Archives for category: Closing schools
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Jennifer Berkshire and Jack Schneider on School Closings in Boston

By dianeravitch
November 20, 2018 //
8

Jennifer Berkshire and Jack Schneider talk here about school closings in Boston. Berkshire recently read sociologist Eve Ewing’s phenomenal book about school closings in Chicago, so the podcast approaches the Boston events from the perspective of the victims. If, like me, you seldom listen to podcasts, here is the transcript.

It is simply a matter of fact that corporate reformers never close schools in white communities, only in communities where parents are apparently powerless. The school closings serve the purposes of gentrification. The excuse is always “test scores,” but the effect is replacement of one group of people by another, more affluent group. It happened in Chicago, it will happen in Boston.

Boston plans to close schools serving some of the city’s most vulnerable students, so they can be redistributed to other schools. As the exchanges in the program show, these students will suffer from the changes and the displacement.

I urge you to listen or read this segment

Categories Accountability, Boston, Chicago, Closing schools, Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, Privatization

My Review of Eve L. Ewing’s “Ghosts in the Schoolyard”

By dianeravitch
November 20, 2018 //
14

The best book about education this year was written by a woman who is a poet, a playwright, a novelist, and soon to be the writer of a Marvel comic about “a black girl genius from Chicago.” Ewing has a doctorate in sociology from Harvard and is now on the faculty of the University of Chicago. In case you don’t know all this, I am referring to Eve L. Ewing and her new book about school closings in Chicago. The title is Ghosts in the Schoolyard: Racism and School Closings on Chicago’s South Side.

Eve Ewing was a teacher in one of the 50 public schools that Rahm Emanuel closed in a single day. Her book will help to memorialize Rahm Emanuel’s stigma as the only person in American history to close 50 public schools in one day.

Because she is a poet, the book is written beautifully. She has managed to overcome the burden of academic language, which can so often sound technical, bureaucratic, and dehumanizing. Her language goes to the heart of the experience of suffering at the hands of bureaucrats and technocrats.

She examines the school closings from the perspective of those who were its victims: students, families, communities.

The question at the heart of the book is this: Why do students and families fight to keep their schools open after the authorities declare they are “failing schools.”

She answers the question by listening to and recording the moving testimony of those who fought for the survival of their schools.

Ewing sketches the history of the Bronzeville community in Chicago, racially segregated by government action. What resulted was a community that was hemmed in but nonetheless developed strong traditions, ties, and communal bonds. One of those bonds was the one between families and schools.

She describes some of the schools that were closed, schools with long histories in the black community. Parents and students came out to testify in opposition to the closings. They spoke about why they loved their school, how their family members had proudly attended the school, only to be confronted by school officials who waved “data” and “facts” in their faces to justify closing their beloved school.

Ewing deftly contrasts the official pronouncements of Barbara Byrd-Bennett (now in prison for accepting kickbacks from vendors), who insisted that it was not “racist” to close the schools of Bronzeville with the emotional responses of the students and families, who saw racism in the decision.

Ewing writes powerfully about a concept she calls “institutional mourning.” Families experienced this mourning process as the city leaders killed the institutions that were part of their lives and their history. The school closings were “part of a broader pattern of disrespect for people of color in Chicago,” they were part of “a formula of destruction” intended to obliterate memory, history, and tradition. The act of closing schools was integral to gentrification. And indeed, Chicago has seen a mass exodus of a significant part of its black population, which may have been (likely was) the purpose of the school closings and the removal of black neighborhoods.

Institutional mourning, she writes, “is the social and emotional experience undergone by individuals and communities facing the loss of a shared institution they are affiliated with—-such as a school, church, residence, neighborhood, or business district–especially when those individuals or communities occupy a socially marginalized status that amplifies their reliance on the institution or its significance in their lives.

Ewing asks:

“What do school closures, and their disproportionate clustering in communities like Bronzeville, tell us about a fundamental devaluation of African American children, their families, and black life in general? Is there room for democracy and real grassroots participation in a school system that has been run like an oligarchy?”

Byrd-Bennett spoke about a “utilization crisis” that required the closure of schools in Bronzeville and the dispersion of their students. Ewing offers a counterpoint, seeing the schools in the black community “as a bastion of community pride” and a long-running war over “the future of a city and who gets to claim it. There is the need to consider that losing the school represents another assault in a long line of racist attacks against a people, part of a history of levying harmful policies against them, blaming them for the aftermath, then having the audacity to pretend none of it really happened. There is the way some of these policy decisions are camouflaged by pseudoscientific analysis that is both ethically and statistically questionable. There is our intensely segregated society to account for, in which those who attend the school experience a fundamentally different reality than those who have the power to steer its future. And finally, there is the intense emotional aftermath that follows school closure, which can have a profound, lasting effect on those who experience the closure even as it is rarely acknowledged with any seriousness by those who made the decision.”

One bright spot in her book is the story of the successful resistance to the closing of the Walter H. Dyett high school in Bronzeville. She explains who Walter H. Dyett was, why the school was important, and why the community fought to keep the school named for him open. Dyett was a musician and a beloved high school music teacher; he taught in Bronzeville for 38 years. The school bearing his name may be the only one ever named for a teacher. A dozen community members, led by Jitu Brown of the Journey for Justice Alliance, conducted a hunger strike that lasted for 32 days. Only by risking their lives were they able to persuade the Chicago Mayor and his hand-picked Board to invest in the school instead of closing it.

Why do parents fight to save their schools, a fight they usually lose? She writes, “They fight because losing them [their schools] can mean losing their very world.”

I have underlined and starred entire paragraphs. Certainly, the testimony of students at public hearings, which was very moving. Also Ewing’s commentary, which is insightful.

At the hearing concerning the proposed (and certain) closing of the Mayo elementary school, students talked about the shame they felt.

One student, a third grader, testified:

My whole class started breaking out crying, so did my teacher. We walked through the halls in shame because we didn’t want Mayo to close. When I’m in fourth grade, I was really thinking about going to the fiftieth year anniversary, but how can I when Mayo is closing?

The shame was on Rahm Emanuel and Barbara Byrd-Bennett, but the students somehow felt culpable for what was done to them.

Another student from Mayo said:

Every day I go to school, we sing the Mayo song, and we are proud to hear the song. We are proud to sing the song every…every day. All I want to know is, why close Mayo? This is one of the best schools we ever had.

The book reads like a novel.

Let me add that I have waited for this book for a long time, not knowing if it would ever be written. History told from the point of view of those who were acted on, rather than the point of view of those at the top of the pyramid. Whose story will be told and who will tell it? Eve Ewing has told it.

I found it difficult to put down.

Categories Accountability, Chicago, Closing schools, Emanuel, Rahm, Racism

Indianapolis: The Resistance Pushes Back Against Corporate Reformers

By dianeravitch
November 19, 2018 //
8

Indianapolis has been a major target for the privatization movement. A group called The Mind Trust, funded by billionaire foundations, has led the effort to destroy public education, while presenting its motives as benign and admirable.

The corporate reform attack on Indianapolis was described vividly in this post by Jim Scheurich and Gayle Crosby.

Tom Ultican wrote about the destructive role of The Mind Trust in Indianapolis, which claims to be allied with the Democratic Party.

Locals, lacking the resources of the privatizes, have fought to save their public schools.

Here is a report on the recent elections from Dountonia Batts, an active member of the Network for Public Education:

Sending a clear message that the community is fed up with corporate reform, voters in Indianapolis ousted two incumbents on the Indianapolis Public School (IPS) Board, replacing them with opponents of the district’s corporate reform agenda.

First-time candidates Taria Slack and Susan Collins were backed by the IPS Community Coalition (the Indianapolis AROS Chapter) and the local teachers union and ran against incumbents backed by Stand for Children and the Mind Trust, a corporate reform institute. Slack and Collins are vowing to pressure the IPS administration to improve transparency, genuine community collaboration and engagement, and hold the administration accountable.

Indianapolis schools have been under persistent attack by corporate reformers over the past decade, with increasing numbers of charters and public school closings. The district—under the tutelage of the Mind Trust—has also created so-called “Innovation Schools,” which are IPS schools that are handed over to a charter management organization. Innovation Schools have complete autonomy, a school board that is not elected by the public, and receive public funds. Additionally, this structure allows charters under the IPS umbrella to take advantage of district-provided services such as transportation and special education services at no cost. This victory is proof that ordinary citizens can defeat big money. People power trumps money power. IPS Community Coalition is organized, prepared, and ready to reclaim our schools

Sincerely,

Dountonia S. Batts, J.D., M.B.A., N.S.A.

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Closing schools, Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, Education Reform, Indianapolis, Privatization, Resistance

Wendy Lecker: A Terrific Book about Chicago School Closings: Eve Ewing’s “Ghosts in the Schoolyard”

By dianeravitch
November 12, 2018 //
16

Wendy Lecker is a civil rights lawyer who writes frequently for the Stamford Advocate in Connecticut.

In this article, she reviews Eve L. Ewing’s marvelous book Ghosts in the Schoolyard.

I finished it a few days ago and can testify that it is a very important book. It is a powerful account of the 2013 mass school closings in Chicago.

Lecker writes:

The increase in racist attacks and voter suppression across the country prompts many whites to claim that this ugliness is “not who we are” as Americans. Sadly, these events merely reinforce how pervasive racism is in American society and policy.

A new book, “Ghosts in the Schoolyard: Racism and School Closings on Chicago’s South Side,” describes how African-American communities experience education reform policies, particularly school closures, in the context of the history of racial segregation and discrimination in Chicago. The author, Eve Ewing, is a professor at the University of Chicago, and a graduate of and former teacher in the Chicago public schools.

In 2013, Mayor Rahm Emmanuel’s administration closed 49 schools, on the pretext that the schools had low test scores and were “under-utilized.” The closures disproportionately affected African-American students in the intensely segregated district.

The questionable standard used to determine “under-utilization” was large class size — 30 children per class. When predominately white Chicago neighborhoods suffered large population declines, CPS never considered school closures there. CPS claimed it would send students to “better” schools, but the receiving schools had test scores just a few points above those slated for closure. From 2000 to 2015, CPS closed 125 neighborhood schools in communities of color, while opening 149 charter schools and selective admission public schools.

“I feel like I’m at a slave auction … Because I’m like, begging you to keep my family together. Don’t take them and separate them.”

This plea was uttered by a Chicago public school principal at one of the public hearings in 2013. Professor Ewing reviewed the testimony of the throngs of community members who came out to oppose gutting their schools. The schools, which had educated generations of the same families, were community institutions. Parents, teachers and students described them as families that provided continuity and stability for the entire neighborhood.

The analogy to a slave auction was not far-fetched. As Ewing notes, “the intentional disruption of the African-American family has been a primary tool of white supremacy.” In Chicago, this is not the first time African-American communities were torn apart by government policy. Wooed to the north by labor recruiters during the great migration, African-Americans were confined to one neighborhood, eventually dubbed Bronzeville, by violence, restrictive covenants and, later, housing policy. The community turned this forcibly segregated neighborhood into a vibrant place — a hub for music and the arts. Public housing policies favored families. Consequently, Bronzeville had a dense concentration of children. Local officials refused to integrate schools, so these children attended predominately African-American neighborhood public schools. Moreover, CPS consistently failed to invest in these segregated schools. Despite local activism and federal intervention over the years, Chicago has done little to address school or residential segregation.

In the late 1990s, Chicago demolished much of Bronzeville’s public housing, ousting many of its residents. Parents who were able sent children to live with relatives who remained in Bronzeville in order to preserve vital school relationships. As Ewing observes, the loss of student population in Bronzeville was the result of overt government policy.

To Bronzeville residents, the 2013 round of school closures was the continuation of a pattern of segregation, displacement and underfunding by Chicago officials. One resident described CPS’s attitude as “I poured gasoline on your house and then it’s your fault it’s on fire.”

There is extensive evidence showing that the 2013 Chicago school closings diminished educational opportunities for the children whose schools closed. Ewing demonstrates that the accompanying loss of relationships, identity and sense of history was just as devastating. The community mourned lost connections with teachers, staff, students, and something larger. Ewing details some of the personalities behind the names of the closed schools — notable African-American professionals from the same community. As one student noted, “That’s how you get black history to go away. Closing schools (especially those named for prominent African-Americans).” In the rare instance where a school slated for closure, Dyett High School, was saved after a community-wide hunger strike, a student declared that “(w)e value our education more because of what people sacrificed.”

“Ghosts in the Schoolyard” illustrates how supposedly objective metrics officials use to judge a school’s quality and fate are far from neutral and fail to account for a host of considerations critical to the community affected. As Ewing concludes, if we fail to consider history, community, race, power and identity when framing and investigating the problems facing our public schools, we will fail to find solutions that serve the best interests of children and communities.

Wendy Lecker is a columnist for the Hearst Connecticut Media Group and is senior attorney at the Education Law Center.

Categories Chicago, Closing schools, Emanuel, Rahm, Race, Racism

Chicago: Arne Duncan Aide is Running Daley Mayoral Campaign; More School Closings Ahead?

By dianeravitch
October 24, 2018 //
9

Mercedes Schneider noticed that Peter Cunningham, the editor or former editor of the billionaire Education Post, is campaign manager for mayoral candidate Bill Daley. Cunningham worked for Arne Duncan in the U.S. Department of Education, where he strongly defended Duncan’s zeal for closing schools with low test scores.

Is this a signal that a new Mayor Daley would double down on zrahm Emanuel’s horrifying record of closing public schools? Rah my set a record unequalled in American history by closing 50 schools in a single day. Never happened before. Will Daley follow the Duncan-Rahm path?

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Chicago, Closing schools, Corporate Reform, Emanuel, Rahm

Jan Resseger: An Important Book About the Tragic Costs of Mass School Closings in Chicago

By dianeravitch
October 17, 2018 //
14

Jan Resseger writes here about an important new book by sociologist Eve Ewing about the mass closure of 50 public schools in Chicago. This was Rahm Emanuel’s worst legacy. It is a stain on his reputation, unmatched in American history. No district or city or state ever closed 50 schools in one day. Emanuel believes, like Arne Duncan, that schools “fail,” when in fact it is society that fails when children come to school hungry and in need of smaller classes, medical care, and food.

She writes:

Eve Ewing’s new book, Ghosts in the Schoolyard: Racism and School Closings on Chicago’s South Side, explores the blindness, deafness, and heartlessness of technocratic, “portfolio school reform”* as it played out in 50 school closings in Chicago at the end of the school year in 2013. After months of hearings, the Chicago Public Schools didn’t even send formal letters to the teachers, parents and students in the schools finally chosen for closure. People learned which schools had finally been shut down when the list was announced on television.

Eve Ewing, a professor in the University of Chicago School of Social Service Administration and a former teacher in one of the closed schools, brings her training as a sociologist to explore this question: “But why do people care about these failing schools?” (p. 13) In four separate chapters, Ewing examines the question from different perspectives: (1) the meaning for the community of the closure of Dyett High School and the hunger strike that reopened the school; (2) the history of segregation in Chicago as part of the Great Migration, followed by the intensification of segregation in thousands of public housing units built and later demolished in the Bronzeville neighborhood; (3) the narratives of community members, teachers, parents and students about the meaning of their now-closed schools in contrast to the narrative of the portfolio school planners at Chicago Public Schools; and (4) the mourning that follows when important community institutions are destroyed.

We hear an English teacher describing the now-closed school where she had taught: “I never considered us as a failing school or failing teachers or failing students. I felt like pretty much everyone in that building was working really hard for those kids…. Trying to push them forward as far as they could go.” (p. 135)

And we hear Rayven Patrick, an eighth grader speaking about the importance of Mayo elementary school at the public hearing which preceded the school’s closure: “Most of my family have went to Mayo. My grandma attended. My mother, my aunt. I came from a big family. The Patricks are known in Mayo. Like, we have been going there for so long. Over the years I have watched lots of students graduate, and they were able to come back to their teachers and tell them how high school has been going. Most of them are in college now, and I see them come to the few teachers that are left at Mayo and tell them of their experience of college and high school. This year I will graduate. And most of the students at Mayo… They’re family to me. Little sisters and little brothers. I walk through the hallway, and every kid knows who I am. I’m able to speak to them, and I honestly, I wanna be able to watch them graduate.” (pp. 108-109)

Ewing also shares the justification for the 50 school closures by Barbara Byrd-Bennett, then Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s appointed school district CEO: “But for too long, children in certain parts of our city have been cheated out of the resources they need to succeed in the classroom because they are trapped in underutilized schools. These underutilized schools are also under-resourced.” (p. 4)

Throughout the book, teachers, students, parents, and grandparents point out the irony that Byrd-Bennett has criticized their now-closed school for being under-resourced. She is herself the person with enough power to have changed the funding formula that left some schools with ever-diminishing resources. Community members also complain again and again that at the same time neighborhood public schools are being shut down, the school district has been encouraging rapid growth in the number of charter schools.

Give credit (blame) where it is due: The Center on Reinventing Public Education at the University of Washington posited that the “portfolio model” would lead to success and efficiency. What they never considered was the consequences of their cold logic: lives and communities disrupted and damaged; grief; the harm to students and teachers caused by constant churn.

But no problem for CRPE: it will continue to be funded by the usual sources to damage more lives.

Categories Accountability, Chicago, Closing schools, Emanuel, Rahm, Failure

Jan Resseger: ED Department’s Inspector General Condemns Failure of Charter Oversight—Again!

By dianeravitch
October 6, 2018 //
9

Jan Resseger reviews a major report by the U.S. Department of Education’s Office of the Inspector General, which condemns the Department’s repeated failure to oversee the spending of federal. charter school funding.

The blame here falls not on Betsy DeVos, but on her predecessor, Arne Duncan, who was so eager to stimulate the creation of new charter schools that he failed to monitor those already opened with federal funds.

She writes:

“The report condemns a trend of poor oversight: This is the third major report in which the Department of Education’s OIG has documented poor management of federal dollars flowing to charter schools. Reports from the Department of Education’s OIG in 2012 and 2016 also disparaged Duncan’s charter school oversight. It is not likely, however, that Betsy DeVos, a libertarian, will improve the Department’s regulatory role.

“The new 2018, OIG report examines whether the U.S. Department of Education has a process for adequately monitoring the management of federal dollars and the management of student records and data when charter schools are closed. OIG examined charter school closures in three states between 2011 and 2015. Defining privately operated charter schools as public schools for the purpose of this report, the OIG notes that in the 2015-2016 school year, there were 98,277 public schools across the United States, among which 6,855 were charter schools. Between 2011 and 2015, 977 of the charter schools closed. OIG studied charter school closures in three states: Arizona, which had the highest number of closed charter schools authorized by the same authorizer; California, which had more charter schools than any other state and more students enrolled in charter schools; and Louisiana, which had the highest ratio of charter school closures relative to the number of charter schools in the state. In its 2018 report, OIG examines the procedures used in 89 of the closed charter schools—45 in Arizona, 31 in California, and 13 in Louisiana. OIG explains: “The purpose of the audit (is) to determine whether the U.S. Department of Education has effective oversight of the programs provided to charter schools….”

“The OIG begins its report by reassuring us—in oxymoronic language— that, “Charter schools are nonsectarian, publicly funded schools of choice that are intended to be held accountable for their academic and financial performance in return for reduced governmental regulation.” Maybe the myth that charters can be held accountable without accountability explains why the Department of Education hasn’t done so well with with preventing the kind of problems the report describes.

“The 2018, OIG report charges that the Department of Education has not provided adequate guidance to enable states and local school districts to comply with the federal laws and regulations they must follow to protect Title I, IDEA and Charter Schools Program dollars when charter schools are shut down. Neither Arizona, California, nor Louisiana had developed required procedures for tracking how the assets of charter schools were disposed after the schools were closed. The report notes that in September of 2015, the Department of Education sent a letter to state departments of education to remind them “of their role in helping to ensure that Federal funds received by charter schools are used for intended and appropriate purposes.” OIG explains, however, that, “The Dear Colleague Letter did not specifically discuss charter school closures.” Neither has the Department adequately monitored states’ charter school closure processes. “The Title I, IDEA, and CSP program offices did not incorporate a review of charter school closure procedures into their State Education Agency monitoring tools.”

“The 2018, OIG report continues: “During our audit period, the Department did not consider charter school closures to be a risk to Federal funds; therefore, the Title I, IDEA, and CSP program offices did not prioritize providing guidance to State Education Agencies on how to manage the charter school closure process….” “Without adequate Department guidance provided to the State Education Agencies and sufficient State Education Agency and authorizer oversight and monitoring of charter school closure processes, the risk of significant fraud, waste, and abuse of Federal programs’ funds is high. The growing number of charter schools, from 1,993 in School Year 2000-2001 to 6,855 in School Year 2015-2016, and the number of charter schools that closed, ranging from 72 in School Year 2000-2001 to 308 in School Year 2014-2015, require the Department’s program offices to develop and implement a modified approach to overseeing the State Education Agencies.””

Finally: “We found there was no assurance that for the sampled closed charter schools (1) Federal funds were properly closed within the required period, (2) assets aquired with Federal funds were properly disposed of, and (3) the students’ personally identifiable information was properly protected and maintained.”

Unfortunately, Kathleen S. Tighe, the Inspector General of the Department of Education, is retiring next month, and her replacement will be named by the president, subject to Senate confirmation. The current deputy IG Sandra Bruce will take over until a permanent IG is nominated and confirmed.

Given the track record of the Trump administration in politicizing every facet of the federal government, this change may be the end of honest inquiry about charter school oversight.

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Closing schools, Duncan, Arne, Education Industry, Education Reform, U.S. Department of Education

Detroit: Charter School Abruptly Closes, Stranding Students

By dianeravitch
September 27, 2018 //
15

Only days into the new school year, the Detroit Delta Preparatory Academy for Social Justice announced that it was closing, stunning students and parents. Enrollment was lower than expected, and the school was not financially viable, according to its authorizer, Ferris State University.

The decision left many of the high school’s students in tears.

“Everybody was breaking down,” said Ajah Jenkins, 17, a senior at the school, which had just begun its fifth year of operation.

Ajah called her mother, Kelye King, “crying, hysterical, screaming, saying, ‘My school’s closing. How am I going to graduate,’ ” King recounted.

Saturday is supposed to be the school’s homecoming. It’s unclear whether it’ll still happen, said King, who is upset because she believes the school should have given parents a heads-up that this might happen.

“I’m just disappointed. I entrusted her education to a group of people — they’re making me feel like I failed her, like I didn’t do enough research.”

The other day, we learned that a charter school in Delaware was closing with no prior notice.

That’s the market for you. Stores open and close without warning.

Schools are not supposed to be like that. They are supposed to be a public service that is always there for the students.

Maybe the market for schools is saturated. After all, you can’t expect to open a shoe store on every corner and expect them all to thrive or survive.

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Closing schools, Competition, Detroit, Disruption

Julie Vassilatos: How Will Rahm Be Remembered? What Will His Legacy Be?

By dianeravitch
September 17, 2018 //
16

Julie Vassilatos baked a cake to celebrate the announced retirement of Rahm Emanuel as mayor of Chicago. But she is laughing and crying. He wants to be remembered as “the education mayor.” Really. Stop laughing.

Here is his real legacy. Open the link to see the whole post plus lots of links:

The closure of 50 schools. This chaotic, criminal mess was why I started this blog. Here are the open letters to Barbara Byrd Bennett and the Chicago Tribune following the first school closure hearings that kicked everything off. Later I realized all those hearings were a sham, just part of a process the Broad Center recommends when a district undertakes mass school closings in order to cut costs. Such meetings are for people to “feel heard,” although no one ever responds or answers any questions or resolves anything. We sat through many rounds of these. Years later, still they go on. I was recently at a similar hearing concerning NTA, the majority-black, successful elementary school Rahm decided to hand over to majority-non-black South Loopers for a high school. That foreordained, futile vibe you get from these events is impossible to avoid, as all major decisions actually have already been made and no comments actually impact the outcomes.

The closure process was every bit as terrible as you can imagine–actually, probably worse, and I wrote about it obsessively in every possible way I could think of until the hour board of ed voted to shutter the schools (which they managed to do without even naming the schools the vote was intended to close).

Research undertaken since the closures has shown they did not improve anyone’s educational experience, they only caused a great deal of “institutional mourning” in children, that is to say, grief. And the board who enacted this policy was summarily dismissed after CEO Byrd-Bennett was nailed for corruption and the optics of their unquestioning approval became a bad look for Rahm.

Add to that the “decimation of school libraries.”

And add to that:

The near-death of Walter H. Dyett High School and the near-death of the Dyett Hunger Strikers. Again, 100% on Rahm. I wrote too many posts on this to link (but here’s the first). Disinvesting a school in a black neighborhood was certainly not new in Chicago with this mayor. But he brought this conflict to new heights. Rahm’s refusal to meet with members of the community, as well as utter shenanigans around Requests for Proposals for the school, as well as a Rahm-beholden alderman and yet more absurd community hearings, created not just an unjust situation, not just a PR nightmare, but also almost irrecoverable health crises for the Hunger Strikers, who went to this extreme measure in order to get a meeting with their mayor. Over 34 days he never met with them. Though the cost was terrible, Dyett remained open. Whatever Rahm’s agenda was here was never made clear, but he lost that round, and the community has a whole bunch of actual, real life heroes.

And don’t forget “the traumatization of children.”

Quite a record for one Mayor. The Education Mayor.

Categories Chicago, Closing schools, Education Reform, Emanuel, Rahm

Little Rock: Please Do Not Steal Our Public Schools and Our Democracy!

By dianeravitch
August 29, 2018 //
14

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

Categories Accountability, Arkansas, Charter Schools, Closing schools, Corporate Reformers, Cruelty, Democracy, Education Industry, Injustice, Privatization
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