Montclair, NJ, is a suburb of New York City that has long been known for its excellent public schools. In recent years, however, the town has been shaken by a fight over corporate reform. The battle intensified when the school board hired a Broadie as superintendent.
Here is the latest report from the front lines:
“How far will corporate ed-reformers go to silence those who speak against the corporate takeover of their schools?
“That is the question residents of Montclair, NJ are asking themselves after the Monday, March 14, 2016 Montclair Board of Education meeting, where they learned that their former BOE had been “[s]erving subpoenas on public schoolteachers in class. Reading them their Miranda rights on school grounds. Using taxpayers’ money to hire investigators to search school employees’ computers late at night.” http://www.nytimes.com/2016/03/19/nyregion/montclair-still-feels-strife-from-a-school-test-posted-online-in-13.html?_r=0
“And compiling an “enemies list” of 27 parents, teachers, and principals names to be searched by the international security firm Kroll, Associates, including a dissenting Board of Education member, the President and Executive Board Members of the local education association, founding members of the grass roots, pro-public education group Montclair Cares About Schools, and parents who had attended MCAS issues forums or commented on social media. http://baristanet.com/2016/03/montclair-boe-more-allegations-questions-and-an-enemies-list-of-names-from-assessmentgate/
http://baristanet.com/2016/03/montclair-emails-paint-picture-of-clandestine-operations-and-confusion-over-assessment-investigation/
“These actions all took place under cover of an investigation about district assessments in 2013 locally referred to as “Assessmentgate.” This blog posted about Assessmentgate which was conducted while Superintendent Penny MacCormack, a graduate of the Eli Broad training program, was in charge of the Montclair schools. MacCormack was Superintendent from Nov. 1, 2012 until she abruptly resigned and left the district in the spring of 2015.
“The Assessmentgate investigation was started after district “quarterly assessments” were seen posted on a scavenger site called Gobookee. MacCormack and her reform controlled BOE maintained that the posting had to have been the result of an insider “leak,” and passed a Nov. 1, 2013 resolution authorizing the BOE to undertake an investigation casting a “wide net” to find the person(s) responsible.
“Teacher Syreeta Carrington testified at the Monday March 14, 2016 at the Montclair Board of Education meeting, that she was
… the teacher who first alerted the district to the availability of the tests online, [and] read a letter for Casey La Rosa, [a Nationally Board Certified teacher] which described ongoing harassment by the attorney for the BOE during the investigation period, including La Rosa being read her Miranda Rights during a class break and repeated harassing emails and phone calls which resulted in her experiencing panic attacks. [La Rosa subsequently resigned from the district.]
http://baristanet.com/2016/03/montclair-boe-more-allegations-questions-and-an-enemies-list-of-names-from-assessmentgate/
“The community always maintained that there had been no leak. An internal IT review by Alan Benezra on October 26, 2013, the day after the district learned of the postings, reported that the assessments had not been posted with proper password protection and were probably scraped by the scavenger site.
“A Nov. 5 email posted online after the March 14th BOE meeting revealed that District Business Administrator Brian Fleischer concluded that :
“much like [BOE member] David Cummings indicated, the URLS for those assessments could have been found through a search, and the URLS for the assessments were not themselves password protected. ..It is therefore possible that no one ever hit ‘send’ or otherwise deliberately uploaded our URLs or PDFs to Gobookee, but rather that Gobookee itself found and ’stole’ the assessments through its own search engine.”
http://baristanet.com/2016/03/montclair-emails-paint-picture-of-clandestine-operations-and-confusion-over-assessment-investigation/
“In spite of this information, MacCormack and her reform dominated Board stretched out the harassing and intimating investigation while racking up bills for the district to pay.
“You can watch a tape of the Monday March 14, 2016 Montclair Board of Education Meeting where a long line of teachers and members of the public raise these troubling issues and ask their current sitting BOE to clarify what happened in their district, who was responsible, what the investigation cost, and the extent to which civil liberties and the runnings of their district were disrupted. Community members are also seeking assurances that this type of conduct has ended. http://vp.telvue.com/player?s=montclair.
“The underlying emails were posted at a local online news outlet and can be read here http://baristanet.com/2016/03/montclair-boe-more-allegations-questions-and-an-enemies-list-of-names-from-assessmentgate/ and here
http://baristanet.com/2016/03/montclair-emails-paint-picture-of-clandestine-operations-and-confusion-over-assessment-investigation/
“None of the public comments at the March 14th BOE meeting or emails can be found in the NYT report of the meeting. The New York Times article does, however, contain extensive quotes from Shelley Lombard, one of the former Montclair BOE members who favored the Assessmentgate investigation. The article does not identify Ms. Lombard as a current representative of Montclair Kids First, a reform organization, represented by Shavar Jeffries, who heads DFER.
“The community now knows what the activist parents and educators suspected — that the precious resources of time, money and leadership that should have been dedicated to students, classrooms, paraprofessionals, teachers and professional development were systematically and strategically diverted into spying, surveillance, lawyers, intimidation of educators and the criminalization of dissent — all in the name of the achievement gap! What a clever, and twisted, set of tactics by corporate reformers.
“Now that these emails have surfaced, will the current “good” Board of education collude and cover up, or will they acknowledge the history of financial and ethical abuse of power in order to help the town heal and move forward?
“Will the people of Montclair receive the answers they deserve?
“Stay tuned.”
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Wow – the fascists among us!
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Unbelievable! This is the United States of America?!? Oceania has nothing on this Orwellian crew.
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Guilty until proven innocent. If there has to be that much security around tests, then the tests are clearly ineffective tools to measure learning. This reminds me of the many purges in history from Falange to Khmer Rouge to Putin. We are becoming a police state under oligarchs. And as always, teachers are the first targets. Maybe this is the flaw Kurt Gödel saw in our Constitution that allowed a dictatorship.
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I’ve been watching the latest Montclair Board Meeting, and for sheer entertainment valued alone, you can’t beat private citizen David Herron’s testimony in front of the board. From his entrance accompanied by Queen’s “Another One Bites the Dust” to his exit where he holds a shovel aloft demanding that he Board keep digging into what and why the on-going McCarthy-ist spectacle has been unfolding.
Trust me on this, folks. It’s quite a performance.
It’s takes a bit to find it, however
Follow these steps:
Step 1) CLICK HERE
http://vp.telvue.com/player?s=montclair
Step 2) On left hand side of a frame, there’s a video screen
for whatever video is selected to be watched (which has an
expand to full screen option, which should be used)
On the right hand side, there’s a playlist with three drop down
windows, the one most to the right is “Playlists”.
CLICK: “Playlists”
Step 3) the fifth “Playlists” category from the top is “Education”
CLICK: “Education”
Step 4) At the very top of this list is the latest Montclair Board Meeting
“Board of Education Meeting: March 14, 2016”
CLICK: “Board of Education Meeting: March 14, 2016”
Step 5) Expand to FULL SCREEN To do so, you
CLICK: icon of diagonal arrows, in lower right corner;
Step 6) Click PLAY, then on the timeline below,
CLICK at about 59:33
Then watch and enjoy.
I also suggest you watch the other public commentors as well, who are equally powerful, though not as entertaining.
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The speaker immediately following Herron is equally compelling. She was the fellow teacher / union rep. who accompanied one of the teachers who were “read their Miranda rights in her classroom” and this speaker claimed that she herself was asked “McCarthy-era” style questions. She mentions that both she and her husband, were also on the “Enemies List”, even though her husband was a private citizen.
Again, to get there, follow these steps:
Step 1) CLICK HERE
http://vp.telvue.com/player?s=montclair
Step 2) On left hand side of a frame, there’s a video screen
for whatever video is selected to be watched (which has an
expand to full screen option, which should be used)
On the right hand side, there’s a playlist with three drop down
windows, the one most to the right is “Playlists”.
CLICK: “Playlists”
Step 3) the fifth “Playlists” category from the top is “Education”
CLICK: “Education”
Step 4) At the very top of this list is the latest Montclair Board Meeting
“Board of Education Meeting: March 14, 2016”
CLICK: “Board of Education Meeting: March 14, 2016”
Step 5) Expand to FULL SCREEN To do so, you
CLICK: icon of diagonal arrows, in lower right corner;
Step 6) Click PLAY, then on the timeline below,
CLICK at about 61:00.
The next speaker after this teacher gets off a great line: “Hiring Kroll to investigate this is like hiring Goldman Sachs to count your lunch money.”
Like the rest of LAUSD, I’m on Spring Break, which I usually spend part of the day watching videos from the library.
The availability of this video makes my planned running to the library to check out a DVD totally unnecessary.
It’s that good.
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Jack, Glad we in NJ can provide stimulating diversions during your spring break. The sad thing is, Montclair has been a respected school district, one which offered magnet schools to counteract segregation issues.
Have you recently checked Bob Braun’s Ledger re lead in Newark Pub Schools? It’s well worth reading while you have time.
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I hope that you don’t think infer from my postings any condescension or any blanket dismissal of all that’s good in Montclair schools. There’s plenty, and unfortunately, there would have been a lot more “good” had you not been infected and invaded by the “Broad virus.”
Out here in Los Angeles, we had our own version of Penny McCormack & her ilk invade and spread the most toxic corporate education reform poison throughout the district — “Dr.” John Deasy. It will take a decade or more to undo the damage that he and Broad did to this district while in power… and are still trying to do out of power — spend a billion dollars to force priivatization-thru-charter-school-expansion down the throats of an unwilling public and unwilling parents.
Read about the “Broad virus” here (NOTE this is five years old):
———–
“Those of us who have experienced the ‘leadership’ of L.A. billionaire Eli Broad’s corporate-trained superintendents send Chicago our condolences. We have been there, done that, with scars to show for it, and nothing in the way of real academic or positive gains for our schools and kids.
“What’s striking is the similarity of the reigns of terror and error of these Broad ‘graduates.’ Disturbingly so, in fact.
” Many of the above earned No Confidence votes from their district’s teachers, and from parents too.
“All meted out a top-down dictatorial approach. Most alienated parents.
“Many closed schools.
“A number had questionable audits on their watch.
“More than one had false or questionable data to support their reforms.
“All commanded large salaries with perqs, while at the same time slashing services for kids and closing schools in the name of financial scarcity.
“A number of them avoided informing the elected school board of their plans or actively withheld information from them, effectively bypassing democracy.
“Scandal, controversy, animosity followed them all, inevitably out the door.
“To help our fellow school districts throughout the nation, here is a guide to diagnose whether your school district has come under the influence of the Broad Foundation (and what you can do about it).”
– – – – – – – – – – – – –
“How to Tell If Your School District is Infected by the Broad Virus:
– – – – – –
“Schools in your district are suddenly closed.
“Even top-performing schools, alternative and schools for the gifted, are inexplicably and suddenly targeted for closure or mergers.
“Repetition of the phrases ‘the achievement gap’ and ‘closing the achievement gap’ in district documents and public statements.
“Repeated use of the terms ‘excellence’ and ‘best practices’ and ‘data-driven decisions.’ (Coupled with a noted absence of any of the above.)
“The production of “data” that is false or cherry-picked, and then used to justify reforms.
“Power is centralized.
“Decision-making is top down.
“Local autonomy of schools is taken away.
“Principals are treated like pawns by the superintendent, relocated, rewarded and punished at will.
“Culture of fear of reprisal develops in which teachers, principals, staff, even parents feel afraid to speak up against the policies of the district or the superintendent.
“Ballooning of the central office at the same time superintendent makes painful cuts to schools and classrooms.
“Sudden increase in number of paid outside consultants.
“Increase in the number of public schools turned into privately-run charters.
“Weak math text adopted (most likely Everyday Math). Possibly weak language arts too, or Writer’s Workshop. District pushes to standard the curriculum.
“Superintendent attempts to sidestep labor laws and union contracts.
“Teachers are no longer referred to as people, educators, colleagues, staff, or even ‘human resources,’ but as ‘human capital.’
“A (self-anointed, politically connected) group called NCTQ comes to town a few months before your teachers’ contract is up for negotiation and writes a Mad Libs evaluation of your districts’ teachers (for about $14,000) that reaches the predetermined conclusion that teachers are lazy and need merit pay. [ ‘The (NAME OF CITY) School District has too many (NEGATIVE ADJ) teachers. Therefore they need a new (POSITIVE ADJ.) data-based evaluation system tied to test scores… ‘ ]
“The district leadership declares that the single most significant problem in the district is suddenly: teachers!
“Teachers are no longer expected to be creative, passionate, inspired, but merely ‘effective.’
“Superintendent lays off teachers for questionable reasons.
“Excessive amounts of testing introduced and imposed on your kids.
“Teach for America, Inc., novices are suddenly brought into the district, despite no shortage of fully qualified teachers.
“The district hires a number of ‘Broad Residents’ at about $90,000 apiece, also trained by the Broad Foundation, who are placed in strategically important positions like overseeing the test that is used to evaluate teachers or school report cards. They in turn provide — or fabricate — data that support the superintendent’s ed reform agenda (factual accuracy not required).
“Strange data appears that seems to contradict what you know (gut level) to be true about your own district.
“There is a strange sense of sabotage going on.
“You start to feel you are trapped in the nightmarish Book Five of the Harry Potter series and the evilly vindictive Dolores Umbridge is running your school district. (Seek centaurs and Forbidden Forest immediately!)
“Superintendent behaves as if s/he is beyond reproach.
“Superintendent reads Blackberry (Goodloe-Johnson, also see comments ) or sends texts (Brizard, see comments) while parents and teachers are giving public testimony at school board meetings, blatantly ignoring public input.
“A rash of Astroturf groups appear claiming to represent ‘the community’ or ‘parents’ and all advocate for the exact same corporate ed reforms that your superintendent supports — merit pay, standardized testing, charter schools, alternative credentialing for teachers. Of course, none of these are genuine grassroots community organizations.
“Or, existing groups suddenly become fervidly in favor of teacher-bashing, merit pay or charter schools. Don’t be surprised to find that these groups may have received grant money from the corporate ed reform foundations like Gates or Broad.
“The superintendent receives the highest salary ever paid to a superintendent in your town’s history (plus benefits and car allowance) – possibly more than your mayor or governor — and the community is told ‘that is the national, competitive rate for a city of this size.’
“Your school board starts to show signs of Stockholm Syndrome. They vote in lockstep with the superintendent. Apparently lobotomized by periodic ‘school board retreat/Broad training’ sessions headed by someone from Broad, your school board stops listening to parents and starts to treat them as the enemy. (If you still have a school board, that is — Broad ideally prefers no pesky democratically elected representatives to get in the way of their supts and agendas.)
“Superintendent bypasses school board entirely and keeps them out of the loop on significant or all issues.
“School board candidates receive unprecedented amounts of campaign money from business interests.
“Annual superintendent evaluation is overseen by a fellow named Tom Payzant.
“Stand for Children appears in town and claims to be grassroots. (It is actually based in Portland, Ore., and is funded by the Gates Foundation.) It may invite superintendent to be keynote speaker at a political fundraising event. It will likely lobby your state government for corporate ed reform laws.
“Grants appear from the Broad and Gates foundations in support of the superintendent, and her/his “Strategic Plan.”
“The Gates Foundation gives your district grants for technical things related to STEM and/or teacher ‘effectiveness’ or studies on charter schools.
“Local newspaper fails to report on much of this.
“Local newspaper never mentions the words ‘Broad Foundation.’
“Broad and Gates Foundations give money to local public radio stations which in turn become strangely silent about the presence and influence of the Broad and Gates Foundation in your school district.
– – – – – – – – – –
*** THE CURE *** for the Broad Virus:
“Parents.
“Blogs.
“Sharing information.
“Vote your school board out of office.
“Vote your mayor out of office if s/he is complicit.
“Boycott or opt out of tests.
“Go national.
“Follow the money.
“Question the data – especially if it’s produced by someone affiliated with the Broad or Gates Foundations or their favored consultants (McKinsey, Strategies 360, NCTQ, or their own strategically placed Broad Residents).
“Alert the media again and again (they will ignore you at first).
“Protest, stage rallies, circulate petitions.
“Connect and daylight the dots.”
— Sue Peters
“For more information on the Broad Foundation, see: A Parent Guide to the Broad Foundation’s training programs and education policies by Parents Across America…. which you can get here:
http://parentsacrossamerica.org/a-guide-to-the-broad-foundations-training-programs-and-policies/
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Oh and here’s Dr. Ravitch with a run-down on some of the Broadies:
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I just found another great speaker whose speech is a MUST WATCH:
Rachel Quinn Egan.
Follow all the above steps to access the meeting video, then go to:
84:22
Mrs. Egan’s Irish brogue just adds to her fury. It’s like watching and listening to a climactic monologue out of an Irish play by John Millington Synge performed at Dublin’s Abbey Theater.
Encore!!! Encore!!!!
———————————————
RACHEL QUINN EGAN: (excerpted)
“Your ugly work is by no means over, but it should end TONIGHT.
“The people who were on that list for daring to oppose an unwelcome reform agenda that is being opposed by thousands across this country are pretty regular folk. I’m a mom of three.
” … ”
“Harassment and intimidation from (former Superintendent) Penny (McCormack) and her reform supporters has not relented, but many of us have kept on coming to your meetings because we realize this fight is bigger than our own children. It is bigger than Montclair. It is a question of civil rights.
“In the weeks that followed that first BOE meeting, I learned that our new super(intendent) was trained by Eli Broad to run public school systems into the ground using a business model. That she was, in fact, implementing a poorly-designed, developmentally inappropriate, dumbed-down, Common Core curriculum that was tied to a terrible high-stakes test, that was tied unfairly to teachers’ assessments, that was designed to break our teachers’ unions, to fail our public schools, and to give them to private profit-making charter school chains!
“I imagine that Montclair (schools) could have been ‘the jewel in their crown.’ Their rage against us for standing in their way is evident tonight by these documents.
“We have been labeled as uncivil trouble-makers, while charter school supporters and investors were welcomed at these meetings to speak in support of Penny and the B.O.E. Indeed, (people with) strong ties to charters in Newark even sat on this board!
“What a disgrace that was!
“And finally now, we have proof of what we always knew, that most of the B.O.E., who were behaving reprehensibly, were spending our tax dollars to investigate, harass, and intimidate us, to shut down our opposition, instead of spending it on our children’s education, and to think you were going to cut the para-professionals from our Special Needs children.
“What a disgrace!
(pointing)
“So I’m going to say to you, David, to Robin, to Brian:
“You were here before. If you were complicit, RESIGN NOW! That is the only decent thing to do. Go! Try and make the rest of your life a little bit more decent than it’s been so far.”
————————–
The mayor should appoint her to the B.O.E.
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Jack, Thank you for the links. My comment was NJ style tongue-in-cheek. It’s telling that so often when we read Dr Ravitch’s or Bob Braun’s blogs, we see “what the bad guys are up to now.”
Recharge and enjoy your spring term. Rooting for your schools from our coast–that’s what Dr Ravitch has achieved.
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This is what you get when you ask for more government, folks. Teacher’s unions, Board of Ed going nuts. Sounds like something Bernie Sanders would have concocted.
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Teachers unions are private organizations. This is in fact what you get when you undermine democracy and replace it with corporate control. I would fear Trump’s fanaticism over Bernie’s pragmatism.
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Correct, labor unions are not part of the government or public sector.
In fact, labor unions that represent the interests of workers are in the non-profit, private sector. But they are not autocratic like corporations and are, theoretically, not owned and controlled by billionaires like the Koch brothers, the Walton family or Bill Gates. However it is arguable that union leadership at the national level has been bought—one way or another—by billionaires and corporations.
Labor unions are democratic organizations and the workers who are members vote on the leadership of the local, state and national unions. In addition, just like billionaire oligarchs and autocratic corporations—both profit and non-profit—labor unions spend money paid by the membership to lobby, in the interest of the workers that belong to those unions, elected officials at the local, state and national level. The goal of that lobbying is to protect wages and benefits for those workers to they don’t end up penniless and without health care when they are too old to keep working.
Even public sector labor unions are not part of the government, and not all public workers are represented by labor unions. About one out of three public sector workers belong to labor unions compared to 6 out of every 100 workers in the private sector. Once people who are easy to fool get past all the corporate propaganda designed to stereotype and demonize labor unions, those fools should learn that there are many benefits to being a member of a democratic labor union.
How unions help all workers
Unions have a substantial impact on the compensation and work lives of both unionized and non-unionized workers. This report presents current data on unions’ effect on wages, fringe benefits, total compensation, pay inequality, and workplace protections
http://www.epi.org/publication/briefingpapers_bp143/
Anyone that wants to get rid of labor unions should look at what it was like in the U.S. before the rise of labor unions. In 1900, 40% of Americans lived in poverty, children as young as 5 – 7 worked in factories, coal mines and prostitution for far less than a livable wage often workign 16 hours days six or more days a week. Most or all workers had no retirement or health benefits or job protection. Someone injured on the job could be fired at will and replaced on the spot and end up with no health care for the injury and no income. This is a snapshot of an economy controlled by capitalists without labor unions to represent workers.
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I would fear the average American’s interest in simply”checking out” (presenting a yet more ostrich-like lack of involvement in politics) under Trump. Society’s level of disconnect and malaise is bad enough as it is now.
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Read Robert Reich’s newest book. It has nothing to do with the “size” of the government (which has been getting shredded for the past 40 years, incidentally), but with how the government is structured and in whose benefit.
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It’s beyond time that Eli Broad be ARRESTED, CONVICTED, and severely PUNISHED for the crimes he has perpetrated, and continues to…against the people of the United States.
This is the “fifth column” that has invaded our neighborhoods and communities, the disease unleashed to destroy public education.
These criminals, including Broad and many others who write checks that are payable to the order of those complicit in poisoning our democracy are guilty of treason and sedition, as well as subversion, against our nation.
As such, they have no place in American society.
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This posting answers the question—
Do the leading lights of self-proclaimed “education reform” really believe in the power of their ideas?
And again, the silence on the subject of this posting by the charter/voucher/privatization zealots that visit this blog speaks volumes about what they rheeally, in the most Johnsonally sort of ways, think.
😏
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The root cause of the corporate assault on public education is something called “The Billionaires’ Disease.” Most billionaires — with the notable exception of Warren Buffett — are delusional. They have accumulated not only great wealth, but all the things that go with it, such as being surrounded by sycophants who tell them they are geniuses. In fact, most billionaires believe themselves not only to be geniuses, but that they alone are responsible for the wealth they have accumulated; they rationalize away the key and essential roles played by others in the success of their businesses. So, in their delusion they view their self-identified genius as being applicable to other areas, such as government and public education, notwithstanding the fact that they have no experience or expertise in these areas. So what we have today are billionaires with no governmental experience who think they know best who our elected officials should be, and billionaires who never taught a classroom full of children but who think they know exactly what “reforms” are needed in public education. And, of course, what’s needed in public schools is the charter school business model because the business model is the only thing the billionaires know even a bit about. And of course there are plenty of simpering sycophants to tell the billionaires how insightful they are because these sycophants see an opportunity to cash in on unregulated charter schools to bleed tax money away from children and into their own pockets. If only there was a cure for The Billionaires’ Disease perhaps the billionaires could turn their resources to combating the true root causes of problems not only in schools but throughout our nation: Poverty and racial discrimination.
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Don’t let Buffett off the hook – he’s no better than the rest of the billionaires. He’s made his fortune through selling and predatory financing of manufactured homes. His “charitable donations” go to the Gates Foundation.
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Is it not amazing the lengths the corporate reformists will go to, at taxpayer expense, to “get” the era heroes and push their disgusting agendas? I’m flabbergasted. THIS should be a story on the front page of the NY Times. Seriously. They are disgusting pigs.
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Ah, yes: lies, looting, spying, coercion, intimidation, all in service of “the civil right movement of out times.”
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I’m a Montclair resident and I was at the BOE meeting last week, although I have no inside knowledge of the accusations and news coming out, and I did not speak at that meeting. I’m glad that facts are starting to come out, and I hope and pray for my community that we’re able to address and deal with the truth, and then move on to celebrating successes and addressing ongoing concerns. I really hope that all sides will share everything they know as soon as possible (lots of local rumors that this is just the tip of the iceberg, etc.), and although I very much appreciate that some of the emails are linked in the second Baristanet article, I’d love to see links to all of the relevant emails. Once the full record is out there for public consumption, we can finish assessing and seeing what happened, but right now, there is enough out there to raise serious concern, at least in my eyes.
My heartfelt thanks to Diane Ravitch for doing what the New York Times failed to do: for listing and explaining the connections of long-time local “pro-reform” BOE member Shelly Lombard, who is quoted extensively in the NYT article. Lombard is a public member of our local pro-reform AstroTurf organization, Montclair Kids First (“MKF”), which is a whole other story.
For Jack and anyone else getting a kick out of our online BOE meetings (see Jack’s instructions above of how to find them online), if you want to see an exchange that encapsulates so much of what I think is wrong with the reformer approach to public education, check out last year’s exchange between Ms. Lombard and two then-current Montclair High School students. The students had drafted and circulated a petition protesting substantial cuts proposed by our about-to-depart Broad superintendent and Ms. Lombard’s response was to scold them for not getting their facts straight. If you’re interested, it was Part 1 of the March 16, 2015 BOE meeting (so a year ago) starting just past the 1 hour and 4 minute mark. I attended that BOE meeting as well and was truly taken aback that a sitting Board member’s reaction to the participation of two students for whose education she was responsible was to publicly scold and berate them rather than to applaud them for taking their very first steps out into the world of participatory democracy.
To me that BOE meeting a year ago highlighted the former BOE’s goal, which was to diminish or eliminate civic participation from the public, and to teach kids to shut up rather than to become effective participants in the democratic process. Whether it’s intentional or just a coincidence, I don’t know, but the focus by “pro-reform” elements on reducing or eliminating the democratic participation of citizens in public school governance is, in my mind, anathema to the purpose of public education, which is to prepare citizens for thoughtful and intelligent and compassionate participation in the democratic process.
The good news is that our pro-public education mayor (who appoints our BOE members) is running unopposed for a second term. I look forward to his announcement, hopefully soon, of who he’s chosen to replace the last of the now outgoing, “pro-reform” BOE members left on the Board.
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