The Koch-Walton front National Parents Union appears to be facing serious mismanagement: two boards of directors (again), two presidents, the unexplained disappearance of the co-founder/board member/secretary-treasurer as money was pouring in and leaders were not being paid, and an upcoming election of officers (not!). The organization is holding a #parentpower2020 “convening” September 2-4. Last year I posed ten questions for NPU, here are ten more, focused on its dubious financial practices. Any media member who would like to learn about who is pulling the strings at NPU, feel free.
- Eight months after the founding of NPU the Vela Education Fund announced a $700,000 grant to NPU. Vela is a joint venture of the Walton Family Foundation and the Charles Koch Foundation. Historian Nelson Lichtenstein writes that WFF is “the single largest source of funding for the ‘school choice’ movement and a powerful advocate of charter schools and voucher initiatives.” (Retail Revolution, 286). Christopher Leonard, author of the best-selling Kochland: The Secret History of Koch Industries and Corporate Power in America, says of Koch: “So the ultimate goal is to dismantle the public education system entirely and replace it with a privately run education system.” How is NPU independent from the goal of its funders Koch and Walton: the destruction of public schools and privatization of public education?
- Four months after the founding of NPU the Chan-Zuckerberg Initiative announced a $260,000 grant to NPU. Combined with the Vela windfall that is nearly $1,000,000. Yet shortly after the Vela grant, secretary-treasurer, founder, and board member Alma Marquez disappeared from the organization without explanation. The personnel listed on the website do not indicate anyone with expertise in administering large grants. How is NPU managing grants in an accountable and transparent fashion?
- On January 15, 2022, one year after NPU’s birth, the Hechinger Report reported that NPU now had a $1.7 million budget but was “stretched so thin during the first few months after launch that the organization’s leaders didn’t get paid.” Yet in 2019 the Eli and Edythe Broad had already donated $175,000 (funneled through Massachusetts Parents United) to underwrite NPU. In 2020, exact date unknown, the Walton Family Foundation donated $400,000 also through MPU. (MPU’s Form 990 for 2020 indicates it sent only $170,000 to NPU). According to NPU’s Form 990 it had 23 employees in 2020 and paid out $634,000 in salaries. Four staff members were paid over $100,000 each. NPU held an inaugural conference in New Orleans in January 2020 and retained the services of international communications firm Mercury LLC. By April 2020 it had retained the same professional polling firm as the Walton Family Foundation, the top Republican firm Echelon Insights, and commissioned eight weekly polls. How could NPU’s finances have been so rocky in 2020 that its leaders did not get paid?
- By August 2020 NPU had put on a national conference in New Orleans, retained Mercury LLC, taken in $550,000 from Broad and the Waltons, received a $700,000 donation from Vela, taken in a $260,000 grant from the Chan-Zuckerberg Initiative, and by January 2020 had additionally received funding from the National Alliance for Public Charter Schools; National School Choice Week; and The City Fund, which in turn receives funding from Walton, the Hastings Fund, the Arnold Foundation (now Arnold Ventures), the Michael and Susan Dell Foundation, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and the Ballmer Group. And its leaders were not being paid. Somewhere in here most of the original board disappeared. Also at this time, Ms. Marquez, the elected secretary-treasurer and a board member, disappeared from NPU and would subsequently not take questions from Hechinger. Can NPU explain its tangled finances and departure of Ms. Marquez? Who is in control of financials?
- Will an election for president and treasurer be held in January 2023? In January 2020 pro-NPU The74 reported that “Founders Keri Rodrigues and Alma Marquez were voted into three-year terms as inaugural president and secretary-treasurer, respectively.” The three year terms are ending and there should be an election for the next term, right?
- According to the Secretary of State, NPU has two presidents: Ms. Rodrigues (who was listed as president with the SOS before her election); and Arthur Soriano. Ms. Rodrigues’s term ends December 31, 2025 and Mr. Soriano’s term ends December 31, 2026. Are there two presidents? Why does Ms. Rodrigues remain president for almost two years after her elected term ends?
- Alma Marquez was voted into a three year term as secretary-treasurer but disappeared from NPU by September 2, 2020, eight months into her term. She was an original director in SoS filings but is gone from there too. Somewhere along the way (as reflected in SoS filings) Mr. Langan became treasurer. By the time Ms. Marquez was ousted, Mr. Langan was chief operating officer. As revealed in NPU’s Form 990 for 2020, Mr. Langan was engaged to Ms. Rodrigues (they have since married). What happened to Ms. Marquez? Why was there no election to fill her positions? By September 2020, NPU had taken in vast sums of corporate non-profit funding, engaged expensive polling and communications firms, held a conference in New Orleans, not paid its top leadership for months, and sacked its treasurer in favor of Ms. Rodrigues’s fiancé. Is anyone on the board concerned with this?
- Here are some comparables of highest compensated officers at other school privatization operations (all include compensation across related entities). Stand for Children, $313,390 (2020, CFO/COO, 11 years of service). Democrats for Education Reform, (2019) $198,413. Families for Excellent Schools CEO (2016), $180,780. Educators for Excellence (2020), $268,066. Now, for the only year existence salaries of NPU’s top two leaders who were engaged to be married, including money that flows through Walton-dependent Massachusetts Parents Union: Ms. Rodrigues, $378,298; Mr. Langan, $248, 278. Why is NPU such a gravy train?
- According to the July 22, 2022 LATimes Rodrigues claimed “Her organization has seen its membership rise from 185 local activist and advocacy groups to over 600 since its inception in January 2020.” There is no evidence that NPU has 600 local activist groups as members, or 185, or really, more than a handful. (Most of the 70 or so I could find are charter school organizations.) I showed this in research in my book Dark Money and the Politics of School Privatization. Where are the membership lists?
- NPU says it helps to represent parents of color in particular. Families for Excellent Schools made the same claims and Ms. Rodrigues was Massachusetts state director of FES. But FES represented the policy preferences of its wealthy funders, including the Waltons. Ms. Rodrigues was a fierce spokesperson for FES’s 2016 ballot campaign to increase the privatization of public schools. After the ballot question defeat and subsequent collapse of FES Ms. Rodrigues told a Boston reporter that “I was completely boxed out. I was like a prop. I think I was used as a parent.” How is NPU any different that FES?
I have many more questions, NPU. But this is a start.
[Full disclosure: as a (now retired) educator in the UMass system, I am a union member. I write about dark money, democracy, and oligarchy. My book, Dark Money and the Politics of School Privatization, is now in print.]
Photo credits: Ms. Rodrigues’s election and Ms. Marquez leading New Orleans parade, The 74. Ms. Rodrigues and Ms. Marquez, National Parents Union, September 2, 2020 (archived at Wayback Machine)
