Leading charter advocates do their thing

Oakland Tribune education reporter Katy Murphy posts on the newspaper's Inside Bay Area blog about Attorney Gen. Jerry Brown sending out a recruitment letter in his official capacity as AG (stationery, logo etc.) for the Oakland School for the Arts, the charter school he founded. (See below.)

Meanwhile, Jeanne Allen, head of the right-wing, privatization-pushing Center for Education Reform — she's the national face of the charter school movement and its best-known spokesperson — writes about sending her son to college. The funny thing is that you can tell from the weasely language that she didn't send the kid to a charter school (it could be inferred that they started at a charter school and bailed out). We're shocked — shocked.

... we wanted our son to be part of a school that would offer a sense of community, that would reinforce the values we taught at home, and that would, of course, put forth a challenging education program.

We got all three for the first few years, but as the grades in his first school progressed, the educational programs did not. A subsequent choice for 5th grade ended taking him all the way through to twelfth grade graduation.

Here's the blog post about Jerry Brown. Needless to say, we adore the part about how it's the Attorney General's role to determine whether it was proper for him to send that letter on AG stationeary.

Jerry Brown writes families, plugs charter school
Posted by Katy Murphy on September 6th, 2007

Jerry Brown might have returned to state politics, but he is still the #1 booster of the Oakland charter school he started as mayor.

Using his personal stationery with the California state seal and his title, the attorney general sent a recruitment letter to local families last month on behalf of the Oakland School for the Arts.

Someone who received the letter sent a copy to us and asked if political officials were allowed to use their titles to promote a personal (though not necessarily financial) interest.

I called the California Fair Political Practices Commission. For questions regarding the use of political titles, seals and/or resources, commission spokesman Roman Porter told me, “I would typically refer folks to the attorney general’s office.”

Interesting…

Not surprisingly, Gareth Lacy, a spokesman at the attorney general’s office, said Brown had every right to help recruit students for the charter school.

“It is acceptable for Jerry Brown to send out mail on personal letterhead,” Lacy said, adding, “The bottom line is that he thinks the Oakland School for the Arts is a great school and it’s helping to revitalize downtown Oakland.”

(that was all Katy Murphy's post, not my words.)

— Caroline