Having gone to college many years ago in Massachusetts, I have an idyllic view of small-towns in New England. Thus, I was shocked to read this article from InDepth New Hampshire about hate groups that are active in Franklin, New Hampshire. True, NH has its Free Staters, rabid libertarians who want no government at all, but you will read here about a different type of extremism, based on hate.
What’s happening to our country? when I read articles celebrating the last election as a rebuke to Trumpism, I remind myself that many important votes were very close. In many states, reason won by 50.4%. Or 51%.
A new hate incident in Franklin, this time white supremacist graffiti painted on a downtown building, has city leaders looking for answers.
Mayor Jo Brown said the city’s task force to combat hate, formed after a Jewish business owner was targeted by a hate group this summer, is working on stifling hate with education and positivity…
It is not clear who is behind this week’s graffiti, Brown said. This is the second time this year Franklin leaders have dealt with hate-influenced issues. Over the summer, members of the notorious hate group, NSC 131, targeted Miriam Kovacs, owner of the Broken Spoon, which is a Jewish-Asian fusion takeout restaurant.
NSC 131, also known as the Nationalist Social Club, is a neo-Nazi hate group active in New England. The group has a chapter active in New Hampshire. In the past year, the group has targeted businesses on the Seacoast for harassment, and even threatened former Nashua Democratic state Rep. Manny Espitia.
State Rep. Charlotte DiLorenzo, D-Newmarket, recently spoke about receiving a racist email from a different group. Attorney General John Formella is investigating the email from a man who identified himself as the founder and president of a group called the New England White Network.
NSC 131 was founded in eastern Massachusetts and its members are tied to violent Neo Nazi groups like The Base, Aryan Strike and Patriot Front. The group has off-shoot chapters in Europe and some southern states. NSC 131 graffiti has been spotted all throughout southern New Hampshire, and the group has made appearances at Nashua City Hall and Nashua School Board meetings, among other incidents.
This summer, the group hung two banners over a highway in Dover that read: “Keep New England white” and “Defend New England.”
The group is virulently anti-Semitic and calls for expelling Jewish people from the United States. The group also calls for violence against Jews and minorities.
“110 and never again. Jews have been expelled from 109 countries make America 110. Any nationalist of action will agree, 110 and never again,” on NSC 131 poster wrote on Telegram.
A hard-right faction took control of the 4th-largest school district in South Carolina last night and immediately got to work smashing anything that wasn’t nailed to the floor.
On the same night they were sworn in to the Berkeley County School Board, a slate of candidates backed by Moms for Liberty and the local Republican Party fired the district’s first Black superintendent, fired the district legal counsel, voted to cut property taxes, approved a ban on “critical race theory” in the classroom, and set up a panel to begin reviewing and banning books containing sexual content that they deem inappropriate.
I was there when it happened, part of an overflow crowd of community members who told the board what they were doing was shameful. We might as well have delivered our little speeches to a brick wall. What we witnessed last night was more like vandalism than leadership.
I live-tweeted the meeting last night if you want to take a closer look. Because this newsletter has a national(-ish) audience, I wanted to share some broad observations that might be helpful as conservatives put all of our schools in their crosshairs.
They came prepared
The temptation is to think of our political opponents as stupid or insane. They might in fact be both, but we can’t think strategically about defeating them without assuming a base level of cunning on their part.
The Berkeley County Republican Party is a well-oiled machine. From the moment the newly elected conservative super-majority members took their seats in the boardroom last night, it was obvious they had a plan and they were sticking to it.
The new members didn’t deliver any flashy soundbites. They hardly discussed their policy proposals at all, aside from a running narrative by their newly installed board chair, Mac McQuillin. McQuilin is one of the longer-serving board members and knows Robert’s Rules of Order. He knew when to call a vote, and his allies on the board dutifully cast their votes in a 6-member bloc. On a 9-member board, they didn’t need to bother with persuading the other side.
This is called party discipline, and Democrats are terrible at it. Progressive activists and politicians could learn a thing or two about tactics here.
They take cues from the national level
Two rallying cries of conservative activists in this country right now are banning uncomfortable discussions of history under the guise of “critical race theory” and forbidding students from learning about the existence of trans people. The messaging is clear and consistent from Tucker Carlson’s mouth to your racist cousin’s ears.
Unlike with Statehouse-level legislation, where watchdog groups like ALEC Exposed track the spread of “model legislation” from the American Legislative Exchange Council, we don’t have a robust way of tracking the spread of billionaires’ pet projects at the level of local school boards (Or maybe we do! Let me know if you have a good resource).
Read enough local news and you start to see the patterns, though. Conservative county council and school board members have no qualms about copying and pasting policies from each other.
Earlier this month in South Carolina, the Horry County School Board set aside a “restricted access” section of school libraries where students can’t read books without parental permission. Book bans and “library consideration policies” were on the agenda in Lexington 3 and Beaufort County school districts this week too, borrowing ideas from Florida’s latest book ban laws.
Following the template, Berkeley County’s school board voted last night to approve a similar book-banning regime, effectively overriding policies that were written by the district’s own school librarians last year.
Gary Rubinstein is a high school math teacher and blogger. He has been following Success Academy charter chain, which has been nationally acclaimed for its high test scores. In his latest post, Rubinstein examines the case of a student who thrived at Success Academy until the pandemic, but struggled when the school switched to remote learning. Read the story and answer the question, was she treated fairly by her school?
Success Academy is known for its high 3-8 standardized test scores and its extreme rigidity. In a way, the rigidity is part of what causes them to have such high test scores. They demand compliance from their students and from the families of those students. When a student or the family of a student is not conforming to the expectations of the school, that student or family are going to be harassed, humiliated, and punished until they either fall into line or ‘voluntarily’ transfer to another school.
The heartbreaking saga of a girl I will call ‘Carla’ began pleasantly enough eight years ago when she was accepted into Success Academy Springfield Gardens as a kindergartener. From kindergarten through fourth grade, she thrived at the school. Her fourth grade report card grades were mostly the highest or second highest category, except for writing where she was struggling….
In fifth grade, she started having problems academically, though not catastrophically, and then as we all know, the pandemic hit and schools in New York went remote for the next year and a half. For the end part of fifth grade and all of sixth grade, Carla struggled to learn remotely. She had various connection issues and would wait in zoom waiting rooms endlessly. She was really traumatized by the pandemic year and was eager to return to in person classes for her seventh grade year.
But she was still suffering the effects of the 18 months of remote learning. She was having mental health issues and was seeing a therapist about them. At school she was failing several classes. Carla is a very hard working student and someone who really tries her best and her parents work very hard to support her needs and to keep on top of what assignments Carla was missing. Everyone knows that Success Academy has one trick in their playbook which is to make students repeat grades for failing courses. So Carla managed to improve most of her grades but she still failed two subjects, writing and science and was told that she would have to pass those two courses in summer school or she would have to repeat the entire seventh grade.
How Success Academy can make such a threat is incomprehensible to me. For elementary school grades it makes more sense, but in a secondary school setting, why not just retake the courses that you failed? But that wasn’t the threat, it was that she had to pass both courses with a 70 or higher or she would be repeating the entire seventh grade, including all the classes that she had passed.
Please read the rest of the post to learn what happened to Carla? Was it fair? Was it just? What do you think?
The Washington Post published a fascinating account of what’s happening inside Twitter, the company with 7,500 employees. The workers have heard nothing since the takeover. No word from the new boss. At one time, he said he would fire 75% of the workforce, then changed it to 50%. He is swiftly destroying whatever collegiality and trust existed among colleagues. A large number will soon have their computers locked and told to leave the building at once with their personal possessions.
With rumors of impending layoffs by new owner Elon Musk swirling inside Twitter on Wednesday, an employee noticed that the Google Calendar of one of their new bosses was publicly viewable. On it was an entry at 5 p.m. that day titled “RIF Review” — an acronym for Reduction in Force, or layoffs.
Another Twitter employee was able to view a group on Slack, the workplace chat tool, in which company administrators appeared to be finalizing the precise number of workers to be laid off, and how much they’d receive in severance.
By day’s end, word had spread across the company that layoffs — half the staff — would probably come Friday, and that Musk would require Twitter’s remaining employees to return to the office full-time. But that word didn’t come from Musk, or anyone on his leadership team. It came via Blind, the anonymous workplace gossip site that some Twitter employees say has become their best, and often only, source of information about what’s going on inside the company in the chaotic, surreal week since Musk acquired it for $44 billion.
Twitter did not immediately respond to a request for comment, and the company’s leadership has not confirmed the layoff plans.
Since Musk closed the deal on Oct. 27, employees say, they have not received a single official communication from anyone in a leadership position at the company. They have not been told that Musk completed the purchase, that their CEO and top executives were summarily fired, or that Musk dissolved the board and installed himself as chief executive.
Instead, they have read about Musk’s dramatic plans to overhaul the company via media reports, Musk’s tweets, back-channel private chats and Blind. Twitter’s formerly open corporate culture, centered on all-staff meetings and freewheeling Slack channels where employees and managers shared ideas, plans and jokes, has turned suspicious and secretive, several Twitter employees told The Wasington Post, speaking on the condition of anonymity because they feared retribution.
“It’s like Twitter’s culture has been completely turned inside out overnight,” one employee said. “Mass trauma event over here.”
The last official communication to the Twitter staff came the day before Musk took over, when Twitter’s head of people, Leslie Berland, sent a cheery email with the subject line “Elon office visit.”
“If you’re in SF and see him around, say hi!” Berland wrote. “For everyone else, this is just the beginning of many meetings and conversations with Elon, and you’ll all hear directly from him on Friday.”
But workers did not hear directly from Musk on Friday, when his planned introduction to the company was quietly canceled, or anytime since. The company’s regular all-hands meeting, scheduled for Wednesday, disappeared from everyone’s calendars on Tuesday.
On Tuesday, Berland left the company, according to people familiar with the situation, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive matters. Berland’s apparent departure, along with those of several other executives in recent days, was not announced either internally or externally, leaving employees to speculate on Blind about which of their bosses have quit or been fired.
Since Friday, employees have posted memes and comments on the company Slack noting each day that has passed without word from management. One person posted an image of a skeleton with a caption that read, “me waiting on updates from leadership,” according to documents obtained by The Post.
In lieu of communicating with employees, Musk and his new deputy Jason Calacanis, who appeared in a company directory over the weekend, have been brainstorming, focus-grouping and announcing new products and policies in public, via their personal Twitter accounts.Twitter’s employees have quickly learned to follow their new leaders’ Twitter feedsfor updates essential to their work.
Hey, Texas! Instead of scary school DNA kits for ‘safety,’ how about some gun safety laws?
Since the horrific Uvalde school shooting in May, Texas officials have done everything they can to protect the state’s guns and comfort the people who own them while doing little to help fearful parents.
In that vein, Texas schools are handing out “safety” kits that encourage parents to collect their children’s DNA and fingerprints in case of an “emergency.” These kits are labeled, without a hint of irony, “A gift of safety, from our family to yours,” right under a giant seal of the state of Texas….
Remind me: Loyal to families or guns?
It would be entirely reasonable for Texas parents – or anyone who sees a link between school shootings and easy access to high-powered firearms – to stand in the Chihuahuan Desert in West Texas and scream to the creosote bushes: “Could we please do something about guns instead of planning for how to identify our kid’s bodies, you sellouts?!?”
But we all know how that’ll go. You might scare a couple passing javelinas, but extracting Texas politicians’ heads from the tuchuses of BIG GUN is like trying to teach common sense to a dude who keeps 37 handguns and five AR-15s in his home for “protection…”
Heck, why don’t we just start issuing dog tags to school kids? If our response to school shootings is to treat children the way we treat soldiers, maybe the DNA kit should come with a weapon and a flak jacket.
Would it be easier to enact reasonable gun laws that require universal background checks, ban the sale of assault weapons, limit magazine capacities and raise the minimum age for gun ownership to 21? Sure, but that might ruffle the feathers of those who think everyone needs to live in a house made of guns and then own more guns to protect themselves from everyone else’s gun-houses and all the other guns. Or something like that. I can’t quite follow the logic, if I’m being honest, but I’m sure if I buy a couple dozen guns it’ll make sense.
America’s love of guns is “absolutely nuts.”
The next time you hear a Republican claim he or she is “pro-life,” ask them why they oppose gun control?
Fiona Hill is a former diplomat who specializes in the study of Russia and Ukraine. She was a star witness in the first impeachment trial of Trump (the Former Guy).
In the early days of Russia’s war on Ukraine, Hill warned in an interview with POLITICO that what Putin was trying to do was not only seize Ukraine but destroy the current world order. And she recognized from the start that Putin would use the threat of nuclear conflict to try to get his way.
Now, despite the setbacks Russia has suffered on the battlefield, Hill thinks Putin is undaunted. She sees him adapting to new conditions, not giving up. And she sees him trying to get the West to accede to his aims by using messengers like billionaire Elon Musk to propose arrangements that would end the conflict on his terms.
“Putin plays the egos of big men, gives them a sense that they can play a role. But in reality, they’re just direct transmitters of messages from Vladimir Putin,” Hill says…
Whenever he has a setback, Putin figures he can get out of it, that he can turn things around. That’s partly because of his training as a KGB operative. In the past, when asked about the success of operations, he’s pooh-poohed the idea that operations always go as planned, that everything is always perfect. He says there are always problems in an operation, there are always setbacks. Sometimes they’re absolute disasters. The key is adaptation.
Another hallmark of Putin is that he doubles down. He always takes the more extreme step in his range of options, the one that actually cuts off other alternatives. Putin has often related an experience he had as a kid, when he trapped a rat in a corner in the apartment building he lived in, in Leningrad, and the rat shocked him by jumping out and fighting back. He tells this story as if it’s a story about himself, that if he’s ever cornered, he will always fight back.
But he’s also the person who puts himself in the corner. We know that the Russians have had very high casualties and that they’ve been running out of manpower and equipment in Ukraine. The casualty rate on the Russian side keeps mounting. A few months ago, estimates were 50,000. Now the suggestions are 90,000 killed or severely injured. This is a real blow given the 170,000 Russia troops deployed to the Ukrainian border when the invasion began.
So, what does Putin do? He sends even more troops in by launching a full-on mobilization. He still hasn’t said this is a war. It remains a “special military operation,” but he calls up 300,000 people. Then, he goes several steps further and announces the annexation of the territories that Russia has been fighting over for the last several months, not just Donetsk and Luhansk, but also the territories of Kherson and Zaporizhzhia.
Putin gives himself no way out except to pursue the original goals he had when he went in, which is the dismemberment of Ukraine and Russia annexing its territory. And he’s still trying to adapt his responses to setbacks on the battlefield….
Reynolds: If Putin wants Ukrainian territory so badly, why is he raining down such destruction on civilian areas and committing so many human rights abuses in occupied areas?
Hill: This is punishment, but also perverse redevelopment. You cow people into submission, destroy what they had and all their links to their past and their old lives, and then make them into something new and, thus, yours. Destroy Ukraine and Ukrainians. Build New Russia and create Russians. Its brutal but also a hallmark of imperial conquest….
Reynolds: We’ve recently had Elon Musk step into this conflict trying to promote discussion of peace settlements. What do you make of the role that he’s playing?
Hill: It’s very clear that Elon Musk is transmitting a message for Putin. There was a conference in Aspen in late September when Musk offered a version of what was in his tweet — including the recognition of Crimea as Russian because it’s been mostly Russian since the 1780s — and the suggestion that the Ukrainian regions of Kherson and Zaporizhzhia should be up for negotiation, because there should be guaranteed water supplies to Crimea. He made this suggestion before Putin’s annexation of those two territories on September 30. It was a very specific reference. Kherson and Zaporizhzhia essentially control all the water supplies to Crimea. Crimea is a dry peninsula. It has aquifers, but it doesn’t have rivers. It’s dependent on water from the Dnipro River that flows through a canal from Kherson. It’s unlikely Elon Musk knows about this himself. The reference to water is so specific that this clearly is a message from Putin.
Now, there are several reasons why Musk’s intervention is interesting and significant. First of all, Putin does this frequently. He uses prominent people as intermediaries to feel out the general political environment, to basically test how people are going to react to ideas. Henry Kissinger, for example, has had interactions with Putin directly and relayed messages. Putin often uses various trusted intermediaries including all kinds of businesspeople. I had intermediaries sent to discuss things with me while I was in government….
Putin plays the egos of big men, gives them a sense that they can play a role. But in reality, they’re just direct transmitters of messages from Vladimir Putin.
Reynolds: Putin is very comfortable dealing with billionaires and oligarchs. That’s a world that he knows well. But by using Musk this way, he goes right over the heads of [Ukrainian President Volodymyr] Zelenskyy and the Ukrainian government.
Hill: He is basically short-circuiting the diplomatic process. He wants to lay out his terms and see how many people are going to pick them up. All of this is an effort to get Americans to take themselves out of the war and hand over Ukraine and Ukrainian territory to Russia….
Putin invaded Ukraine in 2014, exactly 100 years after Germany invaded Belgium and France — and just in the same way that Hitler seized the Sudetenland, annexed Austria and invaded Poland. We’re having a hard time coming to terms with what we’re dealing with here. This is a great power conflict, the third great power conflict in the European space in a little over a century. It’s the end of the existing world order. Our world is not going to be the same as it was before.
Paul Bowers is a journalist in South Carolina who blogs at “Brutal South.” This post is a story of a young person who realized he was transgender. He wrote an essay about his discovery that was published in Scholastic magazine. Two years later, a substitute gym teacher in South Carolina handed out the essay for his class to read. This act created a major scandal, and before long, the governor of the state got involved and demanded censorship of the essay. Bowers interviewed the author of the essay for this post.
Politicians have tried to whip up the issue of transgender youth as a menace to society. The most current survey suggests that about 1.4% of youth 13-17 identify as transgender. About 0.05% (half of one percent) of adults identify as transgender. These numbers have remained stable over time.
Bowers writes:
At the start of 7th grade, Leo Lipson emailed his teachers letting them know about a change in his pronouns.
Writing about his experience growing up transgender in New York, Leo had this to say:
When I asked my teachers for help, they told me I needed to teach my classmates about gender. I thought, “Aren’t you supposed to be the teacher?” I guess they saw gender as my thing, something they couldn’t explain.
Leo’s essay, “I Am Leo,” ran in the December 2019 / January 2020 issue of Scholastic’s Choices magazine, a classroom publication for grades 7-12. It was a fine personal essay that broke down a complicated subject in simple terms.
As far as I can tell, Leo’s article didn’t make many waves until Sept. 9, 2022, when a substitute physical education teacher at a public middle school on James Island, South Carolina, handed out copies of the article to a class (it might have been the entire magazine issue; I’m not certain based on local news reports). The teacher also handed out a worksheet of questions testing students’ basic comprehension. It was an ungraded assignment.
Eleven days later, the assignment earned an official rebuke and press release from the Republican governor of South Carolina.
“I call on [Charleston County School District]’s Board of Trustees to take action immediately to prohibit these types of instructional materials from being distributed or utilized in the classroom without parents’ knowledge and consent,” Gov. Henry McMaster wrote in an open letter to the school board chair on Sept. 20.
Here we had the highest elected official in South Carolina nitpicking a single assignment handed out by a substitute gym teacher. The governor demanded censorship, and he got it: Leaning on South Carolina’s anti-LGBTQ+ sex education policies, a school district spokesperson said in a prepared statement, “District staff regrets that this matter occurred, and leaders are working to ensure all staff is reminded of parents’ opportunity to opt their children out prior to sensitive materials being shared with students.”
Now the issue is a big deal in the state. Parents are being frightened into thinking that the schools are trying to turn their children transgender. Republicans are busy scaring parents and passing laws to make sure that students never learn that transgender people exist.
To be effective, they will have to monitor their television watching and take away their cell phones. If knowing about the existence of transgender people turned people transgender, there would be many more than half a percent to 1.4%.
Open Blowers’ post to read his interview with Leo, who is now 19.
Alex Jones and his companies Infowars and Free Speech Systems were ordered by a jury in Connecticut to pay nearly $1 billion to some of the parents of victims murdered at the Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut, as well as an FBI agent.
Jones falsely claimed that the massacre of children, teachers, and the principal at the school was faked and that the victims were “crisis actors.” He said repeatedly that the purpose of the hoax was to create political pressure for gun control.
Parents and relatives of those who were murdered were harassed and received death threats.
The money will not replace those they lost. The,parents will never hold their babies again. But Jones’ cruel campaign to deny that the massacre ever happened deserved punishment.
This is the second of three trials. Jones has no defense. He maligned the families to make money. Hopefully he will be bankrupted for his sins.
The protest against repression in Iran continued, with a dramatic gesture. The photographs are striking. If you can open the link in The Washington Post, I think you will agree.
As Iranian protests sparked by the death of a woman in police custody continued, several Tehran fountains on Friday appeared as if filled with blood, according to photos and a video — verified by Storyful — that were shared widely on social media. The Persian-language Twitter account 1500tasvir, which has been monitoring the state crackdown that has killed dozens, credited the red liquid in the fountains’ basins to an anonymous artist/activist, referring to it as a protest artwork whose title roughly translates to “Tehran sinking in blood.”
The affected fountains are in culturally significant locations, including one in Daneshjoo Park, near the City Theater, which has been the subject of government censorship, and another in front of the Iranian Artists Forum, an interdisciplinary arts space founded during the reform-oriented presidency of Mohammad Khatami.
According to the Voice of America, citing the BBC’s Persian service, the fountains have since been drained. But for a moment, the ephemeral work served as a visceral reminder of the sacrifices made in the name of women’s rights.
Iran’s weeks-long protests began in mid-September, after Mahsa Amini, 22, was arrested by the “morality police” for allegedly wearing a hijab incorrectly, and died in custody. The death has fueled sprawling protests. Schoolgirls have removed their head coverings and raised middle fingers. Women have burned their hijabs and cut their hair. People have flooded the streets chanting, “Women, life, freedom” and “Death to dictator,” a reference to Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.
Sit down and prepare for a long but very important read. You might conclude that the elected officials of South Carolina–Governor Henry McMasters, Senator Lindsay Graham, Senator Tim Scott, and the State Legislature–don’t give a damn about the children of South Carolina. You might be right.
Seven years ago, Arnold Hillman and his wife Carol retired as educators in Pennsylvania and moved to South Carolina. Instead of taking up golf, they became deeply involved in helping high school students in impoverished schools. Having served as volunteers in the schools, Arnold Hillman quickly realized that South Carolina ignores the needs of its children. There is no real system, he says. Charter schools have been a distraction, not a solution. He concludes that the schools of South Carolina need radical change. What are the chances of a deep Red state acting on his proposals? Sadly, not great. South Carolina has a well established record of tolerating neglect of its children, especially those who are impoverished and Black.
Arnold Hillman can be reached at arnold@scorsweb.org
Arnold Hillman writes:
THE NEED FOR RADICALIZATION IN EDUCATION
It’s time for us to look seriously at completely redoing the education system in South Carolina. As Senator Greg Hembree, Chair of the Senate Education Committee of the South Carolina Assembly told Barnett Berry, “ It is time to stop nibbling around the edges of school reform and the teaching profession.”1
No truer words have been spoken about our present education system. In fact, there really is no system. In the long scheme of things, our present way of doing education is a bunch of pile-ons from the original manufacturing design of Frederick Taylor and his scientific management.
While Taylor was creating the assembly line process, Ford was dehumanizing it by considering people as cogs in a great machine. If you don’t see any relationship between these two mammoth names in our economic history, go to your local high school and watch when the bells ring and students change classes.
More specifically, South Carolina ranks low on education state rankings that use multiple variables. They are variously ranked from 40thin the nation to 49th. Education Week gives South Carolina a C- for education quality.2 While the Annie Casey Foundation grades education as 43rd in the nation.3
Each year the legislature and the administration in South Carolina claim that we have a new program that will increase test scores and general education standards. According to the numbers, that just is not so. We may introduce the newest panaceas and claim that they will create higher state, federal and NAEP scores, but that does not usually happen.
This is not a single person’s opinion. In this article in the State Newspaper of August 5, 2022, it declares that “ SC has among worst school systems in US, new ranking shows. Here’s why and what’s being done.”
The problems will continue. The same people will present small ideas that will hold forth for a while. Then these ideas and programs will fade into the distance and new people with other small ideas will approach these problems and fail once more. Take a gander at the history of education in South Carolina over the past 50 or so years.
If what you see in our history disturbs you, then you are on the correct path to starting over again and creating a new way of teaching our children.
WHERE DO WE BEGIN ?
Minnesota passed the first Charter School law in 1991. It was followed by Massachusetts in 1993. The basic tenets of the laws were that these were going to be public schools, with independent management. They were also less restricted by state law and could become examples of innovation.5
Public schools would then have a chance to look at these innovations and use them in the regular public schools. That is not what happened. Charter schools became independent entities, sometimes managed by profit making organizations. Their history of innovation is slim. Furthermore, since they were able to disregard state law in many instances, while regular public schools could not copy any of the alleged innovations.
Here was a panacea that really had no possible way of succeeding for the overwhelming majority of public school children. Once again, here was an idea that would propel education into the 21st century and improve education for our children. It did not work that way.
As almost all of these panaceas fell by the wayside. It is evident that none of them had any chances of succeeding. The ideas that created these programs never seemed to begin with the children. They were always ideas that were promulgated to somehow enter the system and make things right. Few, if any of them, began with the needs of the children.
In any radicalization of education, students need to come first. All other things are just trimmings that come after. What is evident from all of these efforts to improve public education, is that they have no basis in children’s needs. Whether you agree with Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs or its revision or not, children have absolute needs when they are in school.5
Proof of these needs has been highlighted recently when mass school shootings have created social and emotional disturbances among children. These children need to feel safe.
We can list children’s needs from pre-school to 12th grade. They will all be familiar to you.
Safe and Stable environment
Proper nutrition
Structure
Sense of belonging
Consistency
Health Care
Emotional Support
Education
There are many more items that could be added to the list. The author has chosen these because of consistent information about South Carolina’s children that appears in public journals and media. Here are some statistics.
One in six (or 178,710) children in South Carolina are food insecure — numbers that are growing due to the pandemic-induced unemployment.
• Over 12,000 students experienced homelessness in 2017-19, and another unidentified 34,000 were estimated to be without a home.
• Over 40 percent of South Carolinians live in childcare deserts — a term used to describe a Census tract of more than 50 children under the age of five where there are no childcare providers.
• In 2019, about 10 percent of the 15,000 children referred to the Department of Juvenile Justice were for status offenses (truancy, curfew violation, etc.) reflecting underlying personal, family, or community problems, not criminal ones.
The simple truth is that many children in our state have few of the basic needs outlined above. This is not just a problem of poor and minority communities. 6
A kindergarten assessment at the beginning of the 2020- 21 school year was modified because of the pandemic. However, the results published by the Westend Corporation, the creator of the assessment, found these numbers statewide:
33% of the 48,000 of the kindergartners tested at the beginning of the year had an Emerging Readiness. This means that they will need significant help to reach readiness.
40% of the children were classified as approaching readiness and would need some kind of intervention.
27% of the children are actually demonstrating readiness.7
During the early days of the pandemic there were contrary opinions about wearing masks and getting vaccinations. Even today cases of Covid variants are spiking in a number of counties in the state, according to the DHEC. The situation is confusing. There is an elected Superintendent of Education who had differing views from those of the administration.
This confusion made life difficult for local decision makers. Who does one listen to, the Governor, the Superintendent of Education or the Department of Health and Environmental Control? Consequently, there was little consistency across the state.
Leadership at the local level became a problem when 32 of the 78 school superintendents turned over from March of 2020 to June of 2022. That is 41%.8 This lack of consistency has propelled many school districts into micro-management by school boards. These kinds of happenings are never a positive event for the children.
If South Carolina has a system of education, it is not apparent. The funding mechanisms for school districts relies on many layers of bureaucratic meddling. As in most states in the union, school districts are governed by local school boards. At the upper levels of the state government, the Governor, or an appointed official, such as a Chief State School Officer actually operates the system.
Leadership at the local level became a problem when 32 of the 78 school superintendents turned over from March of 2020 to June of 2022. That is 41%.8 This lack of consistency has propelled many school districts into micro-management by school boards. These kinds of happenings are never a positive event for the children.If South Carolina has a system of education, it is not apparent. The funding mechanisms for school districts relies on many layers of bureaucratic meddling. As in most states in the union, school districts are governed by local school boards. At the upper levels of the state government, the Governor, or an appointed official, such as a Chief State School Officer actually operates the system.
South Carolina is one of 12 states that elects its chief state school officer. There are pros and cons to this system. In some cases, it can stimulate cooperative action, while in others it stimulates conflict.In South Carolina, there are a number of bureaucratic layers to school governance. At the local level, there are school boards, superintendents of schools, county councils, and something called a legislative committee whose power is ill defined. It is composed of both state senators and state house members. There is also the Education Oversight Committee (EOC). This is the legislators’ way of keeping on eye on education and how it is performing across the state.
SO WHAT IS THE CONCLUSION ?
Underneath the edujargon and the political palaver, most folks know that education is not doing well in South Carolina. We will not delveinto higher education. This is a concluding thought from many people.
Now, who do you blame? We blame everyone and no one. Many good hearted people of all political stripes have tried to fix things. They have not succeeded. The Covid-19 pandemic has pointed out that our system cannot deal with the realities of our current world. We have left our children to the devices of companies who are producing online products. We have left our teachers out there in the universe of online education with no tools at their disposal. They have tried mightily to do their job. It was mostly a futile attempt.
staff reports | Results from end-of-year examination scores revealed that South Carolina students are struggling in U.S. history, algebra and biology. More than a third of high school students failed algebra last year and 24% got a “D.” They scored even worse in history and biology with a mean of 65% and 66%, respectively.The culprit: Pandemic-related learning loss, education officials suspect.
State Superintendent of Education Molly Spearman said more work needed to be done to help students recover: “Preparing students to meet college and career-readiness standards must not just be an aspiration in our state,” she said, according to published reports. “It’s a responsibility that all of us must play a role in as we pursue meaningful solutions.16
As we get back to in-person education, the children have been besieged with social and emotional problems. Teachers are not able to handle such things by themselves. It is a gross miscalculation that all children are getting the help that they need. In fact, when they do get help, who is it that provides it ?
We are even further behind than we were in March of 2020. Yet, some school districts still seem to shine. In larger school districts, with many schools, there still seem to be those whodo well. They are singularly in the minority. How can we compare a school district with a median household income of $101,284 with one whose income is $26,074?9
Think of the resources that wealthy parents can provide for their child, compared to a child whose parents are just getting by and have no resources for their child, except for love.
O.K. RADICALS, WHAT DO WE DO ABOUT IT?
We begin with the children and the things that they need. We can look at the above-mentioned items as a beginning. As was said, there are many more things that children need. As they mature through the school and life experiences, their needs change. Do we know enough Piaget to list the things that the children need at particular ages. Notice, I did not say grades. As a noted educator and speaker Sam Clemens once said, “ How do you handle a kindergartner who comes into school carrying a New York Times when you also have a little one who walks in and needs to learn his alphabet?
It all begins at birth, or maybe even before. Without proper health care for expectant moms, the chances of a child having a normal entrance into this world is diminished. South Carolina’s infant mortality rate of 6.5% per 1000 live births is higher than the national average of 5.4% per 1000 live births. Pre-natal medical care is most lacking in rural areas of the state.
How does one prevent this kind of statistic? There are a number of ways, if the state is of a mind. One way is a massive public campaign aimed at areas with few physicians and few clinics. The need for medical facilities in these places should become a state priority.
A second, and more accelerated way is for consortia of school districts, local municipalities and hospitals to purchase medical vans. These vans have been in use in many rural and urban areas in the United States. The van could be under the jurisdiction of one of these entities for financial responsibility. The driver would be a staff member of one of these entities.
Medical personnel could be secured with volunteers, dentists, school psychologists, doctors, nurses, PAs and others. The vans could advertise when they would be in a certain area. Pre-natal exams could be a major function, while children from 0-4 could also be seen by some of these specialists.
A third method of securing health care for pre and post-natal care is an outreach program that is run by a local school district. The Appleton, Wisconsin School District has created a birth through five program that focuses on entire community resources to help parents in the community.
85% of the foundation for a child’s intellect, personality and skills is formed by age 5. Appleton Area School District’s Birth-Five Outreach offers an inclusive network of family care services, school information, and community support.Birth–Five Outreach builds positive relationships with families by offering connections to many school and community resources early on.11
A fourth possible method is to establish a 0-5 school building, or community building that will have all of the services needed by families with children from 0-5 and pre-natal care. In the early 1980’s such a school was created by the Titusville School District in Northwestern Pennsylvania.
All of these suggestions are now in effect in the United States of America, but not in South Carolina. These programs are not only helpful to the individual parent and child, but to the community and to the schools that these children will go to.
SO NOW THEY WALK INTO SCHOOL, OR DO THEY?
If we are going to deal with children where they are at, can we still use the old fashioned age requirement for kindergarten. Not only don’t we want to do that, but maybe we don’t even call the first year of school by that old name. There are things attached to the word, that it may be necessary to use some other word or some other description.
So many of the children that walk through those school doors are at variance with what we consider “ready to learn.” The differences between the children is immense. So what do we do? Here are some programs that could exist in a public school, a vocational school or a technical college.
A. Pre and postnatal care
B. Teenage pregnancy
C. Day Care for community members orschool staff
D. Day Care to programming 0-5
E. On site medical care
F. Training for students to learn day care skills
G. Special education programs for children with disabilities
H. Eldercare
I. Job Placement
J. Home for state reps and congress people
K. Psychological services
There are many definitions of what a school or series of schools might be. The origin of the term, “Community School” comes from Stewart Mott’s vision of the Flint community in Michigan in the mid 1930’s. As the head of General Motors, he was able to fund these programs through his Mott Foundation, which still exists today.
A simple definition of the term Community School comes from the NEA.
Community Schools are built with the understanding that students often come to the classroom with challenges that impact their ability to learn, explore, and develop to their greatest potential.
Because learning never happens in isolation, community schools focus on what students in the community truly need to succeed—whether it’s free healthy meals, health care, tutoring, mental health counseling, or other tailored services before, during, and after school. 13
In recent times, here in South Carolina, Professor Barnett Berry has coined the term “ Whole Child,” education.14His thesis is that unless we take care of the complete needs of children, they will not achieve their maximum capabilities. He also believes that “Whole Child” education begins at birth. Although teaching, “The Whole Child” was concept from the 1950’s, Berry’s description of the process of “Whole Child Education” is much wider and includes so much more than just teachers in a classroom.
One form of “Community School” has been a building that was open 24 hours a day and accommodated an entire community’s needs. The current administration in Washington has increased funding for these kinds of “community schools.” That is not to say that they do not exist already. Here is an example of a school district that has recognized the problems their children bring with them to school and has taken action.
The federal government has recently sent out a request for proposals with the intent of distributing the funding to school districts across the country to promulgate or expand community schools. The total of 468 million dollars in the federal budget proposal for 2023 expands the program. It will be distributed to schools that provide medical assistance, nutritional assistance, mental health, tutoring, enrichment and violence prevention services. The schools will have to be those who have been involved in these programs for a decade.
SO WHAT DOES ALL THIS HAVE TO DO WITH SOUTH CAROLINA EDUCATION ?
For the most part, South Carolina’s education system does not work for most of its children. The state has tried a number of changes, but to no avail. There is a feeling among educators and those who view the system, that caring for the students is not the priority that it should be.
A good example of this kind of attitude is the recent return of one billion dollars in taxes, rather than using these funds to upgrade education. The needs are so great in many districts.
The establishment of public education in the 19th century was challenged by churches and by religious organizations across the burgeoning country. In some states, religious leaders imposed their religious beliefs upon these new schools. As one example, in a number states, there were no events in schools on Wednesdays afternoons and evenings. Those times were set aside for religious experiences.
In other states, there were established times when students could be released early to go to religious studies in their churches. Certainly, no sporting events were to be held on Sunday. Bibles were distributed to 6th grade students in many schools across the nation.
These were but a few instances of church actions in public schools. Sometime at the end of the 1960’s, groups of right wing religionists and their acolytes met to try and undo public education in its entirety. Now, some 50 years later, that they are succeeding in their efforts.
There can be no doubt that elite billionaires with a religious bent are moving to destroy public education. The issue of the separation of church and state is dissolving amidst a cacophony of yelps from these right wing relgionists, or faux religionists, that they are being discriminated against.
It is a apparent that these plans are not only to create a side by side educational system, but to allow students, who they feel are not up to par,to remain in public schools.
In the prior administration, billions of dollars were distributed to charter school privateers, religious schools, private schools and others. This Paycheck Protection Plan was to be used for businesses that had not been doing well during the Covid 19 pandemic. Interestingly enough, none of these dollars could go to public schools.15
The history of public education both here and in all parts of our land is the history of our success as a country. The forces that continue to try and dissolve public education have no idea what will come next. Here in an essay by Anya Kamenetz, reporter from NPR, explains the history and a possible future of public education.
END NOTES
1 “ A Whole Child Policy Analysis,” Barnett Berry, University of South Carolina, SC4Ed P. 4 2022
2. Annie Casey Foundation 2022 Kids Count data book
3 “Map A-F Grades Rating States of School Quality”, Education Week Research 2021
4 “Minnesota is the Birthplace of Charter Public Schools” Minnesota Association of Charter Schools
5 “ Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs” Simply Psychology April 2022
6 1 “ A Whole Child Policy Analysis,” Barnett Berry, University of South Carolina, SC4Ed P. 62022
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