The Chicago Teachers Union reports on some gains. Most notable is that individual school districts will be able to limit charter school expansion into their districts, a battle now being fought in California. The issue is whether the wishes of charter entrepreneurs should outweigh democratic local control of schools. Illinois says no.
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Thousands of public school teachers in Los Angeles went on strike in February, demanding basic services for their students: smaller class sizes (many classes have more than 40 students), classes in the arts and music, a librarian and nurse and other support staff in every school. The strike won broad public support. The teachers won an agreement from the school board.
Now comes the hard part: Paying for the agreement.
On Tuesday June 4, voters in Los Angeles will go to the polls and vote on Measure EE.
It is a parcel tax that would raise $500 million additional dollars every year for the public schools for the next twelve years.
Please show up and vote for Measure EE.
The money is desperately needed to provide the students of Los Angeles the schools they need and deserve. Why should they attend schools that are deteriorating, where the library is open only on occasion or not at all, where a nurse is available once a week, a guidance counselor has hundreds of students, and a school psychologist is available never?
Please show up and vote for Measure EE.
California is one of the richest states in the nation, with a roaring and dynamic economy.
But California spends less on education than most other states. Shockingly, it is on par with Kansas, Louisiana, and South Carolina.
Los Angeles spends far less than other big cities on its students.
Los Angeles Times columnist Steve Lopez met with Superintendent Austin Beutner and UTLA President Alex Caputo-Pearl at an elementary school in the school library, which is closed two or three days a week.
He wrote:
“The two most powerful people in Los Angeles public education are like a tag team now, practically completing each other’s sentences.”
California, he wrote, “ranks at the top in wealth and near the bottom in funding per pupil.”
What would EE cost the taxpayer? The owner of a 1,500 square foot home would pay an additional $240, twice as much for a house twice as large. About 82% of the revenue would come from commercial, industrial and apartment building owners, while senior homeowners (over 65) and disabled homeowners are exempted from the tax.
Who is fighting EE? The Los Angeles Chamber of Commerce, which opposes taxes and apparently opts for an undereducated workforce; the Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association is also opposed, that being the organization responsible for Proposition 13, which undermined school funding in 1978 by setting strict limits on property taxes. The Chamber prefers a regressive flat tax, one that is the same for the owner of a small house and the owner of a skyscraper.
Beutner and Caputo-Pearl pointed to business leaders who understand that the future success of Los Angeles depends on the success today of the students in the city’s public schools and who support EE.
Measure EE includes strict accountability requirements, meaning an independent financial audit to assure that every dollar goes to the schools for the intended purposes of reducing class size and providing needed services, such as nurses, counselors, and librarians.
Measure EE needs a two-thirds majority to pass, and that’s a high bar, but other cities in California have met it. Beutner listed them: Oakland, San Francisco, Santa Monica, and Torrance.
The people of Los Angeles cheered the teachers when they struck and marched in the rain. They honked their horns and gave them thumbs-up because they were doing what was best for their students.
Now comes the voters’ turn.
Will they too stand up for the children who are the future of Los Angeles?
Will they agree that every school should have a working library, a school nurse, a psychologist, and reasonable class sizes?
Will they agree that all children deserve equality of educational opportunity?
Tuesday June 4 will be a decisive day for the children of Los Angeles.
They are OUR children.
If you live in Los Angeles, please vote and urge your friends, family, and neighbors to vote.
Vote as if your future depends upon it.
It does.
Governor Gretchen Whitmer was elected in Michigan last fall as a progressive Democrat. She promised to reverse the destructive anti-public school policies of her predecessor Republican Rick Snyder.
But Governor Whitmer announced plans to close Benton Harbor High School, over the objections of school board members and students. They say that Governor Whitmer made her decision without listening to their voices. Whatever happened to democracy?
Governor Whitmer, I call upon you to meet with the elected Benton Harbor school board and student representatives.
School board member Patricia Rush wrote this letter:
Hi all –
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
From the Benton Harbor Area Schools Board (BHAS)
May 27, 2019
Contact: Steve.Mitchell@bhas.org or Joseph.Taylor@bhas.org
Benton Harbor Area Schools Board and the Community Demand Reconsideration of Governor Whitmer’s Plan to Close Benton Harbor High School
BENTON HARBOR, Mich. – On Tuesday June 4, 2019 at 6pm – the Benton Harbor Area Schools Board will hold the first of several Open Public Meetings at the High School Public Commons to discuss the future of Benton Harbor High School and the entire K-12 school district. Students, families, teachers, and community members are strongly encouraged to participate.
We are urgently requesting that Governor Gretchen Whitmer appear in person at our June 4 Public Meeting – and fulfill 3 of her campaign promises: to support public schools, especially in high-poverty communities, to fight urban poverty, and to hold government accountable. Please see Whitmer’s campaign website: https://www.gretchenwhitmer.com/issues/.
Attached is the Board’s Open Letter to Michigan Governor Whitmer. We respectfully request that all news media PRINT OUR ENTIRE LETTER TO WHITMER – and display on your website.
As has been widely covered in the media over the past few days, Governor Whitmer’s Office, Michigan Treasury, and parts of the Michigan Department of Education have proposed a unilateral plan to close Benton Harbor High School in 2020 with re-distribution of BHAS high school students to a proposed charter school under Lake Michigan College and nine other local school districts.
Parts of the story not reported in the media:
– Governors Office and Michigan Treasury did NOT consult the elected Trustees of the BentonHarbor Board members prior to their unilateral decision. The two BHAS Board members who were briefed in the State Capital Lansing on Friday 5/24/19 were told by the Governors Office staff that this decision to exclude the elected Benton Harbor Board was intentional.
– Likewise, on 5/23/19, the elected state-wide Trustees of the Michigan Department of Education were informed that the Governor’s Office had also excluded them from giving input into the fate of Benton Harbor High School.
– On 5/24/19, the Governors Office informed the two Benton Harbor Board members attending the Lansing meeting that the Governors Office had not held an open public meeting for community input – and did not plan to do so. Instead, the Governors Office met with undisclosed community members that the Governor felt were “representative.”
– The BHAS Board were told that the Governors Draft Plan is a “Yes – or – No Decision with no opportunity for negotiation.” BHAS Board was told it must decide by close of business Friday June 7 to accept the Plan or risk that the State may elect to dissolve the entire Benton Harbor Areas Schools district at any time.
This one-sided decision-making by Michigan State officials is unacceptable. We, the Benton Harbor Area Schools Board are going to hold our State government accountable.
In April 2019, the BHAS Board unanimously voted to support the Fresh Start Resolution petitioning the State of Michigan to reexamine public school accountability and finance systems, calling for a system of improvement strategies developed collaboratively by all stakeholders – to ensure all students and teachers have a voice and receive the opportunities and support they deserve.
The State bears direct responsibility for a significant portion of the BHAS debt. The legacy of this debt should be transparently reviewed and addressed – but the High School cannot be held hostage for the State to agree to debt forgiveness.
The fate of the Benton Harbor High School and the entire School District requires careful planning by all involved parties – especially the opportunity of full community input plus input from both the state and local School Board Trustees who were duly elected by the community to represent them.
//
The BHAS Board OPEN LETTER TO GOVERNOR WHITMER Follows immediately
We respectfully request that all news media PRINT OUR ENTIRE LETTER TO WHITMER and display on your website.
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
From the Benton Harbor Area Schools Board (BHAS)
May 27, 2019
Contact: Steve.Mitchell@bhas.org or Joseph.Taylor@bhas.org
OPEN LETTER TO MICHIGAN GOVERNOR GRETCHEN WHITMER FROM THE ELECTED SCHOOL BOARD OF BENTON HARBOR AREA SCHOOLS, BENTON HARBOR, MICHIGAN.
Dear Governor Whitmer –
We respectfully and urgently request that you visit Benton Harbor in person to meet in an Open Public Meeting with the community and the elected School Board trustees regarding the future of Benton Harbor High School and the K-12 District as a whole.
The School Board is hosting an Open Public Meeting at the Benton Harbor High School Student Commons on Tuesday June 4 at 6pm. We would love to host you and let you hear the full story.
Hopefully you are aware that representatives from your office, Treasury and the Department of Education are claiming that, on your behalf, a unilateral decision has been made to close Benton Harbor High School in 2020. The Board was told by your representatives that a decision was made by your office to intentionally exclude the elected School Board trustees and exclude open community input from the decision-making process. Honestly, we are completely shocked and dismayed by this action. Our Board has been working in good faith with both Treasury and Education to address issues at BHAS including an outline for a new Strategic Plan, submitted to Treasury, but upon which your departments have taken no action.
We also want to openly confront the many “elephants in the room” that neither your staff nor the news media have addressed:
• The land upon which the Benton Harbor High School sits with its athletic fields and adjacent School Board properties are the LAST MAJOR UNDEVELOPED WATERFRONT PROPERTIES in Berrien County, Michigan. Is this just a coincidence, given that your office just told our Board representatives on 5/24/19 that your plan to close Benton Harbor High School has major (but unnamed) supporters in the nearby business community?
• The Draft Plan from your office is explicitly a transfer of wealth from an overwhelmingly poor and black community (Benton Harbor) to nearby white, more affluent communities. Under your Plan, that transfer of wealth will occur through the loss by Benton Harbor of its school facilities and use of school land, transfer of state funding from Benton Harbor to the adjacent nine school districts where you plan Benton Harbor students to be redistributed, and loss of jobs for local teachers and staff of all levels.
• The contention by representatives of your office that hiring a single staff person to act as a “Cultural Dean” to smooth over “discomfort” that the displaced 700 black students might feel when transported out of their community to predominantly white schools is an appalling insult to our youth and the community. Such insensitivity to the painful history of racial segregation, unsuccessful past desegregation efforts, and continued State-sponsored dis-investment in Benton Harbor calls for a swift and strong response.
We call upon you to meet with us – to hear the students voices and the expertise of our teachers.
We call upon you to fulfill your 2018 campaign promises to support public schools, especially in high-poverty communities, to fight urban poverty, and to hold government accountable.
BHAS needs balanced, constructive leadership from you, your office and all State agencies.
We need complete transparency. We need State and local leaders to stop sensationalizing limited
facts about Benton Harbor in the media and on the Michigan.gov website created by your office to
promote your Plan to close Benton Harbor High School. Our community needs to feel that our
youth are respected, valued and worth meaningful investment so that they may achieve their
tremendous potential. The students, their families, our teachers, and our community deserve that.
Sincerely, Steve Mitchell, Trustee and Board President
Joseph Taylor, Trustee and Board Vice-President
Patricia Rush, Trustee and Board Secretary
Denise Whatley-Seats, Trustee and Board Treasurer
Matthew Bradley, Trustee
Lue Buchana, Trustee
Michelle Crowder, Trustee
//
The elected School Board of Pittsburgh unanimously rejected a charter school called Catalyst Academy because of concern about its proposed disciplinary policy and its ability to meet the needs of students with disabilities. The School Board’s decision was overturned by the state’s Charter Appeals Board, which was appointed by the former Republican Governor. The members of the CAB have ties to the charter industry.
This is NOT how democracy should work.
Why should a highly conflicted board appointed by a former Governor have the authority to override the decision of a democratically elected community school board?
Capital & Main interviewed Jackie Goldberg about her views, her vision, her hopes for the future. My heart sang and my brain hummed as I read her inspiring words.
Reading Jackie’s words was like eating comfort food. I kept saying to myself, “Yes! Yes! Yes!”
Read the interview and you will see what I mean.
Jackie knows we are in the middle of a war to save public education. She knows that there is big money determined to kill it. She knows that the hope for the future of our democracy depends in having a well-funded public school system that provides genuine opportunity to all children.
And she is prepared to go to the mat, in Los Angeles and in Sacramento, to get the funding that public schools need and to get the financial accountability that charter schools need.
I am reminded of the first time I met Jackie. It was December 6, 2018. I had heard about her for years as an iconic figure but our paths had never crossed.
Over the past several years, the billionaires were buying seats on the LAUSD and things were looking bleak. I kept hearing about this dynamo Jackie Goldberg, the only one who could turn things around. She was the Cy Young pitcher in the bullpen, the one held in reserve until the ninth inning.
Last December, I went to Los Angeles to receive an award from a progressive group called LAANE (Los Angeles Alliance for a New Economy), which fights for fair wages for low-income workers, environmental protection, and a stronger public sector.
Jackie was there. We agreed to talk after the dinner. We sat in a crowded bar and talked for over an hour. I felt like I was talking to my mirror image yet our life experiences were very different. It was a joyous conversation.
When I returned to LA in February, I spoke at a fundraiser for her. Once again I was impressed by her knowledge, her experience, her passion for education and for children and for justice.
You could count me as her biggest fan but given the 72% win she just racked up, I’m guessing that there are many others in Los Angeles who have known her much longer and who love Jackie as much as I do.
It should go without saying that she is a hero of public education.
Cy Young just came in from the bullpen. Things are definitely looking up.
Alabama journalist Kyle Whitmire puzzles over how state officials created charters, setrules for openingthem, then broke all their own rules to clear the way for a charter school that no one wants.
Read this story and you will understand why the public is turning against charter schools.
Not hard to figure out. Might be something about an old-fashioned word called “democracy.”
The rightwing Manhattan Institute recently honored a Betsy DeVos with its Alexander Hamilton Award.
Mercedes Schneider brilliantly explains that Betsy DeVos knows nothing about Alexander Hamilton or his convictions. Indeed, her anti-government views are the opposite of Hamilton’s, but she doesn’t know that.
Schneider writes:
According to MI, its Alexander Hamilton Award is named such “because, like the Manhattan Institute, he was a fervent proponent of commerce and civic life. ” However, Hamilton was clearly pro-centralized government, which makes the award an MI misnomer since MI uses it to honor the likes of DeVos, whose ideology is much more in line with the Antifederalists of Hamilton’s day.
The contradiction did not go unnoticed; on May 03, 2019, Think Progress published an article entitled, “Betsy DeVos Appears to Have No Idea Who Alexander Hamilton Was” From the article:
…The entire purpose of the agency Education Secretary DeVos leads is to use the resources of the federal government to foster better public education. Let’s also set aside the fact that the overwhelming majority of American primary and secondary school students — 90 percent — are educated by government-run schools. If DeVos plans to fight for “freedom from government,” she is in the worst possible job.
Yet DeVos doesn’t just appear to be rejecting the core mission of her agency and the foundational premise of the American education system. She also seems to have no idea who Alexander Hamilton is or what he sought to accomplish as the architect of much of America’s economic system. The early history of the United States was, to a large extent, a battle between a Jeffersonian model built on agriculture, small government, and slavery; and a Hamiltonian model built on capitalism, economic expansion, and a robust centralized government.
Hamilton’s core insight was that healthy markets and a robust manufacturing sector do not emerge from the ether so long as centralized authorities do not interfere. Rather, the vibrant economy that Hamilton helped build depends on a strong central government authority.
Below are excerpts from DeVos’ speech for the MI event, which she characteristically uses as a slant for her own pro-choice, anti-union agenda:
The Federalist Papers, to which Hamilton contributed a great deal, cautioned against a tyranny of factions. These groups of agitators jealously protect and advance their own self-interests to the detriment of just about everyone else.
Sound familiar? Education unions, the association of this, the organization of that… those are today’s factions. One of their own, the late Al Shanker, said this: “I don’t see a voice for students in the bargaining process. I think it’s one of the facts of life… the consumer, basically, is left out.”
That union boss admitted then what’s still true today: factions keep student voices out. But it’s way past time to let them in!
Note that the Federalist Papers were meant to assuage public fears about a centralized, federal government, but DeVos tries to shape a reference to them in order to discredit teachers’ unions.
DeVos is single-minded. She believes that her mission in life is to destroy public schools, weaken the federal government, and crush teachers’ unions. Why is this woman in charge of the U.S. Department of Education, which she despises?
This is one of Mercedes Schneider’s best pieces.
She concludes, with irony:
At the opening of her MI speech, DeVos comments, “I must admit I’m not sure what I’ve done to deserve such an honor.”
Indeed.
So many layers to that sandwich.
Larry Lee, Alabama journalist and blogger, tells what happened in Washington County, Alabama, when people got fed up with being pushed around and decided to protect their public schools.
People are chartering buses to attend the state education board on Thursday to express their opposition to the charter.
Alabama has a Republican supermajority in the Legislature, and that supermajority does whatever it wants. Whichever party has a supermajority, it’s not good for democracy, because people feel helpless.
What has happened to public education since 2010?
A-F school report cards that are basically worthless–except to those who want to bash public schools. The Alabama Accountability Act which continues to divert millions from the Education Trust Fund. The charter school law that, as we see in Washington County, makes a mockery of transparency and truthfulness.
None of these have been in the best interest of public schools. Yet, try to get someone to take a stand and push back and nine times out of ten all you get is a shrug. Are another superintendent saying, “Well, you know my board wants me to keep a low profile.”
This was until Washington County and a small group of dedicated educators and parents agreed that they were going to stand firm for what they believe is right for their school system and its students.
Thank God they have.
Because in so doing, they have shown us all that David can go into battle with Goliath. They have set an example. One that says only a handful of tenacious folks can get the attention of a great big bunch of folks. Even The Washington Post.
You do it by keeping on keeping on. By not giving up. By doing your due diligence and hours and hours of homework. They refused to knuckle under when the state charter school commission refused to be forthright and share info that belongs to the public. They have had the backbone and courage to challenge people they know are being disingenuous and trying to pull the wool over their eyes.
They have shown us that you can fight city hall. That just because someone is housed at the state department of education and have fancy titles doesn’t mean they can run over local school systems.
Yes, a handful of good people in Washington County have shown all of Alabama what is possible when you are convicted.
And all of Alabama owes them a standing ovation for doing so.
Now let’s see whether the state school board listens.
The privatizers got badly beaten in 2016, when they tried to lift the cap on charter schools in Massachusetts. Funded by the Waltons and the usual coven of billionaires, they asked the public to endorse a proposal to launch 12 charter schools every year, wherever they wanted to open. The referendum was overwhelmingly defeated, much to the surprise of its sponsors.
Governor Charlie Baker is a Republican who has appointed a choice-friendly State Board, so the privatizers have not given up hope for undermining democracy.
Now they are back with a proposal for “innovation zones.”
Jonathan Rodrigues writes:
In a world where we’re more and more accustomed to jargon inherited from corporate start up world like “disruption” and “big data”, “innovation” stands out as one of the most empty vessels in which we project meaning without much thought of it.
In the education world in particular, almost anything can be “innovative”. Even bringing back purposeful segregation and differential treatment under the guise of educational opportunity. Governor Baker’s latest “Innovation Partnership Zones” may be clever, but it’s certainly not very innovative.
If only segregationist Alabama Governor George Wallace had known it would be this easy to fool people, he’d had changed his 1963 speech to “innovation today, innovation tomorrow, innovation forever!”.
So what are “Innovation Partnership Zones” (IPZs), and what would the governor’s bill do? It’s important to note here this idea has prominent Democratic support as well, it was only last year that Education Committee co-chair Alice Peisch (D-Wellesley) and Senator Eric Lesser (D-Longmeadow) sponsored very similar legislation.
The bill allows groups of 2 schools or more (or one school with more than 1,000 students) to create an IPZ which would allow an outside organization to manage these schools and give the “zone” autonomy over things like budget, hiring, curriculum, etc. Essentially third-partying away the public good, but doesn’t “partnership” sounds so much better than “takeover”?
The IPZ can be triggered in two main ways.
The process would then call for proposals jointly with an outside entity that may include nonprofit charter operators and higher ed institutions….
If past is prologue, the results should look familiar. Brown University Annenberg Institute’s 2016 report “Whose Schools?” analyzed the board composition of charter schools in Massachusetts. 60% of charter schools in the Commonwealth had no parent representation at all. 31% of charter board members were from the corporate sector, heavily from finance.
We should all look forward to our IPZs filled with executives from places like TD Bank, who certainly might live in the “region,”, but have no respect for Boston’s biggest neighborhood.
It is especially worrisome that IPZs will be inevitably pushed on communities of color, continuing a nationwide trend of stripping away voice from families of color from Philadelphia to Chicago, Detroit to New Orleans.
A 2015 Alliance to Reclaim Our Schools “Out Of Control” report examined the disenfranchisement of black and brown families through mechanisms such as appointed school boards, and state and district turnovers. In their 2014–15 analysis, there were 113 state takeover districts nationwide. 96 were handed to charter operators. 98% of affected students were Black and/or Latinx. In New Orleans, parents had to navigate 44 different governing authorities; in Detroit, 45.
The most important innovation of all would be the full funding of schools in poor communities.
He concludes:
In no place where black and brown families are the majority in the school district is the innovation of a fully funded quality public school with adequate staffing, special education services, mental health supports, art and music, full-time librarians, and school nurses ever even attempted.
Jennifer McCormick, Indiana’s last elected state superintendent, has 20 months left in her term. She is a Republican, but she is different from the state leadership: She actually cares about students and democratic control of public education.
The Governor and the Legislature have decided that in the future, all power over education will be concentrated in one office: the Governor’s.
The state’s last elected superintendent of public instruction is not leaving office quietly. With just more than 20 months left in her four-year term, Jennifer McCormick is on a mission to warn Indiana voters of the immense power over education legislators just handed off to the governor’s office.
In a presentation to more than 100 parents and educators at Ivy Tech Community College’s Coliseum campus Thursday, the schools chief described the state’s current system of school governance, what it will become in 2021 and why Hoosiers should begin paying closer attention.
“What we’re going to have is not the norm,” McCormick said, describing oversight of preschool education through higher education. “In most states, somewhere in here, beyond the governor’s office – is your voice. In most states, it’s either the state board (of education) is elected, or the state superintendent goes through confirmation by those who are elected, maybe in the state senate. Indiana will be very, very, very top-heavy in one office, with a lot of control.”
McCormick, a Republican, spent more than an hour highlighting policy differences between the Department of Education she now oversees and the governor’s office and like-minded education leaders in the General Assembly, beginning with views on school finance.
“I know it’s not all about the money, but it’s hard to operate school systems without adequate and equitable resources,” she said, citing numerous examples of funding proposals that shortchange public schools and a growing system of “haves and have-nots.”
She has a singular focus: What is in the best interest of the student.
She pointed out the disconnect between different leaders’ objectives. Gov. Mitch Daniel pushed to get every Indiana student prepared for a four-year college track, she said. Now, under the Holcomb administration, the push is for workforce certifications and two-year college programs…
“We need to start saying our customer is not the workforce,” McCormick said to loud applause. “Our customer in K-12 is the child. You have to consider their ability, their passion.”
This is a very unusual point of view in Indiana, where the business leaders make the decision and the Governor expresses them. Educators are supposed to remain silent and do what they are told. Communities are supposed to relinquish local control and take orders from the Governor.
This is not democracy. This is not the way public schools are supposed to operate. The Hoosier state is turning into an autocracy where children are useful only as lon as they meet the needs of the workforce.
