But apart from his dubious residency, what do we know about Josh Kraft? Well, the current articles will probably mention that he is the son of billionaire Bob Kraft and that he was CEO of the Boys and Girls Club of Boston for many years. He’s also the current board chair at the Urban League of Eastern Massachusetts.

In the feudal era, older sons would inherit the family wealth and younger sons would be sent to the priesthood. A similar principle seems to be at play in the family of American oligarch Robert Kraft. Oldest son Jonathan runs the family business while younger son Josh was put in charge of reputation laundering, i.e. philanthropy. (For an in-depth look at how philanthropy serves the interests of the wealthy, check out Anand Giriharadas’ Winners Take All: The Elite Charade of Changing the World. Or just use your common sense—why would billionaire oligarchs have any interest in changing a world that has made them among the wealthiest people in history?)

So yes, Josh Kraft worked at the Boys and Girls Club for a long time. But, of course, any nonprofit hiring a billionaire’s son knows this is a pipeline to serious cash for the organization. I don’t know anyone who works at the Boys and Girls Club, but if it’s like any nonprofit I’m familiar with, its successes can usually be laid at the feet of the hardworking, underpaid folks at the bottom levels of the organization, who often manage to do good in spite of, or at least without any meaningful assistance from, upper management.

But maybe Josh Kraft really was an excellent CEO. This doesn’t change the fact that the man owes his entire career to his father’s money. Which leads me to my first point that I believe disqualifies Josh Kraft from being Boston Mayor. How can a person who has never once in their entire lives had the thought “I don’t know if I can afford this” empathize with the lives and struggles of ordinary Bostonians, especially in an era when the cost of living is one of the biggest challenges of living here? How can he understand the importance of schools to Boston’s families and neighborhoods? How can he understand really anything about being a non-wealthy person in Boston?

I initially thought that The Globe’s enthusiasm for Kraft’s candidacy was based on just this. Because the Globe’s point of view on all things Boston is to prioritize the interests of people who come to Boston over people who live in Boston. So I figured they’d prefer a mayor who will cater to suburbanites and CEOs rather than one who prioritizes Boston residents.

But then I decided to look into some publicly available documents. First I found that Josh Kraft’s home in Brookline is owned by a trust—I have no idea why one does this, but I assume it’s one of those legal but morally questionable tax avoidance things that rich people do. Anyway, there it is. He’s signed over the deed to his Newton home to his wife Carolyn, who is a bit of a local activist in Newton, speaking out against rezoning to make housing more affordable and against the Newton Public Schools’ Diversity, Equity and Inclusion efforts.

Then I looked at ocpf.us, the site that tracks Massachusetts campaign donations. And here’s where I found another possible source of the Globe’s enthusiasm for Kraft’s as-yet-unannounced candidacy. He gave $1k to Andrea Campbell in the last mayoral election as well as $1500 to the Better Boston PAC that supported her candidacy and whose donor list is a who’s who of anti-public-education rich people. Reed Hastings! Chris Gabrieli! Jim Walton! Stephanie Spector! Eleanor Laurans! Stig Leschly! (hedging his bets, he gave $1k to Michelle Wu as well).

Okay, so clearly The Globe wants a mayor who will work to charterize the Boston Public Schools, and it looks like Josh Kraft is that guy.

But let’s head over to opensecrets.org and look at Josh’s donations on the national scene! Because here’s where things get really interesting! There are a lot of donations, mostly to Democrats, including familiar names like Joe Kennedy, Richard Neal, Ayanna Pressley, Mike Capuano, Dan Koh (lol) and Jake Auchincloss. But there are a few donations here that should be extremely worrisome to Bostonians.

In 2019, Josh Kraft gave $1500 to Ohio Representative Bob Latta. Four years earlier, Latta cosponsored a bill to amend the Constitution to outlaw same-sex marriage. In 2020, Latta signed on to the amicus brief in the Texas v. Pennsylvania lawsuit that sought to overturn the 2020 Presidential election. In May of 2021, he voted against authorizing a commission to investigate the January 6th insurrection.

In June 2020, Josh Kraft made a $1500 donation to help Illinois Representative Mike Bost stay in office. Bost was another cosponsor of the bill to amend the Constitution to outlaw same-sex marriage. In 2017, Bost explained he didn’t do town hall meetings because he didn’t support “cleansing that the orientals used to do.” Bost also signed on to the amicus brief in Texas v. Pennsylvania.

In July 2020, Josh Kraft donated $1500 to Georgia Representative Buddy Carter, cosponsor of a 2011 act to criminalize abortion nationwide under all circumstances. Buddy Carter is also against LGBTQ rights and said in 2017 that “we should teach the Bible in schools.” Oh yeah, he’s another signatory to the amicus brief in Texas v. Pennsylvania.

In February 2022, Josh Kraft donated $1500 to Wisconsin Representative Glenn Grothman. Grothman’s career is littered with more hateful and idiotic stances and statements than I have room to list. Here’s his Wikipedia page, and here’s a link to a video about Grothman from Last Week Tonight With John Oliver’s “People Who Somehow Got Elected” series. In 2022, anyway, Grothman got elected with help from Josh Kraft!

In September 2022, Josh Kraft rewarded Ohio Representative Bob Latta for his anti-democracy actions with another contribution: this time for $2900.

I understand that rich people and corporations give money to politicians for access, not ideology, which is why Kraft, like many rich people and corporations, gives to people from both parties. I assume Kraft’s donations to out-of-state Republicans are tied to business interests his dad’s company has in those districts or that are overseen by committees these guys are on. But the Krafts are sitting on more money than they could possibly spend in their lifetimes. They could certainly afford to take a financial hit by not supporting hatemongering congresspeople. But Josh Kraft chose to support them anyway.

I don’t know Josh Kraft’s positions on bodily autonomy for women, whether LGBTQ people should have the same rights as straight people, or whether the 2020 election should have been overturned. But I do know this: Josh Kraft has actively supported people on the wrong side of those issues.

I don’t know what, if anything, is in Josh Kraft’s heart, but ultimately it doesn’t matter. If he believes in the subjugation of women and LGBTQ people and the undermining of democracy, these things make him unsuitable to be Boston’s mayor. And if he doesn’t believe in the subjugation of women and LGBTQ people and the undermining of democracy, but he’s given monetary support to those who do, he’s shown such little regard for the lives and welfare of all Bostonians that he is unsuitable to be Boston’s mayor.

Seriously, we ought to be past the idea that a rich guy is going to ride in on his white BMW and save us all. Shame on The Globe for puffing up this candidacy, and while we’re at it, shame on the Urban League of Eastern Massachusetts for making a man who supports hatemongers its board chair.

#politics #Boston #BosPoli

That’s part of the picture. But with City on a Hill now set to close at the end of the school year and the Boston Globe blaming a drop in the school-age population (which of course affects all schools equally and is therefore a nonsensical explanation for one school’s problems), I think it’s an appropriate time to bring up another problem that charter schools, and especially City on a Hill, have.

Because each charter school functions as its own district in the eyes of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, these schools are absurdly top-heavy. While public school districts have a central office staff to do a lot of administrative tasks, every charter school needs its own person to do the administrative work of running a school. Many of them also have both a superintendent and a principal, though the superintendent is usually called “Executive Director” or some such.

The governance structure of Massachusetts charter schools doesn’t help. Charter school boards are self-appointing and typically don’t have any parent or student representation. So when administrators want to hire too many administrators, the board usually signs off on this.

This was what happened when I worked at City on a Hill. In the 2001-2002 school year, a new President decided the school needed to go from three administrators to NINE. The board didn’t make a peep.(read all about it in the book I wrote!)

Which leads me to the 2021 school year. I looked up the salaries at City on a Hill and found some pretty damning information. The data is done by calendar year rather than school year, so some positions are probably listed twice because lots of people left this school every year, but we can get a picture. 79 people worked at City on a Hill in 2021. 22 of them were not in direct student-facing roles. They had a principal and vice principal, as you might expect, but also the following: Dean of Citizenship, Director of Specialized Services, Director of School Culture and Climate, Night Custodian, Data Analyst and Manager, Human Capital Coordinator, Director of Teacher Development and Compliance, Front Office Assistant, Chief of Staff, Deputy Chief of Staff, Facilities Associate, Director of School Operations, Staff Accountant, Chief Schools Officer, and Senior Advisor. Some of these positions are clearly essential. Many others look a lot like bullshit to me.

The other piece of data that’s relevant here is that City on a Hill was serving roughly 200 students during this time. You can see why this is not sustainable. Especially when “Senior Advisor” Kevin Taylor was making $280,559. (As a point of comparison, Boston Superintendent of Schools Mary Skipper, who oversees a system that serves over 50,000 students, makes $300,000 per year.)

Chief Schools Officer Sonia Pratt made $161,143 in 2021. The Staff Accountant made $89k. Meanwhile, the highest-paid COAH teacher that year made $75k. Most of the teachers were making salaries in the 40k-60k range. Please remember this when people start pointing out that City on a Hill was the only Massachusetts charter school to have a unionized staff. This is a school that was paying huge (by education standards, obviously) salaries to a passel of administrative jobs of questionable usefulness instead of spending money on serving students. Of course they had to shut down.

Something to watch: the City on a Hill Foundation, a nonprofit that supports the schools, has net assets of about 4 million dollars, which I assume is mostly the real estate, which the foundation, not the school, owns. The foundation will need to dissolve since its mission is to support a school that no longer exists. I wonder what’s going to happen to the money?

#education #Boston #CharterSchools

It’s not bad! The proposal seems respectful of the site and will make a lot of improvements to the stadium that will benefit Boston’s student athletes, who will continue to use the stadium for most of the year. (Said improvements won’t actually benefit Boston’s American football players, since that sport, which is currently played at White Stadium, will no longer be allowed there. I’m okay with this because given what we know about what American football does to players’ brains, I don’t believe schools should be offering this sport anyway, but I recognize that I’m an outlier in this.)

They’re replacing bleachers with seats and adding amenities and not cutting down a ton of trees. And, as a daily user of the park, I’m in favor of bringing more people into it. It’s a beautiful, historic, and very underappreciated and undermaintained, and I’d love to see more people enjoying it.

So far so good!

But the transportation options for game days are just laughably bad. They want to bring 10,000 fans to games. And there’s essentially no on-site parking. The closest MBTA stop is close to a 20-minute walk up a steep hill. The proposal calls for shuttle buses from the Jackson Square and Forest Hills T stops as well as from some yet-to-be-named satellite parking lots.

Now look. I’m excited to have a league that hosts some of the world’s best players happening within walking distance of my house. I’m sure a lot of city folks will support the team. But if you want butts in seats, you’ve got to get suburban butts in those seats.

And it’s here that the organizers just seem wildly out of touch with reality. The idea that a girls’ soccer team from the suburbs is going to take 2 trains and a shuttle bus is tough enough without even considering the fear and loathing that many suburbanites have for the city.

I know from having taught in the suburbs that a fair amount of suburbanites believe that merely existing in an urban neighborhood is inherently dangerous, that your personal safety is compromised by being anywhere but a tourist area. Jackson Square and Forest Hills are used by a very diverse group of people. Jackson Square literally abuts the Mildred Hailey Apartments (f.k.a. the Bromley-Heath Projects.) Suburban girls’ soccer teams will not go there.

So I believe the project is doomed to failure. Boston had an NWSL team before—they played at Harvard Stadium in Allston, which is a long walk from a T stop and had limited on-site parking. And the team went under. I think the new team is headed for the same fate. Which is too bad, but not a tragedy for the city or anything. In fact, if the team owners sink millions of dollars into stadium renovations and the stadium is used exclusively by Boston Public Schools students, this will probably be a win for the city.

But my optimism here hinges on the idea that the folks making this proposal are either brightsided by positive thinking or else wildly out of touch with suburban soccer fans. There is another, darker possibility, which is that the team knows very well that their transportation proposal is laughable, and they’re going to get halfway through the renovations and then suddenly announce they can’t make the project work without taking park land for parking.

Mayor Wu says that paving any parkland is an absolute dealbreaker, and I believe her. But I also believe that the power dynamics change dramatically in the middle of the project, when the owners can threaten to walk away from a stadium that’s been torn up but not yet rebuilt unless they get their way.

I hope the city is prepared for some contractual shenanigans from the wealthy people who own the team (because, let’s face it, a well-developed sense of ethics is inimical to making the kind of money these folks make), but more than that, I hope I’m wrong.

#Boston #BosPoli #transportation

But here’s the thing about School Facts Boston. It’s not a parent advocacy organization. In fact, it’s unclear exactly what it is.

Here’s what we know: it was founded in 2019 by failed mayoral candidate/anti-public education activist John Connolly. According to Maurice Cunningham, who knows about such things, it was initially funded by The Barr Foundation, a “philanthropy” that funds a lot of education privatization initiatives.

On its website, School Facts Boston says it is a nonprofit. (It was incorporated as such with the Massachusetts Secretary of State). But it has not filed a form 990 with the IRS. It has a “family advisory board” but does not seem to have a board of directors. It lists no employees.

But on John Connolly’s LinkedIn, School Facts Boston is listed as his only job since 2018. I doubt he’s been volunteering this whole time. So who does he work for? For that matter, who at the group is a paid employee, and who’s a volunteer? How much money do the highest paid employees make? At legitimate nonprofits, this info is all on the Form 990. Here, it’s a mystery, despite School Facts Boston’s assertion on their website that they are “committed to transparency.”

So, okay, this whole organization is shady as hell. Who cares? The education privatization space is riddled with astroturf organizations funded by big pro-privatization donors: Democrats for Education Reform, National Parents Union, Latinos for Education, etc. School Facts Boston is just one more.

But here’s the thing—Vernee Wilkinson, who may or may not be an employee of School Facts Boston, was quoted in an article in the Boston Globe today about school bathrooms. The article, written by James Vaznis, identifies her as being “of School Facts Boston, a parent advocacy organization.”

A quick search for Vernee Wilkinson’s name on the Globe website shows she has been quoted in stories about the Boston Public Schools fourteen times in the last three years. Is there any other parent advocate who gets a call from the Globe once per quarter?

So this is why it matters. This organization has an outsized voice in issues of Boston Public Schools, and we don’t even know who they really are. We don’t know who signs the checks. We don’t know how many employees they have or how many actual BPS parents they represent.

(I suspect it’s not that many. A Wayback Machine archive of their website from 2020 says they’ll be expanding their Family Advisory Board to 40 members within a year. It still says that today, and there are only 13 members)

The Globe’s education coverage was bought—oh, sorry, funded—by The Barr Foundation a few years ago, so it’s pretty unlikely they’ll unmask who School Facts Boston really is. But if you know, feel free to tell me!

#Boston #education #BosPoli

If you don’t want to click through to the old article, here’s why declining enrollments matter: in Massachusetts, the money follows the student. So every open seat in a charter school represents lost revenue for the school. Lost revenue leads to budget cuts, budget cuts lead to worse schools which lead to more open seats. This is the death spiral that charter schools were intended to inflict on real public schools. But now it seems to be happening to them.

As of August 17th, six months after the charter school lottery was held, eight of Boston’s sixteen charter schools still have open seats. Find the whole list here. (Don’t worry! I’ve got screenshots if they take it down!)

This matters, of course, because it shows that the charter school narrative that people are lining up to get in and we should really expand the number of charter schools is false. If you live in Boston, you’ve probably seen the ads urging people to enroll in charter schools. If a school is in high demand, it doesn’t need to advertise. (Also, I don’t believe even nominally public charter schools should use public money to advertise, but I’m old fashioned like that.)

But I started to get curious about why charter enrollment is falling. My theory is that the charters that started in 1995 have been around long enough that they’ve got substantial numbers of alumni who are parents…and choosing not to send their kids to charter schools because of what they experienced there.

So I decided to reach out to a bunch of charter school alumni to see if my theory was correct. This was in no way a scientific survey, and most people are busy and not as obsessed with education as I am. Two folks wrote back to me to say they had good experiences at the charter school where I was their teacher. This didn’t surprise me. The charter where I worked served a small subset of students very well. I think that’s true of most of them.

But then I also got this, from City on a Hill alum Tonya. I’m using her name and story with her permission. I’ve edited her response for length.

To be 💯 with you but when I was a sophomore at COAH, I was treated like shit. The only one that supported me and didn’t look down on me was Ms. Jamison.She told me that I would succeed even being a teen mom. I had teachers and administration tell me I wouldn’t be anything and I would end up working at McDonald’s and I should leave COAH and get my GED. I was misrepresenting the COAH mission statement and was told I needed to leave and go to a secondary maternity school for pregnant teens. I wasn’t even given the proper education there or all of my school requirements from City on a Hill which led to me getting kept back. I was supposed to graduate in 2004 but I transferred out my senior year. It SUCKED ASS for me and I felt like a failure. 1 because I was pregnant and

2 Because I felt like I was purposely kept back. I got straight A’s in my secondary school COAH transferred me to and told me I would be able to graduate with my class. But when it came down to it out of nowhere I didn’t have enough credits. So I happily left COAH permanently. I wasn’t going to be a statistic like admin was saying to me. Mr. Hays wasn’t telling me I wouldn’t be worth anything but he supported his peers and I looked up to these individuals. I PRIDED myself in being a charter school kid because it wasn’t BPS and I knew the requirements and high expectations. I love a challenge and love to prove people wrong when I’m being looked down on. I had a blast friends wise at COAH. I have amazing memories with my peers. But the way I was treated like a piece of trash and then shunned like a stain on their reputation was degrading. I was putting pressure on myself because I knew the obstacles I’d have being a teen mom but they didn’t make it terrible for me like I was a mistake.

Charter school in that phrase to me sounds like “elite”, or “thorough bread”, “smarter than” “better than”, and as much as the mission statement sounds cool and jazzy, it’s bullshit. It’s like a corporate office job that says all these amazing things to get bodies through the door then when you are hired to work their you realize it’s just for show.

I graduated public school with honors and held my “mistake” on my hip and in my class speech I told in short words that I was holding my daughter as a middle finger to everyone that said I couldn’t do it in school.

Now, obviously Tonya is only one alum. I won’t say her story is representative of everyone’s experience, but Iknow for a fact that it’s far from unique. I will never stop feeling ashamed that I sat silently in meetings while students with ed plans were “counseled out” of City on a Hill because the school wasn’t willing to meet its legal obligation to serve their needs. Students usually left those meetings in tears.

Would you send your kid to a school that had, in Tonya’s words, treated you like shit?

(If you’re a charter school alum with a story to tell, click on the contact me link at the top of the page. I have often been guilty of writing about charter schools by the numbers, and I think it’s important to remember that every one of those numbers is a person.)

#Boston #Education #CharterSchools

Now, my city councilor consistently advocates for policies that will show kindness and care to the most vulerable people in the city. And, she drove her car in such a way that she was very lucky not to have killed someone. I’ve been thinking about this contradiction a lot. I’m not surprised when someone on the right drives like an asshole. It’s entirely philosophically consistent to advocate for the idea that only some people matter and to drive in a way that shows you view other people not as people, but as obstacles. But how can you be kind and compassionate in your policies and an asshole behind the wheel?

I’ve come to believe there is something inherent to driving that brings out the worst in people. I certainly do not exempt myself from this, though I am on a continual quest to be a better person in all aspects of my life. But I suspect it’s true of you too. How many of us can say we are the best version of ourselves when we’re driving?

I think one part of the equation is that driving offers a freedom it can never deliver. We get in a car and think it’s going to be like walking, only faster. That is to say, you choose your route, and you just go. But of course other drivers slow us down when we’re driving in a way other walkers don’t slow us down when we’re walking. And this seems profoundly unfair. How dare you people deny me my right to get where I’m going as quickly as possible!?

There is something about driving that makes us disregard the humanity of everyone else on the road. This is particularly egregious if you are walking. Every day I take my dog to Franklin Park and have to cross Walnut Street at a crosswalk with a stop sign. And at least once a week I wind up yelling at someone who blows through the stop sign because they’re not paying attention, or they just don’t feel that the laws apply to them or because they stopped when the person in front of them stopped at the stop sign, so that totally counts. It’s also very frequent that people give me an annoyed face, or gun the engine as soon as my back foot clears the front of their car, or otherwise demonstrate that they think I’m the asshole by delaying them by ten seconds, which is about how long it takes me and my dog to cross the street.

I don’t think all of these people are sociopaths. But I do think there is something about driving that brings out sociopathic behavior.

As I said, I do have a car, and I do drive it, but I’m trying to drive it less. I think we all should drive less, not only as a response to the climate emergency, but because it will make us better people. I don’t think most of us want to be the kind of people who put other people’s lives in danger because they inconvenience us. But more that that, we’re facing some very serious challenges right now, and I don’t believe we can meet these challenges as a bunch of individuals fighting for scarce resources (like space on the roads, for example.) We’ve got to work together and recognize that we’re all in this together, and driving subverts this mindset. It’s literally killing us.

Appendix:

Okay, Brendan, great philosophy, but I still have to get places. What’s your plan?

There’s a center lane busway near my house that has completely transformed my experience of riding a bus. These are exponentially cheaper to build than light rail. They should be everywhere.

Public transportation should be free. Always and everywhere.

So, advocate for these policies.

If you’ve got the money, you can snag an ebike for as little as a thousand bucks. Which is a lot of money, but not compared to the cost of fueling, insuring, parking, and maintaining a car. You might or might not be able to use it year round, but for doing little errands near your house, they’re unbeatable. I put a basket on my (regular, not e)bike and found I was able to dramatically cut the number of car trips in my neighborhood.

Don’t feel safe riding a bike on the road? Advocate for better bike infrastructure. Actually you should do this even if you are devoted to your car and never want to ride a bike because you hate sharing the road with bikes, and they hate sharing the road with you, so get ‘em some protected lanes!

And, of course, you can do what you do when gas prices are high: be thoughful and intentional about when you get behind the wheel. Combine trips. Don’t go for a drive for fun, or to clear your head, or whatever. Take a walk!

Appendix 2: The title of this post is a quote from Repo Man (1984), which is a great movie, marred only by one homophobic slur aimed at John Wayne. It’s a weird, hilarious movie about a young man trying to pick the right mentor. Its’ also got aliens, Harry Dean Stanton, a fantastic punk rock soundtrack, and a scene with the Circle Jerks doing an acoustic cover of “Pablo Picasso.”

#Boston #Driving #Transit #Biking #RepoMan #Bus