Albany Votes and Anonymous No Longer.

Albany went to the polls yesterday and passed the Albany City School District budget. It looks like the library budget did not pass, although according to their website, they are going to do a recanvass of the voting machines. Below is information taken from the WNYT website:

Albany City SD

School budget passed: 3,555 yes to 3,382 no

Proposition 2 (sale of 270-272 Central Ave.) passed: 4,694 yes; 1,068 no

Proposition 3 (sale of Philip Livingston school) passed: 5,673 yes; 1,017 no

Proposition 4 (no-cost construction project) passed: 4,002 yes; 2,644 no

Proposition 5 (Library budget) FAILED: 3,490 no; 3,462 yes

Library trustees: 2 open seats

• Donna Dixon -- 3,383 (winner)
• Timothy D. Smith -- 2,706 (winner)
• Felix Mendoza -- 1,408
• Jose M. Lopez Jr. -- 1,318

It's interesting to look at the numbers of votes, the totals are below:

School budget passed: 6937 total votes (3,555 yes to 3,382 no)

Proposition 2 (sale of 270-272 Central Ave.) passed: 5762 total votes (4,694 yes; 1,068 no)

Proposition 3 (sale of Philip Livingston school) passed: 4657 total votes (5,673 yes; 1,017 no)

Proposition 4 (no-cost construction project) passed: 6646 total votes (4,002 yes; 2,644 no)

Proposition 5 (Library budget) FAILED: 6952 total votes (3,490 no; 3,462 yes)

Library trustees: 8815 total votes (people could vote up to two times, so divided in half= 4407.5 although this does not count for bullet voting)

From these numbers, there was clearly a focus on the library budget (there were 15 more votes cast on the library budget vote than on the school budget vote). I'm looking forward to looking at the actual voting tallies as compared to past budget votes to see how much the false propaganda spread by Charter School supporters affected voting.

That's right, thanks to the Times Union's Scott Waldman's reporting, with assurance we can now say that the negative propaganda sent out was sent by Charter School supporters. Specifically, it was sent by School Performance, Inc. Also known as SPNY. As reported by Waldman in the TU (story link here), "Tom Carroll, who founded the Brighter Choice Foundation -- which supports all of the city's 11 charter schools -- is on the board of School Performance Inc., according to the most recent public records available. Chris Bender, executive director of Brighter Choice, has also served on the School Performance board."

A little digging gives the following information:

School Performance, Inc. has been in existence for 6 years (since 2004).

Address: 915 Broadway, Albany NY 12207

Phone number: (518) 533-1696

Mission statement: School Performance enables teachers and administrators to make data-driven decisions such as re-teaching a whole class, providing individual tutoring to a student who cannot keep up, or adding mini-lessons to get a small group of kids caught up. School Performance helps schools gather, analyze, and act on information quickly and regularly in order to move schools--and students--to the next level

I'm not sure how sending out obscenities through the mail achieves this mission. But thanks to you School Performance, Inc. I now know my 7 year old can read damn and my 5 year old can sound it out. You are a disgrace to everyone in the educational establishment, especially the children, families, and teachers in Brighter Choice schools. I usually prefer a positive look at things, but this is beyond. These people clearly only care about the money they are making, they don't care about our city or our children.