alt Hacker NewsThis is deeply troubling, parents should not have to press so hard on such issues. I've had a growing feeling that schools, and teachers, have been pushing far too much on isolating parents from decision-making about their children.
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Dig deep enough and you'll find the lobbyist.
> The University of Washington today announced that it is part of a multi-pronged grantmaking strategy from Ballmer Group aimed at drawing more people into careers in early childhood education in our state — including by providing more than 1,500 scholarships over the next eight years.
> Ballmer Group is providing a set of gifts totaling more than $43 million to fund scholarships, leadership development and advocacy across multiple organizations, reducing the financial barriers that prevent talent from entering the early childhood workforce. The gifts ensure Washington can successfully implement the Fair Start for Kids Act and build racially diverse leadership in the broader policy field.
https://www.washington.edu/news/2023/03/16/43-million-set-of...
> The Ballmer Group has quietly emerged as a major player in the world of education venture-philanthropy, committing more than $250 million to K-12 related efforts during 2017 and 2018. As a limited liability corporation, the group is free to make charitable donations and for-profit investments—none of which have to be publicly disclosed.
> The Ballmers have also gotten on board with the trend of merging charitable giving with venture-capital investments and calling it all philanthropy.
> Those elements of the couple’s approach are reflected in their hefty investment in Social Solutions Global, to help the for-profit company develop nonprofit case-management software that will be able to integrate with the student information systems used by most K-12 school districts.
> By structuring the Ballmer Group as an LLC, the Ballmers have certainly given themselves more levers to pull in service of their goals, said Reckhow, the Michigan State professor. But they also seem to have embraced the notion that billionaires working to reshape public policy and service delivery don’t need to be transparent about what they’re doing.
> Officials from the Ballmer Group, however, told Education Week they would not commit to publicly disclose all the organization’s grants, investments, lobbying work, or support for elected officials and campaigns.
https://www.edweek.org/leadership/ex-microsoft-ceo-no-not-th...
Up until Mirabelli v. Bonta, children could keep secrets between them and the school and keep the parent out of it even.