Xian Franzinger Barrett is a passionate teacher of middle school students in Chicago. He just received his layoff notice, the third in six years. He is one of more than 1,000 educators who were laid off. As a teacher, he does his best, but the people who run the school system–namely, Mayor Rahm Emanuel–seem to be incapable of stabilizing its finances. This doesn’t happen in affluent suburbs. It happens all too often in big-city districts, where the kids are mostly black and brown, and their parents lack political power.
Xian is a member of the board of the Network for Public Education, and I have gotten to know him since we launched in 2012. I can attest to his love for his profession and his students. Mayor Emanuel wants to put a stop to that.
Friends tried to console him but Xian writes:
But oppression is not an accident; it is a centuries-long design.
That is the only explanation for a Chicago where my students who have already lost parents to Immigration and Customs Enforcement have to persevere through more cuts in school funding, and the mayor who covered up the murder of one of their peers before he was re-elected sits comfortably in office. It’s the only way to explain a Chicago where an eighteen-year-old lies dead and those who were paid to protect him revel in paid administrative leave.
Oppression is the only way to describe the reason why I sit jobless, surrounded by piles of published student work from brilliant teaching and learning in a class I was asked to teach, while those who mismanaged the funds of the district collect their checks and continue to wield power over our students. We can’t shrug this off and persevere. To paraphrase Angela Davis, we cannot continue to accept what we cannot change, we must change what we cannot accept.
Xian is a fighter. He won’t quit. He will be there long after Rahm Emanuel has gone and been forgotten.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
I feel for this dedicated teacher. Being “excessed” is a demoralizing experience. It happened to me once, but I had colleagues that were subjected to this multiple times in the ’70s. These people had a hard time making plans for their futures as their careers were too unstable. These excessed teachers can lose their homes or cars, and they may have children depending on them. It is also a way to destabilize the profession.
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Reblogged this on Matthews' Blog and commented:
This is putting the future of the school children in jeopardy.
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Racism?
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Here is why IS WHY Xian HAS THIS ‘DEMORALIZING EXPERIENCE.’
NO ONE TELLS THE STORY OF THE ABUSE OF THE HUNDRED THOUSAND TEACHERS that came before poor XIAN!
Go to this link and learn how Kathleen Carroll fought back, as did so many other teachers who sued, and won. In the Carroll Case, the corrupt administrators testified and actually admitted UNDER OATH that they did it, and there is not a shred of accountability. They were not charged…. but she won… although they will appeal and tie her life up for many more years.
http://www.perdaily.com/2016/08/a-former-los-angeles-unified.html
If you google that court case, you will find MAYBE 2 links because like all the other CASES WEHRE TEACHERS SUE AND WIN, NO MEDIA OUTLET, no newspaper carries the story.
We hear endlessly about VAM and PARCC but that only LEGALIZED the abuse that continues in LAUSD. Perdaily.com laid out the Carroll case a long time ago.! You .never heard of it. or the Esquith battle?
http://www.perdaily.com/2014/07/former-ctc-attorney-kathleen-carroll-lays-out-unholy-alliance-between-union-and-public-education-pri.html
PERDAILY has been publishing the PLOY, THE FABRICATION of charges that EMPTIED THE SCHOOLS —TENS OF THOUSANDS OF TEACHERS CHARGED AND ALL OF THEM FIRED! WHERE WAS THE UNION?
http://www.perdaily.com/2014/03/lausd-and-utla-collude-to-end-collective-bargaining-and-civil-rights-for-teachers-part-2.html
ELI BROAD GOT TO REPLACE PUBLIC SCHOOLS THAT FAIL WHEN THE TEACHERS ARE MISSING… with charters. Broad who owns the LA Times and the media aint’ gonna tell you about CATHLEEN CARROLL.
http://www.opednews.com/Quicklink/FINALLY-TARGETED-TEACHERS-in-Best_Web_OpEds-Agenda_America_Corporate_Corruption-150708-830.html#comment553842
newest https://dianeravitch.net/2015/08/09/los-angeles-broad-walton-plan-major-expansion-of-privatization/
THIS IS A CIVIL RIGHTS ABUSE that should not occur for any American,let alone the tens of thousands of dedicated civil servants called TEACHERS!
I WAS a celebrated educator who lost everything in 1998!
http://www.opednews.com/author/author40790.html
I wrote this A DECADE AGO for all the good it has done: http://www.perdaily.com/2011/01/lausd-et-al-a-national-scandal-of-enormous-proportions-by-susan-lee-schwartz-part-1.html
Teachers who take their life savings, and spend years of their life like David Pakter. (He won too…even heard of him? Hmmmm?
Of course not.
This brilliant , talented, dedicated teacher, SPENT HALF A MILLION AND TEN YEARS of his life — which does not matter!
http://www.endteacherabuse.org/Pakter.html
They took out the teachers so this happened to NYC and they could bring in the CHARTERS!
THEN THERE IS MONTANA teacher, Lorna Stremcha! Here is a case which like my own very different kind of assault, SHOWS THAT THEY CAN DO ANYTHING THEY WANT TO A TEACHER.
The principal of her school, set her up to be raped!
Would I make that up?
This is the TRUTH, AS SHE PROVED IN COURT!
SHE has written a must read book: “Bravery, Bullies and Blowhards”
Go out and get it BECAUSE IT DEMONSTRATES BEYOND A SHADOW OF A DOUBT THAT they can DO ANYTHING THEY WANT TO TEACHERS ….
….because NO ONE HOLDS THE ADMINISTRATIONS ACCOUNTABLE.
The abuse that Lorna reveals in her book is found NOWHERE in the media — but we hear endlessly about some celeb who pops his girl friend in an elevator.
After all the bullying and harassment failed TO SEND HER PACKING, her principal found a way. She FINALLY WON AFTER years DURING WHICH she fought to be heard because the union was ABSENT!
She even testified before CONGRESS… not newsworthy of course!
Oh! YOU never heard of this, dear Xian?
It was out there in 2013, but not in the media.
http://blog.ebosswatch.com/2013/05/one-womans-legal-fight-against-workplace-bullying/ SHE WAS ALONE IN FIGHTING the utter lawlessness that HAD ALREADY BEEN SET AS THE PROCESS IN THE NINETIES, and we see here on this blog, the constant RESULT of the hidden WAR ON TEACHERS.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bGMBKF2UMq4&feature=em-share_video_user
WHAT HAPPENED TO TEACHERS FOR 2 DECADES NEVER GOT THE MEDIA ATTENTION that would stop the abuse.
Who would hear about Dania Hall ? SHE IS JUST ONE of hundreds that I know of PERSONALLY. http://endteacherabuse.org/Hall.html
Yeah, she finally found an attorney and went to court… It is almost impossible to find one, you know, and if you do, the delays end up bankrupting a teacher like Dania http://www.newyorklawjournal.com/id=1202556493583/Dania-Hall-Plaintiff-v-North-Bellmore-School-District-and-North-Bellmore-Board-of-Education-Defendant-08CV1999?slreturn=20160716151311
Diane posts your stories, NOW, but she does not tell the story of what LED TO THIS STATE OF AFFAIRS…. the war ON TEACHERS THAT BEGAN IN THE LATE EIGHTIES, AND EMPTIED THE SCHOOLS like in NYC THE LARGEST SYSTEM OF THE ALMOST SIXTEEN THOUSAND.
http://nycrubberroomreporter.blogspot.com/2009/03/gotcha-squad-and-new-york-city-rubber.htmlHall.html
NO ONE TELLS IT BUT ME AND THE ACTIVISTS WHOSE BLOGS I POST HERE AND AT OPED NEWS.
That is how ‘THEY’ do it. ‘THEY’ THE EDUCATIONAL INDUSTRIAL COMPLEX
count on the fact that no one knows what is happening in their own district let alone across the nation in thousands and thousands of systems.
Click to access eic-oct_11.pdf
NO one puts the finger of blame where it belongs, on the abrogation of the contract of the teachers who came before, who lost everything BECAUSE THE UNIONS LET IT HAPPEN.
THE CRUX OF THE FAILURE OF THE SCHOOLS IS THIS CIVIL-RIGHTS ABUSE of Americans , TEACHERS WHOSE LIVES DO NOT MATTER TO THE BILLIONAIRES WHO ARE PRIVATIZING THE SCHOOLS AND NEED THEM TO FAIL!
Tell Kathleen Carroll’s story Diane.
It deserves to be told!
Until teacher’s TEACHERS’ CIVIL RIGHTS MATTER, no child will get the education that actually enables learning to take place.
It is the end, because it ends with US!
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