The warning signs appeared soon after Denise Kawamoto accepted a job at Today’s Fresh Start Charter School in South Los Angeles.
Though she was fresh out of college, she was pretty sure it wasn’t normal for the school to churn so quickly through teachers or to mount surveillance cameras in each classroom. Old computers were lying around, but the campus had no internet access. Pay was low and supplies scarce — she wasn’t given books for her students.
She struggled to reconcile the school’s conditions with what little she knew about its wealthy founders, Clark and Jeanette Parker of Beverly Hills.
When Kawamoto saw their late-model Mercedes-Benz outside the school, she would think: “Look at your school, then look at what you drive.”
Read the full story on LATimes.com.
When I started covering education in CA, I was struck by the state’s scattershot oversight of its 1,300+ charters. I wasn’t alone – former LAT reporter @zahiratorres had begun work on an investigation. I picked up her thread.
— Anna Phillips (@annamphillips) March 27, 2019
I focused on Today’s Fresh Start, a charter organization with campuses in L.A., Compton and Inglewood. It has survived years of allegations of conflicts of interest, self-dealing and academic wrongdoing by bouncing from regulator to regulator.
— Anna Phillips (@annamphillips) March 27, 2019
When county officials tried to shut down Today’s Fresh Start in 2007, the Parkers appealed to the state. When they lost their charter with the state, they found school districts willing to overlook their problems. Always, they kept one step ahead of their regulators.
— Anna Phillips (@annamphillips) March 27, 2019
“They’re like cats. They have so many lives,” Denise Kawamoto, a former Today’s Fresh Start teacher, said of the couple and their schools.
— Anna Phillips (@annamphillips) March 27, 2019
