you don’t have to see the procedure, but if you look at Iowa, they had an extraordinarily successful telemedicine abortion program until [legislators] took it down. And what they discovered in Iowa was it didn’t increase the number of people having abortions, they just were able to have them earlier.

Your book also looks at the question of civil disobedience and direct action in a post-Roe America.

Yes, I think we’re going to see a lot more civil disobedience. There was a Mother Jones article recently about a woman who sold medication abortion online for years, and that finally got shut down by federal agents. The only thing that made the police finally get involved was because a man used the medication he bought from her to commit a crime.

As I was reading it I thought, how many people would need to start online websites, offering medication abortion for sale, before the FDA threw up their hands and said I can’t keep up with them all? That’s the kind of thing I’m thinking about. What’s the critical mass where so many people are breaking the law that it’s no longer feasible for authorities to keep up? And who are the right people to do it and how do we organize en masse?

What are some other examples of civil disobedience that you can imagine?

There’s a bill that was just reintroduced in Congress, and it comes up every year, the Child Interstate Abortion Notification Act, or CIANA, which would make it a crime to transport a minor across state lines to get an abortion without parental consent. One of the best things NARAL ever did was they dubbed this the “Jail Grandma law.” They brought to mind a picture of a young girl who goes to a different state to get an abortion, and for some reason her parents couldn’t take her so her grandma takes her across the border. Are we really going to throw grandma in jail? That ground everything to a halt, and that is a perfect example of why we need old white ladies to do civil disobedience.

So the last thing I wanted to ask you about was surveillance, and why being conscious of that will be important in a post-Roe America.

One of the reasons it’s really important to pay attention to what you’re saying over open phone lines, over what you’re searching on Google, over text messages, is that when Purvi Patel was arrested in Indiana for allegedly inducing her own abortion, the state went back and forth on is this murder? Is this feticide? A lot of what they used against Patel were texts in her own phone. We need to be aware that if we do decide that it’s time to organize outside the legal bounds, or if someone is going to try to do an abortion outside of a legal clinical setting, that person will need to be really careful about what they put down in writing.

I’m someone who generally hated being pregnant, I did not have comfortable pregnancies. I don’t know how many times I texted someone saying, “God, I wish I wasn’t pregnant.” If I had had a miscarriage, what would stop some suspicious doctor or some overzealous prosecutor to say, hm, she had a miscarriage, I wonder if she induced her own abortion, and then found that text?

 

The Charter School Movement Weakens in California

Originally published in The American Prospect on March 8, 2018.
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Charter school politics in California have been changing very quickly.

On Tuesday, Los Angeles held a special election for a school board seat that had been vacated in 2018. Ref Rodriguez had been elected in 2015 with the support of the charter school movement, and in 2017, two more pro-charter advocates won seats on the seven-person school board, giving charter supporters a slim majority for the first time. Their victory was short-lived, however, because Rodriguez was soon charged with money laundering, and eventually pled guilty to conspiracy and resigned.

The contest to fill Rodriguez’s seat was, thus, high-stakes: Would someone like Rodriguez replace him on the board, and thereby keep the board’s pro-charter tilt?

While the election is not over, the answer increasingly looks like it will be no. In a crowded field of ten candidates, 74-year-old Jackie Goldberg emerged with 48 percent of the vote, and heads into a May runoff with a strong likelihood of winning. The next-highest challenger received only 13 percent. Goldberg, who was endorsed by United Teachers Los Angeles, did not hide that she was running for the seat mainly to prevent charter advocates from controlling the board. “I don’t want four votes for the charter people,” she told me in January. “I’m not anti-charter, but I’m anti the current charter law.”

Goldberg has been a well-known figure in local progressive politics for decades. A veteran of the Free Speech Movement in Berkeley and later a public schoolteacher, she was elected to two terms on the Los Angeles school board from 1983 to 1991. After that, she served six years in the state assembly and eight as the first openly gay member of the Los Angeles City Council, where in 1997 she authored and passed what was effectively the nation’s first living-wage ordinance. This earned her the reputation as a real darling of the progressive left in the city. Goldberg was also a strong supporter of the recent Los Angeles teachers strike, and the teachers union spent roughly $660,000 to elect her.

The politics around charter schools in California has evolved in ways that stretch beyond the composition of L.A.’s school board, too.

In late December, before the strike, UTLA called for a moratorium on new charter schools. (L.A. has 224 charters, more than any other city in the country.) California’s new governor, Gavin Newsom, and its new state schools superintendent, Tony Thurmond, have also both said they support temporary moratoriums on new charters.

Following UTLA’s six-day strike, where opposition to charters was a central point of the teachers’ advocacy, the L.A. school board approved a nonbinding resolution in support of an eight-to-ten-month moratorium on new charter schools, pending a study on California’s charter laws. The vote was part of the bargaining agreement between UTLA and Los Angeles Unified School District chief Austin Beutner. Getting the board to even take such a vote was a huge win for the union, let alone receiving a unanimous vote, including from the board’s charter supporters.

A public opinion survey of Los Angeles County residents taken during January and the first two weeks of February found that 75 percent of respondents said they wanted to focus on improving existing public schools, and just 25 percent said the focus should be on giving families more school choices. The results were similar when broken down by race, though black and Latino families were slightly more likely to favor school improvements than other groups.

Further north in California, teachers in Oakland went on strike in late February, ending with an agreement that included, among other things, a moratorium on charter schools. Oakland currently has 44 charter schools, enrolling more than 15,600 students.

Keith Brown, president of Oakland Educators Association, said teachers will push for further regulation of charter schools on the state level, and already some bills have gained traction. Last week, the California Assembly approved a bill that would subject all charter schools in the state to the same open meetings, public records, and conflict-of-interest laws that traditional public schools are subject to. The transparency bill passed on a 63-to-9 vote and Governor Newsom is expected to sign it.

And that’s likely not all. Other bills that have been introduced would place a cap on charter schools, limit where charter schools could open, and create new ways to deny charter school applications. About 10 percent of the state’s 6.2 million public-school students currently attend charters.

Eric Premack, the executive director of the Sacramento-based Charter Schools Development Center, told CalMatters that the new bills are “the policy equivalent of an extended middle finger.”

California’s charter advocates are still reeling from two major political losses last year. In the gubernatorial primary, charter supporters spent $23 million backing Antonio Villaraigosa in a failed bid, and more than $36 million on another candidate’s unsuccessful run for state superintendent of public instruction.

After losing those statewide races in 2018, the California Charter Schools Association, the movement’s main political arm, took a gamble, announcing in late December that it would not be endorsing a candidate in the school board special election in Los Angeles. (The lobbying group declined to answer questions in January about whether it would run any independent expenditure campaigns or financially support any pro–charter school board contenders despite not giving an endorsement.)

Given the many candidates vying for the seat, most political observers suspected the CCSA would jump into the fray with an endorsement for the anticipated runoff, where they had been successful in the past.

But now it looks like their strategy failed, and their prospects to take back control of the board are slim. Not only did Goldberg command a formidable lead, but the next two candidates to trail her aren’t reliable charter advocates either. The most outspoken charter proponent in the field—Allison Bajracharya—finished fifth, earning less than six percent of the vote. That catastrophic mistake by the charter school movement could precipitate its further slide into political irrelevance.