Will Republicans in Senate kill it? Will Trump veto it?
It’s an important step towards recognizing that public schools—not charters or vouchers— are the basic foundation of education and democracy.
| January 30, 2019 | Contact:
Elena Temple etemple@aft.org |
| AFT’s Randi Weingarten on the Rebuild America’s Schools Act |
| WASHINGTON—American Federation of Teachers President Randi Weingarten issued the following statement on the introduction of the Rebuild America’s Schools Act, a $100 billion proposal to address the chronic underinvestment in school buildings across the country. The legislation will be unveiled tomorrow on Capitol Hill as one of the first items of business for the House Committee on Education and Labor.
“Every day, millions of students and educators across the country attend schools that put their health and safety at risk—black toxic mold on floors, classrooms without heat, leaking ceilings and contaminated water. We cannot send our kids to schools in these conditions and expect them to learn and thrive. Our children deserve better.
“Thanks to the leadership of Chairman Bobby Scott and Sens. Jack Reed and Sherrod Brown, Congress can take long-overdue action to address the deteriorating and obsolete school facilities that exist in far too many of our communities. Rebuilding America’s public schools requires making our school infrastructure a priority and committing resources to back that claim up.”
|
Diane Ravitch's blog 
It was estimated it will take half a billion to refurbish all the public schools in America. So, it’s not enough, and if it’s a “public/private partnership,” we should expect it will only be about one-quarter of the necessary amount.
This. How much of that “public-private partnership” will go through ed tech providers and other consultants?
BTW, how do we know they’re not counting charter schools as “public charter schools”?
Forgive me for being cynical, but I’ve kicked Lucy’s football one too many times to believe that Democrats aren’t just as in favor of privatization as Republicans.
The only thing about those ‘so-called’ public charter schools is that they USE public funds. There is no oversight of the money those ‘so-called’ public (joke) charter schools … FRAUD is everywhere and children are harmed.
This legislation is “dead on arrival”. Education is and shall remain a state/municipal responsibility. Why have Washington bureaucrats dictate school building/renovation policy. And where in the constitution, is the federal government empowered to allocate federal spending for educational services and buildings?
If the states/municipalities wish to upgrade their facilities, then they should levy and collect the taxes locally.
The federal government is in deficit, and has no money for such spending.
MMT, Charles. Also, a terrific economic stimulation, better than Obama provided for the 2008 recovery– something that not only employs people, but leaves their communities better off as well.
Please. The “education is a state responsibility” ship sailed long ago.
As for deficit, are you advocating for a balanced federal budget? Even if that means drastic reductions in military and national security spending? Because cutting education, healthcare and social services alone isn’t going to balance the budget. Despite your attempts to prove otherwise, you’re smart enough to know that.
90+% of spending on education is done by the states (K-12). States/municipalities set up and run public schools in the USA. There is no federal responsibility to run local public schools, nor to pay for them.
I am not advocating a balanced federal budget.
If the feds want to get serious about reducing spending, it will have to come out of entitlements.
You can’t possibly be that ignorant, can you? Do you know what entitlements are? They’re programs that you pay into all your life so you are entitled to draw from them in your old age. Entitlements are self-supporting and cutting them will not do a thing for the deficit. The only way to reduce the deficit is to reduce the main components of it – wars and so-called “national security”. Keep on with your right-wing talking points and show us how brilliant you are, Chuck.
As far as federal responsibility for schools, you are correct as far as the Constitution goes. But in that case, the feds have no business dictating demands of public schools. Can’t have it both ways. If they want control, they can fund. No funding = butt the hell out.
Well, we cold find $2.7 trillion for education simply by deducting that amount from the military budget. That’s how much the Inspector General’s audit found was unaccounted for. And it would refurbish the country’s schools 82 times over!
The federal government has funded programs in public schools since 1914. Majorvfederal programs, based on NEED, started in 1965 under LBJ’s Elementary and Secondary Act.
The federal takeover of schools’s Standards and tests began with George W. Bush’s NCLB and intensified under Obama.
The federal government spends nearly $500 million annually to subsidize charter schools even though they are amply funded by billionaires.
Moreover, migration of talent from one part of the country to another in search of very good jobs has left irregular collection of taxes in certain locations a threat to local funding being the only option for funding. I recall the schools I saw in the eastern Appalachian region when I lived there that were built during the depression, putting people to work and giving communities hope. What is wrong with that? Why can we not see inner city youth finding construction jobs rebuilding the schools where they went and developing pride in their rebuilt community? Why can this not be financed by those for whom life has been fortunate?
@Dienne: I know what entitlements are . see
https://www.usgovernmentspending.com/entitlement_spending
Entitlements primarily encompass Social Security/Medicare,etc. which are funded on a pay-as-you-go basis.
The remainder of entitlement spending is welfare, food stamps, AFDC, Section 8 housing, and the whole plethora of spending where the feds take money from working people in taxes, and then lavish it on the recipients.
Better to lavish tax cuts on billionaires.
That way, they get what they paid for: power and control.
Head Start is funded directly by the federal government. It’s been a hugely successful and popular PreK education program since 1965.
Reblogged this on David R. Taylor-Thoughts on Education and commented:
This should be interesting.
Betsy Devos has been in a wheel chair from a biking accident and will be in the wheel chair for several months. However Betsy is still in favor of school choice and is hiding under the bridge as Trump and his cabinet members dance around like HR puffenstuff
Betsy’s GOP and her weaponized political actions crippled Americans. What goes around, comes around.
Please, please post a photo of Betsy after the accident. It’ll be a thrill repeat like when Mercedes Schneider revealed the “work” Betsy was doing in her PR team’s stock photo, “Betsy at her desk”. The desk was covered in carpet samples.
Was it that photo where Betsy had a box of water that was made by a company owned by her family?
The Boxed Water was one more example of a slimy tactic by the donor class. I noticed a few years ago that the greediest and most corrupt rich were positioning themselves as “green” as if they cared about the environment. More lipstick on a pig.
I hope Erik Prince fries for his Seychelles meeting. (Talking Points Memo about George Nader, Dmitriev, and Zamel of the PsyGroup.)
When I first read through, I thought the “public/private partnership” was referring to public schools that need to contract with a business for, say, broadband internet. Is that wrong? It looks like you would have to apply to get these grants, and your higher poverty schools (which have a harder time passing bond issues to fund construction) are going to be at the top of the list to receive these funds. I may have read it all wrong though. I am in a Title ! school, high poverty, rural America. VERY hard time passing bond issues. As I read this, I was very hopeful. Give me feedback on what I’m missing. There is a lot I don’t understand.
I hope you’re right, Mindy! That would be the first thing the Dems have done right since probably Medicare….
The first thing to remember is their motive, “What’s in for me, and how can I press my advantage?”
The easiest way for them to profit is to provide loans to fund the work. They will insist they be municipal bonds, so the interest income is tax-free to them.
Next of course is to restrict all construction and provision of material (e.g., computers) and services (e.g., testing) to them rather than having those provided through bidding competition.
Third is to have the contracts written for cost plus percentage, which encourages waste and fraud solely for their profit.
Fourth is to wangle extra tax breaks for themselves and their investors, a la Corporation S maneuvers
This is the ugly back story of public private partnerships. Corporate lobbyists write the fine print of the grants. The workers are outsourced or temp.
harshest reality: each reform action has that hidden fine print
The GOP controlled Senate will amend the bill to give most of that money to corporate charters and Trump will only sign the bill if it includes funds for The Great Wall of Trump.
Mindy is asking the right questions.
The word “partnership” especially in the oft-repeatted version– “public-private” partnership–is a rhetorical move. It helps to disquise the usual facts: The public gives more than it gets. Sometimes the private sector gets the whole enchilada and a big profit to boot. The sponsors and supporters of this bill need to recognize when pigs are wearing lipstick.
When the Dems had the House, the Senate and the Presidency why didn’t Sherrod Brown introduce legislation to help the middle class and poor keep their schools?
It was only 20 years after Gingrich destroyed comity in the House that the Dems realized they couldn’t expect reasonable treatment from the GOP. The new battle is for them to realize they can’t expect neoliberalism to solve the nation’s problems. I’d say this will take another ten years yet, but people like AOC will make it happen.
Uh…the rich pay for Dems to be neoliberal. I don’t think it’s a viewpoint they believe or don’t believe.
CAP (founded by school privatizer John Podesta), where Hillary Clinton found Neera Tanden, advocates for privatization. It’s funded by Bill Gates. I’m speculating that CAP staff, like Gov. Neusom’s new education advisor who was formerly with CAP, would be eager to be in favor of public schools and the attached votes. But, what billionaire will pay them to think like that- certainly not the Puerto Rican victims of disaster capitalism. CAP self-appointed to apply neoliberal ideas in P.R.
Tom Daschle at the BiPartisan Policy center is relying on privatizers George Miller and corporatist Rep. Susan Davis to steer higher ed in the direction of Purdue Global (formerly Kaplan). In Sept., the two were panelists at a BPC session sponsored by Gates and John Arnold.
“the rich pay for Dems to be neoliberal”: Well said, & points to the probable failure of this proposal even were it to pass… Which points yet again to why campaign finance reform – and related legislative reform [e.g., 501(c)3&4] – & legislative workaround to Cit-United decision – and appropriate taxation of corporate profits & multi-millionaires – take precedence as #1 top priority issues in US. The sorry state of funding for public goods in this country will continue regardless of pro-public-goods legislation, because implementation is hobbled at every level by $clout. You can’t build a house on sand.
Bethree5, there is a form of campaign finance regulation which destroys the primacy of money. It ends the obligation candidates and incumbents have towards major donors, it ends the chase for money, it rewards the public for paying attention to campaigns, and it costs almost nothing to implement and operate. I just can’t find people who would like to promulgate and advocate for it.
Chuck,
Where are you looking for the people?
The people are behind AOC’s 70% marginal tax rate.
Linda, marginal tax rate is just one piece of what’s needed— & more importantly, hasn’t got a chance in hell of passing until we shut off the flow of corporate $ into election campaigns & other forms of legal bribery influencing legislation.
Chuck is not wrong. I’ve had my google newsfeed set to “campaign finance reform” [among others] for seven years now, & the number of news articles on the topic is a tiny, pathetic trickle. Granted, it has picked up a little in the past year, but most describe proposals [whether at local, state or natl level] that get shot down at the starting gate. This is a subject that needs grass-roots groundswell, but public seems mostly unaware.
The DFERS are so wrong. I hope, but not holding my breath, they find their souls and minds soon. The DNC NEEDS to support Public Schools or we are toast.
Reed Hastings and the widow Steve Jobs gave the max allowable to Gov. Neusom’s campaign. Since Reed Hastings is a partner in a charter school chain and is in a YouTube video calling for an end to democratically elected school boards, I speculate the California governor is being paid to lose his soul and shutter his mind. His lack of support for the L.A. teachers’ strike revealed his priorities.
Sorry to be Debbie Downer.
Will this money go solely to genuine public schools that are governed by publicly-elected boards and not go to privately-owned charter schools that are operated by boards not elected by the public?
One would think the Patriotic Millionaires might be a counter against neoliberalism. Does anybody know anything about them?
I know a few. They are only millionaires, not billionaires. They support anti-Trump candidates, not the Resistance to privatization.
I believe a lot of skepticism and monitoring of what is going on with this is necessary. Obama gave us Gates and Arne Duncan, without much explanation…..Billionaires are rampant in political maneuvering……finding ways to get around the problems that democracy causes. I screamed as loud as I could when KMOX….the st. louis Rush Limbaugh station enthusiastically presented St. Louis university’s Gary Ritter, Dean of their education school, bragging about how their million dollar gift could be used all over Missouri to collect data, data, data…….and neither the host nor Ritter bothered to mention the million dollars came from the Waltons…..not that they expect anything in return for being generous. Sinquefield gave slu 50 million dollars….he is trying to combine the city and the county…..no doubt lessening the impact of democracy in the process. Show me a billionaire who loves democracy and I will show you a billionaire with a phony bank account.
This is tricky area….and the democrats might be a better bet that some of the others…..if they are respectful to parents children and teachers in what they are trying for. Jeffrey Snyder and Sarah Reckhow (my nephew Matt and his wife Sarah are working at Harvard this year) would be good people to talk to:. …………….Philanthropic involvement in education politics has become bolder and more visible. Have foundations changed funding strategies to enhance their political influence? Using data from 2000, 2005, and 2010, we investigate giving patterns among the 15 largest education foundations. Our analyses show growing support for national-level advocacy organizations. Furthermore, we find that foundations increasingly fund organizations that operate as “jurisdictional challengers” by competing with traditional public sector institutions. We apply social network analysis to demonstrate the growing prevalence of convergent grant-making—multiple foundations supporting the same organizations. These results suggest that a sector once criticized for not leveraging its investments now increasingly seeks to maximize its impact by supporting alternative providers, investing concurrently, and supporting grantees to engage in policy debates.
Joe, can you let me know how to contact Sarah Reckhow?
Hurray.
But what ails American schools equally is crap curriculum. Common Core and NGSS are national disasters. They have substituted tedious, fruitless mental weight lifting exercises for real learning. They comprise the Ignorance Curriculum. That, folks, is our de facto national curriculum. When China eats our lunch, this will be one major reason why. We have been defrauded by the “experts”.
We are all too close to this.
Go up a few thousand feet – or to the headlines or tweets – that’s all anyone reads.
Dems want federal money for infrastructure of public schools. No issues, just fix crumbling schools. Think WPA. How many jobs created? American steel and materials. Could the GOP vote it down? President veto?
President’s base is 1/2 billionaires who wouldn’t get near a public school HOWEVEr the other 1/2 is blue collar, rural, joe six pack call ’em what you want whose kids don’t live near a private or charter school and their schools are falling apart, too. If this stays away from philosophy and prayer and all the other hot buttons – how can a republican vote against bricks and mortar for their state.
If the democrats were smart, they’d say “sure, you can have your $5.7 billion vanity wall if you put up $5.7 billion to rebuild highways, crumbling schools, and increased police funding to states.
His Wall is a vanity project. Mexico should pay for it. That is what he promised.
I cannot elect to lay my finger on any specific constitutional authority for the federal government to allocate funds for the construction of school buildings in this nation. I am opposed to this legislation, and I hope it never sees the light of day.
I would like for the feds to get out of K-12 education entirely. The feds should shut down the Dept of education, and return all responsibilities for education back to the states/municipalities.
Check the National Defense Education Act of 1958, which paid for school construction.
Ike supported it
See my post. In the federal constitution of 1789, there is no specific constitutional authority for the feds to spend one cent on public education or school buildings.
The feds need to get out of K-12 education entirely. Everything they do, seems to be making things worse.
President Eisenhower and Congress passed NDEA in 1958.
LBJ passed ESEA in 1965.
Every Congress since 1914 has appropriated money for education.
You lose this one.
The purpose of charter schools should be to find out what works and what doesn’t. The problem is what we see working in charter schools never gets moved to public schools.
Haas Hall (a public charter school) in Arkansas ranks as the as the 50th best public high school in the nation and #1 in the state. Compare it to the rest of Arkansas and you will see what innovation could be doing for students in Arkansas. Haas Hall also receives no local property taxes so it operates with 50% of the funding that the public schools receive.
https://www.usnews.com/education/best-high-schools/arkansas/districts/haas-hall-academy/haas-hall-academy-1219
Gary,
Please enlighten us about the demographics of this amazing Arkansas charter school.
What are the methods that get great results?
The school has a random lottery to get in so the demographics closely match the other schools in the area. I am not an educator, but this is what I see as a parent.
#1 – They expect every student to succeed and help them along the way. If a student is having problems in public schools, they put the lack of success on the child, demographics, or something outside of the school’s control. If a child’s grades even start slipping at Haas Hall, they supply free tutoring until scores improve.
#2 – They prioritize education over things like football or basketball.
Sorry for the double reply. I do not want anyone to think I am anti-public school or against increasing public school funding. My first child graduates this year and has spent all but 2 years in the non-charter public education system. I have 2 other children still attending non-charter public schools. Making public schools successful is in everyone’s best interest. That can only happen if there is an open conversation on what works to education.