June 29, 2016
PRESS RELEASE
On Wednesday, June 15, 2016, the West Contra Costa Unified School District Board of Education, in closed door session, approved a three year contract with Matthew Duffy to become its ninth permanent superintendent. Mr. Duffy will officially begin on July 6. We want to reiterate two requests made before the School Board on the eve of this announcement.
First, Mathew Duffy must provide a Public Financial Disclosure Report. Prior to being awarded a contract to serve in WCCUSD, Mr. Duffy was senior executive director at New Leaders for New Schools, an organization which received from the Chamberlin Family Foundation a substantial ‘philanthropic contribution’ of at least two hundred fifty thousand dollars; and received from Jennifer Moses and Ron Beller a contribution of at least five thousand dollars. Given that Chamberlin Associates (closely related to the Chamberlin Family Foundation) built the Aspire charter campus on 3040 Hilltop Mall Rd. with imported non-union labor and that Mr. Beller, executive officer of Beta Caliber charter schools proposes to buy the former Adams school site on 5000 Patterson Circle, Richmond, Mr. Duffy must dispel all semblance of impropriety by providing the requested report.
Second, Elizabeth Block and Val Cuevas, current WCCUSD School Board members must recuse themselves from voting on the proposed sale of the former Adams School site given that both of them received hefty sums of money from the Chamberlins to finance their respective campaigns to the school board. According to a news report by Theresa Harrington, Block received $87k and Cuevas $59k. We demand transparency and accountability.
We remain firm in our commitment to defend public education and support the community’s rejection of the proposed sale to the charter industry.