With the national coronavirus situation grim Massachusetts is doing better and is preparing to reopen—including schools. Governor Charlie Baker’s reopening panels (No Place for Heroes) have been long on C-suite types (Zoom!) and short on front line workers. In the case of the school reopening panels, a solid five of the five “parent” members are Walton of Arkansas agents.
That’s according to the head of Massachusetts Parents United. The Revere Journal reported that “president Keri Rodrigues was proud to have five of its parent members participating in the state’s Return to School Working Group.”
There were only five parent members on the Return to School Working Group!: Rodolfo Aguilar, Janual Lopez, Natasha Megie-Maddrey, Raquel Quezada, and Dara Sok. (Karen DeRoche is listed as Membership Chair [not parent] from Massachusetts Parent Teacher Association. So I’m excluding her here. But if I’m wrong, let me know).
Massachusetts Parents United is the most heavily subsidized operation in the Walton Family’s Massachusetts Political Operation—$866,000 in 2017 and 2018—and we don’t know about 2019 or the first half of 2020 yet. Other funders include the Longfield Foundation, Boston Foundation, Shah Foundation, Mifflin Foundation, and Barr Foundation—which also subsidizes education coverage from The Boston Globe. More to come on MassParents funders.
Massachusetts Parents United presents as a grassroots parents group. It’s not. It’s a heavily subsidized Walton family (Wal-Mart) education privatization front. President Rodrigues is also president of the Waltons’ (and other billionaires) National Parents Union—which is not national, not a union, and not parents.
If Wal-Mart swooped in to take over Market Basket, the local media would be screaming headlines each and every day. But the Waltons of Arkansas make continued moves on Massachusetts education policy and—silence. Why?
“In the darkness of secrecy, sinister interest and evil in every shape, have full swing. . . . Publicity is the very soul of justice.”—Jeremy Bentham
[Full disclosure: as an educator in the UMass system, I am a union member. I write about dark money, not education.]