Students at Hill Regional Career High School conducted a peaceful protest because of layoffs of some of their teachers.
During their last period, Career students stepped out onto the grassy field behind the school. They carried a wide pink banner with the names of four teachers who received notice last week that they would be involuntarily transferred out of the school. Others held up signs that said, “WTF: Where’s the funding?” “HISTORY has its EYES on YOU,” and “We need our AP classes.”
“Save our teachers!” they chanted. “Save our teachers!”
Many of the students said they wanted to stand up for the educators who had always stood up for them — sometimes in situations that were literally “between life and death,” said Nidia Luis-Moreno, a junior. They said that, so far, they had collected close to 1,000 signatures opposing the involuntary transfers…
After they walked onto the field, students confronted Principal Zakia Parrish about why she had decided to remove two social-studies teachers and a music teacher, who had all made close personal connections with students.
On the other side of town, black ministers rallied in opposition to the students, claiming that the student protest was an effort to preserve “white privilege,” although the photographs accompanying the story did not show many white students in the protest.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
There is something off in this district. Superintendent Carol Birk can make $235,000 and eliminate 53 teaching positions throughout the school system. Is saving money all that matters? Why not start by cutting her salary?
What happens to class sizes? Students are unhappy. Eliminating the music teacher means no music classes.
When are politicians who underfund and administrators going to start thinking about students and caring for teachers?
I worked in Chicago Heights, IL for twelve years. One year the school board decided to make each of us music teachers change to different schools. There were 11 schools in the district. We asked to remain in the one school in which we felt we were achieving the most. The board said, “No”, and just moved us because they had the power to do that. There was no other reason. The next year we all started teaching at schools we’d never been in before.
Abuse of power is rampant.
At our school, all that matters is Data, STEaM and “21st-Century job skills.” The humanities be damned. Our school board is also useless, acquiescing to whatever demands the superintendent makes. Sad
This type of thing happens and then politicians are wondering why there is a teacher shortage.
I’m out of the mess since I retired a number of years ago. Three times, while I was in between teaching jobs, I tried to find something else to do. Nothing paid as much so I kept teaching even though what I was making wasn’t enough to live on decently. I had a masters degree and grad hours to pump up my salary.
I had tenure but quit that district in Chicago Heights, IL because music had been eliminated. I was certified to teach classroom but there was no planning period. All the music, art and gym teachers had either been fired or reassigned to a classroom. I had been given a fourth grade class and reached the point where I had put names on all the desks and gathered music books and put them at the back of the classroom. The other fourth grade teacher was going to take both rooms [50 students] for art for one hour to give me a break. I was going to take all 50 students for music one hour to give her a break.
I quit right before school started and taught music in a different district. I went through 4 districts in 6 years. Nobody would give a music teacher tenure. It kept the districts from paying higher on the pay scale. One district in Frankfort, IL had gone through 8 music teachers in a row. I was the 8th to be fired.
I couldn’t stand the stress. I then started looking overseas and got a teaching job in Santa Cruz, Bolivia for two years. From there I went to Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia and taught classroom music and beginning band there for 8 years but lived in Kuala Lumpur one extra year without teaching due to a nerve disease that kept me from hearing well enough to teach. Then I came back to the States and retired.
There is nothing like having a worthless school board.
You have the support of almost everyone who reads this blog. Most of us have been in the trenches and totally understand.
I didn’t realize that the situation was this bad for teachers in the arts. You were forced into the “gig economy” long before it had a name.
and across the nation, so much money is now being put into school board elections: big money controlling the agenda while the public remains passively unaware
What is most disgusting about these layoffs is that they are happening in the wealthiest state in the US (as measured by per capita income).
And New Haven is home to one of the wealthiest Universities in the US — Yale, with an endowment of $29 billion.
But of course, Yale and it’s medical center which sit in downtown New Haven on prime real estate pay no property taxes which means the schools of New Haven are basically cheated out of badly needed funds.
By the way, the value of Yale’s New Haven tax exempt New Haven academic property was $2.5 billion (yes, billion) in 2013, about a quarter of the total property value in New Haven
https://www.nhregister.com/colleges/article/Yale-s-tax-exempt-New-Haven-property-worth-2-5-11372847.php
I could not find a more current value (which is almost certainly higher now), but if you use the current mill rate of 42.98 mills for New Haven on $2.5 billion, you get about $108 million.
That’s the tax money (at least) that is lost to the city of New Haven every year because Yale pays no tax on their academic property.
The loss is actually a little less than that because Yale “voluntarily” (out of the goodness of their magnanimous heart) pays $11 million a year to the city (or only about 10% of what they would if they were taxed like everyone else.)
How generous of them.
By the way, the local property tax exemption on Yale is in addition to the Federal tax exemption accorded to nonprofits and dates to an 1834 change to the University charter, at a time when the university was struggling and the city wanted to help them out.
Times have changed and there has been a reversal of fortunes. But Yale has been like the fellow who was given a dollar by a community organization because he was struggling, plays the lottery with it and then refuses to return the kindness. It’s an entitlement attitude.
The “voluntary” yearly contribution of $11 million stems from a 1990 agreement between Yale’s president and the city that ensures that the city will not change the tax exempt status of Yale.
But as I noted above, the $11 million paid yearly is only about 10% of what they would pay if the property was not tax exempt.
One correction on the above. the Yale medical center property actually is taxed, but that is irrelevant to the numbers I gave above which were based purely on Yales tax exempt properties.
“plays and WINS the lottery with it and refuses to return the kindness”
And by the way, New Havens $17 million budget shortfall is just a small fraction of the taxes that Yale does not pay.
As wealthy as Yale is, there is absolutely no excuse that they should be nickel and diming the city of New Haven the way they do.
This is the epitome of how the privileged treat the underprivileged.
Read some of the comments. They are illuminating.
They are involuntary transfers, not layoffs. Though for the kids, the impact is the same: they lose their teachers and the classes they taught. And layoffs are likely down the road, if not for these specific teachers than for younger teachers who get “bumped” because there are no vacancies matching the transferred teachers’ certifications.
Thank you Diane for bringing attention to these great kids! We’re all so proud of them as they put into practice the peaceful resistance they learned about in their history classes. Your support is much appreciated and you continue to be an inspiration to teachers everywhere.
The students are trying to protect the quality of education in their district. When the situation calls for it, sometimes resistance and protest are the only routes left. It is sad that students have to fight for a rich curriculum which every district should be able to provide. This is the dark side of privatization that nobody discusses. Privatization harms public schools because it drains resources, and it is the minority majority schools that bear most of the burden.
Young people all over America are demonstrating that democracy is not dead (yet).
The irony is that millennials are often misrepresented as materialistic, selfish know nothings when they are precisely the ones who are standing up, while our so called “leaders” from both major parties eagerly sacrifice our country and our planet in order to line their pockets with billions of dollars.
Reblogged this on Mister Journalism: "Reading, Sharing, Discussing, Learning".
At first I was a critic and then I became one of your most ardent admirers. Thank you for the serious self-examination that led you to this version of yourself. I am on that board in question and support the students and the teachers. I hope my peers will do the same. This is their generation’s Civil Rights Movement. With a tyrant in the White House and a clueless and heartless person in charge of education, our nation is again at risk. Thanks Diane for shining a light on this issue and stay tuned.
Dr Edward Joyner
New Haven Board of Education
This is a good bill. Wonder what will happen if it EVER reaches the Senate. I’m SO happy that Senator Todd Young [R-IN] ALWAYS keeps my thoughts in mind when considering whether or not to vote for something. I wonder how much he is enjoying the $2,896,732 that he got from the NRA?
He got $48,600 from the DeVos family to ensure he voted for the great Betsy to be Secretary of Education. [[M]y family is the largest single contributor of soft money to the national Republican party … I have decided, however, to stop taking offense at the suggestion that we are buying influence. Now, I simply concede the point. We expect to foster a conservative governing philosophy consisting of limited government and respect for traditional American virtues. We expect a return on our investment; we expect a good and honest government. Furthermore, we expect the Republican party to use the money to promote these policies, and yes, to win elections.]
……………………………………………
Dear Ms. Ring,
Sincerely,
Todd Young
United States Senator
Here’s another ‘great’ non-public school in Gary, Indiana. [A poverty area.]
This school is rated below average in school quality compared to other schools in Indiana. Students here perform below average on state tests, are making below average year-over-year academic improvement, and this school has below average results in how well it’s serving disadvantaged students.
“We’re an independent nonprofit that provides parents with in-depth school quality information.”
[NWI Times] Teacher mocks autistic student with ‘most annoying’ award, parent complains
GARY — A Gary father is expressing disbelief this week after his fifth-grader, who is autistic, was given a trophy dubbing him the “most annoying male” for the school year.
Rick Castejon said the award was given to his 11-year-old son at a fifth-grade awards luncheon for Bailly Preparatory Academy students last month by a special education teacher in front of students, parents and the school’s principal Carlita Royal.
“We were blindsided. We just weren’t expecting it,” Castejon said. “As a principal or teacher, you should never let this happen to any student.”…
https://www.nwitimes.com/news/education/teacher-mocks-autistic-student-with-most-annoying-award-parent-complains/article_c97876c4-8587-51d2-b6e9-872bd83378fb.html?utm_medium=social&utm_source=email&utm_campaign=user-share
Here’s a great piece written by one of the students involved in the protests:
https://www.newhavenarts.org/arts-paper/articles/career-student-dont-cut-our-teachers