Honoring Education Austin's Ken Zarifis—A Champion of Public Education Who Now Needs Our Support

Friends:

On June 4th, longtime Education Austin President Ken Zarifis was critically injured in a devastating car accident that sent him to the Emergency Room in critical condition. He has since undergone reconstructive surgery to the right side of his face and body and remains in the ICU, where he is under close care by nurses and doctors. His recovery will be long and arduous, involving additional surgeries, physical therapy, and intensive rehabilitation.

Ken has been a tireless advocate for Austin’s public schools, teachers, and students for decades. From organizing against the IDEA charter school takeover in East Austin to helping flip the AISD school board in 2012, Ken’s leadership has demonstrated the power of grassroots, local organizing. Under his stewardship, Education Austin—affiliated with both Texas AFT and the Texas State Teachers Association—has won major victories: securing districtwide pay raises, defending safe and manageable working conditions, and advancing inclusive policies for LGBTQ and immigrant communities. Through DACA clinics, citizenship drives, and coalition-building at the Capitol, he has stood unwaveringly for justice and public education.

Ken is also a single father of three, one of whom he still cares for at home. His children—who love him deeply—are doing their best to support one another as he fights to heal. In addition to the emotional toll, the family faces enormous financial pressures. Helping his children manage daily life and covering the costs of ongoing medical treatment will require all the community support we can offer.

If you’ve ever been moved by Ken’s work—or if you believe in the kind of community-rooted, fearless leadership he represents—please consider contributing to support his recovery and his family during this extraordinarily difficult time.

🩵 GoFundMe: Support Ken Zarifis’ Family and Recovery
https://www.gofundme.com/f/support-ken-zarifis-family-and-recovery

Let us now stand for the person who has stood for so many of us. Your support—whether through donations, sharing the campaign, or lifting Ken and his family in your thoughts—can make all the difference.

I’m also honored to share a powerful story by Brant Bingamon in The Austin Chronicle on Ken and Education Austin’s incredible legacy of advocacy and transformation in our schools. Ken, we love you and need you to get well and be well more than ever! 💗

–Angela Valenzuela

Austin’s Powerful Education Union Celebrates 25 Years of Fighting for Teachers’ Voices
Leader Ken Zarifis talks “hard-work magic” of public education

by Brant Bingamon, Fri., June 13, 2025

Education Austin’s leader Ken Zarifis speaks in 2023 (photo by Jana Birchum)

Ken Zarifis remembers when Education Austin, the union representing Austin’s public school teachers and staff, first began to push Austin ISD’s board of trustees. It was 2011 and AISD was considering whether to allow a charter school to take over Allan Elementary on the city’s Eastside.

The plan was for the IDEA charter school to begin with Allan Elementary, then take over Martin Middle School, and, eventually, former Johnston High School, to bring up the schools’ test scores. Public school supporters were furious. Zarifis went to the school board trustee representing his neighborhood and asked her to oppose the plan. Zarifis and other members of Education Austin filled the board of trustees’ public meeting on the night of the vote to speak against it. The trustees still approved the takeover 6-3.

“I’ll never forget it,” Zarifis said. “We started chanting, 'We will vote you out! We will vote you out!’ We went outside, we were all in this big circle, and we said, 'We have to start looking for people to flip the board, for candidates.’ By February, we’d found four people.”

Three of the four – Gina Hinojosa, Jayme Mathias, and Ann Teich – won their elections the next fall, flipping the board against the takeover. At their first meeting in December of 2012, the trustees canceled the district’s contract with IDEA. The takeover of Allan Elementary lasted four months.
“It’s all about local. That’s all that matters to me. I can’t do a damn thing about national stuff, but I can do a lot locally and that’s what I lean into.”– Education Austin’s Ken Zarifis

“I’d never seen electoral politics work in such a local and direct fashion,” Zarifis said. “They terminated it on the first night that they were all sitting there. You suddenly see: We’ve got power.”

That wasn’t always the case for Education Austin, which has been celebrating its 25th anniversary this year. Zarifis’ predecessor, Louis Malfaro, who served as the organization’s president starting in 1999, when the Austin Federation of Teachers and Austin Association of Teachers merged to create EA, said the board of trustees was not necessarily a progressive body during his tenure, that the union needed to assert its power. “We used to be nothing,” Malfaro said. “The teachers in the city, we didn’t run the show. West Austin ran the show. The Chamber of Commerce ran the show.”

It’s been different since the IDEA charter school fight. Zarifis estimates that the union’s preferred candidates have only lost two or three of the trustee races in which the union has endorsed since 2012. All nine of the current trustees were endorsed by the union. District leaders consult with Education Austin so often that it is almost an arm of the district itself. “Ken’s like the 10th school board member,” Malfaro said.

Education Austin has used that influence to fight for districtwide pay increases for teachers and staff, reduced workloads, shared decision-making, and safe working conditions. “They’ve been very successful in advocating for raises for teachers and classified staff,” Ann Teich said. “They’ve also been very successful in advocating for a workday that is manageable – you know, a duty-free lunch and that kind of thing, something I always appreciated when I was a teacher. They’ve also been successful in advocating at the Legislature to some degree.”

Morgan Craven remembers partnering with Education Austin at the state Capitol in 2017. Craven, who at the time was working for the social justice nonprofit Texas Appleseed, had seen federal data showing that young students, disproportionately black children and those with disabilities, were being suspended from school at rates higher than other kids. She wanted to change state law to limit the suspensions.

Craven had no background in education so Zarifis introduced her to his community. “He was like, 'Okay, we’re doing this – let’s do it,’” Craven said. “He got teachers involved in the advocacy. We were working with young people in the advocacy. We were working directly with the district in the advocacy. And I don’t know if that was on his agenda, to suddenly devote this much time to this particular issue, but he just jumped into it.” The advocates got a law passed to limit out-of-school suspensions for young students. The reform was undone this session with the approval of House Bill 6, which once again makes it easier for teachers to suspend students.

“We used to be nothing. The teachers in the city, we didn’t run the show.”– Former Education Austin President Louis Malfaro

Louis Malfaro back in 2010 (Photo by John Anderson)

Education Austin’s vice president Trasell Underwood remembers the leaders who put it on the map, starting with Malfaro, who worked out a consultation agreement with the district allowing the union to discuss wages and working conditions. She praised other EA leaders who recognized the power that would come from merging the previous unions into one entity. She recalled how former VP Montserrat Garibay helped Education Austin organize DACA clinics and citizenship drives, where families sat down with attorneys to begin the process of becoming citizens. She said it was members of the union who pushed the district to support its LGBTQ workers and students by participating in Pride celebrations. “It was Education Austin that went to the district and forced the conversation,” she said.

Zarifis joined the union soon after taking a job as an English teacher at Burnet Middle School in 1998. Today, the school is threatened with a charter school takeover, just like Allan Elementary was in 2012. The state of Texas, through the Texas Education Agency, is forcing AISD to replace the leadership and about half the teachers at Burnet, Webb, and Dobie middle schools in an effort to improve the schools’ test scores. If the scores don’t come up by December, the schools will be handed to charter school management, starting in 2026. The district is planning to close and consolidate other schools.

It’s a crisis that Education Austin has repeatedly confronted during Zarifis’ tenure as president. In 2012, the union partnered with Gina Hinojosa, who had just been elected president of the AISD board of trustees, to save Johnston High School from being closed. (The school was renamed Eastside Early College High School in 2008.)

“I met with Education Austin and other community advocates every week for that whole school year, working to make sure we were on top of ensuring that school would stay open,” said Hinojosa, now a state representative. “At the high school graduation ceremony, the TEA commissioner announced they had met accountability standards. It was just the coolest community effort when it succeeded. But Education Austin was there and that’s how I knew they were a reliable ally and partner.”

Zarifis stresses that it is the union’s focus on local organizing that has made it effective in a state that is adamantly anti-union. “It’s all about local,” Zarifis said. “That’s all that matters to me. I can’t do a damn thing about national stuff, but I can do a lot locally and that’s what I lean into. Most of the stuff that impacts our lives day-to-day happens locally – what the City Council does, what the school board does.”

Zarifis said this is one of the things he loves about public education – that ultimately it’s a grassroots, community-led enterprise. “It’s the most glorious thing. There’s no institution that’s more magnificent, as flawed as as our public school system is, in creating the future, every bit of it. Show me one other institution that’s creating the future. That’s like magic shit. It’s so otherworldly, but it’s hard work. It’s not like a magic-wand kind of magic. It’s hard-work magic.”

This time they mean it: Austin district trustees move closer to school closures

This article by Melissa Taboada of the Austin American-Statesman is very concerning.  There is a lot of detail to plough through in this piece which also provides a decent history of school closures.  That said, Education Austin President Ken Zarifis maintains that "because the majority of the underenrolled schools are in the district’s eastern side, he will not support any closures unless the district first redraws boundaries," and "exhaust all options," generally speaking.

The hollowing out of the city core is deeply concerning. This reflects gentrification and the charterization of schools on Austin's East Side.  I know that they target the Latino, frequently immigrant, community ferociously.  Not speaking about any one charter school, in particular, from my own work in East Austin, I see first hand how our parents fall prey to the glossy handouts and the impassioned sales pitches to lure public school kids out of our East Side schools.  Nevermind the data and powerful evidence that show that parents would do really well to think twice before putting their child in a charter school. 

The shorter and longer game is that we as a polity, as advocates for public education, "poach" these students back into our schools by expanding the programs like dual language education, environmental science, arts programs, as well as community-based programs with high levels of parents involvement, that simultaneously breathe life into the curriculum, schools, and surrounding community.  

Dual language education and Ethnic Studies could and should be major draws that distinguish AISD not only from charter schools locally, but also with respect to public education in our country, as a whole, where such programs often depend on local champions as opposed to being embedded in district policy and practice.  Not that this or any district is perfect, but rather that because governance is local, we as communities can advocate for and seek changes like these that we want, need, and are research-based to boot.

John Dewey famously referred to our nation's public school classrooms as "laboratories for democracy."  With this as a premise, shuttering schools is bad for democracy.  

I am happy to read that the district has plans to work with the Austin Mayor Steve Adler and Council Member Kathie Tovo to transform "shuttered campuses into affordable housing or city parks."

Although this piece makes me sad, I can only imagine what it's doing to those that are feeling targeted at the moment.

-Angela Valenzuela

This time they mean it: Austin district trustees move closer to school closures

By Melissa B. Taboada

February 7, 2019

After years of putting off a decision to close schools, Austin district leaders are forming a plan that would consolidate campuses starting in August 2020.

It’s too early to know which schools will be shuttered or even how the decisions will be made. But district leaders say postponing a decision is not an option as they predict a bleak financial forecast, exacerbated by a plummeting student population, ballooning annual recapture payments to the state, and depleting district reserves. The district must eliminate a $60 million shortfall by next school year.

Administrators on Monday will begin discussions with the school board on developing criteria for closing and consolidating campuses. Officials said they would later involve parents and a committee that has been studying the issue. According to a preliminary timeline, criteria and guiding principles would be set by April, administrators would present schools for possible consolidation by May and trustees would make decisions as early as June.

“We want to ensure every single scenario we produce puts a student in a better school environment. Period,” said Matias Segura, district operations officer. “The methodology we develop and the principles we use to verify our outcomes will certainly reflect that.”

The school district for at least the past quarter-century has been criticized for holding on to chronically underenrolled schools. State officials, consultants and district committees since at least 1993 have called out the district for inefficiencies, all recommending shuttering campuses.

But such discussions always have been met with public backlash, as parents and students defend neighborhood schools and East Austin community leaders warn against closing schools in a part of the city that for years dealt with the trauma of school closures as part of a desegregation plan that shuttered schools designated as black-only and kept open schools for whites.

The district’s financial strains aren’t new, though they’ve been worsening in recent years. District trustees repeatedly have said they will be forced in the coming months and years to make difficult choices, the cuts previous district leaders adamantly opposed, to solve the district’s financial woes.

“We can’t afford to spend in the same way we have,” said board President Geronimo Rodriguez. “There is a political will to put all options on the table. There is a will to make the hard choices. We have to act.”

Calls to close

The district’s enrollment has been declining for six consecutive years, but there have been calls to close low-enrolled schools ranging back a quarter century, when a Texas School Performance Review stated Austin facilities were underused and recommended the district close schools. Then in 2000, in a 736-page audit, the state comptroller again recommended consolidations. In 2009, financial consulting firm MGT of America, hired by the district, also recommended taking campuses offline. Within months, the district acted on more than half of the consultant’s recommendations, but shuttering campuses was not among them.

And in 2011, a facilities committee tasked with finding inefficiencies recommended closing schools. About 1,500 people showed up to district meetings in one week to oppose the closures. And the school board shelved the recommendations.

In 2016, a new facilities and bond advisory committee worked alongside administrators for more than a year to create a facilities master plan, which was adopted in 2017, and also suggested schools should be closed. The consultant initially working on the plan identified schools for closure, but the committee’s facilities report did not list specific campuses. Instead, it called on the school board to examine whether schools should be closed after three consecutive years of low enrollment. Trustees approved that plan, with safeguards to provide underenrolled schools resources and support to help boost enrollment before they would be considered for closure.

Most recently, an administrative plan to balance the budget listed 12 schools that could be closed to help narrow the gap. Then in January, a budget stabilization task force found that the district could save $1.2 million for each closure, pointing to 15 elementaries with fewer than 300 students, but did not name specific schools. The majority of the more than three dozen schools with enrollments under 75 percent of capacity are located east of Interstate 35. Some rank low by state testing measures and count high numbers of Latino and African-American students from low-income families.

District leaders, including some trustees and administrators, have said students who attend aging, underenrolled schools would be better off attending modernized or new campuses with strong academic programs and brimming with students.

Low enrollment won’t be the only factor in identifying schools to close, Superintendent Paul Cruz said. Other criteria will include the physical condition of schools and their educational suitability, he said. Consultants three years ago performed complete facility and educational suitability assessments of every school. Several trustees also have said they want to consolidate schools in an equitable way, which could mean closing schools that are not under-enrolled west of Interstate 35.

“We have to look at developing a criteria that is equitable and considers multiple factors so that one or two communities aren’t disproportionately impacted,” Trustee Cindy Anderson said. “It is one tool to balance enrollment, but we need to examine feeder patterns and boundaries. It’s going to take a number different strategies to balance out the district. No one thing is going to solve the issues. We don’t want to create more problems with it.”

Losing students

The 80,000-student Austin district has declined by more than 6,000 students since 2013, which equates to about $115 million in lost state funding.

School district administrators and demographers attribute the enrollment declines to a number of factors, including transfers to suburban districts and charter schools, and birth rates that declined with the 2008 recession. The number of school-age children living in some pockets of the district is falling, a phenomenon common among urban districts. Demographers describe the loss as a doughnut-shaped hole in the city, where the core has more schools with vacancies. Schools in other parts of the district continue to grow.

Despite a housing boom downtown and areas near downtown, few new homes built in those areas are designed for or marketed to families. At the same time, the new housing is driving up real estate prices, pricing out lower-income families.

The average market value of homes in the Austin school district last year was $441,067, much more than the average market values of homes in Del Valle ($184,059), Hays ($205,261), Pflugerville ($255,785), and Round Rock ($340,767) — four area districts that attract Austin families.

The enrollment decline comes even as the district has enacted countermeasures, including adding prekindergarten for 3-year-olds, starting tuition-based prekindergarten classes, launching a marketing campaign and opening doors to students who live outside the district boundaries. The district has picked up about 2,400 students by allowing transfers from other districts. District officials also have been working with underenrolled schools, allowing specialty programs, such as a dual language program at Becker Elementary in South Austin, a fine arts program at Blackshear Elementary in East Austin, and a dyslexia program at Covington Middle School in South Austin and providing money to market those programs.

Without those efforts, the declines could have been steeper, but critics say the district has not included surrounding communities for input or done enough to help the struggling schools.

Overcapacity, underenrolled

District officials over the years have discussed solutions to address the district’s overcrowded and half-empty schools. But talks about possible school closures and boundary changes have long been contentious in Austin.

Thirty-seven Austin district schools are at or below 75 percent capacity, the threshold the district considers when defining campuses as underenrolled. But nearly an equal amount, 38, enroll more than 100 percent of capacity. In some pockets of the district, particularly in Northwest and Southwest Austin, overcrowding is common, with schools beyond 150 percent capacity. Three elementary schools in those areas have more than 1,000 students, the size of the district’s larger middle schools.

But other campuses, primarily in East Austin, are half-empty, with one at 29 percent.

Download the data

Critics have said the district is pouring millions of dollars into repairs of old buildings, which diverts money away from academic goals. A January report by the Budget Stabilization Task Force also called on the district to shutter schools, but told trustees that cuts must not have “a disproportionately negative impact on certain parts of the district, namely East Austin.” Specifically, the report said closures cannot be limited exclusively to schools that are underenrolled, and recommended consolidations and any boundary changes should increase socio-economic and cultural diversity at schools and must be balanced east and west of Lamar Boulevard.

“All of the easy and non-controversial budget corrections have already been made, leaving only the special interest, sacred cows to be evaluated,” the task force report said. “Only the politically charged and difficult options to address the structural budget deficit remain.”

Attorneys with the Texas Civil Rights Project in 2014 warned Austin district officials against closing schools on the eastern side of the district. Other proponents of keeping schools open have said closures of underenrolled schools would have a disparate effect on already marginalized neighborhoods. One group of regular district activists have threatened to organize an independent district or to be absorbed into a neighboring one.

Ken Zarifis, the president of labor group Education Austin, and one of the task force members, said because the majority of the underenrolled schools are in the district’s eastern side, he will not support any closures unless the district first redraws boundaries.

“We need to exhaust our options before looking at closing schools, but we haven’t done that,” Zarifis said.

Nationally, 1,573 schools, mostly elementary campuses, were closed in 2014-15, the most recent data available, according to the National Center for Education Statistics. Closures have been common among major urban school districts, with dozens shuttered in Chicago, and Washington, D.C. The Dallas district also has closed multiple campuses in recent years. Dallas school leaders last year proposed shuttering more, a plan that was met with resistance and prompted them to scale back to just a few.

Desegregation echoes?

Some experts warn there are repercussions to shuttering schools: Home values often decrease in the neighborhoods with closed schools; parents, particularly those in low-income neighborhoods, have more difficulty getting their children to the new campus locations, and building a sense of community and parental engagement becomes harder.

“Communities of color and low-income communities pay the burden of the closure but they’re not compensated for the burden,” said Michelle Renée Valladares, associate director at the National Education Policy Center, a nonprofit policy research center in the school of education at the University of Colorado at Boulder. “There are a lot of ripple effects and unintended consequences when closing a school. The transitions have never been as smooth as promised so it has a tremendous disruption in the life of the kids. Building that sense of community and parental engagement becomes a lot harder.”

Some see in suggestions of focusing closures in East Austin an echo of the city’s rocky history of desegregation.

As part of the desegregation efforts, the district in 1971 shuttered the original L.C. Anderson High School, which served as a place of pride for many in East Austin’s African-American community.

Parent Emily Sawyer, whose children attend two underenrolled schools said district leaders must be “bold and undeterred by discomfort” in determining what equity should look like in the district as officials approach consolidations.

“Given the current realities in our city and district, school consolidations have become necessary and I believe inevitable,” Sawyer said. “It is not enough, however, to simply be fair minded and logical in choosing and applying criteria for school consolidations. We must choose to be radical in regressing the past racist wrongs perpetrated against those in the education system whom we historically did not see fit to educate.”

Outside help

Some political heavy hitters, community and civic groups are making moves to support the district as it navigates school closures.

Austin Mayor Steve Adler and Council Member Kathie Tovo late last month raised the idea of transforming shuttered campuses into affordable housing or city parks.

Adler and Tovo in a joint statement said as the district faces possible closures, the city simultaneously faces a lack of affordable housing, places for parks and public facilities to meet community needs.

“Perhaps these two sets of challenges can add up to one good answer for our community: opportunities for some community needs to be met on all or part of repurposed AISD properties,” they said.

The city passed a resolution for the two entities to work together to use district facilities in a way to benefit the community.

The school district already has sold surplus land (though not schools) to developers and the city, stipulating that at least a portion of it be used to develop affordable housing, prioritizing district families and staff for such housing.

Leaders of the Greater Austin Chamber of Commerce also in January met with district officials, offering to support a strategic communications plan that explains to the public the need to make hard choices.

“You have a number of business leaders who care deeply about the community and want to help,” said Drew Scheberle, the chamber’s executive vice president of education. “We know that the school district has had some record academic performance and their financial status needs some shoring up and there are tough decisions they must make. We’re not trying to micromanage but trying to support those elected and those working to solve the problems.”

Educators fight textbook that vilifies Mexican Americans - Education Votes

Couldn't let the weekend go by without mentioning this on my blog.    

First, the National Education Association (or NEA), which is one of the two biggest national educators' unions in the country, has joined the #RejectTheText movement in Texas against the Riddle and Angle Mexican American Heritage racist, nativist textbook that is currently under consideration by the Texas State Board of Education.  

Second, this piece by Sabrina Holcomb has great quotes from NEA/local leadership (see below), as well as by #MASforTexas leader Juan Tejeda, who in his quote conveys the sentiment of our movement here in Texas: "I can’t think of any time since the late 60s and early 70s the activism surrounding this issue has been so prominent.”

The piece closes with this quote by Education Austin President Ken Zarifis—who nails it: 

This issue goes beyond November and this textbook, says Ken Zarifis. “The salient question is how do you tell the history of all the people who make up this nation? Why are we scared to acknowledge the contributions others have made,” asks Zarifis. “When I taught 8th grade language arts, my kids were thirsty to hear their stories in the classroom. Why would we deny them that?” The only reason I can think of is we don’t want them to feel empowered by their heritage and the real story of those who came before them.”

I like how he eloquently and succinctly expresses this view in the powerful voice of a caring teacher. 


This is a struggle that has to get named along the lines of majority-minority relations for us to begin to un-do the damage that comes from the SBOE, and by extension, the curriculum and instruction that similarly inflict harm to the degree that they are either ignorant about, if not altogether indifferent to, the empowering, precious knowledge to which our children and communities have been systematically deprived for well over a century. 

Many thanks to NEA staff extraordinaire, Bill Moreno, for facilitating this news story and helping us to get the word out.  And, of course, special thanks to Sabrina Holcomb, who wrote it.  

Thanks, as well, to NEA President Lily Eskelsen for her outstanding leadership in addressing systemic and institutionalized forms of racial oppression that you can read more about here.

Please sign/consider signing the petition if you've not done so.

Angela Valenzuela

c/s

Educators fight textbook that vilifies Mexican Americans - Education Votes: Mexican American Heritage textbook is so riddled with factual errors, key omissions, and blatantly racist statements it has no place in any classroom.

Educators fight textbook that vilifies Mexican Americans

Posted September 30, 2016

1 comment

Posted in: Education News, NEA EdJustice Features, Texas

Demonstrators at Texas Board of Education hearing. Credit: Texas Freedom Network

By Sabrina Holcomb

Critics consider a new Mexican American Heritage textbook so
dangerous, hundreds of people braved the Texas heat to speak out against
its adoption at a Texas Board of Education hearing.

The proposed textbook has offended and outraged activists
who say the book is so riddled with factual errors, key omissions, and
blatantly racist statements it has no place in any classroom.

Take Action ›

Stand with educators supporting diverse books in schools. Click here ›

If this textbook is adopted, say concerned educators, students will
“learn” that Mexican American workers are lazy, Mexican-American labor
leaders wanted to destroy American society, and Mexican American people
are cultural separatists—and that’s just a start.

 “When you are a young person and you read a book that says people
like you are lazy and uneducated and bad for society, you internalize
that,” says Montserrat Garibay, Vice President of Education Austin and an early childhood teacher. “That’s what your friends are reading about you. It denigrates you as a person, and perpetuates institutional racism.”

Over half of Texas’ five million students are Latino, and the
majority of them are Mexican American, leading some educators to
advocate for a more inclusive curriculum that incorporates Mexican
American history—a commonsense approach they say, given research that shows students who take ethnic studies courses perform better on state tests and are more likely to graduate from high school.

Instead of implementing an inclusive curriculum or full ethnic  studies program, however, the Texas Board of Education called for
publishers to submit textbooks for an optional social studies course.
The sole submission, Mexican American Heritage—written by a publisher
who had no subject matter expertise—provoked an incredulous backlash
when the board released a sample.

 “Over 140 errors have been identified in this book already,” says
Education Austin President Ken Zarifis, “yet a spokesperson for the
publishing company questioned having scholars review it. That statement
stunned me. People who deny healthy scholarship shouldn’t be making
decisions about our kids.”

A broad coalition of scholar-activists and organizations, including Education Austin and the Texas State Teachers Association, have organized against the adoption—coordinating scholarly reviews, holding meetings and press conferences, and circulating an electronic petition that has secured over 10,000 signatures.

Martha P. Cotera, Angela Valenzuela, Alonzo Mendoza, Montserrat Garibay,

Ken Zarifis, and Celina Moreno

Coalition members and students, concerned about the negative impact
of a book that “distorts history,” showed up in force at the Board of
Education hearing last week, where over 100 people signed up to speak.
They and other stakeholders must wait until November to hear the school
board’s decision—a choice that could reverberate beyond Texas.

In the world of school textbooks, Texas is the giant in the room—a
large and profitable market that exerts a powerful influence on the
content of textbooks throughout the country. It’s not the first time the
Texas Board of Education has been in the news. In fact, the publisher
of Mexican American Heritage is a former member of the Board who once
said that sending kids to public school is like “throwing them into the
enemy’s flames.”

Despite an uphill climb, some educators have persevered, heartened by the “movement atmosphere” they say has taken hold in Texas and other areas of the country—such as California, which just passed a landmark bill ordering a model ethnic studies course for all state high schools.

“I can’t think of any time since the late 60s and early 70s the
activism surrounding this issue has been so prominent,” affirms art
professor and movement leader Juan Tejeda, who spoke at the schoolboard
hearing along with other stakeholders. “We’re asking the Board to make
the right decision in November.”

This issue goes beyond November and this textbook, says Ken Zarifis.
“The salient question is how do you tell the history of all the people
who make up this nation? Why are we scared to acknowledge the
contributions others have made,” asks Zarifis. “When I taught 8th grade
language arts, my kids were thirsty to hear their stories in the
classroom. Why would we deny them that?” The only reason I can think of
is we don’t want them to feel empowered by their heritage and the real
story of those who came before them.”

Tags: Education Austin, ethnic studies, Ken Zarifis, Mexican American Heritage, Montserrat Garibay, Texas State Teachers Association

#MASforTexas @TFN

Re-Forming AI$D: Austin school board campaigns stage national educational battleground

This is an eye-opening piece of the very shady pro-charter, neoliberal reform movement in and with the Austin Independent School District.  Regarding our most recent school board election and runoff election, learn about the interlocking influences of Austin Kids First (AKF), Leadership for Educational Equity (LEE), Teach for America (TFA), and KIPP that stand to "wrest control" of public schools from the public itself.

Note that while LEE and AKF are seemingly separate entities, TFA provides the connective tissue.   Former Education Austin president, now secretary-treasurer for statewide teachers union Texas AFT, Louis Mal­faro said, "Teach for America is the backbone, the hiring room, think tank, and boiler room for the charter movement."

Then there's Thompson's former employers at KIPP. At its highest level, the charter group and TFA are in bed together – literally. TFA founder and CEO Wendy Kopp is married to Richard Barth, president of KIPP. And that's where the real purpose of TFA and LEE becomes clear. In 2011, Kopp declared that TFA is a "leadership development organization, not a teaching organization." That makes LEE the next step in that leadership trail.

Ending those structures like school boards about which our communities have a vote means creating an educational environment where education reduces to a market exchange that is further circumscribed by legal and binding contracts.  Stated differently, despite the fact that taxpayer dollars fund education—and will continue to do so because we as a public will always pay for education at some level—this agenda spells an end to public governance of public schools while simultaneously gauranteeing a steady stream of public revenue based on taxpayer dollars to the for-profit and non-profit, charter school "reformers" sector.  

Unless your children attend any of our affluent schools, none of this is to say that our public schools are where the public wants them to be.  We obviously need more and equitable funding, certified teachers, and so many other things too numerous to list.  Just like democracy—of which our public educational system has historically been its bedrock—if there are problems with it, the solution is not to end, but rather to extend, it.  

This piece is worth reading in its entirety.  And I am delighted that my friend and colleague, Dr. Ted Gordon, won his race against David "D" Thompson.

-Angela

http://www.austinchronicle.com/news/2014-11-28/re-forming-aisd/

Re-Forming AI$D

Austin school board campaigns stage national educational battleground

By Richard Whittaker, November 28, 2014, News

Something has changed in education politics, and Robert Schneider has seen the shift. Twelve years ago, when he first ran for District 7 in the Austin Independent School District, "It was the PTA folks who ran for the board." That means, a decade ago, a candidate like former Austin Council of PTAs president Monica Sanchez would have romped home in District 6. Instead, this time she was third in a three-horse race, not even making the run-off. In part, Schneider ascribes such upsets to changing demographics in the electorate. He said, "We have more tech folks, we have more younger folks." That change has an unintended consequence. "It's an opportunity for people with very deep pockets to buy seats in the school district."

He should know. Schneider has always faced stiff competition in his southwestern district. But this time around was a little different. Education advocacy group Austin Kids First doubled down on his opponent, Yasmin Wagner, dropping roughly $40,000 in contributions and in-kind expenditures into her challenge. Why target the veteran trustee? Wagner always said on the campaign trail that it was because he was unresponsive to his community. Maybe that was what motivated her, but, Schneider thinks there's another reason why Austin Kids First came after him. "They've got a political agenda, rather than an education agenda," he said. "I'm not a big radical reformer like they are."
Before we proceed, there are three organizations you need to know – starting with Austin Kids First. Founded in 2012, its declared purpose is to get voters engaged in AISD board elections, and encourage high-quality candidates to run. Leadership for Educational Equity does basically the same thing, at the national level. And then there's Teach for America, the national organization that puts recent college grads into struggling schools.

It all seems quite noble. Great teachers. Great schools. Enthusiastic young people, doing a couple of years of energetic teaching, simultaneously becoming more rounded citizens. But, according to Ken Zarifis, president of Education Austin, the school employees' union, there's a big catch. "It's all the same vague comments about 'the best schools' and 'the best teachers' – the broad strokes that everybody wants, but they never define what a good teacher is or a good school or a good trustee."

There's a line in The Usual Suspects: "The greatest trick the devil ever pulled was convincing the world he didn't exist." In the case of the pro-charter, pro-voucher, anti-union coalition known as the "education reform" movement, the greatest trick was grabbing a suitably nebulous name (or group of names), and promoting their cause through equally nebulous, feel-good terms. Zarifis is far from sanguine about their intentions. "When I hear 'reform,' the first word that comes to mind is destruction," he said. "They want to take public education out of the hands of the public, and control it themselves. It comes from billionaires like Michael Bloomberg, who don't understand what it's like to be in a classroom with 35 kids for 90 minutes, and spending every one of those 90 trying to make sure they learn something."

The suspicion is that there's a game plan, and groups like AKF, TFA, and LEE all play a role.

Reformers push metrics like school "accountability" standards that serve to make perfectly acceptable schools appear to be chronic failures. Groups like TFA air-drop student teachers into the neediest school districts and claim that they're "saving schools" – with the implication that existing teachers, with their contracts and experience and training and union protections – are just serving their self-interests. Then charter groups and voucher advocates gin up talk of "school choice," and cream off the best students, leaving public schools with the most struggling students, diminishing finances, and demoralized teachers.

Invest Nationally ... Vote Locally

How does a candidate get the Austin Kids First endorsement? According to Executive Director Stephen de Man, the process is utterly transparent, "with the purpose of getting trustees who are about putting kids first. Thus the name." Candidates fill out a questionnaire, then meet with board members, and an endorsement – with resulting contributions – is made. "Everything's super-transparent. But we look for certain qualities that go beyond litmus-test issues."

In the At-Large Position 9 race, AKF backed Kendall Pace. She now faces UT program director Hillary Procknow in the run-off, and she has the AKF blessing and cash to help her. Pace said she modeled her campaign on that of Trustee Gina Hinojosa in 2012, even using the same commercial firm for her TV spots. When it came to AKF, she filled out their candidate form, and then met with de Man and John Armbrust, the executive director at charter group Austin Achieve Public Schools, at Cherrywood Coffeehouse. After that, AKF donated $35,000, which she used to pay for her TV time. However, that was not the end of their assistance. "People came up to me afterwards and said, 'Oh my god, I like your flier.' I'm like, 'what flier?'" AKF had actually paid for two different mailers on her behalf and, in keeping with state campaign "non-coordination" laws about such dark money expenditures, they had never informed her that they existed.
Beyond legal restrictions, the group has pretty strict rules about contact with candidates. No donor that contributes more than $500 can take part in the endorsement process, and then the group has no contact, beyond normal board operations and meetings, with trustees outside of the election. That's not their purpose, de Man said. "We're not issue-driven: 'Are you pro-this or anti-this?' Two years ago, it was hard for people to understand. How can a group have this money, spend this money, and not have an agenda?"
Austin Kids First at least appears indigenous. But there's nothing local about Leadership for Educational Equity – the D.C.-based group that spent almost $6,000 on District 1 candidate David "D" Thomp­son, who's in a run-off with UT-Aus­tin department chair Edmund "Ted" Gordon.
Thompson's platform is laudable: "Hav­ing incredible teachers in East Austin, focus on gaps [between] our low-income and high-income students, and between our white students and students of color." But that's the kind of bland rhetoric that drives critics of the reform movement (like Zarifis) crazy. Doesn't everyone want all of that? Moreover, doesn't it imply that the current advocates for schools aren't doing everything they can to reach those goals? During the first round of this election, eyebrows were raised that Thompson – co-founder of the Austin branch of KIPP Charter Schools and a TFA alum – suddenly wanted a spot on the AISD board. Thompson countered that this was less fox guarding the hen house than poacher turning gamekeeper.

And now, the revelation that LEE systematically supported his campaign with about 60 in-kind contributions – from software expenses to email costs to candidate coaching – has become fodder for the run-off.

Why would a D.C.-based 501(c)4 nonprofit get engaged in an Austin school district election? Thompson says it's simple: He's a TFA alum and a LEE member, and they take care of their own. "Leadership for Educational Equity is an organization made up of current and former teachers, educators, and leaders who care about educational equality." The group is not dedicated to any set policies, just to candidates who "are dedicated to putting kids first." There's one addendum: All those teachers, educators, and leaders are TFA alums.

AKF's de Man described LEE's relationship to TFA as like "an alumni society for a university." He should know. Before joining AKF, he was LEE's Texas regional director. Yet while LEE denies any ideological bent, its backers may have other ideas. In the last year, there have been only three donors to its Texas operation: Wal-Mart heir Steuart Walton, tech investor Arthur Rock, and former New York mayor Michael Bloomberg. All three are stalwarts of the "reform" movement, all three major advocates for the charter movement.

It's a similar story over at AKF. For the past two AISD board elections, their major donors have been Professional Janitorial Company owner and Republican donor Rex Gore, Silicon Labs co-founder David Wel­land, and former Dell CTO Eric Harslem (plus John Armbrust who gave $1,000 in the last cycle). That trio alone has infused tens of thousands of dollars into an organization that wants to be a major player.

Backbone and Boiler Room

LEE and AKF: two seemingly separate entities – but the connecting tissue is Teach for America. LEE's stated aim is "empowering Teach for America corps members and alumni to grow as leaders in their communities and help build the movement for educational equity." Meanwhile, AKF was founded by TFA alumni Ben Maddox and Sean Flammer, and its current board is comprised of all TFA alums. Moreover, in 2012, when the group first appeared on the scene, it faced immediate accusations that it was little more than AstroTurf, a local variant of the near-identical Dallas Kids First, for which Maddox was a registered lobbyist (see "We're All About the ... Kids!" Oct. 19, 2012). Its leadership is uniformly TFA alumni, and with charter operators like Armbrust interviewing candidates, there are obvious links between AKF, LEE, charters, and the reform movement, all stretching back to TFA. Former Education Austin president, now secretary-treasurer for statewide teachers union Texas AFT, Louis Mal­faro said, "Teach for America is the backbone, the hiring room, think tank, and boiler room for the charter movement."

The links run deep into the personnel. Prior to replacing Flammer and Maddox as AKF's head, de Man was TFA's recruitment director, its director of Alumni Affairs, and then Texas regional director for LEE. Beki Bahar-Engler, LEE Texas' treasurer and vice president of its D.C. office, was previously TFA's vice president of strategy.

Then there's Thompson's former employers at KIPP. At its highest level, the charter group and TFA are in bed together – literally. TFA founder and CEO Wendy Kopp is married to Richard Barth, president of KIPP. And that's where the real purpose of TFA and LEE becomes clear. In 2011, Kopp declared that TFA is a "leadership development organization, not a teaching organization." That makes LEE the next step in that leadership trail.

Yet there are undeniable differences between LEE and AKF. Moreover, it's hard to paint AKF's endorsed candidate list as strictly pro-charter, pro-reform. In 2012, it was easy, since they primarily backed the candidates that voted to hand Allan Elementary over to IDEA. This time, they're supporting Pace in the At-Large race, who is running on a platform of more aggressively countering charter recruitment of AISD students. They e ven endorsed two of the same candidates as Education Austin: Gordon in District 1 and Julie Cowan in District 4.

Moreover, LEE and AKF found themselves on opposing sides in District 1. AKF formally endorsed Gordon, while LEE effectively ran its Texas office as a second campaign office for Thompson. Since midsummer, LEE hasn't spent a red cent in Texas except on Thompson. And this wasn't a one-off contribution. Instead, it was a series of small expenditures, from candidate training to email expenses and software costs.

But Zarifis wonders how serious AKF was about backing Gordon. All told, the group dropped roughly $40,000 into Wagner vs. Schneider, but only $2,500 into Gordon's campaign. That's the same as they spent on Julie Cowan, although her District 4 win was a foregone conclusion. "Austin Kids First had minimal involvement in the Ted Gordon race, even though they endorsed him," said Zarifis. "While they have a lot of money, they haven't spent much to counter the out-of-state money coming into that race."

Ask de Man, and it's a question of priorities. First off, his group decided to take a knee in District 6. Then, considering that both Gordon and Cowan were sweeping the endorsements, and had the support of both AKF and Ed. Austin, it seemed that they were foregone conclusions – a conclusion that, at least in Gordon's race, he admits was woefully premature. That just left the At-Large Position 9, and District 7. "So that's why Yasmin got so much support."

Revolving Bedfellows

Is this coincidence, or is there really some grand conspiracy? De Man is quick to defend his old bosses at LEE as strictly non-partisan. "Even when I worked there, I could not gauge my support for candidates according to some litmus test. If Hillary Procknow was a TFA alumnus, she'd get just as much support as D." He points to LEE's support for Los Angeles Unified School District board member Steve Zim­mer: a TFA alumnus so opposed to charters and vouchers that Bloomberg et al. threw almost $2 million at his opponent. Zimmer is "probably the most outspoken critic of the reform movement, but he got more support than D."

Political consultant Mark Littlefield met with or worked in an informal capacity with several candidates, including Cowan, Pace, and Paul Saldaña, and is actually a friend of Wagner's since high school. However, he was one of the big recipients of AKF cash, pulling in $15,700 in consultancy fees. He countered any suggestion that the AKF endorsement came with any strings. "Yasmin has no corporate reform agenda. Her agenda was: I'm a parent out here, and I never see Robert." As for LEE's involvement in District 1, he concurred with de Man's analysis, saying, "If any TFA person runs for a school board seat anywhere in America, they're going to back you with everything they've got, and that's their sole criteria. ... They don't have an interest in Austin, and would have backed [Thompson] if he ran in Round Rock or Portland. At least, that's what I'm hoping."

For some, LEE's presence is yet another sign that Austin is no longer a sleepy little college town, but a target of opportunity for reformers. Position 9 candidate Procknow said, "They're setting the stage right now. Austin looks like the kind of city they want to pick. There's a large minority population, it's a charter-friendly state, and there's a lot of money to be made."

Even in pro-reform Texas, vouchers face a powerful coalition of opponents: Demo­crats, who see them as backdoor privatization, and rural Republicans who fear that they would decimate their already struggling ISDs. However, many Democrats have been swayed by charter proponents' claims that they can cure all ills. Malfaro said, "I remember watching Wendy Davis just gush over [KIPP founder] Mike Fein­berg. 'Oh, we know you guys know what you're doing, and you're doing it right.'

But Feinberg more and more is opening up and admitting, 'Look, we don't know how to run a whole school district. We're not good at that. We're not even good at coming into a so-called failing school, a high-poverty school where kids aren't doing well because of the tests, and take the whole school over and turn it around.' " The end result, Zarifis said, is "big money doubling down on strategies that haven't really proven themselves out."

Malfaro is concerned that groups like LEE become political spin machines. For Thompson, being able to say that he's been a K-12 teacher is a powerful plus in this election. But that's a claim any TFA-er can make, and Malfaro is dismissive of their classroom time being anything but résumé-polishing. "It's two years, and off to law school."

The Money Trail

But AISD is pushing back. The first big sign that charters were not welcome was the cancellation of the contract with IDEA Public Schools to take over Allan Ele­men­tary and Eastside Memorial High. That's why these elections are so important. Malfaro described the current trustees as "the most progressive school board I've seen in the 20 years that I've been involved." That makes Austin "a flash point for the privatizers. But Austin is ground zero for the community schools movement." He points to the community-led Travis Heights in-district charter, and advocates like Allan Weeks, who created community coalitions to support, not supplant, public schools. He said, "That doesn't fit with [the reformers'] narrative that teachers are the problem, teachers' unions are the problem, tenure is the problem."

But again, why should LEE care about AISD? According to Zarifis, "Because we've been successful in drawing a line and saying we value public schools, neighborhoods schools. We value the families that go to those schools. We push back at charters coming into those schools. That type of success just riles the reformers up because that's not their vision. They want to sell public education to this charter and that charter, upend neighborhoods, and limit choice for kids."

District 6 run-off candidate Saldaña concurs. "I think part of it may be that they see some potential vulnerabilities in AISD," he said, noting that AISD has already lost over 2,000 families to charters. However, he added, with new trustees and a new superintendent, "We have an opportunity to turn the page, to create a new legacy, and one way we have to do that is create a better working relationship with the community and serving the needs of the neighborhood schools."

Moreover, Austin is ground zero for community resistance to what the charter movement has become. And it's that little twist – what the charter movement has become – that is so important.  Originally, charters were supposed to be community-led engines for innovation. With a few of the bureaucratic leashes and tethers removed, schools could experiment, and then districts could apply what they had learned to all their schools. Instead, Malfaro argues, they've become Plan B for venture capitalists who thought they'd make a fortune off school vouchers. When communities nation­wide turned vouchers into political poison, they changed tack. "Public education is this untapped opportunity for vendors of all kinds," said Malfaro.

All observers expect the battle to continue at the state level. Last session, Senate Education Committee Chair Dan Patrick pushed hard for both vouchers and an end to the cap on the number of charters. It's a foregone conclusion that, as lieutenant governor, he'll push even harder for the same targets. However, he'll face the same opposition he faced last time, both from Republicans and Democrats, as they seek to have charters held to the same accountability standards as public schools. Malfaro said, "If that happens, more charters will close, and it becomes a worse investment. You're going to see these investors pull out of charters. They're not doing this for some altruistic view of education. They're doing this to make money."

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AISD Board run-off elections are Dec. 16, with early voting Dec. 1-12. Click here for voting info and Chronicle endorsements.
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