A new grassroots group has formed, created by suburban parents in Ohio who recognize that Governor Kasich’s “reform” agenda is destroying their community schools.
Here is a report from a regular reader:
| Great news from Toledo:
http://www.ourtownsylvania.com/Education/2013/10/02/shrinking-school-budgets-reviewed.html “Toledo area school district treasurers Wednesday participated in a panel discussion reviewing the shrinking budgets of public school funding, coupled with increasing state-mandated programs.
These are districts that are outside Toledo. They’re strong public schools with a real individual and unique community identity, each district. I’m not surprised they’re finally pushing back on the damage being done to their existing public schools by “reform”, because that is the issue in my rural district: reform is damaging our existing public schools. We’re being sacrificed to reform. What’s amusing is this is where Michelle Rhee is from, what is called “suburban Toledo” by national media but what are actually individual towns that aren’t really “suburbs”. Rhee of course attended the pricey and exclusive Maumee Valley private school rather than attending the public schools she derides, but this is her backyard. This is the Northwest Ohio Friends of Public Education Facebook page. It looks like they’re allied with the group in Ft. Wayne, Indiana. Ft Wayne is about 2 hours from Toledo. |
Diane Ravitch's blog 
This is great news. We are in rural NW Ohio. Here is their website.
http://www.nwofpe.org/
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“Washington Local Treasurer Jeff Fouke said in fiscal year 2013 the district gave a chunk of its budget to charter schools. Last year, $2.6 million went to students who were not attending Washington Local schools, he said.”
That is an enormous amt of $$ for 1 district!!!!……
Every school district treasurer should have and share this information with their community. My guess those #s will spin every head in America!!!…..
Lets get this done in Oakland, one of the places they started this charter madness in ernest about 10 yrs ago…when our new Broad supe was installed by the state of CA …. and he wanted to close 12 schools I think … the communities rebelled and he was only able to close about 7 or 8 ….. which, miracle of miracles, re-opened that fall as new CHARTER schools … we now have over 30 charters … and no $$$ for public schools … same happening all over the country … classes up to 30-32 …. no supplies … no librarians, no art (Chicago fired all their art teachers this summer …. ….
But lets find out exactly how much each DISTRICT is paying .. that will make an interesting list of #s.
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It’s really compounded by the poor quality of Ohio charters.
It has reached the ludicrous stage here where we’re pulling funding from strong public schools in order to open weak charter schools.
No one is benefitting. Public school students are harmed AND charter school students are harmed.
Watching this unfold over the last decade has been a real education, I’ll tell you.
Was there ANY planning or thought put into this at the outset? It takes real effort to damage existing public schools AND create a separate system of schools that are often worse than the public system. Who wins here, exactly? The small group of parents who value “choice” over everything else?
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The only thought or planning that went into OH’s current educational mess was Republican’s thinking, “Now just how am I going to make sure my contributors and good friends get paid off with general education revenue?”. That’s it. That’s the whole story.
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Sorry, Shirley! Surely you’re aware that for the last 5 years a dimocrap has held the national bully pulpit and his administration deems it necessary to pump more growth hormone$$$ into the beast that is the charter school sector, better said, private school sector or privatized school sector. And what did the Ohio Dims do to stop or fight that beast?
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Oakland, all you have to do is download their budget and audited actuals for a few years and I guarantee you will find what you are looking for. I am about ready to prepare videos to explain to people how you get budgets and what to look for and how to do public information requests. If you do not know the money do not waste your time on anything else because you will not have it if you do not know the budget. I am amazed at the total lack of any financial knowledge on this blog. No one has responded to any of my financial information given to you in Philadelphia, Chicago or D.C. and N.Y. What is the problem? Is it that you are lazy? Don’t you have 5th grade math skills or a total lack of ability to comprehend? I really do not get it. I do not make my money from this industry. It costs me to do this. It is your income and you do not seem to care so why complain? I thought educators were for educating including your self especially in your own industry as that is what it is when not in fantasy land. It is one more part of our society and now we know that the teachers, administrators, State Dept. of Ed., academics are all losers and did not care about the massive truancy in K-8th grades in California. No educator of any kind did this it was the Attorney General of the State of California, Kamala Harris. .
This is how they hid this. When you look at school district budgets and on the CDE website you only see the difference between enrollment and Average Daily Attendance (ADA) for the district not for grade level. So when you see lots of these and all you see everywhere is totally stable enrollment at the K-8 level and then it drops off I, and obviously many others if anyone else even looked, assumed that these were elementary students and they come to school until the 8-9th grades then they stop coming. No, they hid this to protect the losers who are responsible. First responsibility goes to the failed academics. They are paid and have tenure to do this work as it is assigned to them along with the teacher training. Do you really think that they have any excuse for not knowing? This was a plan to hide their incompetence as long as possible.
THANK YOU KAMALA HARRIS!!!!!
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George,
You are quite correct when you say “I am amazed at the total lack of any financial knowledge on this blog.” With me being a prime example. And that is where you come into play by doing what you’re doing with making videos available to figure out how to go about getting that information. So let me thank you in advance and I’m looking forward to them.
Each of us here can have a special function in fighting the edudeformers as we need to attack the beast on many levels. I try to do my part by exposing/explaining the inherent falsehoods involved with standards, standardized testing, and the “grading” of students and how those practices continue to harm students on a daily basis as much if not more than district officials lying through their teeth about budget issues. Many others point out many of the other problems with the privatization movement of those who wish to make hay off the backs of the students and the taxpayers.
You keep going at it on you end and I’ll (and I’m sure many others) will do it on our end. If there is a message to take from the edudeformers it’s “Keep pounding the same message (in their case mostly lies) over and over and over and over and over until it becomes an unquestioned truth. This blog is the place to begin to fight $$ with FACTS, whether they be financial, epistemological/ontological, philosophical, justice, equity, etc. . . issues. And then we have to take all those out to our fellow educators, administrators, parents, students and the public and not ever let the issues rest. Ultimately I believe it’s going to take legal means in the realm of the civil rights of the students to drive the stake into the beasts’ heart.
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Here is the link to the Northeast Indiana Friends of Education’s blog: http://neifpe.blogspot.com
and to our Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/NEIFPE
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