Keri Rodrigues Goes Coastal with Plans for National Parents Union

Keri Rodrigues of Massachusetts Parents United, the highly subsidized-by-the-Walton-family front in the education privatization business, is pitching a new organization called the National Parents Union. It’s got elements that should appeal to the WalMart heirs – hidden money, infiltration of the Democratic Party, pro-charters, privatization of public goods, and virulently anti-union. But there are problems.

Let’s look at three aspects of the NPU’s concept paper, What’s Not in It; What’s in It; and the Waltons, Democrats, and the Inside Job.

What’s Not in It

Funding! There is nothing in it about who would be bankrolling this operation. There is a list of advisors (in formation) and wouldn’t some of them want to know who is funding such an ambitious proposal? Enough suspense: it will be the WalMart legatees.

It makes perfect sense. MassParents took in over $886,000 in Walton Family Foundation dough in 2017 and 2018, and that figure must have climbed over a million dollars by now. The list of advisors for NPU identifies their affiliations, and those organizations got over $5 million from the Waltons in 2018 alone. There are ties to Democrats for Education Reform and that operation is also heavily underwritten by the Waltons.

The most important omission may be that there is already a National Parents Union: “The National Parents Union was founded in 2012. The National Parents Union is an independent, grassroots coalition. The founding members are the New York City Parents Union, Connecticut Parents Union, Pennsylvania Parents Union, Texas Parents Union, Ohio Parents Union and Moms for School Choice.” It doesn’t seem right that the Waltons and their hirees could swoop in and just grab the name and the good will established by the existing NPU, does it?

Here’s some advice for the real NPU though. Just send the Waltons an Invoice for a million dollars or two, signed National Parents Union. Maybe they’ll pay it. What’s to lose?

What’s in It

According to the NPU document, “There are three primary reasons now is the right moment to scale up our efforts.” (“Scale” is philanthrocapitalist corporate speak.) The first reason is the 2020 presidential election. The second reason is that Ms. Rodrigues and co-founder Alma Vivian Marquez of California see parent organizations working on privatization across the country that could be organized (many of them funded by the Waltons, of course). The third reason is the real reason:

In the same manner that teacher strikes and mobilization are commanding headlines, we have a vision of having parent rallies and mobilizations in the spotlight, redirecting the conversation from one about adults to one about students. The teacher unions currently have no countervailing force. We envision the National Parents Union as being able to take on the unions in the national and regional media, and eventually on the ground in advocacy fights.

If that doesn’t get the Waltons attention there are also promises to engage in “important national fights where the teachers unions have a monopoly on the conversation.”  New NPU will also carry its 2020 strategy to influence the Democratic nomination battle to

other key states including areas where education reform must be highlighted and protected, where teacher strikes are looming or where the strikes have emboldened anti-reform debate. Examples of these include California, Virginia and Colorado.

How could any self-respecting WalMart descendant resist?

There’s other stuff in there including a hope to sign up all the Democratic candidates to the “NPU Education Action Pledge.” Here’s my favorite: to “Identify and engage … surrogates including former Secretaries of Education and other former Elected Officials including former Presidents.”

Waltons, Democrats, and the Inside Job

The beauty of this proposal is it would give the Waltons a beachhead in the Democratic Party. Given the family’s abysmal record on workers’ rights issues the Waltons haven’t been big favorites in Democratic Party circles. But as the hedge fund co-founder of Democrats for Education Reform Whitney Tilson stated, if the wealthy backers of charters are going to succeed in pushing privatization it will have to be “an inside job.”

Right up top of the National Parents Union list of advisors is Shavar Jeffries, president of Democrats for Education Reform. Rodrigues is on the advisory board of DFER. Before MPU got its IRS ruling conferring non-profit status DFER’s funding parent Education Reform Now Inc. served as a conduit for the Waltons to funnel over $366,000 to MPU in 2017. From 2010-2018 the Walton Family Foundation lavished over $22 million on Education Reform Now Inc. Since 2013 the Waltons each year have contributed between twenty to thirty-six percent of all donations to Education Reform Now. In 2010 DFER was taking in contributions from an All-Star cast of conservative donors, including Rupert Murdoch (more on DFER’s Republican funding here). The former leader of DFER Joe Williams now heads up the Waltons dark money political side, the Walton Education Coalition.

During the 2015-16 election cycle, Alice Walton (who dropped $1.46 million into the 2016 Question 2 charter ballot fight, including $750,000 in dark money to Families to Excellent Schools) engaged in a giving program to numerous state Democratic parties. The Waltons are probing for a way in – looking to execute the inside job.

Always look to the funders. Organizations like DFER, MPU and the proposed NPU are simply agents who carry out the program of the mega-rich donors.

You can find the concept paper, plans, and list of advisors for the proposal being made by Ms. Rodrigues to the Waltons right here.

Money never sleeps. Follow the money.

“In the darkness of secrecy, sinister interest and evil in every shape, have full swing.” – Jeremy Bentham.

[Full disclosure: as an educator in the UMass system, I am a union member. I write about dark money (and other things)].