IPS Board Member Resigns For Another Education Profiteering Role

IPS school board member Caitlin Hannon was already one of the infamous education profiteers who seized control of the board after outside education corporate interests funneled large sums of money into the past two IPS school board elections to install their puppets. Hannon has served as executive director of Teach Plus, which had a contract with the school district. Hannon announced today she's resigning her position on the board to accept a new position with yet another nonprofit organization bankrolled by the education profiteers.

Hannon has accepted an education entrepreneur fellowship from the Mind Trust where she will launch yet another nonprofit organization that will provide a shared enrollment system for IPS parents to enroll their students in either an IPS school or a charter school using one form. Chalk Beat notes that it's an idea Hannon has championed as an IPS board member. The current IPS board members will choose Hannon's replacement, which you can bet will be yet another person bought and paid for by the corporate interests that have a financial investment in the policies made by the state's largest school district.

Not by coincidence, an advisory group on which Hannon served released a report in May urging IPS and Indianapolis charter schools to consider partnering to create a one-stop approach for enrollment. Innovation in Public School Choice, which authored the report, was populated with all of the usual education profiteer suspects comprising its board. Hannon's Teach Plus organization actually commissioned that study. It's just another blatant example of self-dealing these folks have set up for themselves which you won't read about in any of the mainstream news media organizations in Indianapolis. They're all in the tank with these corporate elitists who use the education system as an open spigot for financing their education profiteering opportunities.

UPDATE: A reader's comment prompted us to provide a little more information on The Mind Trust, which was set up at the behest of former Mayor Bart Peterson as part of his plan to bust the teacher's unions and transfer power to him and his wealthy crony friends who want to get rich off insider education deals just like the Peterson family earned its fortune from insider real estate deals. According to The Mind Trust's most recent tax filing, it has about $7 million in revenues. It's CEO is David Harris, a former Peterson mayoral aide. He earns about $275,000 a year. The executive VP, Ken Bubp, earns about $175,000 a year. Another executive, Ethan Gray, earns about $135,000, while his assistant, Carrie Douglas, is paid close to $110,000 a year.

Teach for America is its biggest grant recipient, receiving a little more than $2 million annually. You may recall The Mind Trust installed one of the Teach For America beneficiaries, Jason Kloth, as Mayor Greg Ballard's deputy mayor of education before he recently left to work for the Aspen Global Leadership Network, another one of these shadowy NGOs established by New World Order sycophants who have pretty much bought off every elected official of any significance in this country. The New Teacher Project pulls down a grant of a little more than $1 million annually. Caitlin Hannon's former employer, Teach Plus, received a grant of $20,000. Other grant recipients include: Entrepreneurial Ventures ($100,000), Phalen Leadership Academy ($550,000), Christel House ( $250,000), CEE Trust ($960,000), Tindley Accelerated Schools ($250,000)  Kipp Indianapolis ($400,000)  and College Summit ($10,000).

The Board of Directors consist of the usual suspects:

Bart Peterson (Chairman)
David Harris (CEO)
Jean Blackwell
Robert Manuel
Ann Murtlow
Mark Miles
Joyce Rogers
Andrew Rotherham
Ariela Rozman
David Shane
Jane Pauley
Robert Clifford (Treasurer)
Ethan Gray (Executive Director of CEE Trust)
Ken Bubp, Executive VP
Carrie Douglas (Deputy Executive Director of CEE Trust).
Bill Shrewsberry
Don Stenson

Make no mistake about it. The Mind Trust is nothing but an education reform scam whose well-heeled backers have succeed in convincing elected officials who are more concerned about where they're going to raise their next campaign contribution than the quality of our schools to transfer hundreds of millions of our tax dollars annually into the pockets of the education profiteers who don't give a damn about improving the quality of schools, notwithstanding the never-ending press releases masquerading as legitimate news reporting to which we're treated in the Indianapolis Star and the IBJ about the good work they're doing.