It is always hard to explain complicated issues to voters, especially when you don’t have much money.
Take Georgia, for example. Governor Nathan Deal wants to change the State Constitution to allow the state to take over low-scoring public schools and hand them over to charter operators. It hasn’t worked anywhere else, but no matter. The amendment is being sold as a way to help kids and improve schools, when it is a transfer of public schools to private management. It is privatization of public schools and squelching of democracy.
How do you reach voters?
Here is one way: Someone hired an airplane to fly over a University of Georgia football game flying a banner that said:
“No School Takeover. Vote NO on Amendment 1.”
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Good for them, by-passed plutocratic-owned media. On that subject, alternative media, Buzzflash, posted an article today, quoting Diane Ravitch, “New Layers of Dirt on Charter Schools”.
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If democracy keeps squelching democracy, we might end up with appointed,
un-elected “leaders” dictating policy…
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Our dear “leaders” will ban airplane flyovers that support public education, because they are “keeping poor kids from a quality education”
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No need for the if or might in your thought NB!
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I am quite surprised someone(s) had the wits to get the message to exactly the right voters in exactly the right way! It will be a close vote and this might make the difference.
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Ed reformers say these take-overs are all non profit but that simply isn’t true. This is Georgia’s proposed law:
“(d)(1) Each OSD charter school shall have a governing board that is involved in
204 school-level governance of the school. The governing board shall be organized and
205 operated as a nonprofit corporation under the laws of this state. The OSD charter school
206 shall be a public, nonsectarian, nonreligious, nonprofit school that is not home based,
207 provided that a school’s nonprofit status shall not prevent the school from contracting for208 the services of a for profit entity. ”
If ed reformers genuinely wanted to keep ed reform non profit, they could do that. They could draft these laws differently, but they don’t. They leave gaping holes that a for-profit charter can run a truck through.
You could set up a nonprofit shell and outsource EVERY function to a for profit contractor and still call your school a “nonprofit”.
At the very least they should explain to the public that “nonprofit” in ed reform is meaningless. It has no import whatsoever.
When they tell you these “reforms” are not profit-making ventures, look at the laws they’re drafting. The laws seem to be deliberately written to create a veneer of “nonprofit” covering what could easily be a for-profit entity.
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I wonder if most of the VOTER opposition is coming from smaller places or rural areas.
State takeovers play out differently in areas with smaller populations. It’s one thing to privatize 40% of a city’s schools. It’s another to privatize the single public district, the schools everyone in a given area attends.
In rural areas/lower population areas they literally lose any control over ALL of the public schools. It’s a total power grab the state- there’s nothing left locally. It’s a profound loss in a way it isn’t in cities.
That’s what happened in Michigan when they did this identical legislation.
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There certainly appears to be a solid level of opposition in rural counties, but as is typically the case in statewide elections the suburbs and exurbs north of Atlanta will decide the outcome. That said, the political alliances on this issue are not typical.
I live a a deeply conservative suburban/exurban county. My state rep’s kids attend the same public schools as my kids. My rep at least rhetorically supports public schools and local control. Of course, he’s a Republican and would have been committing political suicide if he opposed the governor on this issue. OTOH, our Republican school board members and those of equally conservative neighboring counties passed resolutions opposing the state takeover. There seems to be a sizeable number of public school parents opposed to the OSD who otherwise reliably support the governor in my knock of the woods. In fact the state PTA chair (from the county adjacent to mine) campaigned for Deal but is leading the PTA’s effort to defeat the amendment.
There is a similar split among democrats in Atlanta and the in-town suburbs. There are prominent black Democrats aligned with DFER / TFA opposed by the NAACP, other black political leaders and a segment of white liberals. Given Deal’s increasingly strident tone and series of threats directed at teachers and school boards, my guess is that he has internal polling data indicating the OSD has a decent chance of being defeated.
If it is defeated it highlights something that I think is crucial to saving public education and local control. White suburban parents have to become part of the group actively engaged in fighting for the preservation of public schools and elected school boards. In an interesting (at least to me) aside, the OSD backers have edited their ads. They initially featured a white mom sympathizing with “families of children in failing schools” while reassuringly stating that “schools that are doing well won’t be affected”. I suspect they edited the ads because it was reaffirming my neighbors fear of losing local control that is driving their opposition to the amendment rather than reassuring them.
Also, great move by whoever paid for the banner at the Dawgs game.
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