Snake Oil

Former NFL star Deion Sanders’ new charter schools in Dallas and Fort Worth begin accepting applications from students later this week, opening the two-month window before a lottery picks the 1,500 lucky students who’ll attend Prime Prep Academy next fall.

Last week, Sanders led Prime Prep leaders in a P.R. blitz to drum up interest in the schools, making the rounds of Fort Worth and Dallas newspapers, morning shows, evening news and radio, which helped spread the word that he’s “making the move from the locker room to the classroom,” and “tackling education.”

“All our lives we’ve struggled and tried to get out of the ‘hood. What’s wrong with the ‘hood? Let’s make the ‘hood good,” Sanders told Smooth 105.7 personality K.J. Midday. He said Prime Prep’s Fort Worth and South Dallas schools would be about building kids’ self-esteem and giving them tools they don’t get in their neighborhood schools, like laptops and a computer-based curriculum. “And it cuts time down on the teachers, because the teacher spends her whole day or his whole day on Saturday grading papers. Now it’s great, electronically, it gives them more time to focus on the babies.”

Thursday night, in a chapel at the South Dallas campus they plan to take over this fall, Sanders and his business partner D.L. Wallace promised hundreds of prospective parents and students that what they’re offering is simply “the best” of everything, for free.

Despite those good intentions, Sanders and Wallace told the crowd they’d been through hell the last three years just trying to get this school approved. “I’m not moving. You can’t impeach me,” Sanders said. “Everything in this program is blood-stained because of what we’ve gone through.”

They might have been alluding to the ongoing suit filed against the pair by one of Wallace and Sanders’ former business partners; the Austin-American Statesman report in November that an early draft of their charter application included a consulting contract that would pass profits to Prime Prep officials; or our December report that companies listed on their charter application as having pledged thousands of dollars to the school had no knowledge of doing so. The Texas Education Agency says everything in their application is kosher now.

But Sanders and Wallace framed the criticisms simply as an attack on their vision for inner-city students.

“I want you to know what people say,” Wallace told the crowd. “They say we can’t do this. They say the inner city can’t come together and do great things for their children.”

Along with its potential as a high school sports powerhouse, Prime Prep’s plans are worth watching because its fundraising depends so much on Sanders’ star power and endorsement deals—relying on outfits like Under Armour and the NFL for support, not the Gates or Walton Family foundations that so many other charters rely on.

On a night focused on the school’s academic plans, though, Wallace was the night’s real star. He worked the crowd with a ShamWow salesman’s humor and grace, led rounds of applause for questions from parents and glowingly endorsed the new online curriculum they’ve bought for the school, which will replace a homegrown online homework portal they’d initially planned to use.

The new curriculum will come from Florida-based VSCHOOLZ, Inc. That’s “V” as in “virtual.” The company, backed by Miami entrepreneur H. Wayne Huizenga bills itself as a “fully hosted, customizable solution for schools to be able to launch their own virtual school”—or a “blended” online/classroom hybrid, in Prime Prep Academy’s case. It includes content from publishing giant Houghton Mifflin Harcourt and the Science Screen Report video series.

“Teachers still have to do their jobs. This is a tool to make their jobs easier,” Wallace said. VSCHOOLZ cuts paper-grading time by 75 percent, Wallace said. VSCHOOLZ is “uniquely and completely aligned with the STAAR’s requirements,” Wallace told parents, referring to Texas’ controversial new testing regimen that’s rolling out this year. He said Prime Prep will be the program’s first school in Texas.

“Today’s times mean that we [parents] may not be in a position to teach our kids the things they need to know,” Wallace said—but with their web-based curriculum, Prime Prep students can keep learning on their home computer, and parents can check their progress online, no matter how late they get home from work.

Wallace offered up just a taste of the VSCHOOLZ experience, playing a clip from a math lesson about using a number line to solve a problem. When the clip finished, Wallace was beaming.

“Now wait a minute, that’s something I wouldn’t be able to teach my children,” he said. He pointed out the name of the guy who designed the lesson, and the word “professor” in front of his name. How often do your kids get taught by a professor in public school? Wallace asked parents.

While Prime Prep will probably have between 18 and 22 students per teacher, Wallace said thanks to VSCHOOLZ, they could handle many more than that.

“If you give the teachers the tools effectively, they can teach 25 kids,” Wallace said. “It’s about your commitment to the classroom.”

The meeting was mostly about academics—to avoid recruiting violations, there wasn’t much talk about sports. (The school will debut against 3A competition next year.) But Sanders said leadership training would be built on his TRUTH sports programs, where kids are taught to be confident around pro athletes like, say, Deion Sanders.

“We have kids that aren’t enamored when they meet someone of stature and start asking for autographs,” Sanders said.
Carl Dorvil, the vice chair of Prime Prep’s board, said he’d be lining up entrepreneurs to talk to students and keep them motivated. “We know and understand that all kids are impregnated with potential,” he said. “But they’ve got to labor to get that out.” A delicate lesson to impart in a state where abstinence-only education rules.

“I’ve heard all the hoopla,” Arlington parent Kim Thompson told me after the meeting. Her son’s enrolled in private school today, but he’s been in TRUTH programs, and was lobbying her to enroll him at Prime Prep. “I wanted to know the academic piece tonight, and I was impressed,” she said.

Another parent, Knasha Dawson, said her son has been in TRUTH sports programs for three years. She was impressed by the e-books and laptops Prime Prep will have in the classroom—one laptop per student—“because most schools are still, you know, with the books.”

“This is not about us,” Sanders said near the end of the meeting. Then, he told prospective students he had a stake in making sure they graduated like winners: “My name is on this, so there’s no way I’m gonna let you take my name to the ground.”

So that didn’t take long.

I wrote yesterday that conservatives’ efforts at school finance reform—with a focus on limiting wasteful spending and promoting school choice—might finally find their way to court one day soon, if they could find a lawyer who’d take their case.

Turns out, they already had. Just this morning a new group called Texans for Real Efficiency and Equity in Education filed to intervene in the school finance suits, asking the court to consider whether our current school system is cost-effective, or creates enough room for kids to opt out of their neighborhood school and enroll in a charter instead.

The Associated Press broke the news that “a small group of parents” were filing this suit—but those little guys have some heavy hitters helping their cause, including former Texas Supreme Court Justice Craig T. Enoch as co-counsel with Houston lawyer Chris Diamond.

“Our suit is about the outcomes for the children rather than just the inputs to the system,” Diamond said in a press release sent out today, which also quotes judges in past school finance decisions, who suggest they might ask the school system to limit waste and boost competition between schools, if only someone would ask them to rule on it.

The group is led by a trio of Austin businessmen, including American Land and Minerals owner James Jones, who cites the pro-charter documentary Waiting for Superman as his inspiration for joining the school finance reform fight. Rounding out the group’s muscle as executive director is former State Rep. Kent Grusendorf, a voucher advocate in his time at the Lege, who’ll “help raise money and oversee the organization’s work towards its mission,” according to TREE’s new site.

The parents listed as plaintiffs include families from Houston, Mansfield, San Marcos and Odem (outside Corpus Christi), unhappy with their traditional public school options.

“The fact that we have media reports of nearly 60,000 children stuck on waiting lists for charter schools, with parents unable to pull their kids out of a school they don’t believe meets their kids’ needs, makes it clear that the system is not treating families equitably,” Diamond said in the group’s press release.

Texas Charter School Association director David Dunn issued a statement this afternoon, gratified someone finally noticed that “charter schools are well-known as some of the most efficient public schools in Texas.” “We applaud the focus on structural efficiency and equitable access,” he said.

David Thompson, the lead lawyer for the largest of the four suits facing the state, said he’s still considering what he thinks about this intervention into his suit, but he understands their interest in getting involved. “There are a lot of different points of view because it’s one of the most important parts of our society,” Thompson said.

Because the four suits still haven’t been consolidated yet in court, TREE may end up intervening in each of the others separately. How big a role they get to play in those suits will be up to District Judge John Dietz, who’s handling all four of the suits filed on behalf of school districts.

You can read the group’s filing here.

During a busy day of reintroducing himself to half the reporters in Austin, Gov. Rick Perry told the Fort Worth Star-Telegram’s Dave Montgomery on Tuesday that he very much doubted there’s much interest in Texas for a special session on school finance.

“I would be stunned if there is an outcry from the people of this state or, for that matter, a majority of the members of the Legislature that want to come back in here and have a special session when I don’t think we need one,” Perry told him.

Other folks have a different read on what Texans really want. For weeks, the Texas State Teachers Association has been pushing for a special session on school finance, to fill in last session’s $5.4 billion hole in school funding with some of that fat Rainy Day Fund we’re sitting on. “Most Texans believe it is senseless to leave more than $7 billion of taxpayers’ money in the bank, while their children’s schools continue to suffer cuts,” TSTA president Rita Haecker said in a statement yesterday.

While the damage is already done for this school year, a note from the Center for Public Policy Priorities points out there’s still a way to recover the $2 billion the Legislature cut from schools’ baseline funding for next year, thanks to a $1.6 billion projected bump in sales tax revenue, along with $400 million from the Rainy Day Fund.

Perry’s against spending any of that Rainy Day Fund on schools, and yesterday’s House Appropriations hearing confirmed that a new session on school finance today would be distasteful in the extreme to lawmakers too.

“I don’t think there’s an appetite to go back in and undo what we did during session,” House Appropriations chair Jim Pitts (R-Waxahachie) said, according to the Dallas Morning News, and Rep. Jimmie Don Aycock (R-Killeen) agreed re-opening the school finance conversation would be a huge mess.

In fact, it’ll probably be a long time before lawmakers do anything at all with school finance while those school finance suits mosey on through the courts. As quoted in the Quorum Report last week (subscription required) Rep. Harvey Hilderbran (R-Kerrville) said even a lower court decision on the suits is “not going to influence what we do state finance wise or ways and means wise.”

It’ll be years until the Texas Supreme Court might come up with any guidance or deadlines for the Legislature.

This may look like a holding pattern at the Capitol, a reluctance to upset tough decisions made last session, but every lean year for a school district makes a difference for its kids—more schools getting shuttered, sports programs cut and new costs, like riding the school bus, passed along to families. Texas schoolkids will get thousands less than the average American student each year. 

It was nearly a year ago that Perry reminded us all how this works: “the lieutenant governor, the speaker, their colleagues aren’t going to hire or fire one teacher,” he said. Think about it that way, and it’s hard to figure why they’d take any responsibility now.

When Ted Kennedy dropped by College Station in 2003, the pissed-off Aggies turned out in droves, mocking the late senator with a look-alike contest, a grape-juice toast and a sing-along round of “Ted the Magic Driver.” When President Obama came three years ago, 1,000 demonstrators railed against his presence, with “pissed-off seniors” cruising in from hundreds of miles away to disapprove of Obama more personally.

So the news that U.S. House Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi was spending her President’s Day holiday in Aggieland—the heart of Rick Perry “treat ‘em pretty ugly down in Texas” territory—looked like the setup for a thrilling third round of culture clash. A student group called the Texas Aggie Conservatives promised they’d be there to greet the former House speaker with scathing political street theater. Commenters screamed “liberal hag” and “San Francisco communist” at the news of Pelosi’s coming, announcing they’d canceled their membership in the A&M alumni Century Club, and wondering why A&M doesn’t just invite Mao Zedong to speak next. (Since that TED talk on desert farming co-ops, Mao’s been a star on the lecture circuit.)

With the stage thus set, the George Bush Presidential Library and Museum threw open its doors Monday evening for a polite and well-dressed crowd of hundreds who were interested in what the highest-ranking woman in Congressional history had to say. She spent an hour chatting with Bush’s former deputy chief of staff (and George W. Bush’s chief of staff) Andrew Card, and was eminently deferential to the former president, who looked on from a wheelchair in the front row. It was, after all, his holiday and his museum.

“He was strong enough and confident enough in his strength to talk about a kinder, gentler America,” she said. She recalled Bush’s civility during his time in office, even with his political rivals, “something badly needed today.”

As it turned out, all that vitriol brewing against Pelosi in College Station erupted with a hiccup of a dozen protesters—a sign, maybe, of a kinder, gentler College Station. No “pissed-off seniors” came in from miles away. Nearly all the demonstrators were Texas Aggie Conservatives, the same folks who hand out copies of the U.S. Constitution on campus, and celebrate Ronald Reagan’s birthday by passing out slices of a big cake frosted with the president’s face.

As the much older audience waited outside for the talk, the unhappy students lined up a few hundred feet away. One student wore a ball and chain around his ankle and held a sign reading, “Unchain the American Employer.” Another dressed as Death, complete with the grim reaper’s cloak and scythe, with a paper mask of Nancy Pelosi’s face. “Pelosi = Job-Killer!” his sign explained.

Reporters with questions were directed to speak with Cary Chesire, a group leader who said he was happy with the turnout, and was glad some of the folks waiting to get in to the talk came by to chat about health care and tax policy. “We’ve had a large number of supporters from the crowd,” Cheshire said.

“And curse words,” Death interjected, sounding a little hurt.

Cheshire cut back in. “It’s a great way to get our message out,” he said.

Beside them, two more students said they’d turned up to support the Catholic church’s right to exclude birth control from its health insurance coverage. Their pink signs set them apart from the others. “You can’t be Catholic and pro-choice,” A&M freshman Laura Campos said.

Pelosi, who is Catholic, addressed the issue inside, in response to what Card said was a question from the audience submitted ahead of time.

“I’m from a family that you’d call pro-life. I was raised in that atmosphere. I understand it, I respect it,” Pelosi said. “This is so personal… I’m of an age, we don’t really talk about these things in public.”

“The issue is, in my opinion, not about contraception. It’s about women’s health.” It was her biggest applause line of the night.

“Women have traditionally been discriminated against in the health insurance industry,” she said, making insurance harder to get or more expensive if they are or have been pregnant. “One of the benefits of the Affordable Care Act is that being a woman will no longer be a preexisting condition.”

Pelosi kept reminding the crowd that even her career ambitions were old-fashioned, too—that she’d been a wife and a mother of five first, and ended up in Congress almost by accident. But that was 25 years ago, she said. “It is really urgent that women take responsibility for leadership in the decisions that need to be made for our country,” she said.

She drew lots of applause for that line, and a little less when she suggested campaign finance reform was the way to get there. Women running for office are consistently out-raised by men running against them, she pointed out. “If we can reform the role of money in our political system,” she said,” I promise we will have many more women elected to public office.”

“Change the whole environment [to] one that is much more conducive to us having full participation,” Pelosi urged. “Otherwise, it’ll be incremental for the rest of eternity.”

Until now, it’s been easy to miss the Muslim community in Longview.

As workers, students and families from North Africa and Pakistan have moved to the town over the past few decades, the Islamic Community of Longview has congregated in a member’s apartment to pray and celebrate holidays.

But now that construction is underway on a small mosque on the northern edge of town, the revelation that there are Muslims in Longview planning to worship out in the open has drawn nasty resistance from some future neighbors.

“We’re not acquainted with that culture, and we have children and we have concerns, yes we do,” longtime resident Elizabeth Owens told the Longview News-Journal late last month. “I understand everybody has to worship, but why do they have to bring it to a Christian community? I think that’s terrible.”

Owens planted red signs in yards up and down the street, and on the construction site, with the word “Jesus.” and an ad for the local First Baptist Church. Another resident brought his worries about the mosque to a Longview City Council meeting in late January. Saleem Shabazz, an Islamic Community spokesman, said even before that, a man dropped by the construction site to intimidate workers.

“There are some people here that are just anti-Muslim,” Shabazz said this morning over the phone. He said the resistance to the mosque is coming from people who want to tell him about this country’s Christian roots, and that organized Islam isn’t what Longview is about.

Plenty of others, including Longview police and local Jewish leaders, have jumped in to support the new mosque, Shabazz said. “Even though they might not believe in Islam as a religion, they believe in the right of people to worship.”

It’s hard to argue Shabazz is some kind of outsider in Longview, where he’s lived off and on as a kid, and where his grandfather once led an African-American Baptist congregation.

Almost 30 years since his conversion to Islam, Shabazz said even some of his family doesn’t want to call him by his new name. But he’s had a busy civic life in Longview outside the Muslim community, too. He’s vice-president of Longview’s race relations committee; he volunteers with a kids’ group; and he organizes the Kwanzaa celebration each year.

Longview’s Muslim community includes about 80 people, including children, at major holidays. “You’re talking about people who are going to school, who have families,” he said, “people who have been here 20 years or better.”

“It’s hard to find a place to go and pray,” he said. After Shabazz converted, it took him months to find out where other Muslims were congregating in Longview. Today, he says they’ve simply outgrown the apartments they’d meet in before.
According to the News-Journal, Shabazz has been working with Gregg County Commissioner Charles Davis to handle concerns like noise from the call to prayer (there won’t be one) or potential drainage problems.

“I think it’s full-steam ahead to build a mosque out there. I’m not sure we can do anything about it, or if we should be trying. It’s a free country,” Davis told the News-Journal.

Still, those stories in the local paper keep drawing detractors in online comments—one worries about property values, others about traffic on the mosque’s narrow street—and as workers finish the mosque’s foundation, Shabazz said he hopes to win over neighbors before the building is finished.

“I told them two weeks ago that I’d be willing to meet with them,” Shabazz said. So far, though, he’s heard nothing back.