Seattle parents are encouraging others to cancel their subscription to the Seattle Times, which is anti-union, anti-teacher, anti-public school, and pro-charter.
Dora Taylor writes on the parent activist blog:
“The majority of people I speak to are thoroughly disgusted with the Times and its biased editorials and selection of topics headlined that seem to reflect the opinion of the moneyed few rather than providing real information.
“Bill Gates bought a section of the Seattle Times and titled it the Education Lab. It seemed it wasn’t enough that the Seattle Times was already a shill for charter schools and merit pay for teachers based on test scores, Gates now had his own pull-out section of the newspaper.
“Now parents of students in Seattle Public Schools are fighting mad about the one-sided reporting and editorializing of the teachers’ strike and they are taking action….”
Diane Ravitch's blog 
if only this would happen on Long Island with Newsday.
People have been trying to start a boycott of Newsday for a while now. Please sign the petition and encourage everyone you know to do the same:http://petitions.moveon.org/sign/boycott-newsday-and-stop
Signed… thanks for the link
I wonder if there is a way to encourage some advertisers to join the fight beyond the disruption caused by a drop in subscribers. There are some wonderful web businesses now that buy space for ads and place ads based on what sites are accessed.
That’ll show the reporters, editors, designers, and press workers of Local 37082 who’s boss!
Click to access SEATTLE-TIMES-2013-Contract-Addenda-.pdf
(Don’t worry, they’ve got a great contract that takes them through Jan 31, 2016, and a big newspaper in a place like Seattle would never go out of business.)
You are only partly correct in your analysis Mr. Frowny Face Tim.
Sorry, couldn’t help myself… I was reassigned to teach 5 year olds this year.
http://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/education/school-shutdowns-force-parents-to-find-fallbacks/
Here is the Seattle Time’s latest piece of drivel. It is important to note that parents are backing teachers. Parents are organizing and protesting with teachers, and providing food at picket lines.
It is important to realize that we are in the midst of the Supreme Court ruling striking down I 1240. Organizations that are supported by Gates are furious. They are highlighting the fact that public school children are not in school and charter school children are in class.
I’m confident that the latest Seattle Time’s piece will drivel out at a later date.
The SeattleTimes receives funding from Gates, and we’ve not been hearing about SEA’s advocacy for support services such as counselors and psychologists, lowering special ed caps, providing children with recess etc.
This sounds like a good question:
“On the other hand, I found the response from many charter advocates to also be upsetting. The save our schools posts and demands for a special legislative session went out immediately. Many came from people who have been dead silent about the crippling underfunding of public schools here in Washington State [a situation that has contributed to the ongoing strike in Seattle and a contempt of court charge (and $100,000 daily fine) against the State Legislature].
During the budget crisis of in 2011, here in Tacoma, we closed Hunt MS, McKinley ES, and temporarily closed Wainwright ES. Earlier, but within recent memory, we also closed Rogers (now the site of Green Dot), Gault and Willard. Given that local history, I can’t help but ask: where were all these voices in 2011? Where were you when our school board voted to close three schools serving the Eastside (Tacoma’s most economically disadvantaged neighborhood)? Where were the calls for a special session? Statewide these eight charter schools serve a total of 1,200 students, fewer than four of the five comprehensive high schools in the City of Tacoma. Why are eight charters worthy of a national outpouring of support, but our “common schools” remain perpetually underfunded and allowed to be closed with nary a whimper?”
http://www.natebowling.com/a-teachers-evolving-mind/2015/9/13/on-the-charter-debate-in-washington-and-shabby-adult-behavior
So good to hear!
Excellent question, Chiara. Public schools can all but disappear and nary a whimper but there is hell to pay when these few charters are left to fund themselves. If Gates wants them…let him pay for them…he will dictate the education along with Common Core and SBAC anyway. It is too bad that those parents of the charter students do not know what they are getting themselves into.
It’s not just public schools they completely ignore. It’s charter schools too when it doesn’t fit the political narrative.
17 charter schools closed, abruptly, over one summer in one city in Ohio. All those parents lost their schools with no warning, and every public school kid was also affected because of course public schools are the “backups” for the charter sector, although no one will admit that either.
There was no national outcry at all from the ed reform “movement”. No state official filed anything. Both sets of kids were harmed.
You are correct. Charter school backers are calling for a special session when the state is being held in contempt of court, and being fined at $100K per day.
Backers of 1240 include the Director of DFER- Lisa MacFarlane and Washington Policy Center- Liv Finne.
There are assertions that the Wa. State Supreme Court justices have been bought by WEA. Some are calling for appointed judges.
Can’t drop my subscription now–did in 1996 when the publisher shot his neighbor’s dog. Seattle was still the wild west back then.
Hooray for the Seattle folks. The Seattle Times is well (fill in the blanks).
The big $$$$$ folks want to own everything so they can brainwash and control us for their own selfish and greedy purposes.
The same suggestion to drop subscriptions should apply to the Los Angeles Times and any media that’s not reporting a fair, accurate and balanced story of both sides of the war on public education, teachers and teachers’ unions.
Unfortunately, I’d add the New York Times to the list too.
And Time Magazine and U.S. News and World Report and ….
…and the Washington Post
Except for the Washington Post’s Valerie Strauss, maybe
https://www.washingtonpost.com/people/valerie-strauss
This is interesting from Strauss’s Answer Sheet column in The Washington Post.
Not Bill Gates: Meet Ted Dintersmith, an education philanthropist with a different agenda
https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/answer-sheet/wp/2015/09/11/not-bill-gates-meet-ted-dintersmith-an-education-philanthropist-with-a-different-agenda/
Yes, I worked at the Seattle Times when its workers went on strike in 2000. As we ordinary non-threatening Seattle journalists stood out in the cold with our spouses, children, dogs, grandparents, whoever, publisher Frank Blethen had hired some weird anti-strike company to stand on the newspaper office’s roof in paramilitary outfit, pointing enormous guns at us. Made him look like an idiot to all thinking people. His irrational hatred of unions blinds him to all else, for which reason the Seattle Times should not be anybody’s go-to paper for unbiased education coverage.
Great to see another Seattleite on the thread. Interesting comments. Surely, you must have noticed that there are about 4 Blethens sitting on the Seattle Times editorial board…..:)
I am a parent with two children enrolled in a Seattle public school and I cancelled my subscription the fist day of the strike when the editorial board published their piece that in a nutshell claimed that teachers demands were unreasonable. The next day the Times called me no less than six times asking me to reconsider or to put a “protest hold” on our subscription–no way, not a chance! The Seattle Times isn’t good enough to line my chicken coop!
I’ve been calling the Los Angeles Times good for wrapping fish and that’s it—-for those who fish. I just hope the ink isn’t toxic.
Many of my friends have commented that there isn’t real news anymore. It’s all editorial with the journalists trying to tell me how to think and feel. One of my children commented that he believes that the news is propaganda. My father commented that the news organizations are all bought and paid for and can no longer be trusted to report the real news. My father in law also wondered why the news was so full of stories about local car accidents and empty of real news stories. Both of these men are gone now. I personally do not trust most main stream news sources to report the news without their own brand of bias. And like my father, I believe that the main stream news organizations are owned by the billionaire boys club.
Denver has the same problem. After the Rocky Mountain News went out of business, the Denver Post has been the only mainstream paper in town. They have supported charters, PARCC, and the corporate reform agenda from the beginning, preferring to listen to politicians and business interests rather than educators and parents.
Don,
When I spoke in Denver in 2010-2011, the Denver Post attacked me before I got there
“To learn who rules over you, simply find out who you are not allowed to criticize.” -Voltaire
A related update on what’s happening in Seattle and Washington State:
For those of you who haven’t seen this yet, I’m happy to announce that the following resolution—full text below—was passed by an overwhelming margin, last night, by the 36th District Democrats in Washington State!
I invite and encourage each and every one of you to pass this news around. And if you live in Washington, or know anyone who does, to copy the text for a possible resolution in your own legislative district, or for a letter to any of your elected officials who deal with our K-12 public schools.
We plan to make our elected officials aware of it, and spread the news far and wide that, We Support The Supreme Court’s Ruling, Invalidating
I-1240 and Charter “Schools”!
HERE IS THE EXACT TEXT OF THE RESOLUTION
Resolution Passed by the 36th Legislative District Democrats of Washington State
regarding the Recent Supreme Court Ruling of September 4, 2015.
Whereas, the State Supreme Court of Washington has ruled that the provisions of Initiative 1240, which would have authorized charter schools violate our state constitution and are void;
Whereas, the Supreme Court’s 6 to 3 ruling against the constitutionality of charter schools also includes 1240’s funding provisions, which attempted to tap into and shift a portion of moneys allocated for common schools to the new charter schools;
THEREFORE, the membership of the 36th District Democrats stands in support of the Washington Supreme Court’s ruling of September 4, 2015 and urges Governor Jay Inslee, Attorney General Bob Ferguson, State Superintendent of Public Instruction, Randy Dorn and all members of the Washington State Legislature to fully support the ruling of our state’s highest court and reject any and all efforts to vitiate, amend, or “fix” that ruling, now or in the future.