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Gary Rubinstein: TFA Responds to Sharp Decline in Enrollment by…drumroll…Changing Its Logo

By dianeravitch
June 26, 2023 //
21

Gary Rubinstein joined Teach for America in its second cohort, three decades ago. He worked diligently for the organization but became disillusioned by its constant boasting and its in attention to preparing teachers well.

In this post, he notes that TFA has plenty of money j the bank, but it has lost its luster. In its glory days, it attracted 6,000 applicants. Now it gets only 2,000.

He writes:

In the last few years, TFA has shrunk. Their incoming corps size dropped from 6,000 to under 2,000. They recently laid off 25% of their staff. And those alumni education leaders have pretty much all resigned and faded into oblivion. TFA is at its lowest point since the mid 1990s.

So when I read about their big new announcement, I wondered what it might be. It turned out to be a ‘rebranding’ that they are really excited about. Basically, a new logo.

As a companion to the new logo, they released the most bizarre FAQ explaining the rationale of the new logo.

Open the link to understand why TFA is excited about its new logo.

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Corporate Reform, Disruption, Education Industry, Ethics, Teach for America, Teachers and Teaching

Philadelphia: How a School Board Keeps Out the Public

By dianeravitch
June 25, 2023 //
13

Lisa Haver is a retired teacher in Philadelphia and a tireless advocate for the kids and teachers of that city. She writes here about the undemocratic methods of tha Philadelphia school board, which prefers to operate without transparency.

She wrote the following report with Lynda Rubin on behalf of the Alliance for Philadelphia Public Schools.

The board’s speaker suppression policies are now doing double duty: not just to keep members of the community from speaking but to keep them out of the room altogether. A guard at the door to the auditorium told Lynda Rubin she could go in because she was on the speaker list but barred Lisa Haver because she wasn’t. Haver had tried to sign up but was told by the board that she would not be one of the 30 chosen speakers. She told the guard he could arrest her but that she was going in. Last month some APPS members were detained downstairs because they were not on the list…

Board Denies Charter Reapplication
In the end, the board voted 7-2 to deny the re-application submitted by Global Leadership Academy to operate a high school in the Logan section of North Philadelphia. But that was after a lengthy deliberation session in which some board members, bordering on groveling, expressed their regret at having to deny GLA. BM Sarah Ashley Andrews declared her allegiance to GLA CEO Naomi Booker, who makes approximately $450,000 annually to oversee one school, advising her, “Don’t be defeated.” BM Lam, on the other hand, challenged the statements of praise for GLA’s program. She cited the 1% Math achievement rate and poor attendance at the GLA schools. Most board comments centered around the contents of the application, not the increased stranded costs to the district or how another charter school in Logan would affect the neighborhood’s public schools. The entire process, from Charter Schools Office Director Peng Chao’s presentation and subsequent Q & A session, to the board’s final vote on Item 78, took almost an hour.

Not What Democracy Looks Like
President Streater began the voting session, at 10:37 pm, by quickly rattling off the numbers of the items remaining on the agenda after the vote on Item 78 and the withdrawal of six other items. He instructed the board that all 71 items would be included in one roll call vote. As the individual board members began to enumerate their No votes and abstentions before the vote, Lisa Haver stood up to object. After the vote concluded, and General Counsel Lynn Rauch read the tally, Streater allowed her to come to the mic. Haver objected to the board’s voting on 71 items, for contracts totalling almost half a billion dollars, in one roll call vote, calling the process “shameful”. She also reminded the board that members who abstain from a vote because of a potential conflict must clearly identify the conflict. Streater did not respond. BM Cecelia Thompson, a longtime community advocate herself, said later, “I agree with Ms. Haver.” Thompson said that taxpayers do have a right to know how their money is being spent. Hopefully Thompson will refuse to participate at the next meeting and demand that each item be deliberated and voted on separately.

This is not just a procedural question. We tallied 29 items on the agenda that do not include a provision for any bidding process. The board is passing items for no-bid contracts after barring the public from speaking on most of them, attempting to keep people out of the room, conducting little to no public deliberation on them, and voting on all of them in one vote.

We wrote to the board after the April incident, pointing out that they had only set up 82 chairs in an auditorium that seats 240 people. Thus, the same people who were denied the right to speak now no longer have the right to be present. Did the board not want APPS to witness its voting to spend over $500 million in taxpayer money on 78 official items? Or voting on a charter application that would cost the district hundreds of millions over the next five years? A governmental body not accountable to the public can become tyrannical and dictatorial. We need an elected school board.

In response to APPS’ letter to the board after the April action meeting, Streater defended the practice by citing the board’s need for “efficiency”. Neither the City’s Home Rule Charter nor the board’s own mission statement mandates efficiency. The board promises community engagement and transparency, then conducts its business in a hurried and secretive manner.

Among the contracts passed with little to no deliberation:
Items 73 and 74: $40 million for new Reading and Math curricula, which, according to teachers familiar with the programs, replaces book-centered programs with online programs for every student in every grade from pre-K through 12th. Why does the board and the Watlington administration want to do this? Do children need more on-screen time? Many parents are limiting screen time for health issues and because of the built-in tracking system.

When will democracy come to the city that is the cradle of democracy?

Categories Accountability, Democracy, Education Industry, Ethics, Parent Groups, Pennsylvania, Philadelphia

NYC: Advocates for Justice Files Lawsuit to Block Forced relocation of Two Schools

By dianeravitch
June 22, 2023 //
12

I wrote at the end of April about an effort by the NYC Department of Education to force a high school for overage students in Manhattan to trade places with a billionaire-funded high school on the other side of town. The school for the high-needs students had better facilities, including a gym. I suggested at that time that the Tisch family, which funds the Young Women’s Leadership Academy, could well afford to buy or build a better facility rather than force out the last-chance students in West Side High School. A few days later, the New York City Board of Education, controlled by Mayor Eric Adams, voted to oust the students from the West Side High School and give their home to the Young Women’s Leadership Academy.

It’s not over. A pro bono law firm, Advocates for Justice, has filed a lawsuit to block the swap. The lawsuit includes another school for overage students that opposes the co-location of another school in its building.

For immediate release: Thursday, June 22, 2023

More information: Laura Barbieri, lbarbieri@advocatesny.com, 914-819-3387

Sarah Frank, sarfrank@gmail.com, 617-838-2032

Lawsuit filed to block the re-location of West Side High School and the co-location of Brownsville Academy -both transfer schools with vulnerable overage and undercredited students

Today, Thursday, June 22, 2023, a lawsuit was filed in the New York State Supreme Court on behalf of parents, students, and teachers to prevent the NYC Department of Education from forcing the Edward A. Reynolds West Side High School from moving across town to a smaller building and to block Brownsville Academy from having to share its building with another school,  Aspirations Diploma Plus High School.  

Both of these schools are transfer schools, designed to ensure that vulnerable, over-aged and under-credited students have the support they need to remain in school through graduation. Many of these students have already dropped out of school once or are at increased risk of dropping out in the future, so any negative change in their learning environment jeopardizes their life chances.

The lawsuit, filed by the pro bono law firm Advocates for Justice, focuses on the inadequacy of the Educational Impact Statements [EIS’s] that the NYC Department of Education is required to prepare in advance of the votes by the Panel for Education Policy to approve these changes in school utilization that occurred on April 19, 2023, and May 1, 2023.

Instead, both EIS’s for these proposed changes in school utilization explicitly assumed that current class sizes at both schools would continue indefinitely, even though half of the classes at Brownsville Academy and more than half of the classes at Edwards A. Reynolds West Side High School are larger than the cap of 25 students per class required by the new state class size law, to be phased in over five years.

In addition, students with disabilities in both schools will likely lose their dedicated rooms for mandated services in these new, far more limited spaces. Both schools have very high percentages of such students: 43% at Edward A. Reynolds West Side High school and 26% of the students at Brownsville Academy have disabilities.

 The failure of the EIS’s to analyze the profound educational impacts of these changes is a clear violation of state education law, and in an innovative legal strategy, the lawsuit also argues that the deprivation of critical space from students with disabilities would cause a disparate impact on these vulnerable students, in violation of the New York City Human Rights Law.

Most egregiously, perhaps, is how the students at Edward A. Reynolds West Side High School will be deprived of their on-site GED program, their full-size gym, the Ryan health care center, and the LYFE day-care center, designed to take care of the young children of these overaged students while they are attending school. Yet the DOE fails to assess the likely negative educational impacts of these profound losses, or even acknowledge them in the EIS .

Also highly questionable is the way in which the DOE and certain members of the Panel for Educational Policy ignored their obligations under the Open Meetings Law (OML). Specifically, the law requires that all voting by members of public bodies must be publicly performed. However, many of the Mayor-appointed PEP members failed to turn on their cameras during the meetings that approved these changes in school utilization, which should nullify their votes. In addition, the DOE failed to record the first several hours of the PEP meeting on May 1, which is also an OML violation. Together, these violations call into question whether these PEP proceedings or their votes were legally valid.

State Assemblywoman Latrice Walker said: ““I have long been concerned about the plan to re-site Aspirations Diploma Plus and co-locate it with Brownsville Academy High School. Though well-intentioned, the proposal would harm two communities. Aspirations is the only transfer school in Crown Heights, and I fear they will lose scholars who are not willing to travel to Brownsville. I also share the concerns of the staff at Brownsville Academy, who are worried about the potentially drastic reduction in the number of rooms. The co-location process would deprive the Brownsville Academy of the space currently being used for counseling, an internship program, and their very successful mentoring services. Brownsville Academy has served the community and its students well, consistently ranking in the top 10 in graduation rates, attendance, and career readiness for transfer schools in the city. The potential impact on the student-to-teacher ratio and the reduction of services would have an adverse impact on some of Brooklyn’s most vulnerable students.”

“I strongly support West Side High School staying where it is and appreciate the effort by Advocates for Justice to halt the move,” said Council Member Gale A. Brewer. “It is inequitable to take away from the student population the LYFE Center, the wellness and health center, the large gym and field, and the kitchen. If the TYWLS building is not adequate to meet the needs of its current student population, then it cannot be adequate for the students now at West Side High School.”

“The relocation of West Side High School and the co-location of Brownsville Academy presents a number of challenges to the families, students, and teachers in both schools.” Said New York City Council Deputy Speaker Diana Ayala. “Students within these schools have either dropped out once before or require special accommodations to ensure they receive a quality education. The Department’s relocation plan does not take those factors into consideration and their decision further jeopardizes the educational prospects of the students within these schools. I urge the Department to reconsider this decision and to work with both schools to find a compromise that focuses on the students rather than the ideal location.”

Added Ashley Norman, a plaintiff, a parent of a current student at West Side High School and herself a graduate of the school: “West Side has paved the way for so many students in its time. Myself and everyone I know felt as if dropping out would be the best option, until we went to this school. They do their best to meet you where you are and push you for greatness. This school is so important for young parents. You can receive your education, have your child cared for, and receive not only mental health care but your physical healthcare as well in the Ryan Center -things that being a young parent are hard to juggle. I decided to participate in this lawsuit because I also worry about the potential for gang violence on the East side that our kids might be exposed to. I believe this school NEEDS to stay here for the benefit and more importantly the safety of our community.”

Lucie Gaba, a plaintiff and parent at Brownsville Academy commented: “Before attending Brownsville, my son attended another high school where he struggled with attendance issues and with being on time. Since switching schools, his attendance has improved and the wonderful staff have inspired him to become an active member of the school community. Brownsville Academy has helped my son improve his academics greatly. I am worried that the co-location will make it harder for him and his friends to get the dedicated help they have come to count on. English is his second language and he receives extra services for this reason. I am very concerned that if the co-location happens, the increased crowding will cause him to lose these services.”

Grisslet Rodriguez, plaintiff and parent of a current West Side High School student, said: “I’m participating in this lawsuit because it is the right thing to do for all of the students in West Side High School. I want to be a voice for my son and all the West Side students since their voices are not being heard. My concern is that if our students are moved to another location, the outcome is going to be devastating. It will have a negative impact on a minority group that already struggles. Students might drop out, have emotional damage, and more mental health challenges. My top concern is the lack of safety in the neighborhood that is on the East side and is dangerous. The new location across town will require many students, including my son, to take a bus and a train, which is a longer commute. Health-wise, there is no gym and no clinic, which is so important for the health, well-being, and growth of the students. The daycare center is crucial to keep the young mothers in school. I hope students can remain in West Side High School, where they feel safe. These students have been through a lot, and we are so proud of them and happy that they found a place where they feel they belong.”

Sarah Frank, teacher at West Side High School and a plaintiff, said: “We have been pushing back on this relocation from the moment it was announced because as a transfer school, we know our vulnerable students need access to smaller classes and additional services and support. Our current building was specifically designed for West Side High School in the 1990s to have an on-site daycare and health clinic. Our Public School Athletic League teams play in our beautiful gym and the field adjacent to the school. The building we are being relocated to on the East Side has none of these resources, and traveling to other locations for daycare, healthcare, and athletics is a huge barrier for our students. While we have had enrollment struggles, our enrollment has grown tremendously in the last few months. The new space will not allow us to meaningfully lower class size and will not afford the space for small groups and other social-emotional supports we have always offered our students, particularly the nearly 50% of our special needs population with IEPs. Our students do not gain anything from this move, they only lose.”

Marissa Moore, a plaintiff, and parent at Brownsville Academy HS pointed out: “Brownsville Academy has provided my son with a rigorous academic experience along with rich social emotional support which is so needed coming out of the pandemic. Under the co-location proposal, I am concerned that BAHS will become overcrowded and offer fewer services just like the larger schools which failed to serve him previously.”

Concluded Hon. Carmen Quinones, President of the Frederick Douglass Houses Association where many of the students who attend West Side High School live, “This is not what Justice looks like: putting a target on our children’s back and making them choose to drop out of school or die trying!”

Here are notes:

Memo of Law ; Verified Petition, and affidavits from Lucie Idiamey-Gaba, Sarah Frank, Anneris Fernandez , Chance Santiago, Marissa-Moore, Grisslet Rodriguez, Ashley Norman, and Leonie Haimson.

 

###

Categories Accountability, Cruelty, Disruption, Ethics, Inequity, New York City

ProPublica: Justice Alito accepted Luxury Fishing Trip from Billionaire with Cases Before Supreme Court

By dianeravitch
June 21, 2023 //
21

ProPublica broke a story today about Justice Samuel Alito’s breach of ethics. Actually, the U.S. Supreme Court has no ethics code. Ethics codes are for the little people, to paraphrase businesswoman Leona Helmsley, who once said that “taxes are for the little people.”

Writers at ProPublica emailed questions to Justice Alito on Friday. Instead of answering, Justice Alito took the unusual step of responding in an op-ed article in the Wall Street Journal, which took the unusual step of publishing it.

The ProPublica article begins:

In early July 2008, Samuel Alito stood on a riverbank in a remote corner of Alaska. The Supreme Court justice was on vacation at a luxury fishing lodge that charged more than $1,000 a day, and after catching a king salmon nearly the size of his leg, Alito posed for a picture. To his left, a man stood beaming: Paul Singer, a hedge fund billionaire who has repeatedly asked the Supreme Court to rule in his favor in high-stakes business disputes.

Singer was more than a fellow angler. He flew Alito to Alaska on a private jet. If the justice chartered the plane himself, the cost could have exceeded $100,000 one way.

In the years that followed, Singer’s hedge fund came before the court at least 10 times in cases where his role was often covered by the legal press and mainstream media. In 2014, the court agreed to resolve a key issue in a decade-long battle between Singer’s hedge fund and the nation of Argentina. Alito did not recuse himself from the case and voted with the 7-1 majority in Singer’s favor. The hedge fund was ultimately paid $2.4 billion.

Alito did not report the 2008 fishing trip on his annual financial disclosures. By failing to disclose the private jet flight Singer provided, Alito appears to have violated a federal law that requires justicesto disclose most gifts, according to ethics law experts.

Experts said they could not identify an instance of a justice ruling on a case after receiving an expensive gift paid for by one of the parties.

“If you were good friends, what were you doing ruling on his case?” said Charles Geyh, an Indiana University law professor and leading expert on recusals. “And if you weren’t good friends, what were you doing accepting this?” referring to the flight on the private jet.

Justices are almost entirely left to police themselves on ethical issues, with few restrictions on what gifts they can accept. When a potential conflict arises, the sole arbiter of whether a justice should step away from a case is the justice him or herself.

ProPublica’s investigation sheds new light on how luxury travel has given prominent political donors — including one who has had cases before the Supreme Court — intimate access to the most powerful judges in the country. Another wealthy businessman provided expensive vacations to two members of the high court, ProPublica found. On his Alaska trip, Alito stayed at a commercial fishing lodge owned by this businessman, who was also a major conservative donor. Three years before, that same businessman flew Justice Antonin Scalia, who died in 2016, on a private jet to Alaska and paid the bill for his stay.

Such trips would be unheard of for the vast majority of federal workers, who are generally barred from taking even modest gifts.

Leonard Leo, the longtime leader of the conservative Federalist Society, attended and helped organize the Alaska fishing vacation. Leo invited Singer to join, according to a person familiar with the trip, and asked Singer if he and Alito could fly on the billionaire’s jet. Leo had recently played an important role in the justice’s confirmation to the court. Singer and the lodge owner were both major donors to Leo’s political groups.

ProPublica’s examination of Alito’s and Scalia’s travel drew on trip planning emails, Alaska fishing licenses, and interviews with dozens of people including private jet pilots, fishing guides, former high-level employees of both Singer and the lodge owner, and other guests on the trips.

ProPublica sent Alito a list of detailed questions last week, and on Tuesday, the Supreme Court’s head spokeswoman told ProPublica that Alito would not be commenting. Several hours later, The Wall Street Journal published an op-ed by Alitoresponding to ProPublica’s questions about the trip.

Alito said that when Singer’s companies came before the court, the justice was unaware of the billionaire’s connection to the cases. He said he recalled speaking to Singer on “no more than a handful of occasions,” and they never discussed Singer’s business or issues before the court.

Alito said that he was invited to fly on Singer’s plane shortly before the trip and that the seat “would have otherwise been vacant.” He defended his failure to report the trip to the public, writing that justices “commonly interpreted” the disclosure requirements to not include “accommodations and transportation for social events.”

Categories Accountability, Bias, Billionaires, Cheating, Democracy, Ethics, Justice

Heather Cox Richardson: The Case Against Hunter Biden

By dianeravitch
June 21, 2023 //
52

Heather Cox Richardson hits it out of the park with this column. Republicans are screaming that Hunter Biden got a slap on the wrist for his crimes, and that the Justice Department went easy on him. But Richardson points out that President Biden left the Trump-appointed U.S. Attorney for Delaware in place, and he prosecuted the case. For those upset about Hunter Biden, when will they demand to know why the Saudis gave Jared Kushner $2 billion six months after he left office?

She writes:

After years of accusations and rumors swirling around Hunter Biden, the 53-year-old son of President Joe Biden, the Department of Justice has reached a tentative deal with the younger Biden: He will plead guilty to two misdemeanor charges of failing to file income tax returns for 2017 and 2018 by the filing date, for which he owed more than $100,000 each year. Biden’s representatives say he has since paid the Internal Revenue Service what he owed. Prosecutors will ask for two years’ probation.

Biden will also admit to the fact that he possessed a firearm as an addict, for which he and prosecutors have agreed he will enter a pretrial diversion agreement that will require that he stay clean for two more years, after which the charge will be removed from his record.

Representative James Comer (R-KY), chair of the House Oversight Committee, promptly accused “the Bidens” of “corruption, influence peddling, and possibly bribery” and called the deal “a slap on the wrist.” Throughout the day, right-wing figures have insisted that the deal is proof that President Biden is using the Justice Department to shield his family and to persecute his enemies.

In fact, Biden worked hard to reestablish the independence of the Justice Department after Trump had used it for personal ends. Trump broke the tradition that FBI directors should serve out their ten-year term—a term chosen to emphasize that the position should not be political—by firing FBI director James Comey when Comey refused to stop the bureau’s investigation of the 2016 Trump campaign’s ties to Russian operatives; Biden tried to reestablish the guardrails around the position when he declined to replace FBI director Christopher Wray, appointed by Trump.

Biden also left in place the U.S. attorney for the District of Delaware—the person overseeing the investigation into Hunter Biden that began in 2018—to make the independence of the investigation clear. That Trump appointee, U.S. Attorney David C. Weiss, is responsible for the deal. Georgetown University policy professor Don Moynihan pointed out that Weiss has been investigating Hunter Biden for five years and “[b]est they could do is tax charges which rarely get this level of attention. If Comer has anything real, the prosecutor would have used it.”

Indeed, rather than going easy on Hunter Biden, there are signs that prosecutors treated him more harshly than is typical for similar crimes. Roger Sollenberger, a senior political writer for the Daily Beast, explained that “Roger Stone and his wife settled a $2 million unpaid taxes civil case with DOJ last year—they weren’t charged criminally, unlike Hunter Biden, so they didn’t even get probation.” Justice reporter for NBC News Ryan Reilly noted that it is very rare for prosecutors to bring the addict in possession of a weapon charge they used against Biden. In the past it has been used to find a charge that will stick or alongside charges concerning violent crime.

As right-wing leaders, including House speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-CA), nonetheless attacked the Justice Department for what they claimed was a “two-tiered justice system” that went easy on Biden, Greg Sargent of the Washington Post noted, “The right doesn’t seem to care about the legal process—they care about the results. Their aim is the destruction of the independence of federal law enforcement in favor of a weaponized justice system, and they will keep creating new pretexts until they get it.”

Trump had his own reaction to the Biden charges, calling them “a massive INTERFERENCE COVERUP & FULL SCALE ELECTION ‘SCAM’ THE LIKES OF WHICH HAS NEVER BEEN SEEN IN OUR COUNTRY BEFORE. A ‘TRAFFIC TICKET,’ & JOE IS ALL CLEANED UP & READY TO GO INTO THE 2024 PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION – AND THIS AS CROOKED DOJ, STATE, & CITY PROSECUTORS, MARXISTS & COMMUNISTS ALL, HIT ME FROM ALL SIDES & ANGELS WITH BULL….! MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN!!!” [sic]

Eric Lipton of the New York Times reported today on the Trump family’s ties to a multibillion-dollar project in Oman. The resort project is backed by the Omani government, which has put up the land for the project and is investing up to a billion dollars to upgrade the infrastructure near the project and to fund the project’s initial phase. It will also take a cut of the profits. A Saudi real estate firm closely allied with the Saudi government brought Trump into the deal. The Trump family will not put any money into the project, but the Omani government has paid the Trump Organization at least $5 million for the use of his name and will pay the Trump Organization to manage a hotel, golf course, and golf club for the next 30 years.

“There is a big wealth concentration in the world, which means that those people will more and more demand more exclusive products and more exclusive projects,” the chief executive of the London-based DarGlobal subsidiary of the Saudi real estate firm said earlier this year. The project is being constructed by migrants paid as little as $340 a month for ten hours a day of grueling work in heat above 100°F, or 38°C.

Tonight news broke that on Friday, Owen Shroyer, who worked alongside Alex Jones at the right-wing conspiracy media site InfoWars, will change his plea for charges associated with the January 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol to “guilty,” which might signal that he has flipped.

Shroyer was at the so-called “War Room” on January 5 with Trump lawyer Rudy Giuliani, advisors Steve Bannon and Roger Stone, General Michael Flynn, and Christina Bobb, the lawyer who later signed off on Trump’s statement that he had returned all the classified documents in his possession (he had not). Trump’s chief of staff, Mark Meadows, repeatedly expressed interest to his aide Cassidy Hutchinson in joining the people in that command center, but in the end was talked into calling the group rather than going over.

Shroyer was also part of the 47-member “Friends of Stone” encrypted chat group that organized in 2019 to support Trump in the upcoming election and then to keep him in office after he lost in 2020. If Shroyer has, indeed, flipped, he could provide an important window into the upper levels of the attempt to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election.

Both the New York Times and the Washington Posthave recently reported that several months ago, officials in the Biden administration began indirect talks with Iran in hopes of stopping Iran’s proxy attacks on U.S. forces in Syria, bringing home three Iranian American business executives being held on charges the U.S. considers false—Emad Shargi (detained 2018), Morad Tahbaz (detained 2018), and Siamak Namazi (detained 2015)—and reining in that country’s nuclear weapons development program. In 2018, Trump pulled the U.S. out of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) with Iran that limited Iran’s nuclear research and development. Tehran quickly restarted its uranium enrichment, research and development of advanced centrifuges, and expansion of its stockpile of nuclear fuel. According to Colum Lynch of Foreign Policy, this cut in half the time Iran would need to produce enough weapons-grade fuel to build a nuclear weapon.

Biden yesterday announced a $600 million investment in addressing climate change, with that investment focused on coastal areas and communities around the Great Lakes. Funding for projects, including modernizing electrical grids to make them resilient to extreme weather events, national disasters, and wildfires, comes from the Inflation Reduction Act and the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law.

—

Notes:

To read the footnotes, please open the article.

Twitter links:

SollenbergerRC/status/1671180412498878464

donmoyn/status/1671163439333650436

MuellerSheWrote/status/1671262234352451589

ThePlumLineGS/status/1671226546676170787

SykesCharlie/status/1671230641831129088

harrylitman/status/1671179022313865220

harrylitman/status/1671157442921791488

ryanjreilly/status/1671157209735237633

Categories Biden, Elections, Ethics, Justice, Republicans, Scandals, Trump

Michigan: State Board of Education Passes Resolution Supporting “Freedom to Read”

By dianeravitch
June 15, 2023 //
21

Mitchell Robinson is a professor of music education at Michigan State University who was recently elected to the Michigan State Board of Education. He shared a resolution that he introduced and that was passed by the State Board. Are there books that are not age-appropriate? Yes. Can we trust teachers and librarians to select the right books for the children in their care? The Michigan State Board of Education thinks we can. Michigan law already forbids pornography in schools.

Robinson sent the following to me:

Proud to introduce the “Freedom to Read” resolution yesterday. The State Board of Education respects the professional judgement of teachers and librarians when it comes to selecting learning materials that support the curriculum in their classrooms, and respects the rights of parents and caregivers to determine the developmental appropriateness of books and other materials for their children.

Teachers and parents are natural partners in the education of our children, and attempts to drive a wedge between schools and families by creating outrage over fabricated “crises” will simply not work.

—

“Board Of Ed Adopts Resolution Supporting ‘Freedom To Read'”

A resolution to support K-12 students reading whichever books they like as book bans continue to sweep the country was adopted by the State Board of Education Tuesday.

Board member Mitchell Robinson (D-Okemos) introduced the Freedom to Read Resolution. Robinson cited in the resolution that PEN America’s Index of School Book Bans listed 1,477 instances of individual books banned.

The resolution said in the first six months of 2023, 30 percent of the unique titles banned were books about race, racism, or feature characters of color and 26 percent of the unique titles banned had LGBTQ characters or themes.

On Monday, Illinois Governor J.B. Pritzker signed a law that deems Illinois public libraries ineligible for state funding if the library restricts or bans materials because of “partisan or doctrinal disapproval.”

“Closer to home, the Michigan Civil Rights Commission has asked the Attorney General for an official legal ruling on book banning as discrimination in respect to the Elliott Larsen Civil Rights Act that has expanded to include…LGBTQ+ communities,” Robinson said.

During public comment, several parents and organizations, including Moms for Liberty, spoke out against the resolution. They argued that none of their members were in favor of banning books but did not want their children to read what they deemed as inappropriate and pornographic content.

Board member Tiffany Tilley (D-West Bloomfield) introduced an amendment to the resolution supporting parents in their right to choose age appropriateness of material for their child and rights to make “critical decisions with their local schools.”

Tilley said as a child, she read several pieces of literature, including Shakespeare’s “Romeo and Juliet” that included content that some would say was “racy.”

“I got to a certain age, and I realized we were talking about a 16-year-old boy, 13-year-old girl and they both committed suicide,” Tilley said. “I’m not for banning books. My mom allowed me to read those things. I think that made my life richer, but for some parents, they may not be ready for their children to read about something.”

Tilley emphasized that her amendment would signal to parents that the state is not trying to make decisions for them, but also the state is not trying to ban certain books for everyone. If a parent reads a book and decides they do not want their child to read it, then they need to make that decision with their local school district, she added.

Superintendent of Public Instruction Michael Rice said this amendment was similar to resolutions the board supported previously. In February 2022, the Resolution on Sex Education included language that allowed for parents and legal guardians to opt-out of sex education classes without penalty.

Board member Tom McMillin (R-Oakland Township) wanted wording included that would make clear the board was stating pornography should not be allowed in schools. Board member Marshall Bullock (D-Detroit) jumped in, saying that there are already laws forbidding pornography in school. He asked McMillin how he defined pornography, saying his definition may lead to the banning of other subject matter such as the teaching of human anatomy in a biology course.

In the end, the board voted to approve the resolution 6-2, with McMillin and board member Nikki Snyder (R-Dexter) voting no.

Categories Censorship, Courage, Curriculum, Democracy, Ethics, Extremism, Freedom to Read, Librarians, Libraries, Literacy, Literature, Michigan

Gavin Newsom Slams Greg Abbott for Ignoring Gun Violence

By dianeravitch
June 14, 2023 //
79

California Governor Gavin Newsom has been blasting away at knuckle-headed Republican governors like Ron DeSantis and Greg Abbott for their cruel indifference to other people. He’s already suggested he may sue DeSantis for kidnapping, after Florida sent two private planes with Venezuelan immigrants to Sacramento. Now, he’s going after Abbott for his refusal to take action against gun violence.

He wrote:

Texas… where elected officials are relying on Winnie the Pooh to teach their kids about active shooters because they don’t have the courage to keep our kids safe.

Tweet from Gavin Newsom: 'Winnie the Pooh is now teaching Texas kids about active shooters because the elected officials do not have the courage to keep our kids safe and pass common sense gun safety laws.'

Texas… where Greg Abbott signed a law to send DNA kits to parents of school children so their bodies can be identified after a shooting.

Tweet from Gavin Newsom: 'Greg Abbott’s solution to gun violence? Send DNA kits to schools so parents can identify their kids’ bodies AFTER they’ve been shot and killed.'

Guns are the leading cause of death for kids in America. Kids!

We’re not talking about accidents, or cancer or something unpreventable. We know the steps to take to save our kids lives. But leaders like Greg Abbott lack the courage to act.

Until then… It’s Winnie the Pooh for Texas families.

Gavin Newsom

Categories Accountability, California, Character, Courage, Cruelty, DeSantis, Ethics, Guns, Texas

Was This the Greatest Commencement Speech of 2023?

By dianeravitch
June 13, 2023 //
28

J.B. Pritzker, Governor of Illinois, gave a terrific commencement address at Northwestern University, with a fabulous explanation about how to spot an idiot. He says that idiots are not necessarily stupid. They may be your boss. They may even be elected President.

If you want to see the 20+ minute speech, it’s here.

If you want to see the part where Pritzker explains idiots, state at about 7:50 into the speech.

If you are on Twitter, see it here:

Summary:

“Whenever I’m about to do something, I think ‘Would an idiot do that?’ and if they would, I do not do that thing.” – Dwight Schrute

And what is the best way to spot an idiot? Look for the person who is cruel.

Categories Character, Cruelty, Ethics, Goodness, Lies

Florida Paradox: Immigrants Fearful of Deportation, Farmers Need Workers

By dianeravitch
June 13, 2023 //
54

Ron DeSantis got the Florida legislature to pass strong legislation that puts undocumented immigrants at risk of deportation and puts anyone who helps them at risk of arrest.

Meanwhile, the agriculture industry—a key driver of the state’s economy—is worried about finding enough workers to harvest the crops.

Immigrant advocates warned them to stay home.

But farmers are pleading with immigrants not to leave the state. Even Republican legislators worry that the anti-immigrant law was a mistake.

Republican lawmakers in Florida concerned about the state’s new anti-immigration law and its possible economic consequences begged Latinos to not leave the state in clips from a Monday morning meeting.

The footage, which provides evidence of the law’s “downstream impacts on the state economy” according to MSNBC, shows two conservative Florida legislators attempting to minimize the harm that the law, Senate Bill 1718, could cause, with one asking attendees to advise Latinos against leaving Florida.

“This bill is 100% supposed to scare you,” Republican state Rep. Rick Roth said in a clip shared on Twitter by Democratic activist Tom Kennedy. “I’m a farmer, and the farmers are mad as hell. We are losing employees. They’re already starting to move to Georgia and other states. It’s urgent that you talk to all your people and convince them that you have resources — state representatives and other people — that can explain the bill to you.”

But no one blames DeSantis, who needed to prove his contempt for immigrants.

Agriculture is a big part of Florida’s economy. Who will bring in the crops?

Before the bill passed, the Farmworkers Association warned that about 300,000 of the state’s 500,000 farmworkers are likely undocumented.

Here’s a chance for DeSantis to create jobs for his fervent white supporters. They can pick oranges and grapefruit and other crops in the blazing sun. At minimum wage.

Categories DeSantis, Disruption, Economy, Ethics, Extremism, Florida

Kathryn Joyce: How Sarasota County Became Florida’s Laboratory for Far-Right Extremism

By dianeravitch
June 13, 2023 //
7

If you read one article today, make it this one.

Kathryn Joyce is an outstanding journalist who has written several excellent articles about the far-right conspiracy to destroy public education. In this important article, published by both the Hechinger Report and Vanity Fair, she examines the rightwing takeover of public schools in Sarasota, Florida, by the extremist Moms for Liberty and their hero Governor DeSantis.

Joyce begins:

SARASOTA COUNTY, Fla. — On a Sunday afternoon in late May 2022, Zander Moricz, then class president of Sarasota County’s Pine View School, spent the moments before his graduation speech sitting outside the auditorium, on the phone with his lawyers. Over the previous month, the question of what he’d say when he stepped to the podium had become national news. That March, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis had signed the Parental Rights in Education Act, quickly dubbed the “Don’t Say Gay” law for its ban on all mention of gender identity and sexuality in K–3 classrooms and restriction of those discussions in higher grades as well. Moricz, a student LGBTQ+ activist, had led several protests against the act that spring and joined a high-profile lawsuit against the state. In early May, he charged on Twitter that Pine View’s administration had warned that if he mentioned his activism or the lawsuit at graduation, his microphone would be cut. (In a statement released last year, the school district confirmed that students are told not to express political views in their speeches.)

In the tumultuous weeks leading up to the ceremony, Pine View — Sarasota’s “gifted” magnet institution, consistently ranked one of the top 25 public high schools in the country — was besieged with angry calls and news coverage. Moricz stayed home for three weeks, he said, thanks to the rvolume of death threats he received, and people showed up at his parents’ work. When a rumor started that Pine View’s principal would have to wear a bulletproof vest to graduation, he recalled, “the entire campus lost their minds,” thinking “everyone’s going to die” and warning relatives not to come. His parents worried he’d be killed.

But after all the controversy, graduation day was a success. Moricz, now 19, delivered a pointedly coded speech about the travails of being born with curly hair in Florida’s humid climate: how he worried about the “thousands of curly-haired kids who are going to be forced to speak like this” — like he was, in code — “for their entire lives as students.” Videos of the speech went viral. Donations poured into Moricz’s youth-led nonprofit. That summer, he left to study government at Harvard.

Half-a-year later though, when Moricz came home, Sarasota felt darker.

“I’m wearing this hat for a reason,” he said when we met for coffee in a strip mall near his alma mater in early March. “Two years ago, if I was bullied due to my queerness, the school would have rallied around me and shut it down. If it happened today, I believe everyone would act like it wasn’t happening.”

These days, he said, queer kids sit in the back of class and don’t tell teachers they’re being harassed. A student at Pine View was told, Moricz said, that he couldn’t finish his senior thesis researching other states’ copycat “Don’t Say Gay” laws. (The school did not respond to a request for comment through a district spokesperson.) When Moricz’s nonprofit found a building to house a new youth LGBTQ+ center — since schools were emphatically no longer safe spaces — they budgeted for bulletproof glass.

“The culture of fear that’s being created is doing exactly what it’s supposed to do,” he said. And much of it was thanks to the Sarasota County School Board.

Over the last two years, education culture wars have become the engine of Republican politics nationwide, with DeSantis’s Florida serving as the vanguard of the movement. But within the state, Sarasota is more central still.

Its school board chair, Bridget Ziegler, cofounded the conservative activist group Moms for Liberty and helped lay the groundwork for “Don’t Say Gay.” After a uniquely ugly school board race last summer, conservatives flipped the board and promptly forced out the district’s popular superintendent. In early January, when DeSantis appointed a series of right-wing activists to transform Florida’s progressive New College into a “Hillsdale of the South” — emulating the private Christian college in Michigan that has become a trendsetting force on the right — that was in Sarasota too. In February, DeSantis sat alongside Ziegler’s husband and Moms for Liberty’s other cofounders to announce a list of 14 school board members he intends to help oust in 2024—Sarasota’s sole remaining Democrat and LGBTQ+ board member, Tom Edwards, among them. The next month, Ziegler proposed that the board hire a newly created education consultancy group with ties to Hillsdale College for what she later called a “‘WOKE’ Audit.” (Ziegler did not respond to interview requests for this article.)

The dizzying number of attacks has led to staffing and hiring challenges, the cancelation of a class, a budding exodus of liberals from the county, and fears that destroying public education is the ultimate endgame. In January, Ziegler’s husband, Christian — who chairs the Florida Republican Party — tweeted a celebratory declaration: “SARASOTA IS GROUND ZERO FOR CONSERVATIVE EDUCATION.”

It wasn’t hyperbole, said Moricz. “We say that Sarasota is Florida’s underground lab, and we’re its non-consenting lab rats.”

For as long as Florida has been grading schools and school districts — a late 1990s innovation that helped spark the “school reform” movement — Sarasota, with its 62 schools and nearly 43,000 students, has enjoyed an “A” rating. Perched on the Gulf Coast just south of Tampa, the county’s mix of powder-soft beaches and high-culture amenities — including an opera house, ballet and museums — have made it a destination for vacationers and retirees. And that influx has made Sarasota one of the richest counties in the state.

Since many of those retirees, dating back to the 1950s, have been white Midwestern transplants, it’s also made Sarasota a Republican stronghold and top fundraising destination for would-be presidential candidates. Both the last and current chairs of the state GOP — first State Senator Joe Gruters and now Christian Ziegler — live in the county. Sarasota arguably launched Donald Trump’s first presidential campaign, thanks to Gruters’s early support. These days, though, Sarasota isn’t just conservative, but at the leading edge of Florida’s turn to the hard right.

Partly that’s thanks to the Zieglers, who have become one of Florida’s premier power couples, with close ties to both Trump world and the DeSantis administration and a trio of daughters enrolled in local private schools. As founder of the digital marketing company Microtargeted Media, Christian did hundreds of thousands of dollars of work for pro-Trump PACs in 2021, the Sarasota Herald-Tribune reported. After being elected state GOP chair this February, he announced his goal was “to crush these leftist in-state Democrats” so thoroughly that “no Democrat considers running for office.” Although Bridget stepped down from Moms for Liberty shortly after its founding, she subsequently helped draftFlorida’s Parents’ Bill of Rights, which helped pave the way for DeSantis’s 2021 ban on mask mandates and ultimately last year’s “Don’t Say Gay” law. In 2022, the right-wing Leadership Institute hired her as director of school board programs, and built a 6,000-square-foot headquarters in Sarasota to serve as a national hub for conservative education activism. This winter, DeSantis also appointed her to a new board designed to punish the Disney Company for criticizing his anti-LGBTQ laws….

Last year, when Ziegler was up for reelection and two other board members were terming out, she ran as a unified slate with former school resource officer Tim Enos and retired district employee Robyn Marinelli. The candidates drew support from both DeSantis’s administration — which unprecedentedly endorseddozens of school board candidates across the state — and local members of the far-right. A PAC partially funded by The Hollow’s owner campaigned for the “ZEM” slate (a shorthand for the candidates’ surnames) by driving a mobile billboard around the county, calling one of their opponents a “LIAR” and “BABY KILLER” because she’d once worked for Planned Parenthood. Proud Boys hoisted ZEM signs on county streets and a mailer was sent out, castigating the liberal candidates as “BLM/PSL [Party of Socialism and Liberation]/ANTIFA RIOTERS, PLANNED PARENTHOOD BABY KILLERS, [who] WANT GROOMING AND PORNOGRAPHY IN OUR SCHOOLS.” (Enos and Marinelli did not respond to requests for comment for this article.)

Open the link and read all of the article. It is a devastating article about the takeover of the school board by hateful extremists whose tools are fear and divisiveness.

Categories Accountability, Bigotry, Censorship, Corruption, Cruelty, Curriculum, Democracy, DeSantis, Disruption, Education Industry, Elections, Ethics, Evil, Extremism, Fascism, Florida, Freedom, Freedom of Speech, Freedom to Read, Gender, Injustice, Lies, Parent Groups, Politics, Privatization, Propaganda, Safety, Shame, Students
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