Mike Hynes: What My Daughter With Down Syndrome Has Taught Me

By dianeravitch
August 12, 2022 //
14

Dr. Michael Hynes is the Superintendent of Schools in Port Washington, Long Island, New York.

He writes:


My daughter Sadie has taught me more in her 9 years of life than I have learned in my past 52 years of existence. My wife Erin and I had no idea that our daughter had Down Syndrome when she was born. Sadie had to stay in the newborn intensive care unit for a few weeks and we met some of the most compassionate and amazing professionals in the world. Unfortunately, we also met others who were much better off keeping their thoughts to themselves.


I remember a doctor at the hospital telling me he was “sorry” after Sadie was born. On another occasion, a family member shared with my wife and I that “Mongoloids can be nice people.” She didn’t mean to upset us; it was her mental model about Down Syndrome. Initially, as parents we were surprised with the multitude of closed-minded comments we came across. As Sadie grew and we brought her to restaurants, stores or in public, people would stare at her longer than one should.

I’m sharing this with you not to complain; but doing so because we began to learn how the world can perceive others without knowing anything about them whatsoever, except through the lenses of their biases and assumptions. Little did they know our little Sadie has the best sense of humor and can read on grade level like here peers. She enjoys music and hanging out with her best friends like all children do. As parents, we began to advocate for more programs in her school and for the school districts we served in.


I probably should have started off this reflection by sharing both Erin and I are school Superintendent’s. She is an Assist Superintendent for Curriculum and Instruction and I have served as a Superintendent of Schools for the past 11 years. Here are the lessons we learned from our personal lives that now transcend to our professional ones.

  1. You never know what others are going through. I have a much deeper respect for parents who have children with autism, Down Syndrome, ADHD, OHI, etc. They have incredible stories to share, and we need to support them as much as their children.
  2. Never place limits on your child or students. Don’t accept what professionals say at face value all the time. If Erin and I listened to what some professionals believed Sadie would never be able to do, her life would be so much more unfulfilled. She is flourishing.
  3. In the education system I have served in for over 25 years, we need to remove the word “special education”. This word places a label on a child that never leaves them and carries a negative connotation with it. Yes, the children are “special”, but they are certainly not less than “typical children”. By the way I loath that phrase as well.
  4. Inclusion is important. Integration however is critical. It’s great to be included but to be fully integrated is where the secret sauce is. Separating and segregating children is not the answer. Teach them to become independent and watch them soar!

Sadie is now in 4th grade. She continues to surprise people with her intelligence, humor and at times stubbornness. We are so fortunate to have her in our lives. There are other “Sadie’s” in every school in America. Are we as school leaders doing everything in our power to make our school system more inclusive and integrated? That’s for you to answer and my hope is that you strive to make that a reality. Every child will benefit from it.

Categories Character, Courage, Creativity, Goodness, Hope, Humor, Special Education

Arizona: Parents, Educators, Others Must Fight Rightwing Voucher Plan—Again!

By dianeravitch
August 12, 2022 //
5

Perhaps you thought the voucher fight was over in Arizona in 2018 when voters rejected vouchers by a decisive margin of 65-35%.

But no, the clear and overwhelming decision of the state’s voters did not deter the Christofascists who are determined to destroy public schools by transferring funding away from them to any form of non public schooling, be it religious, private, homeschooling or a business run by a fraudster.

Governor Doug Ducey signed a law creating a universal voucher plan on July 6. The new law will subtract $1 billion from the state’s public schools.

SOS Arizona is once again leading the fight against universal vouchers, led by Governor Ducey and championed by the Republican legislators. The dark money behind the voucher campaign comes from the usual suspects: the Koch machine and the Betsy DeVos combine.

If Save Our Schools Arizona and its supporters can secure 118,823 valid signatures before September 24, the voucher expansion law will be placed on hold until November 2024, when voters get a chance to express their views, as they did in 2018.

The stakes could not be higher – this is a referendum to decide the future of education in Arizona and across the nation.

You can see more about the SOS Arizona signature drive here: teamsosarizona.com.

Beth Lewis, the director of SOS Arizona, wrote to provide the context for the battle over vouchers:

Universal voucher expansion is the KEY issue driving right-wing politics in the US, and hardly anyone is talking about the well-moneyed, dangerous forces driving it. The AZ legislature’s myopic focus on pushing private school voucher expansion over any other piece of legislation for the past 6 years is enough to tell us that — not to mention the massive focus FOX News has placed on vouchers since the bill’s passage here in Arizona. Recently, Christopher Rufo admitted he created the CRT furor in order to advance universal vouchers.

We desperately need folks to plug in – people all over the state can get petitions at our hubs: teamsosarizona.com or sign up to volunteer: bit.ly/SVEvolunteer.

As you know, we are truly the tip of the spear when it comes to privatization. Betsy DeVos’ American Federation for Children is mobilizing (somewhat ineffectively) against our efforts, and the battle lines are drawn. It is evident that universal voucher expansion will become a pattern across the US, as Republican Governors are all declaring that every red state should adopt this policy. We have seen the dangers of private school vouchers first-hand here in Arizona, and our public school system has been starved in order to give credence to those who wish to privatize our public education system.

Charlie Kirk is partnering with an incredibly rightwing Evangelical church (Dream City Church) to open Turning Point Academies across Arizona. Here is the June article from Newsweek describing their plans to proliferate campuses across AZ and then the nation. It is no coincidence this plan was announced the same month the AZ state legislature passed universal vouchers.

Kirk recently spoke at Freedom Night hosted by Dream City Church, and this expose in the AZ Republic shows the hateful ideology against LGBTQ and trans youth Kirk and the Church spread. It’s terrifying – and infuriating to think this is where our taxpayer dollars are headed.

It is abundantly clear that special interests who favor extremist Christian Nationalism are driving the bus on these issues – and it makes sense. Private school vouchers are the perfect solution for building a long-term, endlessly replenishing base of voters who also favor Christian Nationalism.

We only have 42 more days to collect the signatures to put this bill on the 2024 ballot. We expect massive legal battles, as dark money will pour in and the usual suspects will challenge every signature. We are confident we will push back successfully and get the measure on the ballot – we must, as goes Arizona, so goes the nation.

You can help these fearless, intrepid volunteers by sending a contribution to: sosarizona.org/donate.

Categories Accountability, Arizona, Corporate Reformers, Corruption, Dark Money, Democracy, Education Reform, Parents, Privatization, Supporting public schools, Vouchers

New CDC Guidance: No Quarantines, Less COVID Testing

By dianeravitch
August 11, 2022 //
10

Chalkbeat reports that the Center for Disease Control is easing up on its COVID recommendations:

Schools can end quarantines and regular screening tests for COVID, but students and staff should keep masks on in areas with high levels of COVID spread, according to guidelines released Thursday by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

The new, more limited recommendationscome as districts across the country are starting a new school year — and in many cases reflect decisions to ease up on COVID precautions that schools have already made. Almost no districts are starting the year with a mask mandate, and in-school quarantine rules are on the retreat.

“This latest guidance from the CDC should give our students, parents, and educators the confidence they need to head back to school this year with a sense of joy and optimism,” Secretary of Education Miguel Cardona said in a statement. “While COVID continues to evolve, so has our understanding of the science and what it takes to return to school safely.”

Categories Health, Science

George Conway: Trump Is Scared

By dianeravitch
August 11, 2022 //
101

George Conway doesn’t like Donald Trump. Conway is a lawyer and a conservative. He is married to Kellyanne Conway. I think it’s fair to say that George hates Trump. I would love to be a fly on the wall at their dinner table.

George regularly mocks Trump on Twitter. He attacks him in opinion pieces in the Washington Post. He slams him on TV news shows.

He was interviewed yesterday on “Morning Joe.”

Raw Story reported:

“I think the walls are closing in on him,” Conway said. “There are so many different investigations. There’s also civil suits that are chasing him down. I think, bit by bit, we’re finally going to see the processes apply to him. He had his deposition taken yesterday by the New York attorney general. There are some civil depositions coming up, and he is being forced, essentially, to put up or shut up in these investigations. Yesterday, he, you know, took the Fifth 440 times, which is basically the most respect I think he’s ever shown for the Constitution of the United States.”

“But the Georgia case, I think, is particularly one to keep looking out for,” Conway continued. “It’s the one that sort of seems to be moving ahead the most quickly, but I think this documents investigation is one that we haven’t heard the last of. I mean, [Washington Postcolumnist] David [Ignatius] is absolutely right about the innate cautious and by-the-book nature of Merrick Garland. I think that he is handling this absolutely perfectly. I don’t think the Justice Department should be saying anything more than it already has said, which is basically nothing about this, because that’s what the rule of law requires. That is what grand jury secrecy requires.”

“The whole point of this exercise is that nobody is above the law,” he added. “The law applies equally to you and I, to the rich and the poor, to ex-presidents and just regular citizens. One of those protection people have is grand jury secrecy and the presumption of innocence. The reason why the Justice Department does not say anything about ongoing investigations, except in unusual circumstances or when indictments are there, is to protect the reputations of those that are the subject of investigation. If he really thinks that there is a witch hunt going on with these documents that were at Mar-A-Lago, he should tell us exactly what happened. Show us the search warrant. What was the government looking for? What did they take? He has a list of what they took, or should have a list, and that would tell us a great deal. But he doesn’t want to say anything because he knows it’s not going to be helpful to him, I’m sure. Just as actually answering questions from Letitia James yesterday wasn’t going to be helpful to him.”

Categories Accountability, Trump

Vanity Fair: FBI Ignored Most Tips About Kavanaugh

By dianeravitch
August 11, 2022 //
16

Do you remember that Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh liked beer? During his Supreme Court hearings, he was accused of sexual assault when he was in high school. The FBI had a tip line for complaints about Kavanaugh. We now know that the tips were forwarded to the White House, which decided which ones to investigate. Vanity Fair said “We now know that the FBI Investigation of Kavanaugh was a total sham.”

Supreme Court confirmation hearings aren’t usually burned into people’s minds, but there were a number of things that went down during Brett Kavanaugh‘s that will be difficult to ever forget. For one thing, the fact that he referenced his love of beer approximately 30 times, telling the lawmakers interviewing him for the job: “We drank beer. My friends and I. Boys and girls. Yes, we drank beer. I liked beer. Still like beer. We drank beer.” For another thing, the fact that his answer to the question “Was there ever a time when you drank so much that you couldn’t remember what happened or part of what happened the night before?” wasn’t a simple “No” or “Not since college,” but “Have you?” Then, of course, there was the weeping over calendars.

Still, the thing that probably struck people as the most memorable, because it was the most disturbing, was the fact that much of the proceedings centered around the credible accusations of sexual misconduct that had been lodged against the would-be justice, most notably by Christine Blasey Ford, who testified that Kavanaugh had sexually assaulted and tried to rape her when they were in high school. (Kavanaugh has denied this and all other allegations against him.)

Given these allegations—in addition to Kavanaugh’s temperament, which, to put it in terms he can understand, could be best described as “a hothead who just did a 10 Jägerbombs”—it struck many as outrageous for him to be given a lifetime appointment on the Supreme Court. That sense of outrage only deepened last year, when we learned that the FBI had received 4,500—4,500!—tips about Kavanaugh, which were referred to the White House, i.e. the organization trying to get the guy confirmed to the Court. And now, the FBI has confirmed that, yeah, it didn’t really feel the need to look into any of those tips, and when it did follow up on some, the White House was making sure it didn’t dig too far.

Baker Mitchell is not an educator but has created a charter school empire soon after the Tea Party took control of North Carolina. In 2014, the U,S. Department of Education conducted an investigation of Mitchell’s financial practices at his for-profit schools. NC Policy Watch reported that he collected $16 million in only three years from his chain.

Categories Accountability, Justice

Republican State Treasurers Join to Punish Banks That Fight Climate Change

By dianeravitch
August 11, 2022 //
13

The New York Times revealed a shocking conspiracy among Republican state treasurers to thwart efforts to improve the environment. They have combined to punish banks that oppose climate change. Fighting climate change, they believe, is “woke.” They don’t care about the extreme droughts, storms, floods, and other climate catastrophes affecting their states and the nation. They want to protect the fossil fuel industry, not their children and communities.

The investigative report was written by David Gelles based on a review of thousands of documents.

Nearly two dozen Republican state treasurers around the country are working to thwart climate action on state and federal levels, fighting regulations that would make clear the economic risks posed by a warming world, lobbying against climate-minded nominees to key federal posts and using the tax dollars they control to punish companies that want to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

Over the past year, treasurers in nearly half the United States have been coordinating tactics and talking points, meeting in private and cheering each other in public as part of a well-funded campaign to protect the fossil fuel companies that bolster their local economies.

Last week, Riley Moore, the treasurer of West Virginia, announced that several major banks — including Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan and Wells Fargo — would be barred from government contracts with his state because they are reducing their investments in coal, the dirtiest fossil fuel.

Mr. Moore and the treasurers of Louisiana and Arkansas have pulled more than $700 million out of BlackRock, the world’s largest investment manager, over objections that the firm is too focused on environmental issues. At the same time, the treasurers of Utah and Idaho are pressuring the private sector to drop climate action and other causes they label as “woke.”

And treasurers from Pennsylvania, Arizona and Oklahoma joined a larger campaign to thwart the nominations of federal regulators who wanted to require that banks, funds and companies disclose the financial risks posed by a warming planet.

At the nexus of these efforts is the State Financial Officers Foundation, a little-known nonprofit organization based in Shawnee, Kan., that once focused on cybersecurity, borrowing costs and managing debt loads, among other routine issues.

Then President Biden took office, promising to speed the country’s transition away from oil, gas and coal, the burning of which is dangerously heating the planet.

The foundation began pushing Republican state treasurers, who are mostly elected officials and who are responsible for managing their state’s finances, to use their power to promote oil and gas interests and to stymie Mr. Biden’s climate agenda, records show.

Categories Corruption, Environment, Republicans

Carol Burris: Rightwing Groups File Lawsuit to Block Regulations for Federally-Funded Charters

By dianeravitch
August 11, 2022 //
10

Carol Burris has followed closely the development and passage of regulations written by the U.S. Department of Education for federally-funded charter schools. The regulations, she believes, are reasonable and intended to assure that charters funded by the federal government are held to standards of transparency, honesty, and accountability.

She was taken aback to learn that rightwing groups have filed suit to block the regulations. Apparently, those filing the suit think that charters should get federal money without any oversight.

She writes about it here.

Those who want a wild west of unregulated charter schools never give up. A right-wing legal defense firm called the Pacific Legal Foundation has teamed up with the Michigan charter lobby and The Thomas B. Fordham Foundation to stop the reasonable rules of the U.S. Department of Education, claiming the Department has no right to make rules regarding the program.

Here are other lawsuits in which Pacific Legal is engaging:

· Fighting minimum wages for those who wish to move up the ladder at Texas Wally Burgers and Dairy Queens.

· Fighting opportunities for businesses of color to get some competitive advantage in obtaining government contracts after years of discrimination.

· Fighting attempts by three competitive Boston schools to expand enrollment opportunities for under-represented students of color by allotting spots by zip code.

The two plaintiffs, the Michigan Association of Public School Academies and the Thomas B. Fordham Institute, have vested financial interests in charter growth. Fordham is an authorizer of charter schools in Ohio, taking 3% of all the taxpayer dollars that the charters receive for providing “oversight.”

The argument, in its essence, is that the Department does not have the right to set up new conditions beyond what is memorialized in ESSA. If that is so, then when De Vos permitted state entities to distribute money to charter schools from their CSP grants for purposes beyond the opening and expansion of charters during the pandemic, she would have been in violation, too. Here is New York’s redistribution request that was granted. CSP funds were used for a “pandemic response,” as Betsy De Vos approved, without Congress’s permission. If the charter lobby wins this frivolous lawsuit designed to bully the Department into kowtowing to charters, perhaps taxpayers should sue to claw all of the money De Vos distributed back from charter schools.

Finally, I wonder why organizations that claim they fight for charter schools to help low-income kids succeed would run to a law firm that fights minimum wages, reduces disadvantaged kids’ chances of getting into a competitive high school, and roll back opportunities for minority-owned businesses. Perhaps their agenda has nothing to do with children at all.

Categories Accountability, Betsy DeVos, Charter Schools, Deregulation, Education Industry, U.S. Department of Education

New York City: Uncertainty About Schools’ Budget as Court Orders a Pause

By dianeravitch
August 10, 2022 //
5

Leonie Haimson provides an update on the battle over the city’s education budget. Parents and teachers are fighting budget cuts by Mayor Eric Adams.

She writes:

Dear folks–

Sorry to say that late in the day yesterday, the Appellate Court granted the City a stay on Judge Frank’s decision that the Education budget was illegally adopted, which means that the school budget cuts can legally remain in place until the court hears the City’s appeal on August 29.

What’s particularly infuriating is that the City could have asked for a speedy decision from the Appellate court to settle this matter, but instead asked that the hearing not occur until the end of the month, which merely prolongs the uncertainty and the chaos that the City complained about in its brief. The statement from the Attorney for the plaintiffs about this latest decision is on the website here.

We have also prepared an updated FAQ about the court decisions. We are now asking the Council to push the Mayor to agree to a budget modification to restore the cuts as soon as possible, and not wait for any decision from the Court so that parents, teachers and kids can be assured of a safe, healthy and positive learning climate when they return to school in September.

Tomorrow, Thursday August 11, at 1 PM, parents, advocates and teachers will gather on the steps of City Hall to urge the City Council Members to demand the Mayor propose a budget modification, as they make their way into a Council stated meeting. They will then hold a press conference at 2 PM to convey this message . Please join them if you can! We must all do what we can to stop these horrific cuts to schools.

More soon, Leonie

Leonie Haimson
Executive Director
Class Size Matters
124 Waverly Pl.
New York, NY 10011
phone: 917-435-9329
leonie@classsizematters.org
www.classsizematters.org
Follow on twitter @leoniehaimson
Subscribe to the Class Size Matters newsletter for regular updates at http://tinyurl.com/kj5y5co
Subscribe to the NYC Education list serv by emailing NYCeducationnews+subscribe@groups.io

Host of “Talk out of School” WBAI radio show and podcast at https://talk-out-of-school.simplecast.com/

Categories Accountability, Budget Cuts, Funding, New York City

Trump Suggests that FBI Agents Who Raided His Home Planted Evidence

By dianeravitch
August 10, 2022 //
57

Trump’s lies never end.

The New York Times reported:

Even as former President Donald J. Trump invoked the Fifth Amendment in a New York inquiry into his business practices, he and his allies began an effort to discredit another investigation, suggesting without evidence, that federal agents may have planted incriminating materials before searching his residence in Florida on Monday.

In a post on Wednesday morning on his social media app, Truth Social, Mr. Trump said that the agents who showed up at Mar-a-Lago would not let anyone, including his lawyers, observe their work, which was authorized as a by a federal magistrate judge.

Mr. Trump — who has not released the search warrant provided by the agents to his lawyers or the manifest his team was given of the materials the agents gathered and removed — baselessly suggested that the F.B.I. might have acted inappropriately.

“Everyone was asked to leave the premises, they wanted to be alone,” he wrote, “without any witnesses to see what they were doing, taking or, hopefully not, ‘planting.’”

Mr. Trump’s effort to sow doubts about the F.B.I.’s search before the results are known was in keeping with his history of trying to head off news by seeking to turn the tables on his accusers. The former president’s first line of attack against adversaries is often to mount a campaign in advance to discredit them and their work.

Around the same time that his message appeared on social media, The New York Post published an article about the F.B.I. search, noting in the third paragraph that “a source close to the former president” had expressed concern that federal agents or prosecutors could have “planted stuff” in the 128-room building.

The unfounded allegations seem to have first emerged on Tuesday morning when Christina Bobb, a lawyer for Mr. Trump who was present during the search, was asked during an interview on the right-wing TV station Real America’s Voice about whether it was possible that federal agents could have planted evidence.

“There is no security that something wasn’t planted,” Ms. Bobb said before quickly admitting that she did not know if anything improper had occurred.

Huh? No one was present during the search except his lawyer Christina Bobb.

This might be one of the tricks he learned from his mentor Roy Cohn, who advised Mafia dons.

Categories Accountability, Lies, Trump

Why Trump Took the Fifth, Answered No Questions

By dianeravitch
August 10, 2022 //
19

Donald Trump said many times when he was running for president in 2016 that anyone who takes the Fifth Amendment is guilty.

Yesterday, when questioned by New York state investigators about the practices of the Trump Organization, he repeatedly took the Fifth.

The state is investigating whether he manipulated the value of his properties to lower his taxes, then inflated their value to sell them.

The Boston Globe offered Trump’s explanation for his silence:

NEW YORK (AP) — Donald Trump invoked the Fifth Amendment and wouldn’t answer questions under oath in the New York attorney general’s long-running civil investigation into his business dealings, the former president said in a statement Wednesday.

Trump arrived at state Attorney General Letitia James’ offices in a motorcade shortly before 9 a.m., before announcing more than an hour later that he “declined to answer the questions under the rights and privileges afforded to every citizen under the United States Constitution.”

“I once asked, ‘If you’re innocent, why are you taking the Fifth Amendment?’ Now I know the answer to that question,” the statement said. “When your family, your company, and all the people in your orbit have become the targets of an unfounded politically motivated Witch Hunt supported by lawyers, prosecutors and the Fake News Media, you have no choice…”

James, a Democrat, has said in court filings that her office has uncovered “significant” evidence that Trump’s company “used fraudulent or misleading asset valuations to obtain a host of economic benefits, including loans, insurance coverage, and tax deductions.”

James alleges the Trump Organization exaggerated the value of its holdings to impress lenders or misstated what land was worth to slash its tax burden, pointing to annual financial statements given to banks to secure favorable loan terms and to financial magazines to justify Trump’s place among the world’s billionaires.

The company even exaggerated the size of Trump’s Manhattan penthouse, saying it was nearly three times its actual size — a difference in value of about $200 million, James’ office said.

Trump has denied the allegations, contending that seeking the best valuations is a common practice in the real estate industry. He says James’ investigation is politically motivated and that her office is “doing everything within their corrupt discretion to interfere with my business relationships, and with the political process.” He’s also accused James, who is Black, of racism in pursuing the investigation.

Categories Accountability, Lies, Trump
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