Fund for the Public Schools Funnels Money for Children to Politics

Updated 10/24 am

Any intrepid reporters out there to check this out?
We got this in the mail.

I was checking out the financial information on the Fund for the Public Schools.org website and I made an interesting discovery. On IRS form 990 return of organization exempt from income tax in schedule A part 3 question 1 it asks, "During the year has the organization attempted to influence national, state or local legislation, including any attempt to influence public opinion or legislative matter or referendum. The Fund for the Public Schools answered "No" to this question. This was a false statement because they are currently running a television campaign urging that mayoral control be continued. Is the fund for public schools violating the law by engaging in a public media campaign, can their tax exempt status be revoked?

Joel Klein, Caroline Kennedy, Mortimer Zuckerman and Wendy Murdock are on board of directors.

Comment: A campaign that costs millions, money that could have gone to the classrooms. Children First, Indeed.

"Workshop model's" comment below (#1) made me wonder if the Evander ad is new and a response to Eduwonkette's exposure of the Evander miracle where she nails BloomKlein by pointing out that the kids in the new small schools are a very different skill level than the kids forced out into other large schools that will be branded as "failures" and closed. We had a follow-up post with comments from Andy Wolf''s column in the NY Sun where he cited Eduwonkette's work and also comments by Leonie Haimson, who has been talking about the sham of the Fund for Public Schools ads.

By the way, UFT members would have hoped the UFT with all its resources would make a point of these possibly illegal ads, but you don't attack your collaborators.