The “Red Queen in LA” (aka Sara Roos) tries to sort the players in the Los Angeles teachers’ strike.
Who represents the public? Who represents the public interest? Who speaks for the students?
Teachers, administrators, board members, students, parents. In the background, Eli Broad, pulling the strings of Austin Beutner, money manager.
Kids of all ages from 4 to 18 will face a bigger political question of whether to “cross a picket line”. While parents weigh the potential incremental damage to their own kid’s school’s budget from loss of Average Daily Attendance (ADA) money, against the long-term effect of staffing all schools properly with teachers, counselors, librarians and nurses among others, kids have somehow to navigate a world of contingent attendance. Drilled into them the administratively-self-serving mantra of “100% attendance” long ago, they suddenly face a moral dilemma that belies the unwaivering rectitude assigned that rule. In the age of shock doctrine education reform and testing hysteria, has come a political battle-cry that all kids should attend school always, even when sick, even when family duty calls, even when honors or accolades call them elsewhere.
Older kids as emerging moral beings must begin to design this decision independently from their parents. And the resulting “opinion gap” is a stress with incumbent consequences they must bear personally. They must straddle a moral field that encompasses the relationship with their teacher, their school, their friends, their families, their personal dreams and desires. Some students have been threatened with punishment from truancy, with poor grades to diminished GPA and college opportunities, to lost graduation privileges or failure to graduate altogether. The UTLA president has promised to fight “100% at the back” of any students or parents or families who face retaliation for supporting the strike. Pertinent legislation assures that a “valid excuse” will mitigate truancy, but discretion over that definition is Group M’s and they have been clear about asserting a strict, narrow, fealty to financial demands in mandating student’s “100% attendance”. Which incidentally belies all that former pedagogical justification, since there is little chance that students sitting in the school during a strike will actually learn or be taught anything.
Student’s needs and perspective are the least-articulated to the public (though parents will be better-acquainted with kids’ burden). But kids disproportionately bear the brunt of collateral damage when elephants fight. Like the two prostitutes before Kong Solomon, true kinship and care is revealed by willingness to defer to the child’s need. The District has been pimping our children for political gain for long enough.
Which side are you on?
Students, teachers, the rest be damned.
The spin on this from the echo chamber is amazing, even for ed reform:
“As Teachers in Los Angeles Strike, the City’s School District Is Warned That It Could Lose Control of Its Finances If It Agrees to a New Contract That Depletes Reserves”
Three headlines like that on the official privatization mouthpiece, The 74.
Some anti-labor union politicking with a light sprinkling of “education” on top.
https://www.the74million.org/
Has DeVos chimed in with her usual sales pitch of how everyone should “flee” from the public schools she opposes and go to her preferred government contractors? She must be on vacation. Again.
The district has been “pimping its students” for some time. Privatization is the monetization of large numbers of mostly black and brown students. Students become investment holdings of the wealthy. So-called choice allows for the maximum amount of manipulation so that the “worthy,” mostly white students, wind up in better schools with better resources than the “unworthy,” mostly black and brown students. This is segregation supported by public funds.
“Billionaires have their thumb on the scale.” Their impact is far greater. They are the puppet masters behind the curtain pulling the strings. The wealthy are sitting on the neck of democracy using their wealth to mastermind a hostile takeover of public education. Diane is right. Without the billionaires and corporations, there would be no political push for privatization of public education.
Traditional school segregation is also supported by public funds.
True, but at least public education aspires to establish more equity by educating all students in a community.
Communities are largely segregated.
This blog’s readers don’t want to face this reality, but a major cause of the financial problems in the LA public schools is the huge number of kids whose parents are here illegally and whose incomes are far too low to contribute much of anything to the public treasury. LA and California politicians favor open borders immigration – sanctuary cities and states. Last year the public school district in the major city I live nearby noted that the average cost of bilingual education is $23,000 per year per student; the vast majority of students receiving those services are kids of illegal immigrants. Like it or not, those are the numbers, no matter how politically incorrect it is to say so.
The US Supreme Court ruled that all children, regardless of citizen status or origin, are entitled to a free public education. Would you prefer hordes of uneducated children?
You are correct that the SCOTUS ruled on this issue.
The court ruled in Plyler v. Doe that illegal alien children were entitled to a taxpayer-funded education. see
https://www.oyez.org/cases/1981/80-1538
The case was decided 5-4. I would prefer that school districts be required to determine the legal status of all children who attempt to enroll in public school. If the children and/or parents are determined to be illegally in the USA, the school districts must be required to report the criminal aliens to the BCI, immediately, and they should be deported immediately.
School officials are agents of the government, and as such, have the duty to report illegal activity. School officials are required to determine the vaccination/immunization status of all children, and required to dis-enroll unvaccinated children.
I prefer that the hordes of illegal uneducated children be sent back to their home countries. It is not fair, and not right to force taxpayers to subsidize the education (or any aspect) of illegal activity.
Many school districts (including Los Angeles) are burdened with having to provide educations to illegal alien children. This has the effect of reducing the resources that could be applied to the education of children who are citizens or legal aliens.
I prefer that these children are educated
I think you need to watch this video. These are living children and adults that we are talking about. This country has plenty of money to waste on wars that never end, an NSA that peeks into our private lives and the lives of everyone on the planet and money to give to the wealthy and corporations who don’t need more since they will never be satisfied.
These kids need to be educated if they manage to come to the US. I worked in a poverty third world country and saw the public schools that had nothing…no textbooks, no supplies and no well educated teachers. Some classrooms had dirt floors.
I look upon a higher calling that means helping all citizens of the world become their best. Humanity and the future of the planet depends upon this. Ignorants who spread hatred and fear [Trump the Crazed] are destroying our country.
I got tears in my eyes watching this video. Surely one of the wealthiest countries in the world can do better than treat the needy as worthless people. Compassionate leaders would do much better than the cold MAGA that we now have. America is not great when it degrades people who left homelands where they couldn’t live without fear of being killed, raped or having to join murderous gangs.
Jordan has a camp holding 86,000 Muslims who have had to leave their country. Bangladesh, one of the poorest countries in the world, has over 600,000 Muslims who had to leave their homes in Burma/Myanmar. [As of December 2017, an estimated 655,000 to 700,000 Rohingya people have fled to Bangladesh since 25 August 2017, to avoid ethnic and religious persecution by Myanmar’s security forces.]
Educating children with the best resources possible is the least that we can do. [Thanks to whomever put this video on Diane’s blog. GregB? I loved it and weeped.]
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The Killers – Land Of The Free
TheKillersMusic
Published on Jan 14, 2019
Wouldn’t you say that there is a high chance that these children become productive US citizens if they are educated? You may talk about “send back these children where they came from”, but the fact is, they will stay around, uneducated. Their parents do not come to this country so that their kids get educated, they come here for economic reasons, and hence not educating their kids has no significant deterrence value.
I know, Charles, that you like to argue in terms of laws, but why not try to think in practical terms, and see what it tells you?
So do I. Send them back to their home countries, and they can be educated there. Do you really think that citizens should be taxed to provide a free public education to illegal alien children? Is that fair?
Yes. That’s the law of the land. Do you overrule the Supreme Court?
So Charles, you think it is ok to reap profits, exporting textile business that employs 12-year old kids in Bangladesh? You think it is ok to “recycle” plastic by sending it to China, where it is processed by hand? It is ok to poison land in Africa by unsafe drilling practices and not to clean it up? This is just how business works, eh? But you prefer to immediately forget about the global nature of modern world when some of these slaves manage to make it over the border? Let us keep them there, working for us, making stuff for us, die from hunger, so that we continue replacing our iPhones every year and keep driving our SUVs carrying tear-jerking “Support our troops” sticker?
BA: I LOVE your response.
It is the corporations with US governmental consent that caused problems south of the border. We owe something to these people.
I do not overrule the SCOTUS. I still believe that the Plyler decision was wrong. It is NOT fair to tax citizens, to pay for the education of illegal aliens.
The cost of educating these illegal aliens, and then not getting any tax revenue for their support, is bankrupting the Los Angeles school district. If L.A. schools only had to meet the costs of educating citizen children ,and legal alien children, their financial situation would definitely be improved.
The SCOTUS is not always right. Read the book “The Dirty Dozen” about the 12 worst decisions made by the court.
And I believe any decision allowing public funds to support religious schools is wrong.
So I hope that will be reversed.
“The cost of educating these illegal aliens, and then not getting any tax revenue for their support, is bankrupting the Los Angeles school district. ”
This is false. Very high chances are, if we educate these children, they will grow up to be taxpaying citizens. If we do not educate them, then they will hang around the country, perhaps working illegally, certainly not paying any taxes.
With educating these kids, not only you give them a chance for a good life, you also make a good economic decision. In other words, education of these kids is both morally and economically good.
The bankruptcy you are talking about is imaginary. It’s the billionaires who try to bankrupt public education.
Máté Wierdl: Good comment.
Go to YouTube and give ’em a like:
Just learned Spike Lee did the video. It is quite perfect.
GregB: I got tears in my eyes watching the video. The US is so mean to people. Compassionate leaders would find a better way than the hatred and fear that is now being spread. How sad.
Jordan has a camp holding 86,000 Muslims who have had to leave their country. Bangladesh, one of the poorest countries in the world, has over 600,000 Muslims who had to leave their homes in Burma. [As of December 2017, an estimated 655,000 to 700,000 Rohingya people have fled to Bangladesh since 25 August 2017, to avoid ethnic and religious persecution by Myanmar’s security forces.]
The US, one of the wealthiest countries in the world, treats the needy as worthless.
Thanks, Carol, it chokes me up too, but I’m easily choke-up-able. I know many of you probably think my posts on music are tiresome, but it goes back to my first year of teaching. One of my students told me how much he liked the Bruce Hornsby song, The Way It Is. When I asked him if he knew what it was about, he didn’t, we had a long conversation about the Civil Rights movement. It was one of my first great teaching moments. After that, because I had the freedom to teach as I saw fit, I would take a day every 5 or 6 weeks to play songs and discuss the messages. I let students bring in music, which is how I was introduced to Billy Bragg. They learned about Woody Guthrie, Pete Seeger, Lead Belly, Bob Dylan, the Impressions, Stevie Wonder, and about the message of many contemporary songs. Music can convey lessons in minutes that might take hours of class time.
One of the only positive things that has come out of the political climate of the past few years is the energetic creativity of musicians. Reinterpretations of songs like A Change is Gonna Come, With God On Our Side, and Which Side Are You On have a new relevance. Drive-By Truckers have been particularly powerful, especially with their last album American Band. Patterson Hood’s writing in Ever South explains southern conservatism more succinctly than any essay or book, What It Means explains why Black Lives Matter matters to everyone. Mike Cooley’s Ramon Casiano ties together the history of gun violence as no academic has been able to do. And their song The Perilous Night puts into words the horrible feelings many of us had on election night 2016.
And now the era of Individual-1 has unleashed a new era of political creativity. Hurray for the Riff Raff’s Rican Beach is the anthem of our times, as far as I am concerned. Gary Clark Jr.’s This Free expresses the anger we all feel. Mark Ribot’s album Songs of Resistance demonstrates how these songs are timeless. Michael Franti, Zeshan B, and now the Killer have other takes. I need to delve into the world of hip-hop. But without this music, much like this blog, I’m not sure I could make sense of the world and get through every day and keep my sanity.
Gary Clark Jr’s This Land
And is there a better title or song to sum up Individual-1 and his cult?
So what is the capacity of the US for accepting immigrants? 1 million a year? 10 million? More? Is there a need to talk about limits?
I have seen videos like these about Hungary, showing peacefully walking immigrant families, while the reality, which I saw with my own eyes, was completely different, terrifying: males between 20-40, demanding entry to the country, destroying property.
So the question is, if this video shows reality?
LA Teachers rock!
https://truthout.org/articles/la-teachers-demand-moratorium-on-charters-as-strike-begins/
“The District has been pimping our children for political gain for long enough.”
Is the situation as complicated as the (for me largely incomprehensible) blog post indicates? The author seems to be on the opinion (see the quote above), that this strike hurts the kids, and teachers do not strike for the sake of the kids but for their own self-interest.
Political leaders also have an important perspective — who among them will stand up for kids, teachers, and public schools?
The Intercept polled Senate Democrats on the strike and charter schools, interesting results:
“Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., was the first Democratic congressional legislator to acknowledge that the teachers are striking over school privatization, ”
NPR doesn’t want to talk about the privatization at all. In fact, the reporter who interviewed the main union guy (I forgot his name) today, seemed to have the conviction that the union organized this strike out of selfinterest. When the union guy mentioned that the main reason for the strike is privatization, and how it has resulted in decades of neglect, the reporter refused to acknowledge it, and just kept grilling the guy about how much money the district will lose because of kids not attending school during an extended strike. The union guy even hinted that this “money for attendance” policy is highly questionable and is just another way to withhold money from schools and give it to privatizers, but the reporter again failed to react.
The reporter is some new younger voice. I suspect, he was hired by NPR just to cover this story. I could be wrong, but the whole thing is maddening.
Where can one comment on this stuff at NPR?
It was someone substituting for Larry Mantle on AirTalk – actually a production of KPPC. I was listening while in my car and got so mad I drove half-way to the Inland Empire instead of the OC.
So in the US over 3,000 children were separated from their parents? I find it abominable. What should be done to people who have so little concern for children? Children will never recover from this abuse and it is to be put totally on Steve Miller and Donald Trump. Neither are fit to have any power. Racists do not belong in government.
How many have still not been returned to their parents?
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The New York Times
Breaking News Alert
January 17, 2019
NYTimes.com »
BREAKING NEWS
Thousands more migrant children were likely separated from their families than was officially reported, the government found.
Thursday, January 17, 2019 12:31 PM EST
The Trump administration likely separated thousands more children from their parents at the Southern border than was previously believed, according to a report by government inspectors released on Thursday.
Nearly 3,000 children were previously reported to have been forcibly separated from their parents under last year’s “zero-tolerance” immigration policy under which nearly all adults entering the country illegally were prosecuted, and any children accompanying them were put into shelters or foster care.
Note that Trump never joined the condemnation of the racist comments of Stephen King of Iowa.