HERE’S HOW MUCH THE TOP TEN BILLIONAIRES SPENT ON RACES IN THIS REPORT

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Beutner has no experience in public education

In Los Angeles, Austin Beutner leads the privatizers efforts to dismantle LAUSD.

He worked in Wall Street’s Blackstone Group, and then co-founded Evercore Partners, a private equity firm whose claim to fame is dismantling companies, firing workers and selling the leftovers for a profit. After that, he went onto short-term but high-profile gigs with little success. He tried running for mayor, but his candidacy did not gain traction. At LADWP, Beutner was the ninth general manager in 10 years. At the L.A. Times, he was one of several publishers fired by out-of-town ownership. He has no experience as a teacher or even managing a school. So, what makes him qualified to run the nation’s second-largest school district?

How billionaire privatizers are undermining public education

Eli Broad is a retired billionaire who funds school privatization through his various donations to charter school expansion and lobbying efforts. Since 2008, Broad gave $212,500 to Betsy DeVos’ lobbying organization “Alliance for School Choice.” It is a Washington, DC-based firm that, similar to CCSA, undermines public education and pushes for expansion of unregulated charter schools and school vouchers.

Although Broad denounced DeVos as Trump’s education pick, they teamed up to fund legislative races in Louisiana, a state that, post-Hurricane Katrina, became the poster child for unregulated charter growth and the systematic destruction of the civic institution of public education.

Broad and DeVos both funded the Educational Achievement Authority in Michigan, which oversaw the mass charter-ization and de-unionization of Detroit public schools, resulting in a wasteland rife with student equity and access violations, recently documented in a front page story in the New York Times.