Massachusetts: Rightwing Groups Attack Public Schools for Diversity Policies

By dianeravitch
November 14, 2022 //
18

We have been following the activities of various rightwing groups that purport to represent parents. Many if not all are funded by Dark Money, meaning their funders are anonymous. “Parents Defending Education” is now active in Massachusetts, suing districts for events related to race, gender, and sexual orientation. As the article notes, PDE has a staff of 13, some with a Koch background, and is represented by a Trump-connected lawyer. The goal of such groups is to undermine public confidence in public schools and in the judgment of professional educators. The ultimate goal is to heighten the teacher shortage and encourage privatization of schools.

The Boston Globe story begins:

An increasingly active right-leaning non-profit called Parents Defending Education filed a federal civil rights complaint against Newton North High School last month, alleging that a student-led theater production broke the law by limiting auditions to people of color only.


The same group sued Wellesley Public Schools last year for alleged illegal discrimination when Wellesley High School hosted a forum for Asian students and students of color to discuss a mass shooting at an Asian massage parlor in Atlanta. The teacher who organized the session wrote that it was “not for students who identify only as White.”


So far, the national group has identified 43 “incidents” in which they say Massachusetts schools inappropriately – or even illegally – taught students about race, sexual orientation or gender, setting school districts across the Commonwealth on edge that they might be sued next.

“I’ve never seen anything like this before in all my years here,” said Wellesley School Superintendent David Lussier, who settled the lawsuit with the organization in February. “They try to go after superintendents and get people fired.”


Parents Defending Education did not return repeated requests for comment, but supporters say the group offers a vital counterweight to an education system steeped in liberal values.


“I think it’s good because, for a long time, education has been very one-sided,” said Jennifer McWilliams, a consultant to Parents Defending Education who runs her own advocacy group in Indiana. “Schools have decided that they need to teach children morals, values, attitude and worldview over academics.”


The two-year-old organization, based in Washington D.C., urges parents across the country to report incidents in which they believe schools are dividing students on racial lines or inappropriately teaching students about sex or gender roles. The group states on its website that education must be based on “scholarship and facts” and says ethnic studies divides “children into oppressor and ‘oppressed’ groups,” while teaching white students “guilt and shame.”

And the organization has a sizable, well-connected staff to promote their agenda. Parents Defending Education’s website lists 13 staff members including Nicole Neily, former president of an organization affiliated with the Koch Brothers called Speech First and Aimee Viana, a former Trump Administration appointee.


Schools have long been battlegrounds in the nation’s culture wars, but experts say Parents Defending Education marks something new: an attempt to nationalize the agenda. The group has been promoting conservative values across the country, enlisting local groups with names like Moms for Liberty and No Left Turn in Education along the way.


“We see increased coordination, national coordination among groups of all political stripes and partisan stripes, thanks to social media,” said Meira Levinson, a professor at Harvard’s Graduate School of Education. “The right more than the left seems to have mastered techniques of developing language that then can be replicated in legislation, or policy across different municipalities and state governments.”

For Massachusetts educators facing criticism from Parents Defending Education, it suddenly feels like the group is everywhere. The group criticized Brookline schools in April after teachers organized a walkout to protest a Florida measure opponents have characterized as the “Don’t Say Gay” bill.
In June, the organization condemned Milton for teaching a lesson about the country’s first openly gay politician Harvey Milk and the importance of the letters LGBTQ.


“Who the hell wants to go into this profession anymore if this is going to be the type of community that we’re serving and the type of pressure that we’re going to experience,” Wellesley Educators Association President Kyle Gekopi said. “It’s really been forcing a lot of people to question their choices.”


Most recently, Parents Defending Education filed a federal civil rights complaint on Oct. 4 against Newton North High School.


The group alleged to the United States Department of Education that the school violated the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment. Both are meant to protect people from discrimination based on race, color or national origin in programs or activities that receive federal financial assistance. That protection extends to white students, they say.


Parents Defending Education claims the school’s student-led production, “Lost and Found: Stories of People of Color by People of Color,” restricted auditions to only students of color. The show, which organizers described as “a no-cut, cabaret-style show for students of color,” was meant to “provide a safe community space for students of color to express themselves through the performing arts.”


But Newton Public Schools put out a statement stressing that “no one is turned away or excluded from participating” in the play.


Educators far beyond Newton are nervously watching the case unfold. Brian Fitzgerald, president of the Plymouth County Education Association, said Parents Defending Education remind him of activists in past decades who have fought to curtail sex education, making it difficult to teach students about health.


“My fear is that they’re going to impact the ability of a student to learn,” Fitzgerald said.

Categories Dark Money, Disruption, Education Industry, Extremism, Fascism, Koch Brothers, Massachusetts

Florida: DeSantis’ Dazzling Victory

By dianeravitch
November 14, 2022 //
141

Republicans across the country are eying Florida Governor DeSantis as the new Trump, who will lead them to victory in 2024.

Given his hard-right politics, it’s hard to understand the breadth of his victory as similar hardliners across the country were losing.

The Miami Herald wrote:

What forecasters predicted would be a “red wave” did make landfall in Florida on Tuesday night, but it washed over so much of the state that it sent only a “ripple” in races across the country as Democrats had a better-than-expected showing up and down the ballot.

Shortly after polls closed on election night, Ron DeSantis quickly and overwhelmingly won a second term as governor, with a margin of victory that reached nearly 20 percentage points statewide. The Republican governor made gains in each of Florida’s 67 counties, managing to flip eight of the 13 counties he had lost in his first election in 2018.

One of those counties — Miami-Dade — is where DeSantis saw his biggest gain, with a 16-point improvement over his 2018 performance. He also improved by nearly 16 points in Hendry County and by more than 14 points in Osceola County.

Those three counties, not coincidentally, are also the three most Hispanic counties in the state, and DeSantis’ ability to win a larger share of Hispanic voters was a key driver of his remarkable victory. The governor also narrowly won the vote in majority white precincts and more than doubled his vote share in majority Black precincts, capturing more than 16% of the vote in those areas.

DeSantis’ decisive victory, contrasted with Republicans’ lackluster performance elsewhere in the country, have become fodder for conservatives, who are increasingly wondering if DeSantis may make a more effective party leader than former President Donald Trump.

  • ☝️ You can watch highlights from DeSantis’ victory speech at our TikTok.

Trump hasn’t enjoyed seeing GOP elected officials and conservative media question his grip over the party….

As DeSantis works to raise his influence at the national level, back in Florida, he is likely to double down on his conservative policy agenda. Republican legislative leaders have signaled they intend to keep moving Florida forward under his vision, including whether to further restrict access to abortion.

Why was abortion a crucial issue in other states, but not in Florida? Why did usually Democratic districts turn red?

Categories Bigotry, Democracy, DeSantis, Extremism, Florida

Gary Rubinstein: Cruel and Unusual Punishment of a Student at Success Academy

By dianeravitch
November 14, 2022 //
16

Gary Rubinstein is a high school math teacher and blogger. He has been following Success Academy charter chain, which has been nationally acclaimed for its high test scores. In his latest post, Rubinstein examines the case of a student who thrived at Success Academy until the pandemic, but struggled when the school switched to remote learning. Read the story and answer the question, was she treated fairly by her school?

He begins:

A few months ago I published the first part of this series where parents of current or former Success Academy students can share their stories. As I hoped would happen, another frustrated parent found that post and contacted me with his own disturbing story to tell.

Success Academy is known for its high 3-8 standardized test scores and its extreme rigidity. In a way, the rigidity is part of what causes them to have such high test scores. They demand compliance from their students and from the families of those students. When a student or the family of a student is not conforming to the expectations of the school, that student or family are going to be harassed, humiliated, and punished until they either fall into line or ‘voluntarily’ transfer to another school.

The heartbreaking saga of a girl I will call ‘Carla’ began pleasantly enough eight years ago when she was accepted into Success Academy Springfield Gardens as a kindergartener. From kindergarten through fourth grade, she thrived at the school. Her fourth grade report card grades were mostly the highest or second highest category, except for writing where she was struggling….

In fifth grade, she started having problems academically, though not catastrophically, and then as we all know, the pandemic hit and schools in New York went remote for the next year and a half. For the end part of fifth grade and all of sixth grade, Carla struggled to learn remotely. She had various connection issues and would wait in zoom waiting rooms endlessly. She was really traumatized by the pandemic year and was eager to return to in person classes for her seventh grade year.

But she was still suffering the effects of the 18 months of remote learning. She was having mental health issues and was seeing a therapist about them. At school she was failing several classes. Carla is a very hard working student and someone who really tries her best and her parents work very hard to support her needs and to keep on top of what assignments Carla was missing. Everyone knows that Success Academy has one trick in their playbook which is to make students repeat grades for failing courses. So Carla managed to improve most of her grades but she still failed two subjects, writing and science and was told that she would have to pass those two courses in summer school or she would have to repeat the entire seventh grade.

How Success Academy can make such a threat is incomprehensible to me. For elementary school grades it makes more sense, but in a secondary school setting, why not just retake the courses that you failed? But that wasn’t the threat, it was that she had to pass both courses with a 70 or higher or she would be repeating the entire seventh grade, including all the classes that she had passed.

Please read the rest of the post to learn what happened to Carla? Was it fair? Was it just? What do you think?

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Cruelty, Discipline, Education Industry, Harlem Success Academy

David Kirp: Schools Can Improve Without Disruption

By dianeravitch
November 13, 2022 //
47

Valerie Strauss published an article by David Kirp about his new book, Disrupting Disruption. Kirp is one of my favorite education thinkers because he doesn’t believe in miracles or instant success. He believes in commitment and steady work. His new book describes three districts that have applied that formula successfully.

Valerie Strauss begins:

We live in an era where public school districts are routinely slammed for being hidebound and resistant to change. Some are, but others make changes all the time, sometimes with success. This post looks at a few districts that have done just that.


It was written by David Kirp, a professor of public policy at the University of California at Berkeley and co-author of “Disrupting Disruption: The Steady Work of Transforming Schools.” A senior fellow at the Learning Policy Institute, a nonprofit education think tank based in California, Kirp has written more than 15 other books and dozens of articles about social issues and have been focused on education and children’s policy. He was the founding director of the Harvard Center for Law and Education, a national support center and advocacy organization that offers help to people experiencing difficulty in the implementation of key education programs and initiatives.


By David Kirp


Public schools are frequently in the news these days, and seldom is the news good. The spotlight is on ideological donnybrooks over how race and gender-related topics are discussed in classrooms; the growing demand that parents, not teachers, decide what their children should be taught; assaults on the system by opportunistic politicians; and the learning loss blame game, with schools faulted for keeping schools closed during the pandemic. Some state lawmakers have proposed junking the common school and replacing it with a market-based regime.


The good news is that it doesn’t have to be this way.

In “Disrupting Disruption,” my co-authors and I shine a light on three racially and ethnically diverse school systems: Roanoke, nestled in Virginia’s Shenandoah mountains; Union, Okla., Tulsa’s neighbor; and Union City, N.J., across the Hudson River from Manhattan. Their students don’t resemble those in highflying places like Wilmette, Ill., or Lexington, Mass., predominantly White and well-off, with their off-the-charts test scores and graduation rates, and they do not appear on any list of the nation’s highest-performing districts. But they look like much of America, where White students don’t constitute a majority, and many come from low-income families.


These districts have earned the support of their communities. Parents have not fled to charter schools because (as their surveys show) they trust their schools to do the right thing. Rather than engaging in school-bashing, local politicians take pride in generously funding their schools, and taxpayers vote for school bonds.


There’s good reason for this vote of confidence — in each instance, the graduation rate is substantially higher than in school systems with similar demographic characteristics; what’s more, the opportunity gap that in most places separates minority students from their classmates is at or near the vanishing point. In other words, they have managed to combine excellence and equality of opportunity.


There is nothing fantastical about what is taking place, no feats of legerdemain, no superman or superwoman running the show. What they are doing to overcome the demographic odds sounds dishwater-dull, no match for the livelier terminology of markets and choice. But genuine reform isn’t sexy, and the “secret sauce” isn’t much of a secret. Here’s their “to do” list.

● Meet the diverse needs of the students; don’t batch-process them.
● Make equity a priority.
● Deliver high-quality early education.
● Fixate on maintaining high-quality education systemwide, rather than islands of excellence, while constantly seeking ways to do better.
● Beware of fads.
● Help teachers become more effective through mentoring and coaching.
● Use data to drive decisions.
● Engage teachers and parents in decision-making.
● Build an administrative structure that incorporates networks of teachers.
● Forge ties with local organizations and the political system.
● Maintain stable leadership and minimize teacher turnover.
Everything on this list will be familiar to any educator with a pulse. The hard part is getting it right.

There’s more. Open the link. This is a realistic, upbeat book that you will want to read. It describes school reforms built on professional knowledge, not hat tricks. If only Arne Duncan had asked David Kirp to advise him, instead of the crew from the Gates and Broad Foundations.

Categories Accountability, Education Reform

Congratulations, Mitchell Robinson on Election to the Michigan State Board of Ed

By dianeravitch
November 13, 2022 //
3

Dear Mitchell,

I want to congratulate you for your courage in running for the Michigan State Board of Education and double-congratulate you for winning! You have been a faithful member of the Network for Public Education, and I have been proud to post your writings here.

You entered the race knowing that it was supposed to be a bad year for Democrats. You jumped in anyway because you thought you could make a difference. You will!

You entered knowing that you, a professor of music education at Michigan State University, would be pitted against the billionaire DeVos machine. I’m thrilled to see that the entire Democratic ticket swept the State Board of Education and both houses of the Legislature.

You beat Betsy DeVos!

When frustated educators ask me what they can do, I tell them I can think of two options: join your state union (if you have one) and fight back or run for office, for local board, state board or the legislature.

You did it and you won! I know you are thrilled to be part of Michigan’s blue wave. You inspire the rest of us.

I am happy to add you to the honor roll of this blog for your courage, your persistence, and your devotion to Michigan’s children and their public schools.

Diane

Categories Betsy DeVos, Courage, Democracy, Education Reform, Elections, Honor Roll, Michigan

Democracy Survived the 2022 Elections

By dianeravitch
November 13, 2022 //
35

Despite threats of a Trump-led Red Wave, Democrats retained control of the Senate, with the re-election of Catherine Cortez Masto in Nevada. If Rev. Warnock wins in Georgia, the party will have 51 votes in the Senate and won’t be held hostage by one Democratic Senator (looking at you, Joe Manchin). The control of the House may go to the Republicans, but by a small margin.

The extremism that characterizes today’s Republican party was largely repudiated. This election was not a good one for QAnon crazies and assorted lunatics of the far-right fringe. Some were re-elected, but it should be clear to the Republican Party that it needs a major course correction and a return to sanity and sensible conservatism. Time to oust those who want to destroy our democracy and to crush those who don’t think as they do. The future belongs to those who want to govern responsibly, not those who want to burn down the house we live in.

No less important was the defeat of all but one election denier running in the states to be Secretary of State, the official who controls elections.

The New York Times reported:

Every election denier who sought to become the top election official in a critical battleground state lost at the polls this year, as voters roundly rejected extreme partisans who promised to restrict voting and overhaul the electoral process.

The national repudiation of this coalition reached its apex on Saturday, when Cisco Aguilar, the Democratic candidate for secretary of state in Nevada, defeated Jim Marchant, according to The Associated Press. Mr. Marchant, the Republican nominee, had helped organize a national right-wing slate of candidates under the name “America First.”

With Mr. Marchant’s loss to Mr. Aguilar, all but one of those “America First” candidates were defeated. Only Diego Morales, a Republican in deep-red Indiana, was successful, while candidates in Michigan, Arizona and New Mexico were defeated.

Their losses halted a plan by some allies of former President Donald J. Trump and other influential donors to take over the election apparatus in critical states before the 2024 presidential election. The “America First” candidates, and their explicitly partisan statements, had alarmed Democrats, independent election experts and even some Republicans, who feared that if they gained office, they could threaten the integrity of future elections.

Mr. Marchant not only repeatedly claimed that Mr. Trump had won the 2020 election, but he pledged that if he were elected, Mr. Trump would again be president in 2024.

“When my coalition of secretary of state candidates around the country get elected, we’re going to fix the whole country, and President Trump is going to be president again in 2024,” Mr. Marchant said at a rally held by the former president in October….

The Washington Post reported that Democrats made impressive gains in state races too:

After years of watching Republicans dominate in down-ballot races, Democrats turned the tables to their own advantage in the midterm elections, flipping some legislative chambers from GOP control and blocking efforts to create veto-proof majorities in others.


In Pennsylvania, where votes continued to be counted, Democrats are on the precipice of taking control of the state House for the first time since 2008. Democrats also won Michigan’s House and Senate, as well as the Minnesota Senate. The reelection victories for Govs. Gretchen Whitmer (Mich.) and Tim Walz (Minn.) give Democrats total control over those two states — for the first time in Michigan since after the 1982 election.

If the early results hold up in states where some races remain undetermined, Democrats will not have lost control of a single legislature that they previously held, a feat not accomplished by the president’s party during a midterm election since 1934.


The victories blunted Republican plans to push further restrictions on abortion, transgender rights, school curriculums and spending, and in some states expanded Democrats’ possibilities of passing their own priorities….

With some states still counting, Republicans control both chambers of 26 state legislatures, down from 30 before the election. Democrats fully control 19, up from 17 before Tuesday.

Categories Democracy, Elections

It Won’t Be Easy for Republicans to Dump Trump

By dianeravitch
November 12, 2022 //
14

I was thinking about how the Republican Party has a major internal battle brewing between Trump and DeSantis. The GOP establishment knows that Trump and Trumpism is a drag on the party and the last election demonstrated that Trump lunatics are likely to lose. Party leaders and major conservative media have been expressing their desire to move past Trump and eyeing Ron DeSantis as their Savior. Of course, DeSantis sees himself as God’s anointed one; he had a commercial during his campaign showing himself as God’s Creation on the Eighth Day.

So in my imagination, I see an epic battle brewing. Trump will not go easily. His ego won’t allow it.

My hope is that he will fight DeSantis in the primaries, and if he loses, he will launch his own third party, to punish the Republicans who abandoned him. He has his fanatical base, and they will not easily transfer their affection to another candidate, even one who is more far-right than Trump.

So my fantasy scenario is that the 2024 elections will feature a Democratic candidate, the Republican candidate Ron DeSantis, and Donald Trump of the Patriot Party.

Having thought this through, I was delighted to discover that Jamelle Bouie of the New York Times was thinking along the same lines. He wrote:

The idea that Republican elites could simply swap Trump for another candidate without incurring any serious damage rests on two assumptions: First, that Trump’s supporters are more committed to the Republican Party than they are to him, and second, that Trump himself will give up the fight if he isn’t able to win the party’s nomination.

I think these assumptions show a fundamental misunderstanding of the world Republican elites brought into being when they finally bent the knee to Trump in the summer and fall of 2016. Trump isn’t simply a popular (with Republicans) politician with an unusually enthusiastic group of supporters. No, he leads a cult of personality, in which he is an almost messianic figure, practically sent by God himself to purge the United States of liberals (and other assorted enemies) and restore the nation to greatness. He is practically worshiped by a large and politically influential group of Americans, who describe him as “anointed.”

It is one thing for Republican elites to try to break a political fandom. It is another thing entirely to try to break the influence of a man whose strongest, most devoted supporters were willing to sack the Capitol or sacrifice their lives in an attack on an F.B.I. office. Some Trump supporters will leave the fold for an alternative like DeSantis, but there will be a hard-core group who came to the Republican Party for Trump, and won’t settle for another candidate.

This gets to the second assumption: the idea that Trump would go quietly if he lost the nomination to DeSantis or another rival. Donald Trump might have been a Republican president, but he isn’t really a Republican. What I mean is that he shows no particular commitment to the fortunes of the party as an institution. His relationship to the Republican Party is purely instrumental. He also cannot admit defeat, as you may have noticed.

There is a real chance that Trump, if he loses the nomination, decides to run for president anyway. And if he pulls any fraction of his supporters away from the Republican Party, he would play the spoiler, no matter who the party tried to elevate against him. Republican elites might be done with Trump, but Trump is not done with the Republican Party.

Categories Education Reform

Carol Burris: How the Election Affected Education

By dianeravitch
November 12, 2022 //
10

It will take a while to get a full picture of how public education was affected by the election, but Carol Burris, executive director of the Network for Public Education, sums up some of the highlights (and lowlights) here. we will keep reporting as we gather more information.

Carol writes:

The two foremost issues on voters’ minds this election were the economy and reproductive choice. The National Alliance for Public Charter Schools’s “parent power” push poll earlier this year and Jeanne Allen’s (Center for Education Reform) claim that privatized school choice was responsible for some candidates’ victories are two thinly veiled attempts to ingratiate their organizations with those elected.

Nevertheless, who won and who lost will influence education policy. Below are some notable outcomes as well as what we are watching that is still underdetermined.

State Legislatures

When it comes to charters and vouchers, the state level is most important. Resistance to both consistently comes from Democrats, at times, with rural Republican support. For example, the wild expansion of vouchers coincided with former Republican sweeps in state legislatures in 2020. There was no red wave through most state houses, which is good news.

Although we still await vote counts in some states, Republicans have not flipped any state legislatures their way so far, and there have been some realized and still possible victories for Democrats that can bode well for public education.

Michigan:

Michigan is the brightest spot of all. Democrats now have control of the governorship and both houses of the legislature in a state where they have not controlled either chamber since 1984. This provides a long-awaited opportunity to pass laws to make that state’s low-quality charter schools, run predominantly by for-profit operators, more transparent and accountable.

NPE Board member Cassandra Ulbrich retired from the Michigan State Board of Education. However, a great long-time friend of NPE, Mitchell Robinson, was elected, which is wonderful news.

And what about that voucher bill that Betsy De Vos attempted to push through a super-majority? Unless the Secretary of State goes through all of those signatures by the end of the year, it will go to the next legislature, which will not push it through. It will then go on the ballot where just as before, it will fail.

Pennsylvania:

Although Josh Shapiro voiced some support for private-school vouchers on the campaign trail, it is doubtful he will follow through, especially since the House will flip to the Democrats when all the votes are counted. In any case, the super-majority that held school funding increases hostage when the former Governor attempted modest charter reforms is now gone. School board members, teachers, and superintendents who have long fought for reforms to the charter funding system will now have a fighting chance.

And the state’s newest Senator, John Fetterman, is not only opposed to vouchers, he strongly supports Governor Wolf’s charter reforms.

Arizona

While the House will likely remain under Republican control, there is an outside chance that the Senate will split and the Governor will be Democrat Katie Hobbs. If that were to happen, there might be a respite from dismantling the public school system in that state by Republicans.

Federal

The House of Representatives:

Rosa De Lauro is one of the strongest friends of public education in the House of Representatives. She has kept the federal Charter Schools Program in check during her tenure as the leader of the House Appropriations Committee. While Rosa easily won re-election, if control shifts again to the Republicans, education budget priorities will likely change. There will be an attempt to overturn the Charter School Program reform regulations of the Education Department.

Senate:

Continued control of the Senate by Democrats means that even if the House flips, there will be some check on Republican attempts. And if Bernie Sanders assumes control of the HELP committee, that will mean good news for public schools.

But if the Republicans prevail, there is a strong possibility that Rand Paul will lead HELP. Libertarian Paul makes his disdain for public education apparent, and his leadership would lead to constant battles over the education budget and the Department of Education itself, which he would like to abolish.

Propositions

Finally, in some states, voters passed propositions for which we should cheer.

For example, California’s Proposition 28 passed with overwhelming support. The state will now put in about one billion dollars a year to support education in music and the arts, ensuring that arts education will not be dependent on where a child lives. And in Colorado, with the passage of Proposition FF,all children will now receive free lunch in schools even as they did during the Pandemic.

If you have more information about your district and state, please send it to me or to Carol, or both.

cburris@networkforpubliceducation.org

Categories Education Industry, Education Reform, Elections

Uvalde County, Texas, Votes for Gun-Loving Gregg Abbot

By dianeravitch
November 12, 2022 //
32

It seemed that the maniacal slaughter of students and teachers at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas, did not dampen voters’ enthusiasm for Republican Governor Greg Abbot, who does not believe in gun control. Abbot has pushed through legislation to allow people to carry guns without a permit, whether open or concealed.

I swear I do not understand why voters vote against their best interests.

The Texas Tribune reported:

“The fight goes on”: For several families of the victims killed in the shooting at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, the election this year wasn’t like other elections. It was personal.

In May, an 18-year-old gunman killed 19 students and two teachers with a semi-automatic rifle he bought days earlier. The tragedy caused some families to become politically active. They threw their support behind Democratic gubernatorial candidate Beto O’Rourke, hoping that he would be the catalyst to change gun laws in the state.

But O’Rourke lost badly on Tuesday. And Uvalde County decisively voted for Gov. Greg Abbott.

John Lira, the Democratic candidate who challenged U.S. Rep. Tony Gonazles for the seat that represents Uvalde, joined families at a watch party Tuesday night. He said that while Abbott’s victory was “crushing,” he was proud of the families for becoming politically engaged after experiencing a tragedy.

“It just means the fight goes on,” said Lira, who also lost on Tuesday.

As the night went on, many families said their effort to force change in Texas isn’t close to being done. Jerry Mata, whose daughter Tess was killed in the massacre, consoled his oldest daughter, Faith, after the election results were announced.

“Five years from now, the media may leave, everybody may leave, but we’re not going to leave. We’re going to continue the fight and get what we deserve for our kids.”

If you visit Texas, be sure to bring or buy a gun for self-protection.

Categories Elections, Guns, Safety, Texas

Los Angeles: Parents Complain About Sharing Their Schools with Charters, Loss of Resouces

By dianeravitch
November 12, 2022 //
21

Parents in South Los Angeles are angry that their schools have been forced to share their space with a charter school. This practice, called co-location, creates tension and rivalry. Robin Urevich of Capital & Main tells the story:

In the Los Angeles Unified School District, some 50 public schools share their campuses with charter schools. It is often a contentious relationship. But now parents and teachers at Baldwin Hills and Trinity elementary schools in South Los Angeles, asserting that such arrangements jeopardize their children’s education, are demanding the Los Angeles Unified School District board end them for the 2022-23 school year. Baldwin Hills Elementary shares its campus with New Los Angeles Charter Elementary School, while Gabriella Charter School 2 is located at Trinity Elementary.

Students at Baldwin Hills take violin lessons on the playground during recess because there is no other space, said Jacquelyn Walker, Baldwin Hills’ community school coordinator. A program that offers fresh produce and clothing to kids and families who need them was forced to move to a nearby school for the same reason, Walker said. Private rooms are sometimes unavailable for counseling kids and families in crisis.


“We lost our computer lab,” said the Rev. AmberMarie Irving, DD, whose son is a second grader at the school. “If that happened at a majority Caucasian school, all hell would break loose,” Irving said.

“We’ve worked tirelessly to find a permanent home that is not on an LAUSD campus,” said Brooke Rios, executive director of New LA Charter School, which has about 198 students on Baldwin’s campus, according to Rios. “We’re aware of the tension,” she said.

Designated a 2020 California Distinguished School, Baldwin Hills is one of just three elementary schools in the district with a majority African American student body that includes a magnet school for gifted students. The school emphasizes science, technology, engineering, arts and mathematics. It boasts robotics, engineering, yoga and chess classes, and higher than average test scores. But teacher Marie Germaine said the district has undermined the school’s efforts with the space sharing arrangement. “They want us to accept our own suffering and our own demise. We refuse to accept it.”

Germaine, Walker and Irving were among parents and educators from Baldwin and Trinity who demanded the district get charter schools off their campuses when they addressed the school board on Nov. 1, the deadline for charter schools to request space on district campuses for the upcoming school year. Baldwin and Trinity are both among some 34 LAUSD community schools that are designed to be neighborhood hubs, offering services to children and families after traditional school hours. United Teachers Los Angeles treasurer Alex Orozco said that in 2019, the district agreed to avoid co-locating charter schools on such campuses, but hasn’t done so.

Trinity Elementary is at the other end of the achievement spectrum; it is struggling as one of 100 schools that LAUSD Superintendent Alberto Carvalho has targeted for improvement, said teacher Tanya Flores. However, Flores said it is hard to improve when kids do not have adequate space for learning. A fifth grade class meets in the auditorium and a section of the school library serves as a makeshift second grade classroom, she said.

Parent Yuvicela Ruiz said when her fifth grade son’s special education class was moved to another school because of lack of space at Trinity, “it hurt him academically and emotionally. It showed that my son’s education is not valued by the district,” she said.

*   *   *

Relationships between charters and the traditional schools with which they share space have long been fractious. Sharon Delugach, chief of staff to school board member Jackie Goldberg, said sharing campuses can be “like having a really horrible roommate.” Delugach said few co-locations are successful. “There are places where they’ve managed to have a civil relationship, but there’s rarely a positive one.”

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Disruption, Education Industry, Los Angeles
« Older Entries
Newer Entries »