Miami: Art Exhibit Honors Black Queer History in Miami

By dianeravitch
April 1, 2023 //
8

An art exhibit, years in the planning, has opened in Miami to celebrate the cultural contributions and lives of Black queer Miamians. Opening now, as Governor DeSantis intensifies his attack on gay Floridians, the show appears as an act of resistance.

Drag queens dressed in colorful gowns hold a mock wedding to raise money for a local Black church.

At a Miami club, a popular drag king entertains hordes of people.

Local newspaper editorials call for an end to LGBTQ discrimination.

And queer couples fall in love.

These aren’t stories of Miami today. They’re glimpses of Miami’s Black LGBTQ history dating back to the 1940s.

“Give Them Their Flowers,” a new exhibition at the Little Haiti Cultural Center Art Gallery, displays and celebrates Miami’s under-documented Black LGBTQ community at a time when Florida’s government has become increasingly hostile toward Black and LGBTQ representation.

The project, on view until April 23, is the most relevant exhibition in Miami right now.

“This is a space that celebrates, honors and makes visible what has always been here,” said Nadege Green, the exhibition’s co-curator and founder of historical storytelling platform Black Miami-Dade.

“There’s something that happens, especially around LGBTQ+ folks, where sometimes you feel like you remain invisible, and this fully rejects that.”

Since the show was years in the making, it wasn’t meant to be a response to the current political moment, said Marie Vickles, the curator-in-residence at the Little Haiti Cultural Center who co-curated the show with Green. Still, Vickles said, the show underscores the importance of researching Black, queer Floridian history….

“We’re here, we’re queer, we’re Black in Miami,” she added. “And that is a story worth telling.”

Read more at: https://www.miamiherald.com/entertainment/article273408565.html#storylink=cpy

Categories Art, Education Reform, Florida, Gender, Miami, Resistance

Ohio: Private School Choice Is Wrecking Public Schools

By dianeravitch
April 1, 2023 //
18

Maureen Reedy is a former Ohio Teacher of the Year and Upper Arlington City School District Teacher of the Year, retired after a 30-year career as a public-school teacher. She wrote this article for the Columbus Dispatch.

The “public” must be put back into public education in Ohio.

Instead of pushing current legislation like Senate Bill 11 that could take one billion dollars from public schools to fund private and religious school vouchers, Ohio’s lawmakers need uphold Ohio’s constitutional promise to keep public tax dollars out of private schools.

We Ohioans love our public schools.

Most of us attended neighborhood public schools, which continue to be the schools of choice for our children and grandchildren. Our public schools are community hubs that educate over 90% (1.7 million) of Ohio’s children; students come together from all backgrounds to learn and build understanding and acceptance of others.

Public education in Ohio is a 172-year-old promise, created on the constitutional belief that public schools are the fundamental foundation for the public good; a necessary tool to build an educated democracy and sustainable futures for our children in these challenging times.

Why then, are Ohio lawmakers churning out private school voucher legislation that takes hundreds of millions of public-school tax dollars per year from our neighborhood schools to pay for private and religious school education?

School vouchers violate the Ohio Constitution. That is why over 210 public school districts have filed the “Vouchers Hurt Ohio” lawsuit challenging EdChoice Vouchers for their unconstitutional use of state school funds for private school tuition.

Public dollars should not fund private and religious school tuition.

Ohio’s constitution has some of the strongest language in the country specifying that state funds are for public (common) schools only.

“The General Assembly … will secure a thorough and efficient system of common schools throughout the state; but no religious or other sect, or sects, shall ever have any exclusive right to, or control of, any part of the school funds of this state,” Article VI, Section 2 of the Ohio Constitution reads.

Just as Ohio’s founders intended, there is not one single word in the Ohio Constitution that allows the use of state dollars for private and religious school tuition.

Ohio’s first attempt at school vouchers began as a temporary pilot in 2006, and is now a refund and rebate school privatization program that reimburses families who never intended to send their children to public schools.

Runaway train must be stopped

Private school vouchers have ballooned out of control, initially taking away $42 million of public-school funding in 2008 and expanding to $350 million in 2022.

Senate Bill 11 has been introduced to make every child in Ohio eligible for a private EdChoice school voucher, which could immediately take a billion dollars out of the finite supply of state school funds for over 90% of Ohio’s children whose families choose public schools.

When we let vouchers siphon funds from our public schools, our kids do not have the resources they need to succeed, and that hurts us all. EdChoice Vouchers for private schools means more school levies and higher property taxes. State funding for private schools is not only unconstitutional, it is unsustainable for Ohio taxpayers.

This brings us full circle to the crucial choice for the future of public education in Ohio. Public schools open their doors to children of all ability levels; welcoming students from diverse religions, cultures and nationalities.

Overall, Ohio’s public schools continue to outperform private voucher schools.

Public schools mirror the rising challenges of society today. Teachers are not just teaching, but also taking care of rising numbers of children in crises with mental and physical health challenges, which prevent them from learning. Instead of divesting in public education, Ohio needs to re-invest in our public schools.

Let’s face it. The only way to stop this runaway school voucher train is through a lawsuit.

Thousands of Ohio citizens have tried to get legislators to put the brakes on EdChoice vouchers and fulfill their oath to the state’s constitution: state school funding is solely for Ohio’s public-school districts.

The majority of Ohio’s legislators continue to steer our children and families in the wrong direction.

Vouchers hurt Ohio. The numbers are growing.

The movement is strong.

Maureen Reedy is a founding member of Public Education Partners, the largest nonprofit, all-volunteer Public Education advocacy group in Ohio.

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Competition, Democracy, Disruption, Education Industry, Education Reform, Extremism, Ohio, Privatization, School Choice, Vouchers

Politico: GOP Will Make 2024 Election About Crazy Culture Wars That They Created

By dianeravitch
April 1, 2023 //
29

We saw this coming. The GOP candidates for President have decided, for now, to focus their campaigns against “critical race theory,” Black history, the threat posed by transgender students, and any teaching about race, sex, and gender.

Juan Perez of Politico reports:

CULTURE CLASH — Once upon a time, back when people used fax machines, education policy — test scores, spending, school choice and the like — were a notable feature of Republican presidential campaigns.

Former President George W. Bush’s support for education spending and the transformative No Child Left Behind Act was enshrined in the party’s 2004 platform. Former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee railed that a general lack of concern about education in the 2008 presidential field “frustrates the fire out of me.” Bush’s brother, Jeb, invoked Martin Luther King Jr.in 2016 when he proposed a detailed education platform before his campaign fizzled.

This year, education is re-emerging as a prominent issue for the budding 2024 GOP field. But America is poised to witness a presidential contest where the debate over school policy sounds dramatically different — with discussions over academic standards and the stunning, once-in-a-generation hitto test scores taking a back seat to issues with a more distinct culture war bent.

Former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley is salting a back-to-basics education mantra with brimstone, targeting school lessons on race and sexuality. Former Vice President Mike Pence has put a small Iowa school system’s gender identity policy in the national spotlight. And Former President Donald Trump is stirring up concerns about “pink-haired communists teaching our kids.”

Haley’s campaign launch last week offered a sign of the heightened role the education wars are about to play in the GOP primary.

“They’re talking about critical race theory, where if you send a five year old kindergartner into school — if she’s white, you’re telling her she’s bad, and if she’s brown or Black you’re telling her she’s never going to be good enough and she’s always going to be a victim,” Haley said of the academic practice to a New Hampshire crowd last week. “That’s abusive.”

She added that a Florida ban on sexual orientation and gender identity lessons for young students — championed by rival Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis and dubbed by critics as the “Don’t Say Gay” law — “didn’t go far enough.”

“When I was growing up, we didn’t have sex ed until seventh grade,” Haley said to applause in New Hampshire. “That’s the kind of stuff you do at home, you don’t do that at school. That’s the kind of thing parents do.”

For his part, Pence has focused attention on an Iowa dispute, in which the conservative Parents Defending Education organization is suing the Linn-Mar Community School District to stop it from enforcing a policy that directs educators to protect their students’ gender identities on campus.

The court case has garnered supportive briefs from the Pence-backed Advancing American Freedom organization plus a coalition of Christian groups and Republican state attorneys general. The legal battle is also the focus of a Pence political initiative— funded with an initial budget of $1 million — that will advocate for “parental rights” policies embraced by conservatives.

“We’re told that we must not only tolerate the left’s obsessions with race and sex and gender but we must earnestly and enthusiastically participate or face severe consequences,” Pence told supporters last week. “Nowhere is the problem more severe, or the need for leadership more urgent, than in our public school classrooms,” he said.

Trump’s education plan, unveiled last month, calls for cutting federal funding for any school or program that includes “critical race theory, gender ideology, or other inappropriate racial, sexual, or political content onto our children.”

Trump would also open civil rights investigations into any school district that has engaged in race-based discrimination, particularly against Asian American students. He also called to “keep men out of women’s sports,” make significant cuts to school administrative personnel, elect school principals and end teacher tenure.

“As the saying goes, personnel is policy and at the end of the day if we have pink-haired communists teaching our kids we have a major problem,” Trump said.

Sen. Tim Scott, who is testing the waters on a potential presidential bid, is taking a less combative approach. Speaking at a GOP Black History Month event in Charleston last week, the South Carolina senator said “the story of America is not defined by our original sin, the story of America is defined by our redemption” and urged Republicans to “be the party of parents.”

Scott and others are responding to the GOP grassroots energy surrounding issues at the intersection of race, gender, culture and education — which Virginia GOP Gov. Glenn Youngkin successfully harnessed in his 2021 blue-state victory.

The sharp-edged rhetoric might get sanded down for the general election. But for now, not getting outflanked on education controversies that currently animate the right appears to be the first order of business for the 2024 field.

Categories Accountability, Bigotry, Censorship, Civil Rights, Curriculum, Democracy, Elections, Extremism, Fake News, Freedom of Speech, History, Ignorance, Racism

Join a Protest Against Ron DeSantis’ Attacks on Education!

By dianeravitch
March 31, 2023 //
21

MEDIA ADVISORY:

Tomorrow, on Saturday, parents and community members from the Alliance to Reclaim Our Schools (AROS) and HEAL Together, alongside organizations from Florida and Pennslyvania, will hold a press conference opposing Governor Ron DeSantis’ harmful policies attacking our children’s freedom to learn. The press conference will take place opposite the site of DeSantis’ keynote speech at the Pennsylvania Leadership Conference. Florida advocates will speak at the press conference to warn that DeSantis’ policies are bringing chaos to Florida families.

The full media advisory is below. Feel free to reach out to the media contact: Moira Kaleida | 412-760-0030 | moira@reclaimourschools.org



FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: March 31, 2023


**MEDIA ADVISORY**PARENTS, COMMUNITY FROM PA & FL STAND UP AGAINST DESANTIS ATTACKS ON EDUCATION AND OUR COMMUNITIES— PRESS CONFERENCE AND ACTION


Harrisburg, PA – Saturday, April 1, 2023, parents and community members from the Alliance to Reclaim Our Schools (AROS) and HEAL Together, alongside Moms Rising, Red Wine & Blue, 412 Justice and Common Purpose (West Palm Beach, FL), and parents and community members from Florida to Pennsylvania will hold a press conference opposing Governor DeSantis’ harmful policies attacking our children’s freedom to learn.

The press conference will take place opposite the site of DeSantis’ keynote speech at the Pennsylvania Leadership Conference.

Concerned parents and community members will speak in response to the attacks on public education, including the passage of classroom censorship laws, the voucher bill which is a $5 billion giveaway to rich families, and the ban on life-saving education and healthcare for LGBTQIA+ youth.

Florida advocates will speak at the press conference to warn that these policies are bringing chaos to Florida families.


Education justice groups will be holding rallies also on April 1 in Miami, Orlando, Pinellas County and other sites throughout Florida to protest DeSantis’ anti-Black and anti-LGBTQ policies that have had a devastating impact on Florida’s children.

Pennsylvanians have voted against these policies in the past, and through solidarity with Floridians, Pennsylvanians have an opportunity to oppose DeSantis’ divisive tactics in order to ensure that all children have the freedom to learn and build a better future.

WHAT: Press conference with Pennsylvanians and Floridians to oppose Governor Ron DeSantis’ harmful policies attacking our children, our schools and our educational freedom after DeSantis’ keynote speech at the Pennsylvania Leadership Conference.


WHEN: April 1, 2023. Press Conference begins at 1 PM EST.


WHERE: In front of Harrisburg Academy (10 Erford Rd, Wormleysburg, PA 17043). The press conference location is across the street from Penn Harris Hotel (1150 Camp Hill Bypass, Camp Hill, PA 17011) where the Pennsylvania Leadership conference takes place.


WHO: Alliance to Reclaim Our Schools (AROS), with HEAL Together, Moms Rising, Red Wine & Blue, Common Purpose, 412 Justice, and parents, educators, and community members.


For on-site interviews, contact: Moira Kaleida | 412-760-0030 | moira@reclaimourschools.org

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The Alliance to Reclaim Our Schools (AROS) is a coalition of parent, youth, community and labor organizations fighting to reclaim the promise of public education as our nation’s gateway to a strong democracy and racial and economic justice. AROS is uniting parents, youth, teachers and unions to drive the transformation of public education, shift the public debate and build a national movement for equity and opportunity for all.

HEAL (Honest Education Action & Leadership) Together is building a movement of students, educators, and parents in school districts across the United States who believe that an honest, accurate and fully funded public education is the foundation for a just, multiracial democracy.

Categories Academic Freedom, Accountability, Censorship, Civil Rights, Democracy, DeSantis, Disruption, Education Industry, Extremism, Gender, Privatization, Racism, Vouchers

Illinois Families for Public Schools: Vallas Ties to Betsy DeVos Exposed

By dianeravitch
March 31, 2023 //
15

MEDIA STATEMENT

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Friday March 31, 2023

Contact: Cassie Creswell, Illinois Families for Public Schools, 773-916-7794

PAUL VALLAS LIES ABOUT SUPPORT, CONNECTIONS WITH TRUMP SECRETARY OF ED BETSY DEVOS

DEVOS’ SUPER PAC CHAIR ATTENDS VALLAS EVENTS; VALLAS HOSTED EVENT WITH DEVOS IN 2021

CHICAGO — Mayoral candidate Paul Vallas is falsely denying his connections to former President Trump’s former Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos and an Illinois Super PAC that DeVos funds.

DeVos funds and controls the Illinois Federation for Children PAC which made a $59,000 independent expenditure in support of Vallas’ campaign last week. On the same day, DeVos’ American Federation for Children Action Fund, a national 527 PAC funded primarily by DeVos and her husband, made a $65,000 contribution to the Illinois Federation for Children PAC.

Yesterday evening at the Sun-Times-WBEZ mayoral debate, Vallas denied having contact with DeVos, stating “I’ve never had any conversations or contact with Betsy DeVos. And our campaign has not received any money from her.” 

The Vallas campaign said on Wednesday evening that “our campaign has not been in contact with this organization [Illinois Federation for Children PAC].”

In reality, Vallas and DeVos served together as hosts at an Urban League of Chicago event on September, 9 2021 in honor of the superintendent of schools of the Catholic Archdiocese of Chicago.

Moreover, the chair of the Illinois Federation for Children PAC Nathan Hoffman has been regularly attending Vallas campaign events in the last month, including Vallas’ February 28th election night party:

Hoffman was a registered contract lobbyist in Springfield for the DeVos-founded and funded 501c4 American Federation for Children until January 2023. 

On June 18, 2022, Vallas appeared on a panel hosted by extremist anti-LGBTQ+ group Awake Illinois with keynote speaker Corey DeAngelis, senior fellow at DeVos-founded and funded American Federation for Children.

Paul Vallas’ decades-long history of privatizing multiple school districts in the US and extensive support for transferring public funds to private schools are tightly aligned with DeVos’ ideological opposition to the existence of publicly-run, publicly-funded schools.

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Categories Accountability, Betsy DeVos, Charter Schools, Chicago, Education Industry, Elections, Illinois, Privatization, Vallas, Paul, Vouchers

Chicago: Charter Lobby Spent $617,000 Against Vallas’ Opponent in Mayor Race

By dianeravitch
March 31, 2023 //
4

The Illinois charter lobby has spent heavily in the Chicago mayoral race. In recent weeks, the charter lobby has run a barrage of ads attacking Brandon Johnson, the City Commissioner who is running against Vallas.

WTTW News reported:

A statewide advocacy organization designed to promote charter schools spent $617,000 to oppose Brandon Johnson’s campaign for mayor of Chicago, records filed with the Illinois State Board of Elections show.

The independent expenditure by the INCS Action Independent Committee, funded by the Illinois Network of Charter Schools, paid for $258,000 in cable television advertisements on March 16 and $359,000 in digital advertising on March 15, records show. Election Day is April 4, and early voting is underway.

Before the first round of voting took place, the INCS Action Independent Committee spent an additional $63,000 to oppose Johnson’s campaign. In addition to their spending on the mayoral race, the committee has spent at least $107,000 to support City Council candidates in runoff elections, according to records.

Vallas has a well-established record as a passionate advocate of privatization. He supports both charter schools and vouchers.

Vallas wiped out public schools in New Orleans. He launched a massive privatization program in Philadelphia, and he left the district with a deficit.

Categories Accountability, Billionaires, Charter Schools, Chicago, Corporate Reform, Education Industry, Elections, Funding, Vallas, Paul

Who Is Putting Up the Big Money Behind Vouchers?

By dianeravitch
March 31, 2023 //
14

Inside Philanthropy reported on the major funding behind the push for vouchers.

Vouchers are not popular.

There have been nearly two dozen state referenda about vouchers. Vouchers have always lost, usually by large margins.

State legislatures have ignored the voice of the people and passed voucher legislation despite the public vote against them. Vouchers were rejected in Utah in 2007. Vouchers were rejected in Florida in 2012. Vouchers were rejected in Arizona in 2018. Yet the legislators in these states passed sweeping voucher laws, benefitting home schoolers and students already attending private schools.

Why?

There is a lot of money behind the voucher “movement.” The only thing moving in this “movement” is millions of dollars from rightwing billionaires into the pockets of Republican politicians.

All the usual rightwing suspects are pumping big money into the push for vouchers. Betsy DeVos, Charles Koch, the Bradley Foundation.

Connie Matthiessen of Inside Philanthropy writes:

Who is funding the push for school vouchers?

Dark money and disclosure rules make it difficult to pinpoint the funders that support vouchers or how much they are spending on these efforts. But what we do know is that a lot of the typical channels of conservative-leaning philanthropy are funding the organizations that support vouchers.

One reason it’s so hard to track is that a lot of that money is going through donor-advised funds, which don’t have to identify which individual DAF holders are making specific grants. The conservative DAF DonorsTrust, for example, and its affiliated Donors Capital Fund have been moving money to groups that support vouchers. As my colleague Philip Rojc reported in 2021, “Since its founding, DonorsTrust has given out over $1.5 billion. In addition to the sheer volume of money, a large proportion of DonorsTrust’s grantees operate in the policy arena, magnifying the impact of this funding on the public sphere.” It also raked in over $1 billion that year, according to Politico.

DonorsTrust grantees include voucher advocates like the Heritage Foundation, the American Federation for Children, which was created by Trump administration Education Secretary Betsy Devos, as well as the conservative Independent Women’s Forum. The Cardinal Institute, which is supporting education savings accounts in West Virginia, is also a grantee.

We do know some of the non-DAF funders that are supporting the voucher movement, and a few names come up repeatedly. One of these philanthropies is the Milwaukee-based Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation, a long-running conservative funder that has had a major influence in Wisconsin politics and also helped bankroll efforts to discredit the 2020 election results, as Jane Mayer reported in The New Yorker….

The Bradley Foundation funds the Wisconsin Center for Law and Liberty, which supports education vouchers through its Bradley Impact Fund, a donor-advised fund. The Bradley Impact Fund includes among its grantees the Badger Institute, a conservative Wisconsin think tank that is advocating for the expansion of the privatization of the state’s public education system, as the Wisconsin Examiner reported. According to its 2021 grants list, the foundation has also supported Ohio-based Buckeye Institute and the Goldwater Institute in Arizona, which are both pushing voucher-type movements in their respective states.

DeVos herself is another major voucher backer, and has supported efforts in her home state of Michigan and beyond. She is involved with a number of organizations, including the American Federation for Children, which she chaired and helped found. That organization and its affiliates — the American Federation for Children Action Fund (a 527 group that supports candidates) and the 501(c)(3) American Federation for Children Growth Fund — have promoted education vouchers for years, including in Washington, D.C., as the Washington Post reported in 2017. More recently, it backed efforts to push ESA legislation in Idaho, according to a report in the Idaho Capital Sun (Republican state legislators just rejected a voucher bill there). The organization has also been active in privatization efforts in Texas, according to the Texas Monthly; and in Nebraska, the Nebraska Examiner reports that DeVos and her husband provided most of the dollars identified as funding from the American Federation for Children.

DeVos has worked hard to influence education policy in her home state of Michigan, with some success, but so far, has failed to establish a voucher program there. Most recently, in November, voters overwhelmingly opposed a school voucher plan she helped fund, as Chalkbeat reported. Devos and her family gave $6.3 million in support of the ballot proposal.

The State Policy Network also played a role in the pro-voucher campaign in Idaho, according to the Idaho Capitol Sun report. That organization, which oversees a coalition of state-based conservative think tanks, is backed by the Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation and Charles Koch, according to a report by Documented, and has also received funding from DonorsTrust and Donors Capital Fund, according to Jane Mayer’s reporting. In an opinion piece for Washington Examiner, Chantal Lovell, the State Policy Network’s director of policy advancement, credited her group for expansion of education savings accounts across the country.

A number of organizations that Charles Koch has funded over the years have played a role in the voucher movement. The American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), a membership organization of right-leaning state legislators, promotes education vouchers, for example. ALEC has received support from Charles Koch, Donors Trust and the Bradley Foundation. ALEC-affiliated state legislators have spearheaded the voucher movement in Texas, according to the Texas Monthly. The libertarian Cato Institute, which Charles Koch helped create, according to Mayer, supports a form of school voucher called Scholarship Tax Credits.

Open the link and read the article to learn who else is funding the voucher putsch. You may surprised, as I was, to learn that the Gates Foundation gave $1 million to the Reason Foundation, a libertarian organization that supports vouchers and opposes public schools.

Categories Accountability, Betsy DeVos, Billionaires, Corruption, Dark Money, Democracy, Disruption, Education Industry, Elections, Funding, Gates Foundation, Bill Gates, Politics, Privatization, School Choice, Vouchers

Miguel Cardona Finally Speaks Out Against Attacks on Public Schools and Teachers!

By dianeravitch
March 31, 2023 //
26

Secretary of Education Miguel Cardona is not known for speaking out forcefully. But in an interview with Politico, he denounced the attacks on public schools and the blatant politicization of local issues. Politico titled the article: “Biden’s Education secretary is done sitting ‘idly’ amid schools fight.” No more sitting idly!

To be clear, Cardona has been missing in action as public schools are under attack by vitriolic privatizers. School boards have been under attack. Teachers have been under attack. The rights of students to learn accurate history have been under attack.

And Cardona has been silent. Why?

He has a voice. Why doesn’t he use it?

CARDONA SPEAKS — President Joe Biden’s education secretary is stepping up his rhetoric against school-centered partisanship, as nearly 30,000 school board seats are on the ballot this year and White House allies plan a counteroffensive to conservative political momentum.

— “When we talk about politicization, when we talk about book banning, when we talk about Black history curriculum being picked apart — I think there are deliberate attempts to make sure that our public schools are not functional so that the private option sounds better,” Miguel Cardona told POLITICO.

— “It just seems like it’s a constant attackon what I know as a dad, and what I know as an educator, is happening in our schools.” Cardona said. “Education being used to divide communities is the challenge that we face now as leaders.”

— Cardona’s newly public exasperation with the conservative political furoraround education comes as the Republican-controlled House approved sweeping “Parents Bill of Rights” legislation and a growing wave of school choice expansion laws takes hold in Republican-led states, including a measure now primed for the signature of Republican Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis.

— “There are efforts to take dollars, the limited dollars that exist for public education, and provide vouchers to private institutions — weakening the local public school,” Cardona said of recent school choice expansion initiatives.

— “I’m not against choice, I went to a technical high school that wasn’t my local neighborhood high school. … But I don’t want privatization at the expense of the local school. The neighborhood school should be fully funded; it should have great resources so that students who go there have a top-tier education.”

For Cardona, this is as close to a forceful statement as we are likely to see. Even more forceful would be a flat-out expose of vouchers as a cruel hoax that helps no one but the rich families who are getting a rebate on their private school tuition.

Categories Accountability, Cardona, Miguel, Education Reform

Texas: Uh-Oh! The Book Banners Have Gone Too Far!

By dianeravitch
March 31, 2023 //
31

The latest wave of book banning in Texas high school libraries is led by people who don’t read much. Now, they’ve gone and set up a bar that even the beloved classic Texas novel—Lonesome Dove by Larry McMurtry—can’t get past.

In a recent legislative hearing, the book banners put their aliteracy on public display.

Christopher Hooks writes in the invaluable Texas Monthly:

State representative Jared Patterson has never claimed, through campaign literature or any other medium, to be a reader. If he had, he might not have walked into the trap set for him last night during a House Public Education Committee hearing on his inaptly named READER Act. That proposal would add several new bureaucratic controls on the kinds of books that could be kept in or borrowed from public-school libraries. When Democratic state representative James Talarico, of Round Rock, prodded the Frisco Republican during debate, Patterson took the bait. “There should be no sexually explicit books” in a high school library, he said.

Talarico replied that there’s content that could be viewed as sexually explicit in many very good books. (Though he didn’t mention it, the Bible ranks high among them.) Take Talarico’s favorite book, Larry McMurtry’s 1985 novel Lonesome Dove, about two retired Texas Rangers on a cattle drive during the twilight years of the Old West, which has become totemic to generations of Texans. The book includes characters who are prostitutes and scenes of sexual assault and its consequences. It includes birds and bees and all that kind of filth. Talarico asked: Would Lonesome Dove be banned in Texas high schools under Patterson’s bill?

Patterson hadn’t read Lonesome Dove, he replied, committing his first error. But if it contained the ribald passages Talarico indicated it did, well, then, “they might need to ban Lonesome Dove.” There were a lot of interested parties following this hearing, and it was widely understood among Patterson’s allies and enemies alike that he had stepped in it. Lonesome Dove is an easily comprehensible example of the kind of book that deals with difficult subjects but enhances the reader’s understanding of life, and of other Texans. The thought of the novel coming out of high school libraries in a brown paper bag, like a copy of Maxim, made Patterson’s whole bill seem more ridiculous than it already was.

Patterson’s allies apparently thought he needed help digging himself out of his hole, so they jumped in with him. Christin Bentley, a member of the State Republican Executive Committee, had an idea. Apparently not having read the book either, she tweeted that she had “bought Lonesome Dove on Kindle and did keyword searches.” She searched for “f—,” “p—y,” “sex,” and “vagina,” which don’t appear in the novel, and posted screenshots to prove it. After this deep engagement with the text, she was happy to report on Twitter that the book was not sexually explicit and, therefore, would not be banned under the bill.

Of course, Lonesome Dove is set in the 1870s: Bentley was searching for the wrong words. Twitter users helpfully suggested she search for the word “poke.” (Hard to picture Gus yelling “p—y” across the range.) But even a better search would have been of limited value. With a short summary, you can make Lonesome Dove sound like smut or a wholesome novel. The only way to evaluate it properly, as with any book, is to read it and think about it in its totality. That’s the point of books: You can step into the lives of characters unlike you. You can think about what it’s like to be a woman or a man, consider issues you had never given thought to, and step back into your life at the end of it, your horizons a little wider.

Some folks, however, prefer their horizons narrow and dark. For several years, the crusade against books in school libraries has had the most power when targeting literature that discusses LGBTQ issues and racism. Few animated by this debate actually seem to care whether kids are reading about heterosexual sex. Indeed, Patterson has put rhetorical emphasis in his pitch for his bill on books that have “sexual indoctrination,” a euphemism for ones about gender-nonconforming or gay kids. The fear he and allies are stoking seems to be that by reading these books, formerly immaculate daughters and sons will become transgender. His bill’s case depends on circling off “scary” books from “normal” ones. This works well enough for him because few adults have encountered, say, Gender Queer, a graphic novel he’s also put in his cross hairs. But enough Texans have read Lonesome Dove to know that while the book is challenging, it is enriching, and being able to make sense of its challenges is part of growing up, especially in this state.

Patterson’s snafu makes clear that the bill’s sponsors don’t really care about books—or that they don’t understand them. Which is fine. That’s why we have Netflix. But maybe they should leave the regulation of literature to Texans who read.

Please open the link and read the rest of the article. It’s a good one!

Categories Censorship, Libraries, Literature, Stupid, Texas

Mickey Mouse Humiliates Ron DeSantis

By dianeravitch
March 30, 2023 //
40

When the Disney Corporation criticized Ron DeSantis’s “Don’t Say Gay” bill, the Governor struck back by taking control of Disney’s special district and creating a board (appointed by him) to oversee Disney. The board consisted of rightwing extremists and DeSantis campaign donors. DeSantis boasted about his ability to punish and subjugate the state’s largest employer and its economic engine. It was easy to imagine the extremist DeSantis board censoring Disney attractions and shows to make sure nothing happened that was “woke.”

But wait!

While DeSantis was boasting, the Magic Kingdom was making a deal to elude his grasp.

CNN reported here on Disney’s quiet escape from DeSantis’ clutches:

(CNN)The battle between Disney and Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis may not be over yet.

The new board handpicked by the Republican governor to oversee Disney’s special taxing district said Wednesday it is considering legal action over a multi-decade agreement reached between the entertainment giant and the outgoing board in the days before the state’s hostile takeover last month.

Under the agreement — quietly approved on February 8 as Florida lawmakers met in special session to hand DeSantis control of the Reedy Creek Improvement District — Disney would maintain control over much of its vast footprint in Central Florida for 30 years and, in some cases, the board can’t take significant action without first getting approval from the company.

“This essentially makes Disney the government,” board member Ron Peri said during Wednesday’s meeting, according to video posted by an Orlando television station. “This board loses, for practical purposes, the majority of its ability to do anything beyond maintaining the roads and maintaining basic infrastructure.”

The episode is the latest twist in a yearlong saga between Disney and DeSantis, who has battled the company as he tries to tally conservative victories ahead of a likely bid for the 2024 GOP nomination.

The board on Wednesday retained “multiple financial and legal firms to conduct audits and investigate Disney’s past behavior,” DeSantis spokeswoman Taryn Fenske said. According to meeting documents, the board was entering into agreements with four firms to provide counsel on the matter.

“The Executive Office of the Governor is aware of Disney’s last-ditch efforts to execute contracts just before ratifying the new law that transfers rights and authorities from the former Reedy Creek Improvement District to Disney,” Fenske said. “An initial review suggests these agreements may have significant legal infirmities that would render the contracts void as a matter of law.”

In a statement to CNN, Disney stood by its actions.

“All agreements signed between Disney and the District were appropriate, and were discussed and approved in open, noticed public forums in compliance with Florida’s Government in the Sunshine law,” the company said. Documents for the February 8 meeting show it was noticed in the Orlando Sentinel as required by law.

Multiple board members did not immediately respond to request for comment. The Sentinel first reported on Wednesday’s vote to hire legal counsel.

According to a statement Wednesday night from the district’s acting counsel and its newly obtained legal counsel, the agreement gave Disney development rights throughout the district and “not just on Disney’s property,” requires the district to borrow and spend on projects that benefit the company, and gives Disney veto authority over any public project in the district.

“The lack of consideration, the delegation of legislative authority to a private corporation, restriction of the Board’s ability to make legislative decisions, and giving away public rights without compensation for a private purpose, among other issues, warrant the new Board’s actions and direction to evaluate these overreaching documents and determine how best the new Board can protect the public’s interest in compliance with Florida Law,” the statement from Fishback Dominick LLP, Cooper & Kirk PLLC, Lawson Huck Gonzalez PLLC, Waugh Grant PLLC and Nardella & Nardella PLLC said.

The spat between Disney and the governor stems from the company’s opposition to a Florida law that prohibits the instruction of sexual orientation and gender identity through third grade and only in an “age appropriate” manner in older grades. In March of last year, as outrage against the legislation spread nationwide, Disney released a statement vowing to help get the law repealed or struck down by the courts.

DeSantis and Florida GOP lawmakers retaliated by eliminating the Reedy Creek Improvement District, the special taxing authority that effectively gave Disney control of the land in and around its sprawling Orlando-area theme parks. But Republicans in control of the state legislature changed course this year and voted instead to fire the board overseeing the district and gave DeSantis power to name all five replacements. It also renamed Reedy Creek as the Central Florida Tourism Oversight District and eliminated some of its powers.

DeSantis stacked the board with political allies, including Tampa lawyer Martin Garcia, a prominent GOP donor; Bridget Ziegler, the wife of the new chairman of the Republican Party of Florida; and Peri, a former pastor who once suggested tap water could be making people gay.

The controversy is central to DeSantis’ political narrative of a leader who is unafraid to battle corporate giants, even one as iconic and vital to Florida as Disney. It is a saga that is featured prominently in his new book and one he often shares at events across the country as he lays the groundwork for a likely national campaign.

At last month’s signing ceremony for the bill that gave him control of Reedy Creek’s board, DeSantis declared, “The corporate kingdom finally comes to an end.”

“There’s a new sheriff in town,” he added.

However, it may be a while before the new power structure has control, if Disney gets its way. One agreement signed by the outgoing board — which restricts the new board from using any of Disney’s “fanciful characters” — is valid until “21 years after the death of the last survivor of the descendants of King Charles III, king of England,” according to a copy of the deal included in the February 8 meeting packet.

“President Trump wrote ‘Art of the Deal’ and brokered Middle East peace,” said Taylor Budowich, spokesman for the Trump-aligned Make America Great Again PAC. “Ron DeSantis just got out-negotiated by Mickey Mouse.”

The stealth move by Disney prompted allies of DeSantis’ chief political rival, former President Donald Trump, to suggest the governor had been out-maneuvered.

DeSantis’ political operation insisted the governor’s appointees were holding Disney accountable.

“Governor DeSantis’ new board would not, and will not, allow Disney to give THEMSELVES unprecedented power over land (some of which isn’t even theirs!) for 30+ years,” Christina Pushaw, of DeSantis’ rapid response team, wrote on Twitter.

Sorry, Christina, DeSantis should stick to bullying minorities and pick on someone his own size. The Mouse just beat the Mouth.

The BBC scrutinized the new Disney agreement and found that it includes a “royal clause.”

The declaration is valid until “21 years after the death of the last survivor of the descendants of King Charles III, king of England”, according to the document.

Such so-called royal lives clauses have been inserted into legal documentation since the late 17th Century, and they are still found in some contracts in the UK, though rarely in the US.

The 151-page Florida agreement also states that no “fanciful characters” owned by Disney, including Mickey Mouse, can be used by the board. The use of the name Disney is also banned.

Categories Accountability, Creativity, DeSantis, Disruption, Economy, Extremism, Fascism, Florida, Freedom, Freedom of Speech, Gender
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