Hedge fund magnate John Paulson — who reportedly made $5 billion personally last year — reacted recently to Occupy Wall Street protesters by talking about how much the top 1% of New York City families pay in income taxes. What he didn’t talk about was how the same 1% made nearly half (44%) of all the income in the city, or that when all state and local taxes are taken into account, the richest taxpayers in fact pay a lower percentage of their total income in taxes than do people in the middle.

Meanwhile, with unemployment levels stubbornly high, median family income declining and public services under budget pressure, times are getting tougher for almost everyone else.

Public school class sizes in New York City — already far higher than in surrounding communities — are getting bigger still. Our annual survey in September showed that an estimated one-quarter of the city’s public school children were in one or more oversize classes as the school year began. After-school programs are disappearing. Art and music have become things of the past in our schools. Hundreds of school aides are on the unemployment line.

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Overall, the Foundation’s largest grants last year went almost exclusively to organizations which support vouchers and charter schools, including over $2 million dollars to two New York state organizations with the most explicit commitments to supporting for-profit corporate charter schools and weakening teachers unions — the New York Charter Schools Association and the Brighter Choice Foundation. And interestingly enough, the $1.3 million that Eva Moskowitz’s Success Charter Network received from Walton almost exactly matches the amount the Network spent on advertising her schools last year — an average of $1,300 per new student:

Walton Foundation 2010 Grant Totals (for Selected Groups):

• Teach for America (National) — $16,652,436
• KIPP Foundation — $8,650,000
• New Teacher Project — $2,250,000
• Education Reform Now, Inc. — $1,325,000
• Success Charter Network — $1,310,000
• New York Charter Schools Association (NYCSA) — $1,045,459
• Brighter Choice Foundation — $995,332

Given the troubling history of Walmart’s anti-union activities as an employer and their current efforts to expand into New York and other cities with long histories of defending workers’ right to collective bargaining, some scholars are wondering whether the Foundation’s large donations to TFA and other education organizations are a way of getting double value for their money. With these grants, are they both buying goodwill by spending money on schools in cities hit hard by the current economic crisis (which is where they’d like to expand), and continuing to focus their giving primarily on organizations which support their own corporate and non-union model of school reform?

Dorian Warren, a professor of political science at Columbia University’s School of International and Public Affairs and author of a forthcoming book about Walmart, believes the seven communities the Walton Family Foundation is targeting with Teach for America are relevant for another reason: they are all potentially overlap with Walmart’s expansion plans.

“Besides six of the seven communities being comprised primarily of people of color, I wouldn’t be surprised if these also happen to be their store expansion targets,” Warren told The Huffington Post. “A lot of their giving is related to their expansion efforts, but I don’t know for certain whether this is one of those instances.”

Philip Serghini, director of community affairs for Walmart, was more direct in response to another reporter’s question about the company’s recent donation to a charter school in Harlem:

“We’ve made no secret that we want to be part of New York City and we want to be part of the community. One way to do that for any corporation is to meet with, get to know and ultimately make donations to charities that are important locally.”

As other scholars point out in response to the TFA donation, however, the Walton Foundation’s efforts to expand the scope of its giving beyond the most explicit supporters of school privatization have the potential to complicate the ability of their grant recipients to distance themselves from Walton’s more conservative agenda:

Jeffrey Henig, a professor of political science and education at Columbia University’s Teachers College, sees a pattern of giving by the Walton Family Foundation. Its philanthropy, he says, while initially focused on hard-core conservative issues like vouchers and privatization has since expanded to include initiatives like charter schools.

“While groups like Teach for America have done a good job of blurring partisan boundaries, I can’t help but think of this alliance as a pairing of strange bedfellows,” said Henig. “I keep waiting for what I expect are some serious disagreements on core principles to flare up and bring the implicit tension finally out into the open. But so far, it really hasn’t happened yet.”

For Diane Ravitch, a New York University education historian and former U.S. Assistant Secretary of Education, the pairing raises more than a few alarm bells.

“The Walton Family Foundation is the most conservative-leaning in the education philanthropy business,” she said. “Their giving is almost entirely to charters and vouchers. So now you have charters and vouchers and Teach for America — or the mainstreaming of their right-wing agenda.”

A postal record, obtained by a Times Union Freedom of Information request, lists the customer who paid for the mailings as “School Performance.” 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.

Two mailings sent out by Mail Works, a direct to mail company, went to 32,178 city residents, records show. Postage alone cost $6,766. However, the total cost spent by the charter affiliate to defeat the Albany budget is likely far greater because a third mailing went out and the push poll was conducted over a few weeks. The professionally printed cards could have also cost thousands of dollars.

Carroll’s name is familiar to those who follow charter school issues in New York, since he is one of the most prominent advocates of a corporate, anti-union charter model which attracts money from conservative funders such as the Walton Foundation — which also provides money to the group which sent the fliers.

Carroll did not respond to requests for comment and Bender has denied that the Brighter Choice Foundation was involved in the mailings. Though that is technically true because School Performance is a separate entity, the organization has received a significant amount of money from Albany’s charter schools. Its board members also run many of Albany’s charter schools.

School Performance, which provides management services to Albany’s charter schools, is listed as being funded entirely by public money on its 2009 tax return. Some of the money for the organization has come from Albany’s charter schools, which means Albany taxpayers may have supported an entity that has encouraged them to vote down the district’s $206.5 million budget proposal. Money has been contributed to School Performance by the Walton Family Foundation, the charitable arm of Wal-Mart.

Given that SUNY’s Charter School Institute found that Carroll’s own charter school relied on the Albany school district to admit special needs students who were refused admission to Brighter Choice Albany Prep, Carroll’s opposition to fully funding the district’s budget is ironic at best. And his decision to do so through anonymous fliers and polls (paid for by a company funded primarily through the district’s own money via charter management fees) is inexcusable.

Thursday, May 12, 4 p.m.

Rally at City Hall, followed by a march down Broadway and through Wall Street

Financial institutions wrecked the economy, and we paid for it. Now, if the mayor gets his way, they will get another round of tax breaks, on top of record profits and bonuses.  The UFT will join scores of other community groups and unions to say no to layoffs and cuts and to demand that the big banks and millionaires pay their fair share. Our assembly location, City Hall, is one of eight different gathering points. Together, we will all converge with a unified message to demand a fair budget.

More information is at the May 12 website and the May 12 Facebook page. On May 4, the coalition released a report and a plan for a People’s Budget.

Class sizes citywide rose a average 2 percent, or 0.6 student per class. The increases were especially large in elementary schools, up to 23.7 students per class from 22.9 last year, and middle schools, up to 27 kids per class from 26.1 last year. High schools had a small increase.

The 4.2% budget cut is to blame this year, but this marks the third consecutive year of increases. Through 2008, class sizes were decreasing — very slowly, but they were decreasing.  But since then they’ve been up in every grade every year. Since 2008, the average third grade class has swelled by 13 percent. The average first grade class is 9 percent larger. This wasn’t what the Campaign for Fiscal Equity decision was supposed to bring about.

Class Size Increases, School Years 2008 to 2011

For more information, go to ProtectingOurKids.org.

It’s early May, and things in Albany are really tough right now. Our state is facing yawning budget gaps, while political stalemate stymies any effort to raise significant new revenues.

In this environment, the UFT’s message to our elected representatives in the Assembly and Senate has been clear: they must oppose the governor’s drastic proposed cuts to the education budget. Lawmakers are considering a $600 million cut to state funding for our city’s public schools. If we lose that much state funding, class sizes will skyrocket, tutoring and after-school programs will be eliminated, and great teachers will be laid off.

Kids don’t get a second chance at an education. If we allow our school system to be decimated like it was in the ‘70s, another generation of young New Yorkers will lose their opportunity for a better life.

In this crisis atmosphere, we have urged our mayor and schools chancellor to stand with us as we struggle for justice for New York City’s school kids. The UFT helped save our city from bankruptcy in the 1970s, when our pension finds began buying up bonds from the Municipal Assistance Corporation, and we stand ready to do whatever it takes to save our schools now.

It has been disheartening indeed to see the city administration treat this crisis as a opportunity to move a long-held political agenda — end teachers’ seniority rights, expand privatization in the form of charter schools, and so on. While they quibble about who should be laid off, we’re the ones standing with our students’ allies in Albany saying NO ONE should be laid off. Some of you may remember the years in which thousands of New York City school children were taught by uncertified teachers. Those days are over, thanks to historic salary gains and a stable employment situation. In an atmosphere of layoffs, New York City would again face a teacher recruitment crisis once the economy turns around. Few educators want to start working for an employer who’s going to turn around and fire them when the budget gets tight.

Things are tough for teachers all over. The entire high school staff in Rhode Island’s poorest school district was fired this winter because of test scores — and the president publicly endorsed the firings. In Florida, where the gap between the widely respected National Assessment of Education Progress scores and state test scores is sixty points (!), both houses of the legislature passed a bill to end tenure and convert all teachers’ contract to one year, renewable on growth in student scores on the state tests. (This measure, thankfully, was vetoed by Florida’s governor after a statewide outcry by parents and teachers.) In the District of Columbia, seniority layoff rules were abolished eight years ago, leading to a five-year turnover rate of close to 50% and an unrelenting decline in student achievement. In New Jersey, the new governor has tried to pit parents against teachers, urging voters to reject school budgets unless teachers agree to pay cuts. And here in New York City, we’ve worked without a contract since November, with no progress made by the Public Employees Relations Board’s mediator.

Whenever you’re reading this, please pick up the phone and call your Assembly Member, State Senator, and City Council Member. Tell them that you stand with your children’s teachers for a strong public school system. Remind them that election cycles don’t matter to our kids; good schools do.