Massachusetts Parents United claims to be “the independent voice of parents.” But it’s entirely dependent on funding from the Walton Family’s (tax deductible) political operations.
When I wrote Massachusetts Parents United: Old Wine in an Empty Bottle in July 2017 there were some clues about its funding but not much detail, and what detail there was has turned out to be misleading. The first thing that struck me back in 2017 was that MassParents was boasting of its financial backers.
The folks behind MPU also were dark money givers to the charter school ballot campaign in 2016 – the Waltons, Charles Longfield, and Barr’s Amos Hostetter gave millions in dark money. So declaring MassParents a front for education privatization interests wasn’t much of a stretch. MPU claimed to have been founded by three moms in a library but it was also projecting income of $1.5 million for 2018 and expenses of $800,000.
It doesn’t look like MPU gets much real money from anyone but the Waltons. Barr funneled $1,000 to Education Reform Now to help fund MPU’s convention in 2017. The Longfield Family Foundation kicked in $6,250. Maybe the Davis Foundation and National Philanthropic Trust did better, but their information isn’t available at the moment.
But in 2017 the Waltons gave MPU $20,000 directly and over $366,000 through Education Reform Now which also funds, with Walton money, Democrats for Education Reform Massachusetts. In 2018 the Waltons gave $500,000 to MassParents directly.
The pass through of WalMart heirs’ money through Education Reform Now to MassParents in 2017 was because MPU didn’t have its tax status approved yet so it had a Sponsor Agreement with Education Reform Now/Democrats for Education Reform. The Walton money was designated to start a new parents advocacy group in Massachusetts; that became MassParents.
MPU’s Form 990 tax return for 2017 claimed contributions of only $40,000 so if you looked at it you might think it really was a mom and pop band of plucky parents. But that masks the hundreds of thousands of Walmart legatee donations.
We also know that in 2010 Education Reform Now/Democrats for Education Reform Now received an infusion of millions from conservatives like Julian Robertson and Rupert Murdoch and that ERN/DFER has gotten $22.2 million from the Waltons between 2010 through 2018. That’s a lot of right wing money for a “Democratic” organization.
The CEO of Massachusetts Parents United is also the founder of a proposed group called the National Parents Union (but there is already an existing National Parents Union) that would be formed to attack unions on behalf of corporate interests during the 2020 Democratic Party nominating process. And who has the new faux NPU gone to for funding? The Waltons, of course.
There are more answers than questions. But where Democrats for Education Reform and Massachusetts Parents United are involved, real answers are always hard to come by.
Money never sleeps. Follow the money.
We must make our choice. We may have democracy, or we may have wealth concentrated in the hands of a few, but we can’t have both.” – Louis Brandeis
[Full disclosure: as an educator in the UMass system, I am a union member. I write about dark money, not education.]
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