There will be a very important meeting tonight in Pittsburgh to learn about the crucial school board meeting.
Be there if you care about public education!
“School Board Town Hall Forum
“You believe in good school boards, right? You’re voting in the primary on May 19th, right? With 4 of 9 school board seats on the ballot, Pittsburgh voters will be electing several new faces – and the new board of directors will be making some pretty big decisions. They will choose the next Superintendent. They will approve budgets and potentially make decisions about school closures and new charter school applications. They will set policies that impact school climate, learning conditions, student discipline, restorative justice practices, and high-stakes-testing, among many other things.
“So it matters who you elect to the school board! Please come to the Town Hall Forum tomorrow to meet the candidates and ask them your questions. Wednesday, April 29th from 5:30 – 7:30 pm at the Pittsburgh Theological Seminary’s Hicks Memorial Chapel (616 N Highland Ave, Pittsburgh, PA 15206). Kevin Gavin from 90.5 FM (WESA) will be our moderator. There’s free parking, refreshments, and childcare is available if you RSVP to gpspittsburgh412@gmail.com. What more could you ask for?
“This is civic engagement 101. Please be there and be a part the decisions that will shape the future of our public schools for years to come.”
Diane Ravitch's blog 
CROSS POSTED AT :http://www.opednews.com/Quicklink/If-You-Live-in-Pittsburgh-in-Best_Web_OpEds-Budget_Decisions_Diane-Ravitch_Important-150428-513.html#comment543060
WITH THIS COMMENT:
With 15,880 school districts those who are engineering the failure of our public schools depend on you NOT to participate. With the purposeful lies that are dispensed, and the endless opinions, YOU need to listen for yourself and reflect to find the truth. Paul Krugman writes: “we live in an age of unacknowledged error.”
He reminds us that there are “paid pundits” & “supposed expert” and “maybe just an opinionated billionaires” “weighs in on major policy initiatives”, and makes “strong predictions of failure.”But when nothing they predict actually comes to pass, they do not acknowledge their errors”
I agree, and where the schools are concerned… their purpose was to confuse the people with all the noise…the noisiest being Duncan and his sycophants Rhee, Klein, Gates, Broad etc etc ad nauseous.
Where schools are concerned, they predict all manner of disasters and then they actually make it happen with VAM & Common Core crap.
YOU need to participate locally, because one by one, just as the GOP did with this genius strategy of taking out the vulnerable places, in order to turn all the states RED, they take out the schools district by district.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MiAq9sIvTJE#t=119
Go, Vote!…and go the NPE (Network for PUBLIC EDUCATION) to stay informed about the assault on out INSTITUTION OF PUBLIC EDUCATION.
http://www.networkforpubliceducation.org/news/
LikeLike
Thank you so much for posting this, Diane. This is a very important meeting for Pittsburgh parents, students, teachers and people of conscience.
LikeLike
Thank you, Diane; agreeing both with the post and with Steven Singer’s thanks. One note: this meeting is not tonight/Tuesday, but Wednesday, April 29 — so if people are just reading this on Wednesday morning, they have not missed it!
LikeLike
A new report just came out from the Alliance to Reclaim Our Schools and the Center for Popular Democracy. The waste and mismanagement of charters are costing taxpayers in just fifteen states $200 million dollars. If this level of waste and fraud can’t catch the attention of the media, what can? People in Pittsburgh must fight to keep their public schools. http://www.scribd.com/doc/263415503/New-Report-Finds-Over-200-Million-in-Fraud-and-Abuse-at-Charter-Schools
LikeLike
Dr. Ravitch, update on Dallas ISD lawsuit. Read articles and court documents. You just cannot make this up. Meeting to decide fate of Mike Miles is Friday, per court ruling.
http://educationblog.dallasnews.com/2015/04/decision-expected-today-in-dallas-isd-trustee-lawsuit.html/
LikeLike
http://www.dallasnews.com/news/education/headlines/20150428-judges-ruling-paves-way-for-vote-on-miles-future-in-dallas-isd.ece
LikeLike
It might help to know that the lawlessness in Dallas was rampant everywhere. If you have never gone to this site, where the stories from the mouths of teachers across the nation for over a DECADE…NOW IS THE TIME to know this is NOT just about Dallas.
ISN’T IT TIME YOU LEARNED HOW LONG THIS HAS BEEN GOING ON
IN NYC STILL; allow to lies to prevail, and to harass teachers, and to allow superintendents to literally jail teachers… and T NO POINT DOES SHAME KICK IN!
http://protectportelos.org/does-workplace-bullying-continues-my-33-hrs-behind-bars/
and the same in LA:
http://www.perdaily.com/2010/02/yesterday-i-was-removed-from-class-in-handcuffs.html
They could do this (and I wrote this in 2004) a decade ago:
http://www.perdaily.com/2011/01/lausd-et-al-a-national-scandal-of-enormous-proportions-by-susan-lee-schwartz-part-1.html
and HERE IS WHY:
http://citywatchla.com/8box-left/6666-lausd-and-utla-complicity-kills-collective-bargaining-and-civil-rights-for-la-s-teachers
The top-down reformers have been SHOOTING DOWN TEACHERS for OVER a decade, so the schools would fail.
http://www.perdaily.com/2014/06/lausds-treacherous-road-from-reed-to-vergara–its-never-been-about-students-just-money.html
Teachers do not riot, but they SHOULD TEARDOWN the hypocrisy and the bureaucracy, in the courts…. But it is very expensive… and should have been done by the UNIONS!
http://www.perdaily.com/2014/07/former-ctc-attorney-kathleen-carroll-lays-out-unholy-alliance-between-union-and-public-education-pri.html
AND SO…. here’s the thing>>>> the PUBLIC HAS NO IDEA that this WAR ON TEACHERS is still ongoing… so the schools will FAIL (bereft of the genuine PROFESSIONAL PRACTITIONERS who the defamers and reformers call ‘teachers’
The writer of this book a Montana teacher was set up by her principal to be assaulted in her own classroom, and nothing happened to him… she sued, and won, at great cost… and write this:
LikeLike