Arnold Hillman and his wife Carol are educators who retired from their workin Pennsylvania and moved to South Carolina, where they continued to work with impoverished high school children in underfunded rural schools, but as volunteers. Arnold writes a blog, which I urge you to follow. He was astonished, for example, when the Governor and Legislature forbade the public schools to impose mask mandates. He thought it was crazy. what sane person would fight measures to protect public health.

In this post, Arnold looks at the salaries of sports announcers. Not the players, but the people who talk about the players. Then he looks at the salaries of cable news talking heads. Then the coaches of professional sports teams and a few successful actors.

All of these salaries are in the millions of dollars.

Then he notes the average salaries of teachers, nationally and in South Carolina.

We pay for what we value.

Something is screwy here.

On Thursday, the board of the Los Angeles Unified School District will hear a presentation by Margaret Roza about innovative ways to cut costs. Roza was for many years a fellow at the Center for Reinventing Public Education at the University of Washington, a pro-school choice think tank. Now she is director of the Edunomics Lab at Georgetown University, offering advice and analyses about school finance. The Lab has many high-profile funders, including the John and Laura Arnold Foundation, the Gates Foundation, and the Walton Family Foundation.

Roza has been critical in her writings of class size reduction and has recommended saving money by cutting teachers’ pensions and benefits (which she called “Frozen Assets” in a 2007 paper of that name).

A decade ago, Leonie Haimson debated Roza on these topics and took issue with her view of saving money.

Roza and her associate Katherine Silberstein will address the Innovations Committee of the LAUSD board on Thursday.

They will warn the board to Beware of adding recurring costs!

Consider one-time expenses:

Stipends(e.g. for tutoring, summer school

Contractors(e.g. nurses, tutors)

One-time hazard pay

One-time summer school

Temporarily added weeks of school

Pay for family efforts

Instead of recurring expenses:

•New hires (e.g. nurses, counselors, VP, teachers, tutors)

•Base pay raises: Across-the-board % raises, COLAs

•Increased benefits

•Permanent calendar changes

•Changes to class sizes

©2021 Edunomics Lab, Georgetown University 

So, Rosa is still promoting the idea that teachers should not get increased benefits or across-the-board raises or cost-of-living expenses. She is still critical of reducing class sizes.

Is any of this innovative? It may mean saving money, but how will it improve teacher professionalism or education?

Download the pdf here.

Anya Kamenetz of NPR describes the chaos and rage enveloping many school boards as they are besieged by angry protestors. The protestors may represent a small minority of parents but their intimidating presence at school board meetings gives them an outsized voice. It’s actually astonishing that parents would shout and organize protests against public health measures meant to protect their children, family, and community.

The Poway Unified School District, in San Diego County, Calif., was planning a pretty typical school board meeting in September. They were hearing reports from their student representatives and honoring their teachers and other staff members of the year.

Because of the pandemic, the general public has been asked to join and comment via livestream.

That hasn’t stopped protesters from showing up in person.

“In the August meeting, they were pounding on the windows,” said board member Darshana Patel. “So little by little it’s been escalating — they’ve been antsy and escalating their hostility and aggression toward the board.”

In several states and districts around the country, protestors have been disrupting school board meetings. They’re opposed to mask policies. Vaccine mandates. LGBTQ rights. Sex education. Removing police from schools. Teaching about race and American history, or sometimes, anything called “diversity, equity and inclusion” or even “social-emotional learning.”

She wrote about the letter sent by the National School Boards Association to Attorney General Merrick Garland, asking for federal help to protect school boards. She wrote her story before the NSBA withdrew its letter and apologized for sending it, after several red-state associations resigned their membership or threatened to.

She continues:

What happened — what is happening — in Poway is not an isolated incident, but it may take the cake for being “surreal,” as Patel puts it.

At the board’s Sept. 9 meeting, some protesters followed behind a visitor and got inside the building. Patel and her fellow board members decided that the best way to de-escalate the situation was to immediately adjourn the meeting.

What happened next is documented in an elaborately shot and edited video posted to YouTube:

“So we are the people,” says a man in a black baseball cap and black T-shirt. “So we can go ahead and replace the board. Let’s take a vote. Who’s willing to become the president?”

Another man steps up, wearing a T-shirt that says “Let Them Breathe,” with a yellow smiley face on it.

He gives his name as Derek Greco. The protestors vote, “Aye!” to make him the new “school board president.”

Later that night, Greco, who could not be reached for comment, posted a video to Instagram. In it, he’s breathless and sweaty. “The board vacated their seats tonight. So we then brought in a constitutionalist and we held a quorum and we voted in a new board,” he says. “You are looking at the new president of the Poway Unified School District, apparently.”

“Constitutionalism” is a far-right ideology that means, in essence, that people don’t have to recognize any laws or authorities that they don’t like beyond the Constitution itself. The video continues at a local restaurant, where Greco and some of the others who had just declared themselves the new school board explain that they then “voted” to remove Critical Race Theory from the school — though it is not being taught — and to stop requiring masks. Later, Greco and four others filed notarized oaths of office with the San Diego County Clerk.

Tools and tactics for disrupting school boards

The “election” by those protestors on Sept. 9 was in no way legitimate, county officials say, and the properly elected school board continues to run the district.

Melissa Ryan founded the consulting firm CARD Strategies, which tracks right-wing extremism. She says this kind of activity usually begins with real anger — in this case, on the part of parents, at COVID school shutdowns and restrictions like masks. But it’s not entirely grassroots and spontaneous. “The flames are being fanned by national money and resources,” she says. “It’s basically the same groups and funders that were funding the Tea Party and frankly, it’s the same tactics.”

Kamenetz names some of those groups funding the protests:

• The Manhattan Institute, one of the most established conservative think tanks, published “Woke Schooling: A Toolkit For Concerned Parents” in June.
• Citizens Renewing America, founded by President Trump’s former budget director Russell Vought, published a 34-page guide for activists also in June, dedicated to “combating critical race theory in your community.” The toolkit states the following: “CRT holds that racism is not just a belief held by individuals; rather, it is a system of oppression that has been built into the very structure of our society.”
• Parents Defending Education, founded earlier this year, provides resources to activists, pursues litigation, and publishes “incident reports” on districts around the country. President Nicole Neily previously worked at the libertarian Cato Institute and the Independent Women’s Forum, another conservative group that has produced a template letter for activists challenging school mask mandates.
• Turning Point USA, a group closely allied with Trump through its leader, Charlie Kirk, started School Board Watchlist, a website with the names and photographs of school board members around the country. They say they are “America’s only national grassroots initiative dedicated to protecting our children by exposing radical and false ideologies endorsed by school boards and pushed in the classroom.” School districts are called out for requiring masks and promoting “cultural literacy and sensitivity.”
• The Proud Boys, which the Southern Poverty Law Center calls an extremist hate group, has taken part in school board protests in several states.
• The 1776 Project is a political action committee backing school board candidates nationwide who oppose antiracist curricula. They raised nearly $300,000 in the quarter ending Sept. 30, according to FEC filings.
• PragerU is a nonprofit media company founded by the conservative radio host Dennis Prager. Last year they started an online community aimed at parents and teachers that claims 20,000 members. There are videos and books for children promoting a patriotic vision of American history and conservative heroes like Condoleezza Rice, alongside a “Parent Action Guide” for parents who want certain materials removed from classrooms, and a video documentary for parents about “the battle happening right now for the minds of our children.”

Yet another group that promotes anti-masking protests is called “Let Them Breathe,” founded by Sharon McKeeman, a California mother of four. She has raised nearly $200,000 selling smiley-face T-shirts with the logo, ”Let Them Breathe.” Or ”My Body My Choice.” (This T-shirt might also be sold at pro-abortion rallies, but that’s not what McKeeman has in mind.)

Public radio station KPBS wrote about McKeeman here. in addition to fighting masks, she is also fighting mask mandates.

Jack Ross writes in California-based Capital & Main about the role of Los Angeles in developing community schools, a model that has been successful in New York City and that involves democratic cooperation among parents, teachers, students, and staff.

He begins:

In the winter of 2019, two oddities swept Los Angeles: rain and a teachers’ strike. When the storm cleared, United Teachers Los Angeles (UTLA) and the Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD) announced a contract that capped class sizes, raised teaching salaries and dedicated funding for school staff including librarians, nurses and psychiatric social workers.

One aspect of the agreement received less attention: funding for 30 LAUSD schools to become community schools. Community schools support students and families beyond the school day by providing social services and boosting curricula with arts and academic programs.

“This approach evolves the school site into a hub for the community where families access health, socio-emotional, mental health and enrichment support for students during and following normal school hours,” LAUSD explains on its website. The idea is to bring schools into communities and communities into schools by charging a team of parents, faculty and community members with establishing local programs and resources on campus for students while also providing services from the school site for community members, like immigration counseling or fresh fruit on Sundays.

The concept of a school as a community hub goes back at least to early 20th century education theorist John Dewey, and has been revitalized with new research. A study conducted by the Rand Corporation of community schools in New York City found positive impacts on math achievement, credit accumulation, student attendance and on-time grade progression. Disciplinary incidents, meanwhile, went down. (Curiously, the study found no impact on school climate and culture.)

The model is gaining traction nationwide. This summer, UTLA’s foothold became windfall at the state level when Gov. Gavin Newsom signed a budget designating $2.8 billion for community schools in California, an investment more than six times larger than the $442 million proposed by President Biden just weeks before. Previously the federal government had invested just $30 million in community schools; Biden’s plan would have increased funding by more than 14 times. The National Education Association is also giving $3 million annually in $75,000 grants to districts investing in community schools.

Last year the NEA founded a Community Schools Institute to support district and union locals transitioning to the model, with 39 states and a $10 million investment to “lead the way and provide a roadmap to the future of public education.” Under direction of the institute, the California Teachers Association (CTA) is organizing teachers’ unions across the state to demand community school transitions in their districts, according to CTA Vice President David Goldberg. (Disclosure: The NEA and CTA are financial supporters of this website.)

The CTA is also taking pains to establish what exactly defines a community school. By including those requirements in future contracts, the CTA hopes to ensure the schools are genuinely community run by coalitions of parents, teachers and staff, different than what came before and long lasting. A school merely offering social services after the final bell, he says, but not run by a community coalition should not necessarily qualify.

“We’re trying to build a model around democratic unionism, and democratic running of schools, and real deep coalition work with parents and students that is actually capable of fighting for ongoing funding,” says Goldberg. “There’s a tension in the state where they want to do this quickly: What can we pull off the shelf and use? That’s not how you transform public education.”

The article goes on to describe how the pandemic disrupted planning for expansion of community schools. Some have managed to get their planning underway, others have not.

But it is a hopeful sign for the future, because parents who are invested in their school and their community, who know that their voices matter, are unlikely to be lured away by glowing but false promises made by privatizers.

I just received an invitation from the historic Apollo Theater in Harlem to a virtual book launch of Nikole Hannah-Jones’ super-controversial book The 1619 Project: A New Origin Story. I will share the invitation with you because you might want to hear the story of the book and its reception. I bought a ticket to the event and the book.

To get a ticket, you must buy the book from certain booksellers mentioned on the site.

The event date is November 16 at 8 p.m.

This is the description of the event:

The Apollo Theater is proud to partner with Penguin Random House in honor of the book launch of The 1619 Project: A New Origin Story. This virtual event brings together Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Nikole Hannah-Jones and collaborators in conversation around the expansion of the award-winning essay series from The New York Times Magazine. The 1619 Project is a groundbreaking work of journalism that reframes our understanding of American history by placing slavery and its continuing legacy at the center of our national narrative.

About The 1619 Project: A New Origin Story:
A dramatic expansion of a groundbreaking work of journalism, The 1619 Project: A New Origin Story offers a profoundly revealing vision of the American past and present.

The New York Times Magazine’s award-winning “1619 Project” issue reframed our understanding of American history by placing slavery and its continuing legacy at the center of our national narrative. This new book substantially expands on that work, weaving together eighteen essays that explore the legacy of slavery in present-day America with thirty-six poems and works of fiction that illuminate key moments of oppression, struggle, and resistance. The essays show how the inheritance of 1619 reaches into every part of contemporary American society, from politics, music, diet, traffic, and citizenship to capitalism, religion, and our democracy itself.

This is a book that speaks directly to our current moment, contextualizing the systems of race and caste within which we operate today. It reveals long-glossed-over truths around our nation’s founding and construction—and the way that the legacy of slavery did not end with emancipation, but continues to shape contemporary American life.

Hannah-Jones will be joined by Ibram X. Kendi for a discussion about The 1619 Project: A New Origin Story, moderated by journalist Soledad O’Brien. Later in the program, to celebrate the simultaneous publication of The 1619 Project: Born on the Water, a picture book adaption for young readers, Hannah-Jones will join co-author Renée Watson and illustrator Nikkolas Smith for a conversation moderated by author Derrick Barnes. The event will also feature an archival photo presentation by Kimberly Annece Henderson and a poetry reading by Honorée Fanonne Jeffers.

Nancy Bailey, expert blogger and retired teacher, was outraged that the Biden infrastructure plan omitted the $100 billion that was promised to renovate and repair school buildings.

She writes:

Our public schools should be safe, welcoming places, that support the work of teachers, cherish students, and provide a climate and atmosphere conducive for learning.

Our public schools should be the pride of our nation!

We are all to blame for not caring enough to demand great public schools for all of our children, a huge equity issue! Wake up to the fact that children, mostly poor, in this country are attending dangerous school buildings that could make them sick.

Read the rest of her plea for safe, welcoming buildings.

And consider this: In Finland, architects compete to design beautiful school buildings. When I was there, I received a coffee-table book displaying the most outstanding school buildings in the nation. Why do we neglect the spaces in which our children spend hours daily and are expected to learn?