In Birmingham Schools, More Days Of Drama

Over at Forbes.com, I took a look at the latest round of struggles in Birmingham, Alabama, including just some of the reformy groups that have been busy there.

In 2000, the Black Alliance for Educational Options was launched. Margaret Spellings’s US Department of Education gave them unsolicited grants for three years (2002-2004) totaling $1.5 million; their mission was “to actively support parental choice to empower families and increase educational options for black children.” It was also backed by money from the Walton Family Foundation and the Bradley Foundation, longtime supporters of charter schools and choice.

In 2011, BAEO was working in Alabama, part of the push that eventually brought charter school laws and school choice to the state.

But within a few years, BAEO was splintering and struggling for funding; in October of 2017, it announced it was folding and on December 31, 2017, its Facebook page noted “Today is the last day for us.”

As BAEO’s was winding down, Black Alabamians For Education (BA4E) was founded to continue the advocacy for school choice in Alabama with a mission “to equip, inform and empower Black families with information on accessing a high quality education.” (They actually filed with the IRS as “Black Alabamians for Educational Options.”)

How big is BA4E? They list their address as “Suite #403”at a Birmingham address that Google maps shows as a one-story UPS store. But they have plenty of connections. They were part of the AAA Coalition, a group that advocated for the Alabama Accountability Act, a tax credit scholarship school voucher program. The coalition included many players in the school choice arena, including Excel In Ed (Jen Bush’s choice group), American Federation for Children (the Betsy DeVos choice group), Ed Choice (formerly the Friedman Foundation), Catholic Education Partners (the church’s choice advocacy group), the Alabama Policy Institute (free market think tank), and a couple of charter school organizations.

BA4E’s closest working relationship is with New Schools for Alabama, an organization whose mission is “to support the growth of excellent public charter schools in Alabama.” NSFA’s CEO is Tyler Barnett, who started his career with two years in Teach for America and went on to several choice and reform-related gigs around the country before landing in Alabama. Their work focuses on providing training, development, and technical assistance to launch new charter schools.

NSFA is a successor to Alabamians for Public Charter Schools, a group formed in 2013, and actually filed its 2018 IRD 990 form as the Alabama Coalition for Public Charter Schools, with most of the same directors and with Barnett as executive director. (Barnett does not appear on non-profit registration records for Alabamians for Public Charter Schools, but several NSFA directors do, including Emily Schultz, then of the National Alliance for Public Charter Schools).

In 2019, the Alabama Coalition for Public Charter Schools, “doing business as” NSFA, applied for a grant from the federal charter school grant program (CSP). That’s the grant program that has faced criticism for waste and fraud and a lack of oversight; last year, the Biden administration added regulations to put additional guardrails on CSP’s spending of public tax dollars.

For NSFA, the CSP program represented a considerable financial boost. Their IRS 990 form shows that in 2015-2017, the group took in a total of around $80,000 in gifts and grants. In 2019, that total was over $2 million. NSFA reported that their CSP grant would be for $25 million.

In their grant application, NSFA explained that it would “quarterback” with the lead partners: the state department of education, Insignia Partners (a consultant group that works extensively with charter school operators), and Black Alabamians for Education. Their application promised two “primary strategies”— first, to “recruit, train and support aspiring charter leaders to start new schools in Alabama” with an emphasis on Birmingham, Montgomery, Mobile and Huntsville, and second, to recruit successful charter management businesses to start new schools in Alabama. The big goal: launch 15 new charter schools in 5 years, targeting those four communities.

BA4E would be responsible for grassroots activism and community engagement; the proposal said that “the organization will commit 100% of its time” to NSFA’s project. In other words, BA4E was to work full time for NSFA, harnessing its mission “to equip, inform, and empower Black families with information on accessing a high-quality education” in service of NSFA’s mission to use its CSP grant to seed new charter schools in Alabama.

In particular, BA4E was tagged to “build a presence” and “identify potential supporters” in the community, targeting regions in which potential leaders and allies for charter school growth could be cultivated.

The main contact for monthly check-ins would be Neonta Williams. An army veteran, Wiliams had worked in several community service jobs before landing at the Nashville office of BAEO as Family and Community Organizer. When BAEO folded, Williams spent six months leading Nashville Rise before founding BA4E.

And then, she got elected to the board of education for the public school district. Read here for more of the story.