“Few men have virtue to withstand the highest bidder.”
-George Washington
Anna Batista, a corporate consultant at Highstreet Consulting running for Pittsburgh School Board, is taking thousands of dollars in donations from big money interests.
A quick look at campaign finance reports on Allegheny County’s Website shows Batista took beaucoup bucks from school privatization lobbyists, real estate developers, lawyers, and financial advisors.
Meanwhile, her opponent Pam Harbin, a public school watchdog, is supported almost exclusively by grassroots donations.
Both candidates are running for District 4, which serves parts of Squirrel Hill, Point Breeze, Shadyside and North Oakland. Since they’ve cross filed and will appear on both the Republican and Democratic primary ballots, the seat should be decided in the May 21 primary.
Batista and Harbin have raised similar amounts for their campaigns. Harbin has $33,412.95 while Batista has $32,414.
Batista has support from at least two troubling industries – school privatizers and corporate crusaders – which are nowhere to be seen in her opponents financials.
Particularly troubling to me are the charter school and voucher advocates.
Someone shouldn’t be running for a public school board with backing from the same vultures demanding public schools be dismantled and their assets and funding siphoned away to private industry. Charter schools cost the Pittsburgh Public district more than $85 million per year in tuition payments. While the district has no plans to open new public schools, it is forced to open new charter schools every time one of these publicly financed but privately run institutions appeals to the state Charter Appeal Board, further draining resources away from remaining public schools.
In fact, Batista is using “Students First” as a title on her campaign mailers. This is the name of a well-known school privatization group founded by infamous public school saboteur Michelle Rhee. The education justice movement across the country and here in Pittsburgh has been fighting Students First for years. They are infamous for dumping money into Pennsylvania politics to back legislators friendly to school privatization. No one who is serious about education justice would use this title: either Batista does not know about Students First, she knows and doesn’t care, or she is being intentional in signaling to privatizers that she is on their side.
Students First merged with 50CAN, a national group focused on vouchers and school privatization that grew out of ConCAN, started by Connecticut hedge fund managers. Betsy DeVos, now U.S. Secretary of Education, praised the merger and has done similar work for years through her own organization with the same privatization agenda. Here in Pennsylvania, the local branch is PennCAN. Their director, who also sits on the board of a local charter school asking for approval to set up shop in Pittsburgh, is one of Batista’s donors.
The largest donations are noted below. Chief among these are:
-Rachel Amankulor, PennCAN and Catalyst Charter School board member. (Pittsburgh Public School Board denied Catalyst’s application citing problems with its plan to accommodate students with disabilities, among other issues, but the state Charter Appeal Board overturned the board’s decision and the case may now go to Pennsylvania Supreme Court.)
-Catherine Axtman, spouse of William Axtman who sits on the Propel Charter School Board
-Kirk Burkley ($500) and Robert Bernstein ($250), of Bernstein- Burkley, a Pittsburgh law firm specializing in Business Law, Creditors Rights, Oil & Gas, Bankruptcy, & Real Estate. (Burkley ran against school board member Lynda Wrenn in 2015 – a race fought in large part around privatization issues!)
-Allison McCarthy, Vice President of Teach for America; Catalyst Charter School Board Member; and Broad Academy graduate (Eli Broad is a major privatizer who started the Broad Academy of which Devos is a graduate.)
-Nathaniel Yap, spouse of Brian Smith, Catalyst Charter Founder and CEO ($1,000)
And then we come to the big business partisans.
Many of these advocate for tax deferment programs to entice businesses into the Pittsburgh area on the condition that they are allowed to escape paying taxes or pay at a reduced rate for a certain number of years. Programs such as Tax Incremental Financing (TIFs) put a heavier burden on the schools than other public resources. They cost the school district 50% as opposed to the county and city, which only lose 25% of their owed taxes each.
Local politicians like County Executive Rich Fitzgerald and Pittsburgh Mayor Bill Peduto – though Democrats – are chief advocates of these types of neoliberal, business friendly programs. While the city and county have nothing to do with Pittsburgh Public Schools, they do often expect the School Board to rubber stamp TIFs. The School Board is an independent taxing body, but they are rarely brought to the table at the beginning of the process.
Corporate donors include:
-Friends of Rich Fitzgerald ($500)
-People for Bill Peduto ($2,000)
-Gregg Perelmann, Walnut Capital ($1,000)
-Todd Reidbord, Walnut Capital (Developers of Bakery Square and other projects that have received a number of TIFs)
-Helen Casey, CEO of Howard Hanna
-John Katz, Brandywine Agency ($1,000 plus in-kind) (His office in the Squirrel Hill business district is worth thousands)
-Paul Katz, Brandywine Agency ($250)
-Patricia Katz, Brandywine Agency ($1,000)
-Rod Werstil, McKinney Properties ($500)
-Kevin McKeegan, Meyer, Unkovic & Scott LLP (Pittsburgh Real Estate Law)
-Luke Meyers, Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom LLP and Affiliates (New York Real Estate Law)
-Nancy Finkelstein, Schulte Roth & Zabel (Finkelstein’s Linkedin Profile includes this quote: “I have concentrated my practice on representing private equity funds, investment banks, hedge funds, financial institutions, finance companies and high-net-worth individuals in a wide variety of transactions, including financings, debt restructurings, leveraged acquisitions, and collateralized loan facilities.”)
-Steven Massey, Federated Investors
-Richard Lerach, Gateway Financial
-William Sheridan, Reed Smith LLP (“Represented managed care defendants in obtaining dismissal of antitrust conspiracy and monopolization claims.”)
All of this is truly troubling for someone running to serve as a school board director.
Compare Batista’s financials with that of her opponent Harbin.
In at least two instances, Harbin won endorsements and donations from organizations Batista had been courting.
Pittsburgh Federation of Teachers gave Harbin $5,000 instead of Batista.
Likewise, Unite! Pittsburgh gave Harbin $1,500 over Batista. This is State Rep. Summer Lee’s PAC. The organization supports candidates running on a criminal justice slate who are committed to ending the school-to-prison, poverty-to-prison, and addiction-to-prison pipelines.
Other notable donations to Harbin’s campaign include:
-Women for the Future Pittsburgh ($500)
-Friends of Chelsea Wagner ($500) (Wagner is Allegheny County Controller and one of the founders of Women for the Future Pittsburgh)
-Michael Fine ($2,800) physician for the Veterans Administration
-Kathy Fine ($2,800) Michael’s wife and long-time education justice activist who fought against the closing of Pittsburgh’s Schenley High School.
-Nancy Bernstein ($1,000) J Street Board Member (J Street organizes and mobilizes pro-Israel, pro-peace Americans who want Israel to be secure and democratic.)
These are exactly the kind of donations you’d expect from a grassroots candidate – labor unions, progressive political promoters and activists.
Full disclosure: Though I live just outside of the Pittsburgh area, I am not unbiased in this race. I consider Harbin a friend and fully support her run for school board.
However, the donations outlined in this article are all facts. Feel free to go to the county Website and see for yourself.
Our children deserve better than Batista – a school director in the employ of the same forces out to sabotage education and pick the remains clean for their own individual ends.
Call me crazy, but I think children should be an end in themselves.
School board candidates who put themselves up for sale like Batista don’t deserve your vote. They’ve already sold theirs to the highest bidder.
Like this post? I’ve written a book, “Gadfly on the Wall: A Public School Teacher Speaks Out on Racism and Reform,” now available from Garn Press. Ten percent of the proceeds go to the Badass Teachers Association. Check it out!
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If “facts matter”, then get them right. 1) You meant to bash me, not Allison. She didn’t do Broad, I did. 2) It’s the Residency I did, not the Academy. They are different. 3) Devos is awful- but she is not a Broad alum. If you’re going to systematically attack people and make assumptions about their beliefs and alliances, you should do it accurately.
Furthermore, I have to say, the responses to this on social media are downright frightening. No one questions your right to stir people up the way you did, but when I have to forward this to my husband on a work trip to warn him that I’m nervous that some of the comments online were so angry as to make me nervous for our kids, maybe (just maybe) it went too far. That said, Pam has hated me for years and publicly bashed me, so I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised. Feel free to link these comments to earlier blog posts when you attacked me.
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Cate, thank you for commenting on my article and offering to correct my errors. However, I do need to confirm exactly who this is? Are you Cate Reed? That would make you a Teach for America recruiter. Right? Also who is the Allison you’re referring to – Allison McCarthy, Vice President of Teach for America and a Catalyst Charter School Board Member? If so, I DID identify her as a Broad Academy graduate. If I’m wrong about that, I apologize and will revise the article.
I am sorry my article has caused you so much stress. I didn’t mean to attack anyone. I simply related some of the people and organizations that donated big money to Anna Batista. I also expressed my opinion of why I thought those donations and special interests were troubling.
If you are Cate Reed, I believe I wrote this about you in 2016 when you were a treasurer for a new PAC funding school privatization candidates for Pittsburgh Public School Board:
“…Cate Reed, our own Teach for America (TFA) recruiter. Perhaps she took it personally when the newly elected school board overturned a decision by its predecessors to contract with TFA for three-years and pay $750,000. This is one of the few times – if not the only time –this has happened across the nation. Reed is also a Broad Center residency recipient. Established by billionaire Eli Broad, the Broad Center runs an unaccredited training program for school leaders, where candidates learn Broad’s philosophy of school management. Broad has no education experience. He is a self-proclaimed expert, a businessman who made his billions in home-building, mortgage lending, and insurance (AIG).
On the Broad alumni page, Reed speaks about making sure every child has an opportunity to succeed, especially students of color in low income communities.
‘The Broad Residency affords me the opportunity to be a part of the change I wish to see—and to use my skills to pursue my wildest dream of educational equity,’ she says.
The problem she identifies is real. However, her solution is ludicrous. You don’t provide better opportunities for poor black children by making the leaders of their schools unaccountable to the public. You don’t help poor black kids by removing qualified teachers from their classrooms and replacing them with lightly trained Teach for America recruits. You don’t help poor black kids by giving them an endless series of culturally and economically biased standardized tests and ignoring the fact that they receive substantially less resources than their richer, whiter peers.”
You can revisit the whole article here: https://gadflyonthewallblog.com/2016/04/11/new-pac-descends-on-pittsburgh-public-schools-to-charterize-and-take-over-school-board/
As to the current article about Batista’s backers, I’m sorry if people are saying mean things on the Internet. I don’t believe your name (Ms. Reed?) was mentioned at all. I honestly don’t advocate for violence of any kind. I want you, your children and everyone in the entire city to be free from attack or bullying. However, I also hope Pittsburgh residents don’t vote for the corporate-minded initiatives you support and the candidates who back them.
All the best.
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Is your thesis here that any politician is the creature of their single largest donor?
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Teaching economist, my “thesis” is a bit more simple: if you want to know someone’s master, read the receipts. Batista is funded mostly by corporate raiders and school privatization cheerleaders. Harbin is funded mostly by teachers, grassroots organizations and everyday people. If you can’t tell the difference between the two – between someone trying to get rich off our public schools and others just trying to eke out a middle class living so they can afford to help kids learn – then you need more help than this humble education blogger can provide.
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No reports are coming up on the county’s campaign finance website. Can you provide a pdf?
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https://www.alleghenycounty.us/elections/candidates.aspx
Click that link, go to “Campaign Finance Reports”, enter “Report Year” as 2019, and then it is filed under B for Batista.
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