When West Virginia teachers went out on strike in 2018, setting off a national wave of teachers’ strikes, one of their core demands was “no charter schools.” Governor Jim Justice promised that he would veto any charter school legislation. The teachers know that charter schools divert money from public schools, which are already underfunded in West Virginia. When charter and voucher legislation was introduced this year, the teachers walked out again. They may yet be double crossed by the legislature. Our allies in West Virginia called on the Network for Public Education to speak up on behalf of public schools.

Carol Burris and I wrote this article, which was published in the state’s leading newspaper, the Charleston Gazette-Mail.

it starts like this:

Peter Greene reviews a push-poll commissioned by DFER (Democrats for Education Reform), the hedge fund managers organization, created to promote charter schools.

Greene wisely notes that DFER is trying to encourage Democrats not to walk away from charter schools, which have become radioactive as the stories of charter scandals proliferate.

Step back and what you see is a context in which the Teachers strikes have brought attention to the damage charters inflict on public schools.

More and more, the public is beginning to ask why it makes sense to run two systems that get public money, one of which is free to kick out students it doesn’t want.

Betsy DeVos loves charters. Charters are more segregated than public schools. Billionaires and Wall Street love charters. The public is beginning to see through the facade, the hoax.

Why starve the public schools that enroll 85% of students so that 6% of kids can choose charters (the other 9% are in private and religious schools)? Why ruin public schools to make DeVos, the Waltons, and DFER happy?

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Tomorrow is the runoff for the empty seat on the Los Angeles school board, pitting veteran teacher-activist Jackie Goldberg against novice pol Heather Repinning.

In the first round, Jackie won 48% of the vote to Heather’s 13%.

The election should be a walk, but the Corporate Reformers fear Jackie, who has a wealth of experience as a former school board member and state legislator. So the billionaires are all in for Heather.

One sign of the Times is that the editorial board of the LA Times wrote an editorial praising Jackie’s experience and knowledge but endorsing the unqualified Heather.

If Jackie prevails tomorrow, as she should, the public schools will have an articulate champion, and the charter schools will no longer have a free ride.

That’s the bottom line is this race.

If you live in District 5, vote for Jackie.

I started this blog in 2012. Readership began building and reached amazing heights. But in 2016, something strange began to happen. Readers began disappearing. Many contacted me offline to ask if I had blocked them. Of course, I had not.

I contacted WordPress, where I always get a very fast response from people they call “Happiness Engineers.” They told me that Facebook had changed its algorithm, which caused a drop in my readership. But readers continued to reach out to me to say that they had been dropped without their permission and asking how to resume receiving the blog. I always sent their requests to the Happiness Engineers, who told them that they had pressed a button to block receipt of the blog and advised them how to unblock it.  This happened to members of my family and close friends, some of whom never figured out how to resume getting the blog.

Recently, Mercedes Schneider was dropped, like so many other readers before her.

She figured out exactly how to restore her receipt of the blog.

In the future, when a reader writes to ask why they no longer receive my blog and how they can resume it, I will send them Mercedes’ careful explanation.

Meanwhile, I wish someone at WordPress would figure out what’s wrong with their software and why they unsubscribe people who don’t wish to be unsubscribed.

Bob Shepherd—teacher, author, editor—is writing a dictionary of a new language called “Reformish.” Here is the current version. 

David Cole is National Legal Director of the ACLU.

He wrote the best, most incisive analysis of the Mueller Report, describing precisely what it found. The report is an indictment in all but name, and he explains why.

The Report, he writes,

lays out in meticulous detail both a blatantly illegal effort by Russia to throw the 2016 presidential election to Donald Trump and repeated efforts by President Trump to end, limit, or impede Mueller’s investigation of Russian interference. Trump’s efforts included firing or attempting to fire those overseeing the investigation, directing subordinates to lie on his behalf, cajoling witnesses not to cooperate, and doctoring a public statement about a Trump Tower meeting between his son and closest advisers and a Russian lawyer offering compromising information on Hillary Clinton.

Attorney General William Barr, who has shown himself to be exactly the kind of presidential protector Trump wanted Jeff Sessions to be, did his best to whitewash the report. Almost four weeks before it was released to the public, Barr wrote a four-page letter to Congress purporting to summarize its findings…Barr took Mueller’s words out of context and omitted all mention of the damning evidence that courses through the report….

The Mueller report did not address “collusion,” a term that has no legal definition, but the narrower question of criminal conspiracy. It found no evidence that Trump campaign officials conspired with the Russians’ disinformation campaigns or hacking of computers belonging to the Democratic National Committee and the Clinton campaign. But it describes extensive contacts between the Trump campaign and the Russians, many of which Trump campaign officials lied about. And it finds substantial evidence both “that the Russian government perceived it would benefit from a Trump presidency and worked to secure that outcome, and that the Campaign expected it would benefit electorally from information stolen and released through Russian efforts.” Russian intelligence agency hackers targeted Hillary Clinton’s home office within five hours of Trump’s public request in July 2016 that the Russians find her deleted e-mails. And WikiLeaks, which was in close touch with Trump advisers, began releasing its trove of e-mails stolen by the Russians from Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta one hour after the Access Hollywood tape in which Trump bragged about assaulting women was made public in October 2016…

Mueller found “sweeping and systematic” intrusions by Russia in the presidential campaign, all aimed at supporting Trump’s election…

If this was a witch hunt, it found a lot of witches.

The report establishes beyond doubt that a foreign rival engaged in a systematic effort to subvert our democracy…Mueller’s report shows that Trump’s concern was not for American democracy, but for saving his own skin.

The results of Mueller’s meticulous investigation, Cole writes, “are devastating for Trump.”

What lies ahead?

Cole thinks that impeachment is impossible, given the servility of the Senate Republicans, whose fear of Trump outweighs their oath of office. What remains is an unending series of investigations leading up to the 2020 elections. The voters will decide what kind of government and what kind of leadership we want.