Just ONE Week Away! The first-ever PUBLIC Education Nation
This time we own the table, and we will bring together educators, parents and students to tell the truth about what is happening in our schools, and what real reform ought to be all about.
TOMORROW, Sunday, October 5, will be our major money bomb online fundraiser for the event. This is NOT sponsored by the Billionaires – it is sponsored by US – each and every person who cares about the future of public education
One easy way to help is to sign up for our Thunderclap. Just a few clicks will allow a SINGLE tweet or Facebook post to be made, showing your support and spreading the word about the fundraiser. Please sign up — and share. Thank you!!
Please donate here, and spread the word.
If you are in the New York area, and would like to attend the October 11 event in person, please show up by 11:30 am at 610 Henry St at Brooklyn New School/Brooklyn School for Collaborative Studies, and register here in advance. You can also sign up for the online event on Facebook here.
Follow us on Twitter at @PublicEdNation & @NetworkPublicEd
Panel #2:
Support Our Schools — Don’t Close Them!
The second panel next Saturday will be moderated by a classroom teacher from Chicago, Xian Barrett. Xian has been active in the Chicago teachers Union, and numerous other organizations that work to elevate the voices of teachers. He will be joined by the following education experts:
Yohuru Williams, PhD, is the Assistant Professor of history at Fairfield College in Connecticut. Here is why he is passionate about supporting schools:
“Schools are the nucleus of communities. Every school closed is a community compromised. I fight school closures because I believe in the importance of schools as centers of learning and places for community dialogue and participation. The arbitrary closure of schools, driven by corporate education reform, is another example of how so called education reformers undermine democratic practices and place profits over people. The disbanding of popularly elected school boards, reallocation of critical resources to unproven charter schools, and narratives of teacher and student failure that accompany school closures betray the real agenda of the corporate raiders-their desire to line their pockets, in spite of the detrimental influence school closures have on communities. This is why we fight.”
Tanaisa Brown is a high school student active in the Newark Students Union. She explains her activism:
I fight against school closure because I see the detriment it has, not just on ONE school, but the whole community. Newark, NJ has been under state control for 20 years, and slowly but surely, they have been underfunding our district. From this point, they deemed many of our schools as “failing” in order that they could “prove” that they needed to enter and “reform”. These are reforms that close schools, and sell PUBLIC PROPERTY to privately owned companies not in correlation with education.
As a community, Newark has taken great action from students, parents and teachers, and even to Board Members who file legal complaints about the reforms. As an organization,The Newark Students Union has taken many actions. About 2 years ago, we had our first meeting with about 100 students at a local college. From there, we held our first protest where the superintendant and Cory Booker were in attendance for a radio show. Since then, we have had 2 city-wide walkouts of many high schools, and a boycott of Newark’s Public Schools. Our major events include a shutdown of Newark Board of Education’s business board meeting where we remained in the central offices for 17 hours. We also recently shutdown 3 public high schools in a soft blockade and marched the first day to have skill shares at a park, while on the second day we performed a hard blockade next to the Board of Education on the busiest street in Newark for about 8 hours. Aside from actions, we inform students about current issues, meet with other organizations to create unity, and were deeply involved in the recent Mayoral Election.
In having our events, we always have demands that will count as “wins” if they are met. The most important one is a stop to the One Newark plan, which displaces our students, staff, and furthers harm of education. The entire community is against this plan and it would be really huge if we could defeat the plan introduced by the nonchalant Superientendent Cami Anderson. A “win” that encompasses the one previously mentioned one is FULL LOCAL CONTROL. This “win” is something that all urban districts can agree with because with local control over OUR DISTRICTS, we can have more of a direct say-so in our educational policies. Chris Christie will not be able to send puppets to NJ’s districts to destroy them! But besides stopping the ed reformers, we wish to implement community schools with wrap-around services that can not only uplift the students but our families as well! Community schools have always proven to be effective and produce better results for the whole city!
I think one of the most important things is good media coverage and social network coverage and support. These are both excellent ways to educate the masses on the issues happening in your area and it allows for allies to give support and to share your stories with their allies and home communities. I think in order to work nationally in this movement, we need unity and support because as the saying goes, divided we fall. If other organizations are hosting events that may be close by or you are able to sacrifice to get to (works well for summer actions), then we should be able to network, connect and invite eachother. Keeping in touch no matter the distance is a great way to stay united. But an idea for national unity that we can work towards is to keep one central demand amongst the ones that are more personal to your community. For example, we can all have a central goal/demand of “Community schools” or “Stop privatization and standardized testing”, nationally rallying around that one idea while still presenting a plethora of your own specific issues. This will show unity to the oppressors, showing that this force is bigger than they thought, and it will also stand out to the different media sources as the begin to notice a national trend.
Think of our school districts as a flower. Chris Christie and Cami Anderson believe that in order to help the flower, you have to uproot it. I disagree, I believe that to help this flower grow beautifully, we need to water the same flower, expose it to sunlight, and show it love.
Hiram Rivera is the Executive Director of the Philadelphia Student Union. He is a native of New Haven, CT, a father, an activist, and an organizer. He started his career in youth organizing as a coordinator at Youth Right’s Media in New Haven, training Black and Latino students in video production and campaign organizing around Education & Juvenile Justice issues.
On Saturday, Oct. 11, you can tune in online here at SchoolhouseLive.org to the live broadcast starting at 12 noon Eastern time, 9 am Pacific time.
The event will conclude with a conversation between Diane Ravitch and Jitu Brown.
The Network for Public Education is hosting this event. It is NOT sponsored by the Gates, Walton or Bloomberg foundations. It is sponsored by YOU, each and every one of the people who care about our children’s future.
Can you make a small donation to help us cover the expense of this event? We are determined to create the space not ordinarily given to voices like these. But we need your participation. Please donate by visiting the NPE website and clicking on the PayPal link.
A live-stream of the event will be available on Saturday, Oct. 11, starting at Noon Eastern time, 9 am Pacific time at http://www.schoolhouselive.org.
