Protesters are expected to gather outside Eli Broad’s new $140 million museum that houses his 2,000-piece contemporary art collection, to call on the billionaire to halt plans to back a charter school plan that could enroll half of the students in the Los Angeles Unified School District.
Parents and students are expected to join members of the United Teachers Los Angeles, which represents LAUSD teacher are expected to picket outside the museum on its much anticipated opening day.
UTLA President Alex Caputo-Pearl said they take issue with a reported plan by Broad to put “between half a billion and a billion dollars into a plan to draw 50 percent of LAUSD students into unregulated, non-union charter schools.”
Caputo-Pearl said they are “not protesting the opening of The Broad Museum,” which he said is a “nice contribution to the arts and culture of Los Angeles,” but the charter school plans revealed in recent media reports are cause for concern.
The Eli and Edythe Broad Foundation, as well as The Keck Foundation and the Walton Family Foundation, are among groups that are looking to fund an expansion of LAUSD’s publicly funded charter system, according to the “Los Angeles Times.”
But Caputo-Pearl said such schools, which could be similar to charter schools the Broad Foundation has already funded in New Orleans, “don’t play by the same rules” and are prone to “cherry-picking” their students, failing to set up a public process for teachers to interact with parents.
Such charter schools also are not transparently managed by a public entity, he said.
He also called Broad’s recent political contributions to help defeat Proposition 30, which raised taxes to fund public schools, hypocritical, since the measure potentially puts funding into school arts programs.
“We’re concerned about the hypocrisy of building this great new arts museum in downtown, but working against schools having good arts progams across Los Angeles,” he told City News Service.
Caputo-Pearl, who is also calling on Broad to take part in public debate on education, said if Broad wants to be more “productive” in improving education, he should instead be supporting efforts to reduce class sizes, getting more professional development programs for teachers and pushing for more state funding for schools.
Otherwise, he said, “we are of the mind that billionaires should not be running public education.”
Broad museum officials declined to respond to a request for comment.
