The Network for Public Education invites School Board members to join our new group dedicated to fighting privatization of public schools.
https://npeaction.org/2017/03/03/7286/
We will keep you informed about political activity in your state and introduce you to other dedicated School Board members.
NPE Action exists to fight school privatization and to demand better resourced, more equitable schools.
Here is the latest news on the privatization front.
Good News! House Bill HR 610, the School Choice Act, Appears to Have Stalled
HR 610 was written to eliminate the Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965, which was passed as a part of Lyndon B. Johnson’s “War on Poverty,” and to create block grants to “distribute a portion of funds to parents who elect to enroll their child in a private school or to home-school their child.” It would also lower nutritional standards for free or reduced priced lunches.
Thanks to your efforts, the Network for Public Education generated over 32,000 emails to members of the U.S. House of Representatives in opposition to this bill. That is a job well done, members!
Be our Eyes and Ears in Your State
Voucher bills and bills that expand charter schools are popping up in nearly every state. When we learn of such bills, we create an action alert that produces a barrage of emails to lawmakers. We need your help in keeping us up to date.
Become a member of our state alert system. If you know of a bill in your state that would promote vouchers, so-called education savings accounts, or tax credit funded “scholarships” to private schools, let us know using the form below. If there is a bill that would expand charter schools or reduce their governing regulations, tell us.
You can find the sign-up form here. Please be sure to save it in your favorites for easy access.
We will then investigate the bill and help mobilize activists in your state.
NPE Action Welcomes Tina Andres to its Board of Directors
Tina Andres has been a public school teacher for 30 years in Santa Ana, California. She has taught elementary special education classes and middle school mathematics for 25 years. She has served as a math curriculum specialist, and mentored over 50 student teachers from public universities throughout her career. Tina is married with two children who attend Santa Ana schools. She is an active member of NEA and CTA and serves on the State Council. Tina is also a member of the BATs Board of Directors. She is a proud advocate for public schools. We welcome Tina to our NPE Action Board.
Are you a School Board Member? It’s Time to Organize!
NPE Action is creating a nationwide Grassroots School Board Members Network. If you are a member of a board of education, please sign up to join.
https://npeaction.org/2017/03/03/7286/
This new grassroots group will provide a means by which you can share resolutions, actions, and communicate with like-minded board members who are intent on supporting and preserving public education.
We believe that School Boards are vital for democratically goverend public schools, and we want to fight with you to make sure that the public understands their importance. We will also provide resources and information.
There is no cost to you–our only motivation is to help you find like-minded board members with whom you can communicate in this important struggle to save our public schools from privatization.
If you would like to join, please fill out our short form that you can find here. If you are not a school board member, please share the form with a school board member.
Thank you, Betsy Deavos, for awakening the parents, teachers, and other concerned citizens about the risk of privatizing our public schools and handing them over to entrepreneurs and religious institutions.
We will fight you. We will stand together against your schemes and malevolent dreams. The public paid for our schools, and you can’t take them away.
The Network for Public Education and NPE Action will lead the fight.
Thanks to DeVos, our membership went from 22,000 to more than 300,00 and it is growing daily.
Help us push back.
RESIST!!!!!
Please take the time to read this letter from Carol Burris, the CEO of the Network for Public Education and the NPE Action Fund.
Carol describes NPE’s plans to continue the struggle for our public schools.
We know what the DeVos agenda is, and we know she will tout the failed remedies of corporate reform.
Make no mistake: corporate reform is the status quo! It has had the unrelenting support of the U.S. Department of Education since 2001. It has the support of a long list of billionaires and foundations. Federal policy from NCLB TO Race to the Top to ESSA is the status quo. It is policy built on the assumption that schools will get better if the state threatens teachers and principals with punishments and rewards. Many schools have been stigmatized and closed based on false assumptions. Many educators have unfairly been terminated based on flawed evaluation methods.
We want to create a strong and powerful grassroots network of defenders of public education. We want to help you connect with allies in your state, your district, your hometown.
We now have more than 300,000 members, ready to join in our crusade. Be strong and join with us. (“Somewhere beyond the barricades, is there a world you’d like to see?” Les Miserables). Is there a different, better kind of school you’d like to see? We can dream it. We can do it. But first we must survive the next four years.
Diane
The Network for Public Education will watch what Betsy DeVos does and report it to you immediately.
We will keep you informed about what the privatizers are doing in your state and community.
We will help you connect with other people in your state who are mobilizing to stop privatization.
The fight to save public education will happen in communities and districts, at the grassroots level.
We ask you to join us, become active, send us action alerts about meetings, protests and demonstrations in your district or town or city so we can help you get the news out.
Here is information you can use:
Get everyone you can to join NPE. Sign them up
http://networkforpubliceducation.org/become-a-member/
Tell others on Facebook to join. We will be mobilizing in the months ahead.
Create a local group in support of public schools. Use Facebook or create a website. Then join our Grassroots Network.
http://networkforpubliceducation.org/grassroots-education-network-3/
Read our emails. We will be regularly launching campaigns at the national and state level.
Make a donation. If we are to fight this we will need funds. http://networkforpubliceducation.org/about-npe/donate/
Together, we will build a movement so powerful that we can beat Donald Trump, Betsy DeVos, and all others who aim to privatize our public schools. Together we can keep the for-profit privateers and frauds out of our schools.
Work with us. We need your help.
I hope you will make plans to join me and many other advocates of real reform when the Network for Public Education holds its annual meeting in Oakland in 2017. The dates are October 14 and 15, 2017.
Become a member of the resistance!
NPE meetings are always exciting. We have wonderful and inspiring speakers; great panels; and a spirit of camaraderie that you are not likely to find anywhere else. You will meet the parent leaders and bloggers that you have read about. And you will make new friends, while finding out about how to keep public education alive during these next four years–and beyond.
Previous conferences have been held in Austin; Chicago; and Raleigh. It is time for a West Coast gathering.
Save the date. And watch the website of the Network for Public Education for updates.
The Network for Public Educations vows to carry the fight for a qualified Secretary of Education to the Senate floor.
We now have more than 300,000 members, located in every state.
We will fight for a Secretary of Education who will uphold the laws, support the right to an education for all children, and strengthen our public schools.
NPE just released this statement:
Although disappointed by the decision of the HELP committee to send the vote on Betsy DeVos to the Senate floor, The Network for Public Education (NPE) was pleased by the strong opposition to DeVos. All Democrats voted against DeVos. Senators Collins of Maine and Murkowski of Alaska while voting to move her nomination forward, would not commit to voting for her when the vote comes to the full Senate.
“Betsy DeVos put a spotlight on the threat to public education that charters-both online and brick and mortar, and private voucher schools pose to our democratically governed, community public schools. Public school advocates across the nation spoke out. Our campaign against DeVos generated over 600,000 emails and thousands of phone calls and letters to the Senate. Most Americans do not want an unregulated, privatized school system paid for by American taxpayers. That is what DeVos represents,” said NPE Executive Director, Carol Burris.
NPE President, Diane Ravitch, believes the massive political donations by DeVos was the driving factor behind her appointment. “We are disappointed but not surprised that Betsy DeVos was approved by the Senate HELP committee, despite the fact that she is completely unqualified for the job by experience or knowledge or any other criteria. As she has acknowledged, she and her family have given millions of dollars to the Republican party, including to members of the committee that just approved her. We weep for the children of America, knowing that this woman will launch an assault on their community public schools, as she did in Michigan. Since her choice theology was implemented in Michigan, that state’s rankings on national tests have plummeted, and Detroit–now flooded with charters–remains the lowest performing urban district on national tests. We will continue to fight this nomination as it moves forward.“
NPE Executive Board member, Phyllis Bush, lives in Indiana, a state the embraces the DeVos philosophy. “While the members of the HELP committee can talk about the importance of using a business model to reform public schools, the ultimate cost to Indiana is landing on the backs of students. Privatization reform has resulted in larger class sizes, tests that provide little useful information, school letter grades that reward zip codes, the elimination of essential services in public schools, and a critical teacher shortage.”
The Network for Public Education intends to mobilize its over 300,000 supporting members to continue the fight against DeVos’ appointment.
“When it comes to our fight for adequately funded, democratically-governed public schools, we make ‘no excuses’.” Our neighborhood schools made our country great. We will not allow them to be destroyed,” Burris said.
The Network for Public Education and the NPE Action Fund has created a toolkit for citizens to use to protest the confirmation of a totally unqualified person for Secretary of Education. Billionaire Betsy is a lobbyist for vouchers and charters. She has wrecked the schools of her home state. Do not let her ruin the nation’s public schools. Resist!
Please use the toolkit to let your Senators know that you oppose her confirmation.
Happy New Year! I hope 2017 brings you health, happiness, and good times with family and friends.
2017 will be a dangerous time for our nation.
Somehow, a man was elected as president who has no experience or qualifications or knowledge. He is not a “populist,” the term adopted by the media. He is a white nationalist and a plutocrat who said whatever he needed to say to get elected. He has chosen as his Secretary of Education a woman who is a zealot for religious education and private providers. She is not an educator. She has never worked in education. She did not got to public schools, nor did her children. She does not like public schools. She is contemptuous of our public schools. She likes charter schools, cyber charters, vouchers, and anything other than public schools. She is a billionaire who has spread millions to elect other zealots for school choice, despite the fact that it is no solution to the problems of public education, and despite the fact that every dollar that goes to a charter school or voucher school is taken away from a public school. She seeks the destruction of public education.
We will stand strong in support of the commons. We will not let this pampered billionaire destroy what belongs to us. We will fight her in the states and in the districts. We will reach out to our elected officials, local and state and Congressional. We will remind them that the public schools are an essential part of our democracy. We will ask Republicans and Democrats alike to defend our public schools against the Trump administration’s determination to privatize them.
Join the fight. Stand with your allies. Join the Network for Public Education. It will not be an easy struggle, but it is a worthy one. It is a fight for democracy against autocracy. We are citizens first, not consumers. We will fight to maintain separation between church and state. We will fight for our democratic legacy. We will fight for democratically controlled community schools that accept ALL children, no matter when they show up, no matter whether they can speak English or whether they have disabilities.
This is the challenge for the next four years. It begins in a few weeks.
Do not be afraid. We have numbers. We must fight to sustain our democracy and our public schools. We will and we hope you will join us.
A reader in Ohio named Chiara left the following succinct comment:
It’s maybe a good time to be a public school supporter🙂
Ed reform has embraced DeVos/Trump.
The “agnostics” are marginalized and irrelevant- the privatization zealots are now “the movement”. They don’t even discuss public schools anymore- they fight over when privatization should be regulated or unregulated.
It’s a huge opportunity. They’ve abandoned 90% of schools and it’s such an echo chamber they don’t even see it.
So privatization will have 100 Senators, The President, the USDOE, hundreds of House members and 10% of students and families.
Public schools will have no representation or advocates at the federal level, but public schools will have 90% of students and families. Just think about how nuts that is and you see the opportunity.
There’s an opening for some entity or group(s) to represent the interests of 90% of children and families. That COULD be new people with appealing and practical ideas that actually BENEFIT existing public schools. Imagine that! 🙂
Join the Network for Public Education and help us support public schools. We can help you find your state and/or local group that shares your passion to preserve public schools as a foundation of our democracy.
