This is a very effective short video of a UTLA rally for resources and respect. Alex Caputo-Pearl, president of UTLA, warns that we must save public education from the proliferation of privately managed charters—or lose it within the next five years.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
The Los Angeles Times website is blocked in Europe because it violates their privacy laws, so I haven’t been visiting it since I read that in the Guardian, but I went to the site just now to see if this huge protest was reported. Nothing. Crickets. Zilch.
Eli Broad, Reed Hastings, and the rest of the American oligarchs are buying Los Angeles. They bought the media. They bought the criminal school board. They bought the superintendent. They are trying to buy the governor’s mansion and with it, the Commission on Teacher Credentialing and the state board of education. They are railroading democratic rule in Los Angeles.
Public education will not survive without serious intervention. Action is called for. Get ready to walk, colleagues. The time has come.
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LCT, the good news is that the plutocrats’ choice for Governor, Antonio Villaraigosa, former Mayor of LA, is polling at about 12%. He was last seen advising Herbalife.
http://www.latimes.com/politics/la-pol-ca-antonio-villaraigosa-tax-returns-20171124-htmlstory.html
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When you mention Reed Hastings, don’t forget that horrible and deceitful, public-school hating Obama and wife have teamed up with Hastings to form their own production company to create propaganda films and documentaries that will drive their neo-liberal agenda. The Obamas have been paid MILLIONS to do so. It’s depraved.
Shame on hideous Obama and wife! They were never progressives, which was deceiving and disappointing. They have always been wolves in sheeps’ clothing.
Obama: Just as bad as Trump, only for very different reasons. Obama and wife have accelerated the destruction on public schools and disrespect for public school educators. RttT was NCLB on mega-steroids.
I condemn the Obama and Trump administrations, loudly and proudly. It’s hysterical to think that there are people out there that think Obama was a socialist or was a true progressive/liberal.
I hope LA public schools prevail.
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The LA Times has always ignored UTLA rallies. They will cover six people rallying to save a tree, but five thousand teachers, nope.
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a sadly growing problem across the nation: so little cohesive media coverage to show the public that the teacher issues aren’t just “little” and “local”
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I lived in California many years ago. I cannot imagine the People’s Republic of California ever phasing out government-run, publicly-operated schools. It isn’t going to happen. So relax.
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Your imagination is limited, Charles. The billionaires bought a charter-compliant majority on the LA board. Their puppet master wants to privatize at least half the schools. That a running start.
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Far more than Charles’s imagination is limited. Far more . . . .
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I could be wrong. It is just that I cannot imagine ultra-blue California ever phasing out any government operation, including publicly-operated schools. Californians, by and large, have limitless faith in government.
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Charles. I suggest you look at the stealth takeover of CORE districts in California, some of the largest, under the banner of “collaboration” but with billionaire-backed efforts to by-pass citizen and school board participation. The capture is accomplished by a single MOU signed by the superintendent. http://coredistricts.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/08/CORE-Cross-District-Collaboration-Report-August-2015.pdf
Also look at the August 2018 marketing of Charter Schools Deserts, with maps and zones in each state designed to encourage charter expansions in census tracts selected by measures of “levels of poverty.” These levels are conjured to rationalize the movement of charters into suburbs said to have “insufficient” choice in schools. This report is from the Thomas B. Fordham Institute, also circulated by the Heartland Institute. The report is designed to shore up the rate and the scope of school expansion. https://edexcellence.net/publications/charter-school-deserts-report
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