Jan Resseger writes here about the almost complete lack of leadership at the national level–and even at the state level–in protecting our children in the midst of an ongoing pandemic. The failure of Congress to agree on federal aid for cities and states is a glaring example of indifference to the health and well-being of children and families and teachers. The breakdown of negotiations between Nancy Pelosi and Steven Mnuchin can be attributed to Donald Trump and Mitch McConnell, who don’t want to see any aid go to blue states and cities. This is tragic because the victims are children.
She writes:
I do not remember a time when the wellbeing of children has been so totally forgotten by the leaders of the political party in power in the White House and the Congress. This fall, school district leaders have been left on their own as they try to serve and educate children while the COVID-19 pandemic continues raging across the states. School leaders are trying to hold it all together this fall at the same time their state budgets in some places have already been cut.
In Ohio, the COVID-19 recession is only exacerbating a public school fiscal crisis driven by a long history of inequitable school funding and the expansion of school privatization. On November 3, the school district where I live has been forced to put a local operating levy on the ballot simply to avert catastrophe. EdChoice vouchers, funded by a “local school district deduction” extract $6,000 for each high school voucher student and $4,650 for each K-8 voucher student right out of our school district’s budget. Although these students attend private and religious schools, the state counts voucher students as part of our per-pupil enrollment, which means that the state pays the district some of the cost of the voucher. In a normal year, there is a net loss because the vouchers are worth more than our district’s state basic aid, but this year the loss is even worse: In he current state budget, the Legislature froze the state’s contribution to the state’s school districts at the FY 2019 level. This means that the state is not allocating any additional funding to our school district to cover the new vouchers the state is awarding this year from our local budget. The Plain Dealer reports that our district will lose $9 million to the EdChoice vouchers this school year, and the school treasurer reports that 94 percent of all vouchers being awarded to students in our district are for students who have never been enrolled in our public schools. In essence, this means that across Ohio, the Legislature is forcing local school districts to pay for private and religious education.
This year, however, on top of the voucher expansion, COVID-19 has affected local school budgets across our state. Last spring, when the coronavirus shut down businesses and caused widespread layoffs, the Governor significantly reduced what the state had already promised to school districts in the state budget. Across the state’s 610 school districts, over $300 million—which the school districts had been promised before the fiscal year ended on June 30—just didn’t arrive. All of this has created a fiscal emergency for school districts across Ohio.
Only the AFT and Randi Weingarten, she writes, have remained alert and warned of the dangers of Congressional inaction. But the party in power is not listening.
It is necessary to understand the group psychology, the psychodynamics and psychopathology of cults.
In what way are public school supporters making their case? What avenues are they using to reach the parents and grandparents of students? PR and DM can be expensive but that is the name of the game, especially during the pandemic. My experience post retirement has been that people I always assumed were intelligent and well-read have zero comprehension of the issues. I have been their first acquaintance with the problematic nature of charters.
West Coast Teacher,
You raise good questions. We are doing our best to inform the public via the Network for Public Education. We have conducted numerous studies of charter school failures, scandals, frauds, support from billionaires, etc. We sent out press releases. Sometimes they are picked up by the media, sometimes not. John Oliver did a brilliant piece about charters (about 10 million views), and so did Samantha Bee. The truth is that the privatizers have unlimited resources; we do not. We have to count on volunteers and their energy in saving public schools.
a key point for YEARS
What service does the cult leader provide his followers, his ultimate victims, that leads them in exchange to sacrifice everything nearest and dearest to themselves?
The entire country is suffering economically from the global pandemic. It is a global crisis. Privatization is a misguided, man made crisis that has allowed charter schools and vouchers to drain public school budgets. Vouchers are a total waste of money that allows money from public school budgets to flow to private schools that parents would have paid for anyway. Privatization is a political attack on the poor and working class by those that are wealthy. Electing politicians that support private interests over the common good is a way to undermine the schools most students attend. The federal government has ignored the fiscal crisis that most states are facing. The only way to change this noxious trend is to vote out candidates that favor privatization of our public schools.
I really feel bad for young people in the United States. Their political leadership is of such poor quality and so corrupt it barely functions.
They got a really raw deal. I had it better. The collapse in quality is really something. They’re all either incompetent or corrupt or both.
Do not blame the Democrats unless they gain the majority in both Houses of Congress during the November election. Then once they are seated early in January if they continue to do nothing like the GOP Senate majority has been doing for years as obstructionists to everything that would be good for the working class, then blame the Democrats, too.
When the country did have a president with his party in power in Congress that worked for the benefit of all the people instead of the wealthiest 1%, who were they?
Franklin Roosevelt? Harry Truman? 😐
Twoscore and seven years ago some wealthy fathers bought forth on this continent a new nation, conceived in greed and dedicated to the proposition that no men are created their equal.
Now we are engaged in a great civil rights war, testing whether that nation, or any corporate-led nation so shortsightedly conceived and dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great battle-blog of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that blog, as a constant reminding-place of those who gave their dark money that this new oligarchy might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this…
The billionaires will little note, nor long remember, what we say here, but we can never forget what they did. Here, it is for us the people, rather, to be dedicated to the unfinished work which Diane here has thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us — that from these honored posts we take increased devotion to that cause — that we here highly resolve that the cradle of democracy shall not have died in vain — that democracy, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom — and that government of the corporation, by the corporation, for the corporation, shall perish from the earth.
Here’s the thing: Jan uses the determiner “our” in her argument. A generally accepted definition of “our” no longer holds in 2020 USA. It is, more precisely, as Pink Floyd defined almost 50 years ago, “Us and Them.” “Mine matter, yours don’t. And as long as mine are OK, I really don’t give a damn about yours.” That’s why some on this blog are willing to seek out alternatives to public education for their children while–get this–still proclaiming to support public education(!) instead of doing the hard work of making public education a public (community, universal, etc), priority worth committing to and for which to fight. “Our” seems to be just fine as long as it doesn’t hit close to what some consider to be home.
Jan said: “But the party in power is not listening.” That is the bottom line.
The neglect of policies that would help children and parents is deliberate. Republicans choose to ignore the public welfare and next generation because these are not viewed as profitable but a drain on the almighty economy, specifically an economy that is defined by the stock market and wealth of the few.