Reverend Anika Whitfield wrote an open letter to Arkansas’s State Commisioner of Education, its Governor, and the City Superintendent, complaining about the state takeover of the Little Rock School District. This has long been a goal of the Walton family, the richest, most powerful family in the state and in the nation.
She writes:
Superintendent Poore and Commissioner Key (with a copy to Governor Hutchinson),
How are you able to live with what appears to be placing a hit on the lives of over 17,000 innocent students in the LRSD?
What appears to be your willful cooperation with political and philanthropic interest groups to violate the most vulnerable children in our city by closing their schools; selling (without our permission) their community schools to private charter businesses and to governmental programs that are run by officials who have benefited from a prison industrial system that profits off of incarcerating the lives of many of these same students, is unfathomable.
What does it profit you to watch innocent children suffer at your own hands?
What do you gain by taking away resources from children, families, and educators?
How many families and communities must destroyed before you have seen enough?
Are there any valid examples of affluent neighborhoods and communities that you have imposed your power to take over their children and absolve their patriotic rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness?
What wealthy communities have you tried to force, without the will of the people, to accept a subservient educational business model for educators and students while imposing legalized disenfranchisement of their wealthy parents?
What truthful evidence can you provide that school closures, increasing class sizes, creating job losses by merging schools, and re-segregating communities, has proven to be a successful model in strengthening those same communities?
The plans that were laid out today for the LRSD showed ample evidence that your jobs have been, as has been suspected and predicted since your unorthodox appointments, a political and economic bidding to make wealthy investors like the Walton Family Foundation, Stephen’s, Inc. and others, to gain more wealt by privatizatizing public institutions and disenfranchising persons primarily impacted by poverty and systemic racism.
We have attended your previous school forums in large numbers. We have participated with consistent and persistent voices our opinions and desires to regain locally, elected, representation by our peers.
We have made clear our desires to keep all of our schools open, to raise community economic support for all of the schools and, particularly students, in the LRSD so that all students are attending classes and schools that are excellent.
We have provided plans, options and opportunities to work with you to keep schools open, and to improve the overall moral in schools by creating more community support and developing public accountability.
Yet, despite our active participation in your created system of governance, you have repeatedly denied all of our requests.
What will it will take for you to stop disrespecting and disregarding the voices and presence of our LRSD children, their parents, community?
What is the ransom you require to return our district back into the hands of the LRSD community?
Sincerely,
Rev. Anika T. Whitfield
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Reblogged this on David R. Taylor-Thoughts on Education.
“Please, kind Sir”
Please, kind Sir
Don’t take my food
I’m pretty sure
It’s rather rude
Please, kind Sir
Don’t take my home
I’m pretty sure
I’ll have to roam
Please, kind Sir
Just go to Hell
I’m pretty sure
It fits you well
Agree. No more “please”. There is no ransom these thugs will agree to. They will never respect citizens nor hold communities in high regard. It is pillage and plunder time forever and ever Amen, as far as they are concerned So, let’s throw these money changers out of the temple. There is no morality here and democracy is held in utter contempt. Stop talking nice to them.
“What will it take?”
What will it take
To make you quit
Closing our schools
And selling our s**t?
What will it take
To make you cease
Leave us alone
Leave us in peace?
What will it take
To let us be?
What will it take?? —
Your slavery”
Bravo to Rev. Whitfield! She fully comprehends the evil political manipulations at play to deny communities of color of their locally accountable, democratically operated public schools. The objective is to shift a public asset into the private portfolios of wealthy pockets of the Waltons et al. They want to create a separate and unequal system that will generate profit for wealthy investors. It is a reminder of the slave culture of the south where black people serve the wealthy, but this is a modern day reincarnation of the same principles. Little Rock needs a band of civil rights lawyers to examine their state constitution and existing state laws to stop these legalized theft of democracy.
Agree with the thank you to Rev. Anika T. Whitfield and the key points she has made. The Waltons and like-minded billionaires think that they are entitled to own or control all public assests and institutions that are open to all. The entitlement mindset extends to dumping money into the formation of privately managed schools with programs that teach this generation to comply with the coersive tactics of control by private contractors who look at charter schools as investment opportunities, franchise-like, with test scores of students the productivity metric that matters most.
I agree too. Whitfield’s letter should appeal to any decent person’s righteous sense of fairness and humanity. I am not sure the letter is addressed to decent people, though.
This is a digression, but Bernie backed Andrew Gillum, a black progressive, won the democratic primary for governor in Florida. He had the smallest amount of money of any of the candidates. He won by grassroots campaigning all over the state. This is a huge accomplishment as he upset the favored Gwen Graham. I hope this is a sign of more progressive wins in the state.
Thanks for posting this, retired teacher. Yay!
and Gillum’s message on education is truly LIBERATING. Imagine Florida breaking free…
“We have provided plans, options and opportunities to work with you to keep schools open, and to improve the overall moral in schools by creating more community support and developing public accountability.”
Because all the big decisions have already been made. They’ll bring “the community” in but only later, and only to tweak the plans on some meaningless “compromise” issues.
The Grand Plans are made at the CEO level. The grunts on the ground then get the privilege of making the ed reform dream a reality.
Ed reformers themselves say this- “we know what works” – they already know everything- these community buy-in exercises are more slick marketing from some very sophisticated salespeople.
I just feel bad for the public school students in these ed reform-captured districts. No one bothers to tell them or their parents that the Best and Brightest have deemed their schools unfashionable, and are winding them down. The least they could do is announce they’re abandoning the public schools- then kids and parents could get out and get into one of the preferred charter or private schools. The gradual eradication approach they use is brutally unfair to those families who remain in public schools and REALLY misleading.
Melba Pattillo Beals, one of the 9 students who integrated Central High in Little Rock, has a great book for young people entitled: March Forward, Girl. HOLY COW. I knew about Little Rock, but reading her account put me there and it was NOT a pretty picture. This book is fabulous.
http://melbapattillobeals.com
While blacks speak about the destruction of their local schools, they don’t realize that the same program is being followed all over the country in poor white districts.
This is not a race based issue; it is a class based issue. The poor and middle class (of any race) simply doesn’t matter to the privatization vultures. They see us all in genetically inferior. It really is just that simple
You are right. These profit seekers will step on everyone’s democracy, if they score an easy victory with poor minorities. We need to think of public education as a legacy right that must be preserved for our children and grandchildren.