John Ogozolek, a teacher in upstate New York, watched a news show and hit the ceiling. He wrote:
“CBS reporter Scott Pelley put Governor Rick Snyder on the hot seat yesterday, asking him repeatedly why he apparently still doesn’t have a handle on the specifics of Flint, Michigan’s poisoned water. http://www.cbsnews.com/news/michigan-gov-at-least-100-kids-affected-by-lead-in-flint-water/
“PELLEY: So fair to say you don’t know what the lead content is in the water?
“SNYDER:Well, again — we don’t want people to believe it’s safe. Extensive testing is going on, has been going on for some time. And we are seeing improvements in the water supply. But we don’t want people to believe it’s appropriate to drink at this point in time, and that’s why I’m proud to have the National Guard out there working hard.
“PELLEY: I don’t understand why you can’t give us the latest testing data and what it shows for the water in Flint. What is the number?
“SNYDER:I don’t have the number at the top of my head of the very latest data. And it varies by parts of the city.
“PELLEY: I would think that the governor of Michigan would have those numbers at the top of his mind right now.”
“Later on , Pelley changes the subject to the deplorable conditions in Detroit’s public schools and the protest by teachers to call attention to the tragic situation: a classroom ceiling caving in, maggots in a toilet and little kids bundled up to ward off freezing temperatures as they try to learn.
“CBS PELLEY: In terms of the sickout in the Detroit schools [Wednesday], what is your message to the teachers?
“SNYDER: I would hope you would stop harming the children. I appreciate the fact that people have strong feelings on different issues. But to do it at the expense of affecting the school day for the children, I don’t think that’s appropriate.”
“Boy, oh, boy….it’s times like this when I feel like kicking in my TV screen. It’s a 30-year-old set, about the size of big pumpkin. Makes me want to punt it across the front yard.
“WHAT???? Is this guy Snyder crazy? He oversees the poisoning of an entire city’s water supply including what appears to be permanent injury to children…..and then he turns around and has the gall to blame teachers for “harming” kids. These are the same teachers who are trying to call attention to the actual damage that is being done to children day after day in Detroit’s public schools….harm that Snyder is still turning a blind eye to.
“Meanwhile, in another story, there was President Obama prowling around the Detroit Auto Show, taking time out to criticize the handling of the water situation in Flint. Teachers’ union members were on hand to protest outside in the bitter cold.
“Union spokeswoman Ann Mitchell told The Associated Press that teachers “couldn’t miss the opportunity” with the president in the city to say they “really need someone to help focus on the schools.”
“We have got to stop this whole business by Snyder, which is an attempt just further the charters and further, really, the destruction of education in the city. We are determined to win that fight. The whole next generation relies on it,” Cass Tech teacher and activist Steve Conn told CBS affiliate WWJ.” http://www.cbsnews.com/news/detroit-schools-sue-to-get-teachers-back-in-classrooms/
“News to President Obama: your policies have helped aid and abet the destruction of public schools in places like Detroit. If you want to see who is also responsible for the disasters in Michigan, look in the mirror. It’s happened on YOUR watch.”
I am tired of blaming presidents, congress and state elected officials for the destruction of public education. It is We the People who need to look in the mirror. It is We the People who stopped electing state and federal officials with an intractable commitment to our children and to providing a globally enviable public education. We the People are the solution or the problem. We the People recognize the obligation and opportunity that ever state and federal election and “vote” holds. Democrat or Republican, the failure is OURS!
There’s a wonderful article in November’s Harper’s Magazine that states, if it can be summed up, that emotionally-appealing phrases such as “We the People” as well as others that were hammered into us since grade school are merely myths that serve the wealthy and ruling classes only so they can walk to the bank with all the money.
Okay, so what are you, specifically, doing about the situation? Are you out there protesting? Are you actively campaigning for (a) grassroots candidate(s)? Which candidate(s)? How much money are you donating? How often do you write to/call/visit your elected officials or visit your legislature in session? Do you keep up on every single bill moving through Congress and your state legislature, including all the amendments and tiny add-ons?
What you’re not understanding (or willfully ignoring) is how We the People have been taken by stealth on all fronts. Yes, we can blame our elected official for this because they’re the ones in bed with ALEC and Gates and the Koch brothers and the Waltons and all the other billionaires and corporations who have planned this for decades. ALEC writes the legislation, all the thousands of pages of it, intentionally slipping in completely unrelated passages and amendments that are nearly impossible to catch. Our politicians bring these bills to a vote before any debate – certainly any public debate – has had a chance to happen. The next thing you know, we have dreadful new laws in place and we’re already starting in a disadvantaged position trying to undo the worst of the effects, all while We the People are trying to survive and feed our families and maintain our homes on stagnant or declining wages and almost no benefits.
So I’ll thank you to stop blaming the victims, please.
Google my name and you will see what I do. I walk my talk every single day.
I do think we’re responsible to a certain extent.
I generally think level of responsibility matches level of influence or power, though, and one vote just isn’t that much influence or power so it’s a hard case to make.
“What you’re not understanding (or willfully ignoring) is how We the People have been taken by stealth on all fronts.” Do any readers actually believe that America was taken by stealth when it comes to education reform???? Come on!!!
“Do any readers actually believe that America was taken by stealth when it comes to education reform???? Come on!!!”
Right, the rephormers have come right out from the beginning and said that their goal is to privatize public education for profit and they’ve allowed ample opportunity for debate on that point. What planet do you live on?
NCLB was pretty close to 1000 pages if I recall. ESSA is more than that. No one really knows what’s in there. Experts like Mercedes Schneider have spent hours pouring through the law and still there’s no consensus on what it says. Similarly for state and local legislation and ordinances – usually passed with little notice with tons of amendments and riders slipped in. It’s happened over and over again.
And then there’s the charter authorizations that happen in secret, behind closed doors, often at the state level when the local district has refused the charter.
Yes, this has been a stealth take-over of public education, not to mention democracy as a whole. If they had done it any other way, they couldn’t have pulled it off.
Marcie… you have made a career of advocacy and earn your living doing this. It is commendable to be advocating for special ed – very commendable. You can probably go home at night without a lot of surprises like going home to a neighborhood shooting or dealing with a rat infestation etc… But there are many folk who work as hard as you do and whose careers are not advocacy-oriented and in fact they may make a lot less than you do and live in run down neighborhoods and work unstable jobs just to put food on the table. There are those that work 60 hour weeks in white color jobs. When you drop, “We The People”, you act as if there is a level playing field and that everyone’s workday can accommodate advocacy or that everyone has ample time to “advocate” (and if you are poor it might be after working three jobs). That is just not the case! THERE HAS BEEN A LOT OF TRICKERY FROM THE CORPORATE WORLD which has assured that “We The People” has a new connotation (we the business leaders). Laws have been subversively enacted to ensure that the “We The People” you address are powerless. Politicians are beholden to the special interests of corporations and super wealthy individuals thanks to Super Pac rulings and this has profoundly denied voices of “We The People”. Are you ignoring this? Have you forgotten about Citizen’s United? You do a great disservice to The People of this nation when you place blame as in your comment. It sounds like just another “sound byte”. I would rather you have said that you have dedicated your livelihood to advocacy and wish to find ways to help others who may not know how to advocate – to find ways to do so. If my teacher’s contract gave me “X” number of hours a week for advocacy, you’d bet I would be doing this. But alas, I dedicate all my working hours (and most of my time at home) to the students I serve. A construction worker is busy all day doing hard labor and probably goes home, needs a shower and falls asleep not too long after dinner. We are all in this together but we have equal but different ways of contributing to society. Stop the blame game. When I read many of the quality education blogs, there are suggestions about how to help… links to writing this or that organization or Congressman in regards to particular issues etc. This assists me to do what I can. What links are you providing other than to request people Google you? Just thinking…
I would nominate Arne Duncan and Barack Obama as two stealth bombers who are trying to destroy American public education.
Snyder’s erratic behavior to hem-and-haw accountability is predictable. The one who poisoned the Flint residents is the one who’s got intoxicated most among all. Perhaps it’s time to put ‘Sick-Note’ tag on his forehead before it’s too late.
I just don’t think anyone can deny they drew attention to the conditions. It was a success.
If they don’t want people to walk off the job maybe someone could have listened to them for the years they were following the process and “acceptable” channels and were completely ignored?
The only thing it has in common with the Flint water situation is that political leaders ignored and sometimes denigrated the people on the ground who were pointing out problems. The whistle blowers aren’t the problem. The leadership is the problem.
They’re all but teaching people to take extreme measures by ignoring them UNLESS they take extreme measures.
Why are our elected leaders so completely and utterly non-responsive? Maybe we could focus on “reform” there for a while. Start at the top instead of the bottom. They can always go back to bashing teachers and labor unions if leadership reform doesn’t work.
Amen, Chiara. Amen!
The man does not seem to have wisdom of hindsight. The approach to the decaying school infrastructure is the same approach he took when he first heard about the water contamination- it’s all in your head people, see the water is drinkable!
“I appreciate the fact that people have strong feelings on different issues. ”
Boy, that’s a laser-like focus on their specific concerns. Can he get any more vague and meaningless? Can he possibly make it clearer he hasn’t heard a single word they said and is dismissing the actual physical conditions in those schools as “feelings”.
What I love about the (bipartisan) mania for “running government like a business” is how they seem incapable of delivering basic government services.
It’s the worst of both worlds. It’s not good government and it’s not good private sector. It’s this awful hybrid that we seem to be stuck with. Can we have two sectors again- a public sector and a private sector? Can we hire some people who don’t have complete contempt for the public sector they’re supposed to be improving?
Hey Diane, are you coming to the LUVFEST at the AFT Convention in Minneapolis? Their failure to demand locals organize and get ready for action has left teachers high and dry while the unions bloviate about the “reform partnership”. Where is the union leadership? The State AFT? The locals? The stewards. Everyone is twiddling their thumbs and planning Christmas and End of Year parties. Is that all the union is now?
Toni,
I won’t be there. Lead the way. It’s on you.
It will likely be a Hillary lovefest. https://preaprez.wordpress.com/2016/01/21/will-the-nea-ra-be-nothing-more-than-a-hillary-pep-rally/
Okay, so the governor probably read this, because they all slavishly follow their press and he does too:
“Residents’ complaints about their water’s foul odor and odd color were met with irritation from Michigan officials, according to emails released by the governor.”
He’s doing it again with the schools?
As a retired Micigan educator, I felt the governors’ comment about DPS teachers was particularly galling, especially since Detroit schools have been state run since 1999. They have fallen farther into debt, and the conditions have continually deteriorated under the state’s management.
Governor Snyder and his minions have systematically chipped away at DPS by stripping money away from public schools and bestowing it upon the charters that proliferate in the Detroit area.
Heckuva job, Snydley
Here’s some commentary directly from Detroit PS teachers–the situation is much more complex than crumbling buildings and overstuffed classrooms. The entire system has been taken over by an Emergency Manager:
http://blogs.edweek.org/teachers/teacher_in_a_strange_land/2016/01/teacher_protests_unethical_and_union-led–or_evidence_of_professional_courage.html
ANd here are more teacher voices–both from those who were protesting via sickout and those who went in to work:
http://blogs.edweek.org/teachers/teacher_in_a_strange_land/2016/01/whats_going_down_in_detroit_today.html
What has happened in Detroit is now a template for the rest of the nation–witness the IL governor’s call for an Emergency Manager system there.
I wold like to have met you. Ya think you could get invited??
I will wait for the invitation
The tragic situation in Michigan is the result of that toxic libertarian/Ayn Randian so called philosophy: greed is good, trickle down free marketism, deregulation, privatization, limited government, corporatism and the destruction of the commons.
I agree that we as teachers have to bear responsibility. Many rely too heavily on unuion leadership and their spin. Others stood silent or stopped attending union meetings, and in the case of NYC less than 30% of in-service teachers voted in the last union election leaving the majority of the votes to be decided by retirees—many who are out of touch with classroom realities.
If teachers in your school are no talking about fighting Reforms, or Detroit teachers, etc. then there is a giant problem.
NYC teachers can undermine Randi and her ties to Reforms by voting for Jia and MORE. It’s a start if you are not the type who wants to be an activist for public education. Just don’t be surprised when then giant rock falls on your head if you decide to sit this election out.
I hear you. It was my first convention and it was very orchestrated and very much a LUVFEST. See you in Minnesota!
Typical rhetoric from Gov. Snyder attempting to do damage control. Pretty arrogant of him to blame teachers for harming kids when his education policies and emergency managers have been harming kids for 6 years. Sadly, that is what we are used to here. Trust me, I know. I teach in Michigan.
Christie with his last breath this week used his air time to 1) bash teachers and unions, 2) bash politicians in favor of funding public worker pensions, 3) push for reduction in estate and business taxes (on the wealthy), and 4) speak out of his rear on helping addicted (and psychiatric?) individuals in NJ, after he cut funding for said programs and closed group homes and cut funding for the mentally ill, and lastly, a big push for MORE charters. What. A. Turd. I cannot wait until he is voted out of office and handed his rear on a platter. He should be ashamed of his record and how he kowtows to his benefactors. He makes me sick.
Oh, sorry, i lost the point of this comment for a moment. OF COURSE, everything is the teacher’s fault. I hope Snyder is comfortable with his new friends when he gets indicted and sentenced to prison…along with his dear friend Mr. Early.
Well, it looks like Governor Snyder is something of an expert on and at harming children….
what happened to all the money that was suppose to go to schools to keep them running Did the government put in there pockets or what?