Jason Fischer's game is hypocrisy

I want to point a couple things about Fischer out.

Fischer ran for soil and water before he ran for school board.

He turned that first race partisan when he somehow got Jeb Bush to endorse him. He was caught publicly lying a few times so I thought he was sunk, but hey Mandarin. 

He quit to run for the state house.

In his day job he literally works for the states voucher king, John Kirtley.  

Then he routinely inserts millions into the state budget for his super donors pet charter school. The donor Gary Chartrand does not live in Jacksonville and the school, KIPP, isn't in Fischer's district.

That's just a few of his hits.

At tonight's School Board meeting, Ashley Smith Juarez made a great point about Fischer.
  



Jason Fischer who started his political career by being elected to the school board now wants to end Jacksonville's ability to vote for school board members. You know because reasons.

Also I always thought a central tenant to republican politics was democracy works best when it is closest to the people. It's more responsive and more direct. His proposal guts direct democracy.

That's the thing about Fischer, he has no code, he has no scruples. he says and does what he thinks will benefit him and him alone and he doesn't care if he lavishes public money on his donors or tries to strip voters of their right to pick their Representatives.

Jason Fischer doesn't just represent all that is wrong in politics but all that is wrong in humanity as well.

City Council refuses to meet with the school board

During today's finance committee meeting, packed with anti-public education zealots, they deferred the special tax referendum. That was not unexpected. That they refused to meet with the school board is.

The school board and city council have a joint session scheduled for August 14th , when city attorney Jason Gabriel is finally supposed to have an opinion if the school board is subservient to the council or not and to discuss all the answers to the city councils tax referendum questions.

The problem is time is a commodity that the school board does not have much of, so they asked the city council if they would be willing to meet sooner and they declined.

Why? Probably because they know the specious reasons they used to interfere are falling away and they want to switch to plan B which is run out the clock, to make it impossible for the school board to have the referendum this year. As it is now DCPS will have to push it back to January.

The city council should be ashamed of themselves. First they tried to use specious reasons to usurp the school board's authority and now they are trying to run out the clock just so a handful of super donors can reap millions in public money. They don't care about kids or schools or even the city in their Pyrrhic attempt to dismantle DCPS.

Friends we aren't being led, we are being ruled.

At this point silence about the attacks on public education is the same as complicity

First they came for the teachers, blaming them for all of society’s ills. People couldn’t look in the mirror and blame themselves or at the very least take some responsibility as teachers became social workers, nurses, and so much more, so I didn’t speak out.

Then they came for the schools. I wasn’t in school and didn’t have children in schools and charters didn’t seem so bad unless I looked behind the curtain and I didn’t want to look behind the curtain so I didn’t speak out.

Then they came for the school board. Elected representatives became too big of a threat to their agenda to many wouldn't roll over but since there would be a school board in some form left after the elected board was disbanded I didn’t speak out.  

Then when the teachers were gone, the schools were replaced and the school board in the pocket of the mayor there was no one left to come for and their takeover was complete. It was to late for me to speak up.

The future of education in Jacksonville is very close to becoming businesses manned by temps with none to be held accountable. 

At some point silence becomes complicity. If you believe in teachers, public schools and direct democracy, the time to speak up is now, while there is still something left to speak for.

Lenny Curry comes out as pro extortion

When it was revealed that two of Lenny Curry's top lieutenants, attempted to extort nearly a half million from the school district, the mayor barely shrugged his shoulders.  

From Florida Politics. 

Curry political adviser Tim Baker and recently retired Chief Administrative Officer Sam Mousa would draw $12,500 a month for up to three years, basically in exchange for helping to get the referendum through Council and passed.

Hershey met with Baker and Mousa before Mousa left city employment, but the formal proposal came later.

On Thursday, Curry told us he had no problem with the solicitation, even as it came in the twilight of Mousa’s city employment.

“Tim Baker has been a consultant of mine for a number of years. I’m one of many,” Curry said. “I had no issue with him out conducting business.”

The same held true for Mousa.

“Sam is no longer an employee of the city and he’s going to take his talents and skills out to provide his services in a way that’s best for business,” Curry said.

https://floridapolitics.com/archives/302339-business-curry-mousa

So even though Mousa started the ball rolling while he was an employee of the city that doesn't matter? How are former employees allowed to lobby their former employers anyways? 

This is what I believe. I believe Curry knew about the plan the entire time and either helped come up with it or gave it his blessing.  I can't imagine them making such an audacious move without his involvement at some level and we need an investigation not carried out by the office of general council, which has proven to partisan and beholden to the mayor, to tell us.

Say I am wrong, say the mayor was clueless, then at best he was okay with a city employee trying to get a half million dollars from a different city agency by lobbying his current bosses. How is that legal or ethical. let that sink in.

The mayor literally shrugged his shoulders and basically said grifters gonna grift and it was okay with him. 

The office of general council drafted the legislation to make the school board appointed.

Jason Fischer, who quit to run and who works for John Kirtley the voucher king, literally, created quite the hubadoo when he announced he was proposing legislation to make the school board appointed by the mayor. He didn’t write the legislation however. Duval’s very own office of general council did. You know the group that changes the meaning of statutes and words whenever the mayor’s agenda calls for it.

This brings several questions to mind.

Can Jason Fischer have the OGC draft legislation? Can anyone?

How is this not a conflict of interest. In theory the OGC works for the school board as much as it does city hall.

Was this really his idea or is he carrying water for the mayor.

Did you see the part where it asked was this endorsed by any groups, and it was checked no? Um come on the civic council who pays Fischer’s bills was undoubtedly for and most likely behind this.

Welcome to Jacksonville where if the people in charge have their way, democracy will soon be a thing of the past.

Jacksonville poised to give out another thirty million in incentives to a business building a headquarters on the river.

So what does this have to do with education, I mean we need jobs right?

Well first I am not a fan of corporate welfare. Large and successful companies getting millions to do what they already have more than enough money to do.

You know who didn’t need 233 million dollars in incentives including almost a hundred million in cash? Shad Kahn, owner of the Jaguars which alone are valued at 2.3 billion, dollars. But her.

Now on the heels of that, and spending over 20 million on the Landings plan to nowhere, we are about to give 30 million to a company that probably doesn’t need it either.

I bet if we invested in our schools companies would come without having to receive public bribes to do so.

 From the Jacksonville Business Journal, The Downtown Investment Authority will consider granting almost $30 million in state and city incentives to the construction of a riverfront corporate headquarters during Wednesday's board meeting.

The incentives include a $23.4 million tax rebate grant, a $3.5 million city grant payable when the project is complete and $3 million in tax refunds – $600,000 from the city and $2.4 million from the state.

The package, code-named Project Sharp, will go towards construction of a 300,000-square-foot corporate headquarters to house 500 employees with an average annual wage of $85,000. The company will also keep 1,216 existing jobs in Jacksonville, a hint that the unnamed company maybe Fidelity National Information Services (NYSE: FIS).

FIS has been exploring ways to accommodate new employees after its $43 billion merger with Worldpay and has about 1,200 Jacksonville employees, CFO Woody Woodall previously told the Business Journal.

https://www.bizjournals.com/jacksonville/news/2019/08/05/dia-to-consider-30-million-incentive-package-

Um they just completed a 43-billion-dollar merger and they need 30 million in public money? I know some of you are saying well if they didn’t get it here they could get it somewhere else, and the answer is no they wouldn’t if every place finally started saying, we would love to have you but like regular folks have to pay to move so will you.  

We have all this corporate welfare and our schools are crumbling, does nobody else see a relationship there?

It’s time we demanded our leaders made the people of Jacksonville its priority.

Is there going to be an investigation into Mousa and Baker, and what Curry knew and when?

The legitimacy of Jacksonville city government is on the line.

As for as I can tell it's not illegal for the mayor and the city council to sell out the city's children and schools. Immoral yes, illegal no. However if Sam Mousa while a city employee hatched a scheme with another of Lenny Curry's top lieutenants, Tim Baker, to extort a half million from the school board isn't illegal then nothing is. Then if the mayor coordinated it some how, and I can't imagine those two doing anything without Curry's approval then this is a serious matter.

This is something the city should not forget. This is something that city shouldn't just shrug their shoulders over and move on from. We need to make sure that we have a city government that is above board that does things the right way. 

The city council should immediately call for a investigation and the last people that should handle it is the general council's office. When they didn't recuse themselves over the special tax referendum, two agencies had competing interests, and dubiously sided with the city, they proved they could not be trusted to be impartial. Furthermore they are beholden to the mayor for their jobs and what the mayor knew and when he knew it should be central to the investigation.

It's not illegal to sell out the city's schools and children. I get that. Profiting off this sell out however should be. Conspiring to profit off it should be too. We need to know if that is what the mayor and two of his top lieutenants did.

If the people of Jacksonville don't have a government they can trust then we should replace the people governing with people we can.

Teach for America back on the SB agenda Tuesday

Teach for America is back on the agenda Tuesday. I wrote the letter below to our super and school board because I think our kids deserve professional teachers and people who are more likely to stay more than just two years. Plus at 9 grand a recruit can we really afford it?

I have to say I have been impressed by most of the board and superintendents ongoing battle with the mayor and city council over the sales tax referendum. You do the school system and city proud. 

That being said we must still strive to do things the right way and entering into a contract with Teach for America does the exact opposite of what evidence and best practices say the students in our most vulnerable schools need. 

Your own analysis says that many of the Teach for America teachers struggle in the classroom. I remind you what it said

  TFA teacher performance based on Florida DOE Valued Added Model (VAM) score was reviewed for TFA teachers in TFA cohorts 2013-2015 to 2016-2018 using VAM data from 1415 to 1718 school years. There were 473 TFA teacher scores during those years. Of those, 53.9% were Effective or Highly Effective and 46.1% were Needs Improvement or Unsatisfactory. However, a comparison of performance of TFA teachers at elementary schools versus secondary schools revealed that TFA teachers at secondary schools had a significantly higher percentage of Effective and Highly Effective VAM scores, 56.0 % for secondary and 45.1 % for primary. 

During the same time period the overall average of effective and highly effective teachers was much higher, an average that was apparently brought down by Teach for America teachers.

Also it may be a little dated but a 2013 report from Columbia said Teach for America serious exacerbated Duval's teacher retention problem.

https://drive.google.com/drive/search?q=columbia%20teacher%20data  

Furthermore who do you think is going to work in the IDEA schools if they come to Jacksonville? Teach for America teachers that is who. Why would you enable the presence of this group knowing that their ultimate aim is to replace you? That does not make any sense. 

https://www.propublica.org/article/how-teach-for-america-evolved-into-an-arm-of-the-charter-school-movement 

Last year the district brought in 18 teach for America staff and paid zero dollars. They were allowed to apply like anyone else. Why can't that continue to be good enough? this year you are promising to pay 50 thousand to bring in ten? How does that make sense. 

Finally the cost of 9 thousand per corp member should be prohibitive. Wouldn't that money be better spent going to colleges of ed and recruiting their top graduates, you know people who want to be teachers and who have a much greater chance of both being effective and staying more than two years? If you need help I will volunteer my services and I won't charge you a dime. 

I get it we need more teachers, but Teach for America is not even a band aide on the problem, in fact it adds more to the problem. I urge you not to approve the contract and instead strive to put a professional teacher in every class. That not an ever revolving door of novices is what our children deserve and what you are obligated to do your best to provide.

What kind of city do you want Jacksonville to be? (draft)

We have to decide what kind of city we want to live in. One that works for the vast majority of us or one that works for just a few. A city that has leaders that look out for the people or a city whose leaders look out for just themselves and their donors. This has been a dark summer for Jacksonville but things can quickly and easily get worse.

It started with the mayor and city council inexplicably fighting against a special tax referendum that was to be used to upgrade and repair our schools, the one thing at least publicly everyone agrees needs to happen. They did so on behalf of a cadre of super donors known as the civic council many of who have close ties and financial entanglements with charter schools.

The city council was able to get involved because we have a city attorney who has way to much power and is either corrupt or incompetent and it doesn't help that he is beholden to the mayor who hates public schools so much he would rather see them fail than lift a finger to help them.

The major sticking point is the members of the civic council want hundreds of millions of dollars for charter schools and they are bound and determined to have their bought and paid for politicians jam up the works until the school board gives in.

Then just for added intrigue throw in two of the Mayors top lieutenants, Sam Mousa and Tim Baker tried to extort nearly a half million dollars from the district in order to get the referendum on the ballot, something which up till now has been nothing more than a formality.

If this was the only story that dominated the summer it would have been enough but it's just chapter one.

Chapter two would be the privatization of the Jacksonville Electric Authority, something while campaigning the mayor said he was against.

This is moving at warp speed as well. The JEA went from buying a new multi million dollar headquarters to its about to implode in a matter of weeks. The only solution offered, privatization.

Literally just last week the JEA board, after raising the salary of its CEO to over a half million dollars, must be nice during the middle of an economic crisis, said they were going to explore privatizing what had been considered the city's crown jewel. Then this week they announced they are taking bids until September thirtieth. Nine weeks, that's how long this process could take. We will have gone from buying a new headquarters to selling the entire thing.

You might be wondering about the mayor's campaign promise not to privatize JEA? Well like his decency did, when he sided with a handful of donors over the city's children with the tax referendum, that went out the window and he is now all for it. Though if we are being honest we all know he has been for it this entire time.

Then as far as controversies go, we are just getting started. The city just announced they had made a 450 million dollar for lot J to create an entertainment district near the stadium. It was a few days later that we learned that 233 million of that would be paid for by the public.

This is the same city that balked at the price of a special election for the tax referendum, that would have saved five million dollars and that they didn't have to pay in the first place. That's right friends, the city has 233 million dollars to give out in incentives but can't raise a finger to help our schools. I would say I don't know how the mayor and city council sleep at night but I imagine it is pretty easy since barely a quarter of the city bothered to show up and vote in this past springs elections. The mayor that is spearheading these and other dubious moves was elected by 15 percent of the city.

Here is the thing about this too, the city unless the city attorney changes the meaning of a statute there and a word here, like it did with the sales tax referendum may be able to weigh in on the sell of the JEA but not this lot J fiasco. It will most likely be passed with barely a conversation and in a few weeks as well.

With all this going on the ballooning murder rate and what we are going to do with the Landing after spending 20 million dollars and blowing it up without a plan, come in at page 19. These things which should be front page news don't even make the fold. 

This is us, this is the city of Jacksonville, and I have a feeling things will get a lot worse for the every day citizen. they will be frozen out more and have whats important to them ignored or taken away, before things get better. 

The city council sends questions to Lenny Curry about the lot J sale

The city council as you can see by their involvement in the sales tax referendum likes to know the issues. Several of them sent questions to Mayor Curry about the lot J sale that I was able to see.

Scott Wilson, - I look forward to meeting with the Jaguars and then doing what they and mayor Curry to tell me to do. That's not a question, um when can I meet with the Jaguars so I can do what they and Mayor Curry tell me to do.

Aaron Bowman- I don't need to see any of the details, on this. Where can I pick up my "wink, wink, complementary" tickets.  Takes bite of apple.

LeAnna Cumber - I am not an engineer but I work with them, what does that have to do with the give away, err, sale, nothing I just thought I would bring it up.

Tommy Hazouri - when flying to London on the Kahn jet, is it carry on or checked baggage?

Micheal Boylon -  can you do 10 tickets, six for me and my family and 4 for my inflated ego?

Al Ferro- couldn't we have used lottery money to sweeten the deal?

Rory Diamond - the only place children get a chance is charter schools, and yes I know that has nothing to do with the lot J give away, err sale, I just want to remind everyone this is what I said at a city council meeting.

Reggie Gaffney - how can we get Sam Mousa involved?

Ju'Coby Pittman -  do I have to go to the games?

Brenda Preistly Jackson - can we have anyone against this tested for age related dementia? what was the Jags record last year? what's their record against AFC west competition historically, how many players from historically black colleges have been on the Jags roster for more than 7 games (plus thirty other questions about nothing).

Curry was quick to reply too. He said,  I am going to London!!!

Friends think about this, if the city settled on a 233 million dollar give away on a 450 million dollar project, what was Kahn's starting position?

Did Sam Mousa's new consulting firm do the negotiations on behalf of the city, since he offers clients bad deals, that would make sense

Who wants to bet this deal won't get a tenth of the scrutiny the school board's sales tax referendum has received and it seems to me that this is to big of a decision for the city council to make and the city should be allowed to weigh in. Now you might be saying, we elected the council to do a job, well we elected to school board to do a job too but that hasn't stopped the city council from interfering. 

Jacksonville always seems to have money for scoreboards but never for schools.