Boston Picks Experienced Educator as New Superintendent

By dianeravitch
June 29, 2022 //
7

The Boston Public School board selected a new superintendent. She is Mary Skipper, who has had many years of teaching experience in Boston and is currently superintendent of the Somerville, Mass., district.

Currently the head of Somerville Public Schools, Skipper will take over at a crucial juncture for Boston, which only days ago fended off a state takeover by agreeing to a long list of improvements that she will now be charged with seeing through. She narrowly edged out the other finalist, BPS regional superintendent Tommy Welch, in a 4-3 vote.

The 55-year-old Skipper previously worked in Boston for nearly two decades, teaching Latin at Boston Latin Academy before working her way from principal to district administrator overseeing three dozen high schools. She earned a reputation for innovations at a high school she previously led. A decade ago, then-president Barack Obama held up Skipper’s school, TechBoston Academy, as a national model when he delivered a speech there.

She’s been superintendent of the roughly 4,700-student Somerville district since 2015.

Skipper was not available for comment after the vote. But she previously has said that teachers were surrogate parents to her, playing a deep role in her life, so she felt teaching was something she needed to do.

The job she’s stepping into has already been largely redefined by an agreement finalized this week between Mayor Michelle Wu and state Education Commissioner Jeff Riley, who had threatened to label the district as “underperforming.” In exchange for maintaining autonomy and the district’s reputation, Skipper will have to carry out a long list of mandates from a district improvement plan agreed upon Monday that aims to overhaul special education, services for English learners, and transportation, among other things…

Skipper’s selection could carry some risk for the district, since she’s not available to take over full time in Boston until late September, after the deadline for completing 10 of 24 action steps required by the joint agreement for improving Boston’s schools…

Skipper will also have to overcome frustration from some community members that the superintendent search did not yield Black or Latino finalists. Civil rights leaders and education advocates called on district leaders to halt the vote or extend the process after the search committee presented only two finalists; Skipper is white and Welch is an Asian American.

Two other would-be finalists, a Black woman and a Latina, withdrew before the list was finalized and made public. The panel overseeing the search selected Skipper and Welch from a field of 34 applicants.

Categories Administrators, superintendents, Boston, Education Reform, Massachusetts

Rep. Boebert: “I’m Tired of This Separation of Church and State Junk”

By dianeravitch
June 29, 2022 //
129

Rep. Lauren Boebert, a Trump Republican from Colorado, apparently never took a class in civics, government or history and is an embarrassment to the Congress in which she serves. She won her primary on Tuesday. Boebert is a high school dropout who earned her GED in 2020, according to Wikipedia. She is a born-again Christian and a strident advocate of guns; she and her husband own a restaurant—Shooters Grill in Rifle, Colorado,where staff are encouraged to carry guns. From the following report, which appeared in the Washington Post, it is certain that she is ignorant about the Constitution and the Founding Fathers.

Rep. Lauren Boebert (R-Colo.)…says she is “tired” of the U.S. separation of church and state, a long-standing concept stemming from a “stinking letter” penned by one of the Founding Fathers.

Speaking at a religious service Sunday in Colorado, she told worshipers: “The church is supposed to direct the government. The government is not supposed to direct the church. That is not how our Founding Fathers intended it.”

She added: “I’m tired of this separation of church and state junk that’s not in the Constitution. It was in a stinking letter, and it means nothing like what they say it does.” Her comments were first reported by the Denver Post.

The Constitution’s First Amendment, which states that “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof,” has been widely interpreted to mean the separation of church and state — although the phrase is not explicitly used.


Gwen Calais-Haase, a political scientist at Harvard University, told The Washington Post that Boebert’s interpretation of the Constitution was “false, misleading and dangerous.” Calais-Haase said she was “extremely worried about the environment of misinformation that extremist politicians take advantage of for their own gains.”

Steven K. Green, a professor of law and affiliated professor of history and religious studies at Willamette University, agreed, saying, “Rep. Boebert is wrong on both matters.”


“While the phrase separation of church and state does not appear verbatim in the Constitution, neither do many accepted constitutional principles such as separation of powers, judicial review, executive privilege, or the right to marry and parental rights, no doubt rights that Rep. Boebert cherishes,” wrote Green, the author of “Separating Church and State: A History.”

Categories Colorado, Elections, Extremism, Religion, Republicans, Separation of church and state, Stupid

Georgia: Voters in Two Counties Reject Anti-CRT School Board Candidates

By dianeravitch
June 29, 2022 //
13

Voters are not buying the phony claims of the candidates running on platforms against “critical race theory,” not even in conservative counties in Georgia. Thanks to Jennifer Berkshire for this story.

The Georgia Recorder reports on two elections:

Voters in Cherokee and Coweta counties rejected three school board candidates backed by a right-wing federal PAC Tuesday, following similar losses in last month’s primary.

It’s uncommon for political action committees to weigh in on local races, so voters were surprised to open up their mailboxes and find flyers from the 1776 Project PAC endorsing a slate of candidates ahead of the primary.

The PAC is a response to the 1619 Project, a New York Times initiative examining the lingering effects of slavery throughout U.S. history.

The 1619 Project; critical race theory; diversity, equity and inclusion and social and emotional learning have become rallying points for white, conservative parents who say their children are being made to feel guilty for racial injustice.

On its website, the committee describes itself as “dedicated to electing school board members nationwide who want to reform our public education system by promoting patriotism and pride in American history. We are committed to abolishing critical race theory and ‘The 1619 Project’ from the public school curriculum.”

Among the PAC’s endorsees were Cherokee County’s Sean Kaufman, a small business owner, and Ray Lynch, a physician.

Cherokee

The two previously teamed up with fellow 1776 Project endorsees Cam Waters, who works for the Georgia Association of Health Underwriters, and accountant Chris Gregory, styling themselves as 4CanDoMore, a slate for parents who “have been silenced, ignored and belittled.”

“With 4CanDoMore we can have a board majority that asks questions, a board that is transparent and unafraid, a board that reflects the family values of Cherokee County,” reads a statement on their website.

Their goal was to create a majority on the seven-member board to prevent policies they view as divisive, especially critical race theory and diversity, equity and inclusion programs.

The district had plans to hire Cecelia Lewis, a Black principal from Maryland to serve as its first diversity, equity and inclusion administrator, but she decided not to take the offer after watching a raucous meeting in which parents railed against her hiring.

The 4CanDoMore team offered Lewis’ planned hiring as evidence that the board did not consider the desires of parents.

Lewis has said she did not know what critical race theory was at the time and had no plans to incorporate it in her role. Cherokee County has never included the concept, which is typically reserved for higher-education graduate studies, in its curriculum, but the school board approved a resolution to ban it anyway. The state school board went on to impose its own ban on lessons teaching that the United States is racist, and Gov. Brian Kemp signed a bill into law further banning “divisive concepts” regarding racial history. Teachers and administrators have largely said such measures were unnecessary.

Cherokee is a conservative county — nearly 70% of voters there chose Donald Trump in 2020, but their rejection of the 4CanDoMore squad suggests local issues can still trump national culture war arguments, said Jamie Chambers, a writer and Cherokee County resident who opposed the four candidates.

“In my area, Ray Lynch was running against Susan Padget-Harrison, and unlike him, where he came from out of state and was just kind of attacking, she has experience. She has been a teacher. She’s been involved with our school system for decades and has ties to our community,” he said. “And I think, ultimately, that’s the thing that carried the day with voters, people who were connected, that were actually talking about real issues within our schools and not just repeating talking points that don’t apply to us. While we live in a very conservative area, I don’t think that the kind of people who were protesting the hiring of Lewis, who were banging on the windows and doors of the superintendent’s office, those aren’t representative of the voters around here.”

Kaufman lost to Erin Ragsdale, a businesswoman and educator, and Lynch was defeated by Padgett-Harrison, a professor of education at Piedmont College.

In last month’s primary, Waters and Gregory were both defeated by incumbent board members by significant margins.

Coweta

In Coweta, incumbent school board member Linda Menk was ousted by baseball coach Rob DuBose, who received nearly 80% of the vote in the runoff.

Menk received calls for her resignation after she attended the Jan. 6, 2021 rally in Washington that preceded the attack on the U.S. Capitol. Critics also offered a list of insensitive and conspiratorial social media posts as evidence of her unfitness.

She also raised hackles on the board in 2019 for contacting the FBI, allegedly in an attempt to set up colleagues in a non-existent bid-rigging scandal.

Menk said she did not breach the Capitol and was simply expressing her First Amendment right to protest.

She offered no apologies in a school board meeting days after the riot.

“It was not sedition, it was not insurrection,” she said. “I attended a very peaceful rally, one of the most meaningful things that I actually had the privilege of engaging in was a large percentage of the attendees were there who had escaped communist China and had emigrated to this country, and the stories that they told me, basically, the United States was the last hope, it was the last place that they had to go.”

At the same meeting, then-board chair Amy Dees castigated Menk for distracting from the job of supporting students.

“We do have First Amendment rights as board members, but as an elected official, there are consequences for what we post and say,” she said. “Tonight, three board members took an oath of office. That oath of office means something, it means something to me. I uphold that with the utmost of integrity. It saddens me that we are here again and again and again, and it seems to me, Miss Menk, that you’re in the center of that.”

Other Coweta candidates endorsed by the 1776 Project PAC, Maxwell Britton, Megan Smith and Cory Gambardella, fell to board incumbents in the May primary.

Categories Accountability, Democracy, Extremism, Georgia, Race

Georgia: Protestors Drove This Black Educator Out of Her Job and Pursued Her

By dianeravitch
June 29, 2022 //
6

ProPublica wrote about a campaign to destroy the reputation of a black educator and their pursuit of her to another district. The white agitators accused her of being an advocate of “critical race theory,” but she didn’t know what it was. That didn’t deter the vigilantes.

In April of 2021, Cecelia Lewis had just returned to Maryland from a house-hunting trip in Georgia when she received the first red flag about her new job.

The trip itself had gone well. Lewis and her husband had settled on a rental home in Woodstock, a small city with a charming downtown and a regular presence on best places to live lists. It was a short drive to her soon-to-be office at the Cherokee County School District and less than a half hour to her husband’s new corporate assignment. While the north Georgia county was new to the couple, the Atlanta area was not. They’d visited several times in recent years to see their son, who attended Georgia Tech.

Lewis, a middle school principal, initially applied for a position that would bring her closer to the classroom as a coach for teachers. But district leaders were so impressed by her interview that they encouraged her to apply instead for a new opening they’d created: their first administrator focused on diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives…

At first, the scope of the role gave Lewis pause. In her current district, these responsibilities were split among several people, and she’d never held a position dedicated to anything as specific as that before. But she had served on the District Equity Leadership Team in her Maryland county and felt prepared for this new challenge. She believed the job would allow her, as she put it, to analyze the district’s “systemic and instructional practices” in order to better support “the whole child.”

“We’re so excited to add Cecelia to the CCSD family,” Superintendent Brian Hightower said in the district’s March 2021 announcement about all of its new hires. (The announcement noted that the creation of the DEI administrator role “stems from input from parents, employees and students of color who are serving on Dr. Hightower’s ad hoc committees formed this school year to focus on the topic.”) Hightower acknowledged “both her impressive credentials and enthusiasm for the role” and pointed out that, “In four days, she had a DEI action plan for us.”

But then a group of white parents decided that Lewis planned to bring “critical race theory” to their district. And they decided to hound her out of her job and out of Georgia.

Categories Accountability, Extremism, Georgia, Race, Racism

Thoughts on The Latest 1/6 Hearing

By dianeravitch
June 29, 2022 //
41

The testimony of Cassidy Hutchinson, the former aide to Mark Meadows (chief of staff to Trump) was riveting. If you didn’t see it, find it on the Internet and watch in full.

What she described was a conspiracy to overthrow the results of the election, a last-ditch effort to keep Trump in power by any means necessary.

Trump was speaking at the Ellipse and was disappointed by the crowd size (again!). When he realized that many of his supporters were excluded because they were carrying guns, he wanted the metal detectors removed so all his supporters could join the crowd because they weren’t gunning for him.

Trump expected to join an armed mob marching to the Capitol. That was the plan. But his own Secret Service guards wouldn’t let him go there because he might be in danger. He tried to grab the steering wheel of the SUV, but was thwarted by his personal guard, whom he tried to throttle. Personally, I regret that his security detail did not take him to the Capitol. Imagine the scene. The president in the midst of a mob, smashing windows, banging on the doors of the Senate Chamber, chanting “Hang Mike Pence,” perhaps putting his feet on Pelosi’s desk. If that had happened, not only would he have been disgraced in the eyes of the world, but he would have to abandon his phony protestations of innocence.

But his security detail protected him from himself.

Back at the White House, he watched the mob deface the Capitol and ignored pleas by friends like Kevin McCarthy, Jim Jordan, Laura Ingraham, Sean Hannity, even Ivanka and Don Jr. to call off the marauders. He did nothing. Meadows did nothing.

Hutchinson went on to describe his reaction when Trump learned in December that Bill Barr had told the AP that the Justice Department had not found fraud of a size that would change the election result: he threw his plate against the wall of the White House private dining room, smearing the walls with catsup and the floor with broken porcelain. This was not the only time this happened, she testified under oath. Trump was also known to pull the tablecloth off the table, sending the food and dishes to the floor. (Was he trying that magic trick where the magician pulls the cloth and all the dishes remain in place?)

After hours of violence in the Capitol, Trump finally made a video calling on his supporters to go home. He said “I love you.”

Not long afterwards, his political allies ludicrously claimed that the invasion of the Capitol had been staged by Antifa. Why did Trump tell Antifa “I love you”? If they were Antifa, why did he want so badly to join them as they rioted? If they were Antifa, why didn’t he tell them to go home immediately? Why were so many Proud Boys and Oathkeepers and other militant crackpots leading the crowd if they were Antifa?

The corpulent man-baby was a sore loser. He preferred to destroy our system of government and unleash violence and mayhem in the Capitol rather than admit defeat. He sent a mob that he knew was armed to wreak maximum damage on the Natuon’s Capitol. He would have been satisfied to see his servile Vice-President Mike Pence hung by the mob, to see Nancy Pelosi beaten to death by the mob, to see Senators and members of the House brutalized, and to unleash the raging horde on all his political enemies rather than admit that he lost the election.

The Republican Party and its elected leaders has embraced the bully who has dragged them into the muck of rebellion, violence, and contempt for the Constitution. As Liz Cheney memorably said to her colleagues at the first meeting of the 1/6 Commission: “There will come a day when Donald Trump is gone, but your dishonor will remain.”

Honor? When did we last hear that word mentioned in the same breath with the name of President 45? Will the Republican Party survive its servile embrace of the Malevolent Fool who would be King?

What, if any consequences, will there be for a man who attempted to overthrow the government and shred the Constitution? And for those who aided and abetted his treason?

Categories Accountability, Corruption, Cruelty, Disruption, Elections, Republicans, Trump

Christine Langhoff: A Victory for Boston Public Schools!

By dianeravitch
June 28, 2022 //
17

Yesterday, the Massachusetts Commissioner of Education and the Mayor of Boston reached an agreement not to label the Boston Public Schools “underperforming” and the state backed away from taking control of the district. Perhaps they realized that state takeovers typically make things worse, not better.

Our reader Christine Langhoff is a retired teacher in Boston. She added the following informed comment.

Christine Langhoff writes:

Despite the Boston Globe’s heartfelt desire for privatization – its education reporting is outsourced to privatizers and charteristas at The Barr Foundation – public pushback had an impact. The state has had zero success in the school systems where it intervened, when measured by the metric the state board loves: test scores. Boston scores, even during the virtual schooling of the pandemic, have been higher than in Lawrence, Springfield, Holyoke and Southbridge, where the state is in charge. They failed to get this done before Governor Charlie Baker – funded by the Kochs and the Waltons – leaves office this year.

Our newly elected mayor, Michelle Wu, has her own two young sons in BPS and is committed to public education. She has refused to back away from her advocacy for the schools. Her predecessor, Marty Walsh (now Biden’s Secretary of Labor), was himself a founder of a charter school, and underfunded the schools during all seven years of his mayoralty. He made no effort to solve the issues cited in the state’s report in his quest to defund, destabilize, and destroy the school system.

Wu has managed in a brief time to recruit two excellent finalists for the superintendent’s position. Both of them are true public school educators who live in Boston. Mary Skipper’s three children are BPS graduates and Tommy Welch’s kids are presently enrolled as well. Contrast with Laura Perille, who was named superintendent by Walsh, despite being completely unqualified save for the fact that she ran an umbrella group for the foundations bent on privatization. (Perille took over from Broadie Tommy Chang, who was responsible in LA for the disastrous rollout of laptops.)

It’s a new day for public education in the city of Boston. The Waltons are somewhere, licking their wounds in defeat once again.

Categories Accountability, Boston, Corporate Reform, Democracy, Education Reform, Massachusetts, Supporting public schools, Walton Foundation

Peter Greene: Why SCOTUS Was Wrong About the Praying Football Coach

By dianeravitch
June 28, 2022 //
110

The Supreme Court ruled in favor of a football coach who conducted prayers in the 50-yard line.

You read it here first: This case may be a prelude to overturning the Supreme Court’s ban on prayer in schools, a decision that evangelicals have complained about since it was issued. As we have seen in the past week, this Court is indifferent to precedent. They are rightwing ideologues who want to redraw the well-understood rights, freedoms, and boundaries of American life. No one knows what to expect: Will they outlaw contraception? Will they outlaw same-sex relationships and marriage? Will they outlaw interracial marriage? Will they overturn Brown v. Board of Education? Will they restore the power to impose racial segregation to the states? The Trump three plus Alito, Thomas, and Roberts are a supermajority; they are appointed for life. They will do whatever they want, with no accountability.

Peter Greene writes that the Court has no understanding of the duties of a school official.

It has become increasingly clear—blindingly obvious—that this Court will always favor religious expression over all competing claims. Six justices have completely abandoned the Founding Fathers’ explicit belief in separation of church and state and their determination to avoid any “establishment” of religion.

Greene writes:

I am absolutely gobsmacked. I expected that SCOTUS would okay school prayer via Kennedy v. Bremerton School District. I did not expect that their decision would be based on a disconnecting themselves from reality. 

The result is here. I’ll walk you through the highlights (sputtering as I go). Sorry. I don’t have time to make this short.

This is the case of the football coach who wanted to pray at the 50 yard line after games, and when the district told him to stop, decided he’d get his fifteen minutes of holy fame out of it. Full summary here.

Justice Gorsuch wrote this one, and he’s in an alternate reality in the very first paragraph.Joseph Kennedy lost his job as a high school football coach because he knelt at midfield after games to offer a quiet prayer of thanks.

Nope. Joseph Kennedy decided not to put in for the job for another season.

Mr. Kennedy prayed during a period when school employees were free to speak with a friend, call for a reservation at a restaurant, check email, or attend to other personal matters.

This line of reasoning will be followed throughout. If you’re on the clock, but can get away with dividing your attention, that counts as personal time. Not for the last time, Gorsuch and the berobed conservative activists of the court will demonstrate no understanding of how school jobs work. As a teacher, if I’m on my computer or phone while I’m supposed to be supervising students, I’m asking for trouble. And if I’m a coach or activity advisor, and my students have not officially left the building for home, then I had better be doing my job, which is keeping an eye on them.

What follows is a glowing version of Coach Kennedy’s history with the school, putting emphasis on how quiet and personal and totally not while performing his duties as a government employee Kennedy’s praying was. We will have to wait for the dissent to get the full story from this planet. What Gorsuch gets semi-right is that this practice stayed below the radar for a while, until Kennedy had expanded it enough that word got back to district officials, who had a church-and-state-separation freakout. 

But Kennedy had an epiphany driving home one night, and felt “compelled” to do the prayer, and send a big letter to the district, in which he offered to do the prayer quietly “while students were busy with other activities–whether heading to the locker room, boarding the bus, or perhaps singing the school fight song” which–no! The offer of “I’ll just slip a prayer in when I’m supposed to be doing my job” is not a great offer!

On October 16, “some members of the community” joined him and “this event spurred media coverage.” Well, yes– as the dissent points out, Kennedy spurred, courted, welcomed and recruited media coverage, as well as (not for the first time) participation from the other team. The district continued to put pressure on, feeling that to not do so would suggest they were endorsing a school prayer, and that their understanding of the Constitution would be that such an endorsement was wrong. How very old school of them.

The district noted in their evaluation that Kennedy failed to supervise students after games and failed to follow district policy regarding religious expression. Kennedy decided not to put in for the job for the coming year….

Please open the link and read Greene’s post in full. Will students now have to put up with teachers opening and closing their classes with a prayer?

We have a Supreme Court that will privilege every form of prayer, in every setting, and will allow those with religious convictions to discriminate against those who do not share their views.

Is theocracy the right word?

Thomas Jefferson must be rolling in his grave.

Categories Religion, Separation of church and state, Teachers

Maine: Will the State Fund Religious Schools that Violate State Law by Discriminating?

By dianeravitch
June 28, 2022 //
40

The recent U.S. Supreme Court decision requires the state of Maine to pay the tuition of students who attend religious schools since the state pays tuition at private schools where no public schools are available due to sparse population. The two religious schools that sued are run by born-again evangelical sects that ban the admission of gay students, students with gay parents, or gay staff. They also require the members of their staff to adhere to the school’s religious views.

But the State Attorney General says it would violate Maine law to fund schools that discriminate.

AUGUSTA, Maine — Religious schools got what they wanted when the Supreme Court allowed them to participate in a state tuition program.

But the state attorney general said the ruling will be for naught unless the schools are willing to abide by the same antidiscrimination law as other private schools that participate in the program.

An attorney for the families criticized the “knee-jerk” comments, and the leader of a religious group predicted further litigation.

The Supreme Court ruled Tuesday that Maine can’t exclude religious schools from a program that offers tuition for private education in towns that don’t have public schools. But religious schools didn’t have long to savor their victory before learning of a new hurdle.

Attorney General Aaron Frey said both Christian schools involved in the lawsuit have policies that discriminate against students and staff on a basis of sexual orientation or gender identity, preventing their participation in the tuition program despite the hard-fought litigation.

“The education provided by the schools at issue here is inimical to a public education. They promote a single religion to the exclusion of all others, refuse to admit gay and transgender children, and openly discriminate in hiring teachers and staff,” he said in a statement.

There was no immediate comment from two schools, Temple Academy in Waterville or Bangor Christian Schools.

Michael Bindas, senior attorney for the Institute for Justice, said the attorney general isn’t paying close attention to the Supreme Court’s commitment to religious liberty in recent years.

“It was an erroneous opinion of the Maine attorney general that embroiled the state in five lawsuits spanning three decades and that culminated in the Supreme Court’s ruling against the state,” Bindas said Thursday in a statement. “The current attorney general seems to not have learned any lessons from that experience.”

If the state truly intends to use the state law to create another obstacle, then more litigation will be inevitable, said Carroll Conley, executive director of the Christian Civic League of Maine.

The original lawsuit by three families seeking reimbursements to attend Christian schools dates to 2018, but it goes back even further.

The state always sought to maintain a solid line between church and state by reimbursing for private schools — but not religious schools. The goal was to give rural students without a public high school an education that’s similar to what public school students get.

In Maine, 29 private schools participate in the program, enrolling 4,526 students, officials said. Private schools that meet the state’s criteria can get about $12,000 in taxpayer funding per student.

The most immediate effect of the court’s ruling beyond Maine probably will be in nearby Vermont, which has a similar program.

The Supreme Court’s 6-3 decision could propel school choice pushes in some of the 18 states that have not directed taxpayer money to private, religious education. It was seen as an affirmation for states that already have voucher programs open to religious schools.

But all schools receiving state tuition must abide by the Maine Human Right Act, which bans discriminating against someone because of their race, gender, sexual orientation, ethnicity or disability, Frey said.

The Legislature in the last session strengthened the law that clarified the scope of the Maine Human Rights Act in education. Democratic Gov. Janet Mills signed the bill into law last year.

The updated law, sponsored by Democratic Sen. Craig Hickman, the first openly gay African American to serve in both chambers of the Legislature, bans discrimination in education on the basis of “sex, sexual orientation or gender identity,” among other things.

The American Association of Christian Schools, meanwhile, brushed aside concerns of discrimination against the LGBTQ community.

“We don’t look at it as discrimination at all. We have a set of principles and beliefs that we believe are conducive to prosperity, to the good life, so to speak, and we partner with parents who share that vision,” said Jamison Coppola, spokesperson for the association.

Categories Education Reform

Good News! No State Takeover for Boston Public Schools!

By dianeravitch
June 28, 2022 //
2

For a while, the state board of education was threatening to take over the Boston Public Schiols, despite the fact that state takeovers have a dismal record. Then the state threatened to label the district “underperforming,” which served no purpose other than humiliation. But a deal was reached, and the state has backed off its heavy handed tactics.

Boston Mayor Michelle Wu and the state Education Commissioner Jeffrey Riley came to an eleventh hour agreement Monday to prevent the state from designating the district “underperforming” and stepping up oversight of the district.

The agreement between the state and city, announced Monday night, details district improvement efforts following a state review that found Boston Public Schools was failing to make enough progress in addressing long-standing problems, including providing services to English learners and students in special education.

“These commitments will set up the district for success right away,” said Wu in an interview Monday night. “I’m eager and ready for the work ahead.”

The deal comes after weeks of negotiationsand political brinksmanship that, at times, played out before the public. After the state in May released its audit outlining chronic dysfunction in Boston Public Schools, Wu pushed back on the state’s initial proposals to improve the district, which would have made her directly accountable to Riley for improving schools and imposed short deadlines for addressing problems. She instead called for a “partnership” with the state.

And when talks broke down last week, the state upped the ante by recommending Boston receive more oversight and be labeled underperforming, an embarrassing designation that can take years to reverse.

The negotiations have cast a feeling of uncertainty over the district, as it searches for a new superintendent. The Boston School Committee meets Wednesday to vote on two candidates: Mary Skipper, the Somerville superintendent; and Tommy Welch, a regional school superintendent in Boston Public Schools and BPS parent.

Welch has said he could begin Friday, after outgoing Superintendent Brenda Cassellius departs. Skipper has committed to staying in Somerville until the fall.

The agreement includes deadlines as early as August for the city and school system to complete many steps.

It’s hard to imagine any meaningful reforms that can be completed in the next six weeks.

Categories Accountability, Boston, Disruption, Massachusetts

Dana Milbank: If Texas Secedes, Good Riddance!

By dianeravitch
June 27, 2022 //
164

Dana Milbank is my favorite columnist at the Washington Post. In this column, he responds to the Texas GOP platform, which proposes that the state secede from the US and become a sovereign nation. Milbank says. “Good riddance!” As a native Texan, I’m ashamed for my state, ashamed that it’s been taken over by theocrats and dumbbells.

The Lone Star State does not have the best track record as a sovereign power. The Republic of Texas survived only 10 years from independence to annexation by the United States in 1845. Texas seceded during the Civil War — and, with the rest of the Confederacy, was crushed.


But, as the saying goes: If at first you don’t secede, try, try again. The Texas GOP now wants the state to vote on declaring independence.


And the United States should let Texas go! Better yet, let’s offer Texas a severance package that includes Oklahoma to sweeten secession — the Sooner the better.

Over the weekend, while many Americans were celebrating the 167th anniversary of Juneteenth (when Union Gen. Gordon Granger, in Galveston, Tex., delivered the order abolishing slavery) the Texas Republican Party voted on a platform declaring that federal laws it dislikes “should be ignored, opposed, refused, and nullified.”


The proposed platform (it’s expected to be approved when votes are tallied) adds: “Texas retains the right to secede from the United States, and the Texas Legislature should be called upon to pass a referendum consistent thereto.” It wants the secession referendum “in the 2023 general election for the people of Texas to determine whether or not the State of Texas should reassert its status as an independent nation.”


Yee-haw!


Of course, protections would have to be negotiated for parts of Texas that wish to remain on Team Normal. Dallas, Houston, Austin, San Antonio and parts of South Texas would remain in the United States, and they will need guaranteed safe passage to New Orleans or Santa Fe, along with regular airlifts of sustainable produce, accurate textbooks and contraceptives.

But consider the benefits to the rest of the country: Two fewer Republican senators, two dozen fewer Republican members of the House, annual savings of $83 billion in defense funds that Texas gets. And the best reason? The Texas GOP has so little regard for the Constitution that it is calling for a “Convention of the States” to effectively rewrite it — and so little regard for the United States that it wishes to leave.


In democracy’s place, the Republican Party, which enjoys one-party rule in Texas, is effectively proposing a church state. If you liked Crusader states and Muslim caliphates, you’ll love the Confederate Theocracy of Texas.


The Texas GOP platform gives us a good idea what such a paradise for Christian nationalists would look like. Texas would officially declare that “homosexuality is an abnormal lifestyle choice.” It would redefine marriage as a “covenant only between one biological man and one biological woman,” and it would “nullify” any court rulings to the contrary. (The gay Log Cabin Republicans were banned from setting up a booth at the convention.) It would fill schools with “prayer, the Bible, and the Ten Commandments” but ban “the teaching of sex education.” It would abolish all abortions and require students to “learn about the Humanity of the Preborn Child.”


The Texas Theocracy, which maintains that President Biden “was not legitimately elected,” would keep only traces of democracy. It wants the Voting Rights Act of 1965 “repealed,” and it would rewrite the state constitution to empower minority rule by small, rural (and White) counties. It would rescind voters’ right to elect senators and the Constitution’s guarantee of birthright citizenship.

The Texas Theocracy would probably be broke; it wants to abolish the federal income tax, “Axe the Property Tax” and do away with the estate tax and various business taxes. Yet it is planning a hawkish foreign policy! The platform argues that Texas is currently “under an active invasion” and should take “any and all appropriate measures the sovereign state defines as necessary to defend” itself. It imagines attacks by a “One World Government, or The Great Reset” — an internet-born conspiracy belief — and proposes “withdrawal from the current United Nations.” The Theocracy would put the “wild” back in the West, abolishing the minimum wage, environmental and banking regulations, and “red-flag” laws or waiting periods to prevent dangerous people from buying guns.

Above all, the Confederate Theocracy of Texas would be defined by thought police. It would penalize “woke corporations” and businesses that disagree with the theocracy over abortion, race, trans rights and the “inalienable right to refuse vaccination.”

Government programs would be stripped of “education involving race.” Evolution and climate change “shall be taught as challengeable scientific theories subject to change.” There would be a “complete repeal of the hate crime laws.” The Texas Revolution “shall not be ‘reimagined’” in a way the theocracy finds “disrespectful.” Confederate monuments “shall be protected,” “plaques honoring the Confederate widows” restored, and lessons on “the tyrannical history of socialism” required.

In their platform, the Texas Republicans invoked “God” or the “Creator” 18 times and “sovereignty” or sovereign power 24 times. And the word “democracy”? Only once — in reference to China.

I hope you can read the comments. Readers suggest other states that should secede with Texas.

Categories Bigotry, Censorship, Civil Rights, Democracy, Elections, Extremism, Fascism, Guns, Ignorance, Lies, Privatization, Religion, Republicans, Separation of church and state, Texas, Trump
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