At the meeting in Austin of the Network for Public Education, I singled out a large number of people and groups who are turning the tide on behalf of the public good. One of them was Austin’s own Sara Stevenson, a librarian at a middle school. Sara reads the editorials in the Wall Street Journal and responds whenever they lash out at teachers or public schools. This keeps Sara very busy, because public education, teachers, and teachers’ unions are a favorite whipping boy/girl of the WSJ, which hates unions and anything that is not yet privately managed.
Sara was previously added to the honor roll for her courage and persistence on behalf of public education.
Today, Sara came to the defense of Mayor Bill de Blasio, responding to Peggy Noonan and the WSJ’s barrage of attacks on him for denying Eva Moskowitz the eight charters she wanted (she got five) and not allowing her to take public space away to grow a middle school (194 of her “scholars” were displaced); if she had gotten what she wanted, children with special needs would have been pushed out to make room for Eva.
One thing wrong in Sara’s letter: Eva’s salary is $475,000, not $400,000. Her 22 schools have fewer than 7,000 students.
Sara writes:
LETTERS
De Blasio’s Focus on the 96% Is Right
Bill de Blasio, is more concerned about the 96% of NYC school children who attend public schools than the 4% who attend charters.
March 14, 2014 6:19 p.m. ET
Regarding Peggy Noonan’s “The Ideologue vs. the Children” (Declarations, March 8): Bill de Blasio is more concerned about the 96% of New York City school children who attend public schools than the 4% who attend charters. And it’s true that charter schools benefit from Wall Street hedge-fund managers’ huge cash infusions. Eva Moskowitz, head of the Success Academy charter-school chain, makes around $400,000 annually to run 22 schools. In contrast, my superintendent in the Austin Independent School District, Meria Carstarphen, oversees 117 schools comprising 85,000 students and makes $283,000 annually. Furthermore, my superintendent is held accountable by a publicly elected school board of nine members who must approve her decisions. How about Success Academy pulling children out of school for a field trip to Albany for a political rally? Imagine what Ms. Noonan would be saying if those “evil” union teachers took their students out of learning opportunities for a day of demonstration. There is a lot more to this issue than she and the Journal are acknowledging. Dig deeper. See the larger picture.
Sara Stevenson
Austin, Texas
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Great points. I’m still stunned that the parents did not object to the field trip. Perhaps they feared displacement. That was so inappropriate.
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It was nothing more than a propaganda show peddling children for people who want to exploit them. The grossest part is that Cuomo has teamed up with right-wingers like Noonan on this issue.
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Bravo, Sara Stevenson! Thank you for being the ultimate fact checker and fighting for public education. We librarians are all about facts, information and truth. We were the first search engines.
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You still are the “first” search engines. Google just doesn’t have its customer service down. Anyone who thinks computers replace librarians is a fool.
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Clearly I need to get to know Sara Stevenson better.
Maybe I missed discussion here — forgive me if I did — and I’ve not blogged it yet myself, but we have a major excrement storm brewing in Dallas.
About 20 years ago some wag got a law passed in Texas that makes a path to take an entire school district the charter route. Privatized, no public votes on boards, etc., etc. It’s cleverly called “home rule,” though there is not a hint of home rule in the law. Corporate rule is what is called for.
The law has never been tried.
But Dallas Mayor Mike Rawlings, with the assistance of Enron surviving billionaires and a lot of tony folk who can afford to hire a few hundred petition signature gatherers, are proposing to turn Dallas Independent School District into Texas’s first charter district.
They’re gathering signatures now. They need 5% of eligible voters in DISD to sign (not registered voters), and then the existing school board (headed by Broad-grad Mike Miles) appoints a commission to write a charter. That charter is then voted on by the voters. If at least 25% of eligible voters vote, the election is valid. The backers hope to get this done to put it on the ballot this November, to get the 25% eligible voters out.
Chief advantage of a charter? Supporters mostly refuse to talk, but a few have let slip that they can extend the school year a lot, cut teacher pay, and fire teachers.
So far, not a lick of a hint of an advantage for students and their achievement.
I’ll blog it soon, but I’m training Scout leaders today.
Sara Stevenson, we need your experience and knowledge.
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Ed, I’ve been following the story in Dallas as I’m from there. It’s appalling. I read recently that Rawlings got huffy and walked out of a meeting that was supposed to rally support among the Hispanic community. I don’t think Dallas ever recovered from the busing of the 1970s. I was in high school then but went to Highland Park and was therefore unaffected. It’s really appalling that Rawlings is trying to take over the entire school district. Keep up the good fight. We in Austin are behind you.
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Texas State Democratic Party today passed a resolution opposing the “privatization” of Dallas ISD. It’s heating up.
Yes, Rawlings left the meeting because “uninviteds” asked questions he didn’t like. Others in the takeover group stayed. Telling stuff: Newspaper again noted as “advantages” of charter district, longer hours for everybody, and fire teachers more easily.
Dallas Morning News story quoted someone opposing the attempt to keep Dallas citizens fearful.
Glad to know you’re following the issue.
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Let’s not forget who owns The Wall Street Journal. Media Corp, and the CEO is Rupert Murdock who is an InBloom partner with Bill Gates. InBloom stands to make a possible $20 billion annually off of Common Core standardized tests.
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Good posting.
Please excuse the small correction and some calculations.
Eva Moskowitz makes $475,000 a year for 6,700 students. Do the math: that’s $475,000 ÷ 6,700 = $70.90 (rounded off to the nearest penny) @student@year.
Link: http://www.nytimes.com/2014/03/05/nyregion/de-blasio-and-builder-of-charter-school-empire-do-battle.html?_r=2
Carmen Fariña, NYC Schools Chancellor, get $212,614 for 1,100,000 students. **She gets a pension of $199,579 @year, unrelated to her present salary, which is less than the $250,000 @year of two of her predecessors, Cathie Black (3 months) and Joel Klein (8 years).** $212,614 ÷ 1,100,000 = $0.19 (rounded off to the nearest penny) @student@year.
Link: http://nypost.com/2014/01/05/new-schools-boss-to-collect-double-de-blasios-pay/
So on a @student@year basis, $70.90 ÷ $0.19 = 373 (373.157894… rounded off).
So the bank account of Eva M increases at the rate of 373 @student@year to 1 @student@year of Carmen Fariña.
Let me make this a little more graphic. For every 100 students@year, Carmen F deposits $19 in her bank account. For every 100 students@year, Eva M amasses $37,300.
Which, according to the new math as promulgated by the charterites/privatizers and their edubully enforcers and educrat enablers and accountabully underlings means that Carmen F is in it for the money, while as for Saint Eva…
An old dead Roman guy nailed this over two thousand years ago:
“For greed all nature is too little.” [Lucius Annaeus Seneca]
😎
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Isn’t it ironic that Governor Cuomo made it quite clear that NO school superintendent should have a salary as high as HIS, but doesn’t bat an eye at Eva Moskowitz paying herself almost a half million dollar salary while he comes out in full support of her schools? Hypocrisy for sure.
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I’m sure Cuomo would say that he’s talking about public school districts and that Eva Moskowitz doesn’t run a public school district. She’s a CEO of a private company that only calls itself a public school to collect as much as possible from taxpayers. Once the money hits her bank account, it becomes private sector property and no longer belongs to the public.
We are witnessing the creation of a legal double standard—legalizing robbery and corruption.
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Thanks, everyone, and of course, Diane. I originally wrote $450K salary for Moskowitz in my letter because that was the information I had found. The letters editor changed it to “around $400K.”
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