David Koch speaks at an Americans for Prosperity Foundation event in 2013. The Libre Initiative, one of the group's newest campaigns, is on track to make contact with more than 100,000 Hispanic households this year on school choice. | Phelan M. Ebenhack/AP Photo How the Kochs are trying to shake up public schools, one state at a time The push by Libre represents a new front in the fight by targeting Hispanic families.

With school choice efforts stalled in Washington, the billionaire Koch brothers’ network is engaged in state-by-state battles with teachers’ unions, politicians and parent groups to push for public funding of private and charter schools.

One of the newest campaigns is the Libre Initiative, a grassroots drive targeting Hispanic families in 11 states so far, under the umbrella of the Charles and David Koch-funded Americans for Prosperity, a powerful conservative and libertarian advocacy group.


While the Koch network has long been involved in school choice battles, the push by Libre represents a new front in the fight by targeting Hispanic families — and a recognition that with Congress gridlocked, it’s on the ground at the state level where the network can disrupt the educational status quo. The Koch message on schools is shared by Education Secretary Betsy DeVos, a longtime ally.

“Across the [Koch] network, there’s a greater commitment to advancing this because we do see it as critical to advancing a free and open society,” Libre’s Executive Director Jorge Lima told POLITICO.

The group has had some initial success — for instance, helping to thwart a moratorium on charter school expansion in New Mexico. But it’s also created bitter divisions in the Latino community and led to accusations the Kochs are trying to undermine public education — and even in some cases, to subvert the Democratic process.

“Don’t let so-called Hispanic organizations such as the Libre Initiative deceive you ...” Geoconda Arguello-Kline, secretary-treasurer of the Culinary Union, wrote last year in a guest column published in the Las Vegas Sun. “Libre is not looking out for Nevadans’ best interest; it is working to benefit its billionaire Koch funders.”

Despite such criticism, the group is hunkering down for the long haul in states it views as ripe for change even as it eyes new states for expansion. Lima says it’s on track to make contact with more than 100,000 Hispanic households this year on school choice.

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Besides Nevada and New Mexico, Libre is organizing in Arizona, Colorado, Virginia, Florida, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Texas and Wisconsin. Its recent efforts, with other Koch-backed groups, include:

— A planned “six-figure” spend in Nevada on “deep canvassing” in Hispanic neighborhoods to build support for educational savings accounts, which enable families to use state tax dollars to pay for private school. Although such a program was passed by the Nevada Legislature in 2015, it never took effect after the funding mechanism was ruled unconstitutional.

— A lawsuit brought by Americans for Prosperity, among others, aimed at stopping a 2018 Arizona referendum asking voters whether they want to keep a school choice law passed earlier this year. The law would expand the availability of education savings accounts to more than 30,000 families — a move that public school supporters fear would divert millions of dollars from financially stretched public schools.

— A “six-figure” Libre and Americans for Prosperity campaign in Colorado this summer to promote charter schools and education savings accounts and another ahead of a Nov. 7 school board race by the Americans for Prosperity Foundation to push choice-friendly issues.

— A seven-figure investment In Virginia’s gubernatorial race by Americans for Prosperity that includes a video criticizing Virginia Lt. Gov. Ralph Northam, a Democrat, for his opposition to education savings accounts.

— Mailings in Spanish and English supporting a Florida law that encourages charter schools in communities with low-performing schools. After Gov. Rick Scott, a Republican, signed it into law, the state Democratic Party said he’d “declared war on our public schools.”

Mike Petrilli, president of the conservative-leaning Thomas B. Fordham Institute, said it’s noteworthy the Koch network has singled out school choice.

"It’s telling us they have good reason to believe this is an issue that’s resonating with Latino families,” he said.

He also gave the initiatives strong odds at changing at least some state policies.

“Most of these states have had very active school choice movements with other organizations on the ground trying to expand programs,” Petrilli said. “ … It could be enough to put some of these ideas over the top.”

The state tug of wars come as a federal push for school choice has slowed, with Congress balking at the few private school-choice expansion measures that DeVos has sent to Capitol Hill.

The Trump administration’s budget called for a $250 million private school choice program and an initiative that would have allowed Title I funds to follow students to a new school — both ideas that were rejected by House and Senate appropriators. The House and Senate bills did boost funding for charter schools — but not by the $500 million the administration sought.

Nonetheless, Koch organizers view DeVos as a national booster for their cause. Americans for Prosperity has long worked in tandem with the school choice advocacy group that DeVos cofounded and previously chaired, the American Federation for Children — even sponsoring its annual conference. Libre also endorsed her as secretary.

“It does help to have someone like Secretary DeVos as leading this conversation on such a national level, so that when we knock on that door it literally is not the first time that they heard about charter schools or education savings accounts,” Lima said.

Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers union and a fierce critic of the Kochs and DeVos, said the Koch-funded push is about destabilizing public schools. She said she thinks austerity efforts to drastically cut school spending in states like Kansas backfired, so the Kochs are emphasizing private school choice instead.

“They and Betsy DeVos are twins,” Weingarten said. “They are about destroying public education and destroying the foundations of opportunity for working folk.”

Like DeVos, Koch organizers insist the push isn’t about dissolving public education, but about making more options available to Hispanic and other families.

And like DeVos and her husband, Charles Koch has been a longtime supporter of the conservative American Legislative Exchange Council, which has advocated for state laws that encourage private school choice expansion.

The Charles Koch Foundation is also a donor to Harvard’s Program on Education Policy and Governance, which recently hosted a school choice conference featuring DeVos as the keynote speaker.

It’s unclear what, if any, coordination might exist between the Education Department and the Koch network. An Education Department spokeswoman did not respond when asked for comment. Lima said Libre is in contact with the department, but the group’s direction stems from polls and conversations with Hispanic families, who say they care deeply about education.

Hispanic families want more options for their children, he said, and the “only thing that’s really changing the game right now” is giving parents a say in “having greater access.”

Achievement gaps for Hispanic students persist. Even as they’ve made gains, there are still gaps with their non-Hispanic white peers hovering around 20 points on the National Assessment of Educational Progress test known as the “nation’s report card.” The graduation rate for Hispanic students is 78 percent, compared to the national rate of 83 percent.

In many ways, Lima suggests, Libre is playing a long game.

In Arizona, the referendum vote set for 2018 would ask voters to decide whether they want to keep a law that expands education savings accounts. Arizona Gov. Doug Ducey, a Republican, backed the law and said this summer during a three-day Koch donor retreat in Colorado Springs that, “I need the power of the network” to get it passed, the Denver Post reported.

Oral arguments on the referendum challenge are scheduled to be heard Dec. 1 in Maricopa County Superior Court.

Dawn Penich-Thacker, a spokeswoman for Save Our Schools, a parent group that helped collect the signatures to challenge the Arizona law, said the push by Libre in her state is disingenuous.

She said that families aren’t told there are financial limits to what would be available to them for private school tuition, which would be around $5,000.

She said many families would be surprised to learn that might not cover all the costs of their kids’ private schooling, especially when the students get to middle or high school.

She also said Libre is participating in a “systemic degrading” of public schools, and stirring fear.

It makes families feel like participating in a private school program “is the only good thing I can do for my children,” Penich-Thacker said.

In Nevada, after now-Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto (D-Nev.) came out in opposition to education savings accounts last year when she was state attorney general, Libre ran digital ads accusing her of “lining up against Latino families and in support of special interests.”

“Hispanic children are trapped in overcrowded and failing schools as a result of the system Cortez Masto is defending,” the group said.

Others in the Latino community, including Arguello-Kline of the Culinary Union, came to Cortez-Masto’s defense.

“We absolutely do not support the Koch brothers coming into Nevada,” said Ruben Murillo, president of the Nevada State Education Association teachers’ union, saying education savings accounts would siphon millions from public education.

“Our message to the Latino community is, what guarantee do you have that you’re gonna have good quality schools where they are accepted and where they are able to work with them on their individual needs?” Murillo said.

In Colorado, the site of the pro-charter school drive, the term “school choice” is being used by Americans for Prosperity “to push a movement to divert public dollars from public schools and undermines the public’s confidence in our public schools,” said Susan Meek, communications director at Great Education Colorado, a group that backs public education in Colorado.

Meek said that not all “school choice” is the same, and this “strategic decision to use this term has been highly effective in hiding the privatization movement behind the guise of charter schools.”

DeVos has not publicly weighed in on any of the Koch-backed initiatives, but she emphasized the action in the states in her recent Kennedy School speech.

“Washington, and in particular the U.S. Department of Education, just needs to get out of the way,” she said. “That's because the real future of choice is in states. It's their futures to shape. And it's already underway today.”