October 08, 2011 10:51 PM UTC

UPDATED: Vouchers in sheep's clothing in the Ed Reform Movement

•  
• by: John Tzekara

Monday morning update: A friend who read my diary told me this morning that my link regarding Mr. Mendoza’s voucher celebrating house party no longer works.  Apparently Mr. Mendoza or someone else spent some time this weekend literally scrubbing his tracks from the internet (comments below also indicate that he’s removed his postings on facebook and twitter).  Fortunately the internet has a way or replicating things many places.  You can still read the story here.

(Original Diary)

In any movement, there are the reasonable people and those on the extreme fringes.  For those of us who believe in a balance between traditional neighborhood schools and charter, magnet, autonomous, and innovation schools, the line is usually drawn at vouchers.  Earlier this year we saw the right wing radicals like John Caldara fighting to keep vouchers for religious schools in Douglas County, which of course was thrown out by a judge:

I figured Douglas County could keep their nutjobs, because no one in Denver (where I live) actually supports vouchers for religious schools (besides a handful of Republicans no one will elect).  Apparently that isn’t the case.  I was reading about the gloves coming off in the Denver school board race, and one name struck me as interesting: Myles Mendoza.  Myles is the mouthpiece for a new group called “Latinos for Education Reform” which just started running full page ads attacking Arturo Jimenez, the board rep running for reelection in NW Denver.   He has since posted this “ad” on every facebook page relating to NW Denver he could find.  This is the same Myles Mendoza who held an event at his home in Castle Rock celebrating vouchers being approved in Douglas County:

So apparently after being thrown out in the courts there, Mr. Mendoza, who is employed by Ed Reform Now (an organization that I don’t believe is radical), decided to start attacking Denver Board members.  A quick search also shows that Mr. Mendoza was a pretty major donor to Jane Norton in the last Senate campaign.

Mr. Mendoza clearly isn’t the type of Bennet reform Democrat that he apparently wants people to think he is naming a group LFER (sounds a lot like DFER right?  Except that DFER is a national group and actually has a history besides some attack ads).

I’m writing all this because I don’t want people to think that right-wingers like Mendoza speak for those of us in the middle on reform.  I support good schools – I think that’s all every parent really wants.