News

Christie aide latest to use private emails. The use of private emails adds Christie, a possible Republican presidential candidate in 2016, to a growing list of administrations that use private email accounts and other digital services to conduct official business. In turn, state and federal officials, regardless of political party, have sidestepped public records laws meant to keep government activities transparent. Topeka Capital Journal

What’s At Stake In Privatizing Education. Obama’s contribution to the privatization campaign has centered for the most part on education. But before we can evaluate its impact, it is necessary to consider the different forms privatization can take in relation to schools, since it can occupy different positions on a wide spectrum of possibilities.  CounterCurrents.org

TX: Education Reform Group Mobilizes for 2014 Elections. Texans for Education Reform, whose legislative package included measures to encourage the growth of online education and charter schools, has formed a political action committee, according to filings with the state ethics commission. The new committee will allow the group, which spent at least $645,000 on a team of 16 lobbyists during its first legislative session, to put some of its resources toward political candidates.  Texas Tribune

DC: New DC library chief sees MLK as ’empty canvas’. In his new job, the 44-year-old Reyes-Gavilan will have the opportunity to revamp the District’s biggest library — the Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial Library — seeing through a planned renovation of the four-decade-old structure designed by modernist icon Ludwig Mies van der Rohe. What Reyes-Gavilan will undertake is just as momentous and complicated in political, financial and administrative terms —  building support, most likely, for a public-private partnership that finances the redevelopment in part by adding floors to the Mies structure, then leasing part of it to a private entity. Washington Post (blog)

GA: Budget, education among top Ga. legislative issues. Both Deal and Ralston have signaled a willingness to at least start a discussion about privatizing some child welfare services, looking to Florida as an example. San Francisco Chronicle

NH: Finding funding next step for bill to increase charter school aid. A bill to boost charter school aid that passed the House this week faces a tough road in the House Finance Committee, tasked with determining where to find the more than $2 million the bill would cost. Concord Monitor