Most people think of tracking satellites in space.
, a member of United Teachers Los Angeles, looks at the looming threat of privatization--and the potential for resistance among teachers, parents and students.
August 31, 2009
IN A progressive city, with a progressive mayor and one of the most progressive teachers' unions in the country, the floodgates were opened August 25 to private control over education.
The Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD) board voted 6-1 to authorize opening up over 250 schools to bids by charter schools and other outside entities.
Many of these schools have been "program improvement" schools for three or more years--that is, schools that are failing under the test score criteria set by the federal No Child Left Behind law. Fifty others, though, are brand-new, shiny, multimillion-dollar complexes, built with public bond money in the largest public works program any city has undertaken since the 1970s.
These new schools have state-of-the-art facilities--all the best science labs, art rooms, cafeterias and common space. They stand in stark contrast to the crumbling and often-poisoned schools that most LAUSD students attend.
Now, these newly constructed, publicly funded buildings could be turned over to private operators--though the original bond offering that voters approved said nothing of the sort.
The schools haven't been turned over yet--under the terms of the school board's resolution, the board and the superintendent will consider competing proposals for each of the schools and make a decision in the future.
But the direction is obvious. As Marguerite Poindexter LaMotte, the sole dissenting vote on the board, pointed out incredulously, "This motion means that Los Angeles Unified School District has to bid for control of our own schools!"
The board member who raised the motion, Yolie Flores Aguilar, Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa's ally on the board, painted the proposal as matter of "choice" and "competition." Ironically, though, students, parents and teachers won't get to vote for the "choices" that will be presented for the schools starting this winter.
Some progressive organizations and individual teachers have argued that we can make our own proposals for running the schools that have been opened up to bidding. But there is no mechanism for communities or teachers to ensure that their opinions will get taken into account. And the charter school operators have big advantages--including pockets full of private-sector cash--to push their ready-made plans.
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WHY WOULD a school board vote to give up control of its own schools, including 50 brand-new buildings? The process of passing the resolution revealed another motive: breaking the power of teachers' and other employees' unions.
School board member Steve Zimmer raised an amendment to the resolution that existing employees' unions would have to be the sole representatives of employees in the new schools. But this amendment was watered down to say that existing unions would only represent workers in schools that remained under the control of LAUSD.
So the amendment did nothing to counter the clear threat to unions at the schools opened up to bidding. As has happened in other cities where charter schools got a foothold, the union could be forced out altogether, employees could be fired en masse or required to reapply for their jobs, and collective bargaining agreements might have to be renegotiated with a hostile employer.
Zimmer, who just began his term on the board this year after being elected with the overwhelming support of the teachers' union, voted for the proposal. Despite his claim to oppose privatization, his strategy for dealing with the motion was to support it and try to amend it.
That strategy failed, as the amendment on workers' representation illustrated. Another amendment proposed by Zimmer--that parents, teachers and high school students should have to vote for a reform proposal at individual schools--was also watered down to the point of meaninglessness, by making the vote by parents, teachers and students "advisory."
The worst part of this story is that it didn't have to go down this way. I was part of the effort to organize opposition to the giveaway proposal. In the two weeks before the motion was raised in the board, LAUSD held "town hall" meetings all over the city to hear community input about improving existing schools and visions for the 50 new schools.
Activists from our Progressive Educators for Action (PEAC) caucus in the LA teachers union attended the town hall meetings to talk to parents about the motion, the issues at stake, and the possibilities for building coalitions for progressive school reform. In one of the town halls in the predominantly Latino suburb Maywood, 37 of the 40 speakers spoke against privatization of the schools.
Opposition in this particular neighborhood can be attributed to well-organized parent and community groups, such as Maywood Unidos, which have fought not only to make Maywood a sanctuary city for immigrants, but also for community access to schools. At a brand-new school built in the neighborhood, Maywood Academy, only 40 percent of the students last year were actually from Maywood. Students who lived right across the street couldn't get access.
Similarly, a self-organized group of parents at Garfield High School has been fighting against a takeover of their school by the charter schools operator Green Dot. And the community organization ACORN organized opposition to the privatization resolution.
In contrast to these groups, other organizations claiming to represent "the community" supported the motion. For example, the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund, Inner City Struggle and Community Coalition all took positions in favor of the proposal, probably hoping that they will be able to gain full or partial control over some of the new schools.
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OUTSIDE THE school board meeting, both supporters and opponents of the motion held rallies.
Green Dot, which has been funded with millions of dollars from the Eli Broad Foundation, supports a "parent organization" called Parent Revolution that held a demonstration, complete with Mayor Villaraigosa speaking. Over 1,000 people attended, wearing pre-printed blue shirts.
Some of the attendees reported that they had been offered $10 or community service hours to attend the rally. But among attendees, there were certainly parents who sincerely want to fight for school reform and believe this proposal will help them to do it.
Our union, United Teachers Los Angeles (UTLA), wrote an open letter to these parents explaining our opposition to key aspects of the motion, and many of us spent time talking to parents. Among those whose genuine concern is for social justice for their children, there is huge potential for building alliances when we point out that the only way to get real reform is for parents, teachers and students to unite and fight for more resources and democracy.
With this goal in mind, PEAC activists have set out to formulate a vision for reform that we can build with parents and students. This vision includes the basic principles of access, equity, excellence, public management, local control, sustainability and commitment to collective bargaining rights.
UTLA has also formed a "reform committee." Inside this committee, debates exist about some of the pilot school and innovation division projects already existing in LAUSD. At some schools, special agreements with the mayor, extra resources, more local control over budgets and curriculum, and special partnerships with community organizations have been traded for thinned-down union contracts. The jury is still out on whether these schools are really providing more "innovation" and local control.
Though the union as a whole did not commit fully to the kind of alliances with parents that we should have in the first round of this fight, the potential to organize around the issue of equal access to excellent education is very strong.
If we attempt to include parents and students in the fight for access for all to quality public schools, we could stop the mayor and his charter school allies from privatizing our schools, and fight to shape those schools according to the visions of parents, teachers and students. We now have to counter their agenda with ours, school by school.
A farcical forum on a new KIPP charter school slated to be place in IS 195 in Harlem took place on Thursday. A KIPP middle school has existed in the building for a number of years, slowly eating up space, forcing teachers to re-locate classrooms, even in the middle of the year.
The proposal is for KIPP STAR to place a 9th grade, with 45 students from throughout the city, into the building, supposedly for only one year.
Teachers at IS 195 literally found out about the new KIPP STAR High School last week! [Ed Note: We have known about the KIPP STAR HS since the spring.] They discovered piles of school/teacher materials dumped into the boys and girls locker rooms. Unbelievably, KIPP generously offered to pay for the materials to be placed into a storage space. Presumably, teachers would be able to pick up these materials during their lunch breaks?
About 15-20 IS 195 teachers showed up to the hearing, in addition to someone whoa few ACORN people came, a DOE representative, a UFT representative, and 2 GEM'ers came. One woman from SUNY came, only to "listen" and report back to the SUNY board. Nobody from KIPP STAR charter school bothered to show up. Nobody argued in favor of the charter school being there.
I know the 195 teachers saw Norm's blog the night before and came because of that. Teachers from IS 195 made comments to the effect that they expect the DOE to eventually attempt to completely phase out IS 195. Teachers at 195 stated that they assumed the high school would be staying for more than one year, not a bad assumption given the track record of charters in other places.
As with other schools, this is not a "failing" school, even by the D.O.E.'s skewed standards. Many teachers there had been in the building for 10, 15 or more years (in one case, 31 years!), and pointed to the improvements that they have seen in the school. Teachers also raised concerns that placing a high school within a middle school setting would not be good.
Finally, the hearing itself was decried as a farce by everyone there. As work had already begun on the KIPP STAR rooms and with only days left before the school year begins, how could they really be getting input from the community? Certainly, there was little effort put forward in advertising this hearing, as teachers at IS 195 only found out about it at 8 a.m. the morning before, and parents and community members were not made aware of the hearing.
GEM representatives announced the upcoming "Truth About Charter Schools Forum" this coming Wednesday and got contact info from a bunch of teachers.
The office of Charter Schools justifies their attempt to pull kids out of DoE schools and into Charters as a way to equalize the demographics in those two separate education tracks.
This is a rhetorical justification that the reality does not bear out.
The reason charters do not serve students with additional learning needs, such as ELL, ED or any needs beyond SETTS is NOT because the students did not know they are an option.
This is not a marketing problem- it is a pedagogical or philosophical one.
To whit- in District One (Lower East Side of Manhattan) the average special ed population in district elementary schools is around 15% - these are students in CTT or self contained classes or are students in D75 who are mainstreamed in gen ed programs. In our Middle schools this district average jumps to 21%.
Yet the charters located in District school buildings - which serve some 11% of our district students - DO NOT OFFER ONE SINGLE CTT or SELF CONTAINED CLASS.
How is sending those kids brochures, letters, or post cards going to close that service gap?
If your child has an IEP that spells out the learning environment and services he or she needs, and your local charter schools does not offer said services what are you going to do?
Look elsewhere to enroll your child.
Charter schools, which use public tax dollars and public school buildings can afford to provide lots of nice extras- like small class size, enrichment classes, longer days, etc. in part because they do not need to serve the neediest of our children.
This nation is rushing towards a system of separate and unequal schools where, among other segregating practices, the families of our most vulnerable kids understand that they NEED NOT APPLY to charters.
Lisa Donlan
CEC One
| The Coalition for Public Education/ Parent, Educator and Student Power! Telephone (212) 561-7368 For Immediate Press Release: Contact: Jitu Weusi (718) 773-2252 (718) 857-1427 Sam Anderson: (917) 671-8207 The Coalition for Public Education will host a Founding Day Convention on Saturday, August 29, 2009 at DC 37 Headquarters. DC 37 is located at 125 Barclay Street in lower Manhattan near the Westside Highway. In attendance at the Convention will be the following public officials partaking in a panel discussion on the current trends in public education and the recent debate on mayoral control of the school governance system in New York. The elected officials confirmed for the convention are: Senator Eric Adams Senator Bill Perkins City Councilman Charles Barron City Councilman Robert Jackson TV Personality Camille Yarbrough NYS Assemblywoman Inez Barron NYS Assemblyman Nelson Castro NYS Assemblyman Alan Maisel NYC Mayoral Candidate Tony Avella NYC Candidate for Public Advocate Norman Siegel WBAI Radio Personality Basir Mchawi During the Convention members of the Coalition for Public Education will facilitate four Caucuses identified below engaging convention participants in a discussions pertaining to public concerns regarding parental rights, youth advocacy, labor issues of educators/school staff and community concerns about neighborhood school control. Parent Caucus-facilitated by Muba Yarofulani, Anne Kjellzer and Brenda Walker Youth Caucus-facilitated by Abu Muhammad and Rodney Deas Educator/School Staff Caucus-facilitated by Linda Williams, Mark Torres, Lilly Taylor and Nicola DeMarco Community Caucus-facilitated by Jitu Weusi, Mark Rodriguez and Roy Burrowes ############################################################################## |
While news of the lawsuit pushed the DOE to back off and give us another "chance", it did not stop Harlem Success from being given the green light to move into the building anyway and target our students to fill their spots.
Our parents received heavy mailings, phone calls, and personal visits, as Harlem Success employees stood outside the school building at every dismissal accosting parents and cajoling them into signing up for HS. Staff members were told by parents just how persuasive and persistent Moskowitz's team was and wondered if they really had a choice. All the while DOE and Moskowitz/HS staffers were in and out of our building, offices, classrooms- sizing up what they wanted and making plans to get their way.
Her people even walked in and out of classrooms- DURING lessons (without asking our permission) and hovered daily after school in certain rooms (my office in particular as she practically drooled over where she would put her desk, etc. ) It was offensive, disrespectful, and inappropriate! But, DOE once again, gave M her free reign- at the expense of the two other schools already housed there (Opportunity Charter School has been in the building since 2006-2007 as well, chipping away more and more space each year.)
We acknowledge that our enrollment is dropping- certainly partly in due to the myriad of Charter Schools in the area sending their beautiful full-color brochures and promising longer hours (daycare!) and sometime monetary rewards as well for students to transfer out of the public schools. Add a well-funded, pushy Harlem Success Academy to the mix and we do not stand a chance!
Our funding has been cut so that we can not provide much in the way of after-school programs, so when they offer an opportunity to attend their school which starts at 7:00 and ends at 4:30- what parent would decline?
And now, we have had to give up so much space to HSA. Mind you they were caught in the spring time stacking their enrollment numbers to nearly impossible numbers so as to gain more space than needed. Our principal called them on this and M had to admit she had less than previously stated. Who knows what else she lied about. The DOE blindly accepted- seemingly happy to shove PS 241 out of the way?
Our Middle School students will be relegated to several classrooms in the basement, our principal has given up her office (adjacent to the main office) to a first grade classroom, we have lost our Art Studio, our elementary school science lab, our teachers lounge, parent room, offices for pull-out instruction, and now must share the gym, school yard and cafeteria with two schools. One can only wonder what time lunch will be served?
Recess will go on forever with the screams and laughter that permeates the classrooms and disturb the learning environment (the school yard is situated in a courtyard fashion) – no problem when it was only for an hour a day- but now?
Moskowitz is trying to smooth out the wrinkles by purchasing our silence and complacency. She has offered the following: new cafeteria tables, new gymnasium, new auditorium.
If these were so sorely needed, shouldn't our own DOE have made arrangements??? Don't our students deserve things too!
They have completely renovated the wing HSA took over: air conditioners (our students did not have any), new walls, new doors, smart boards in every room, beautiful cubbies placed in the hallway so as to leave more room for who knows what kind of furniture and other goodies that have an overabundance of money to purchase.
They also have staff members manning the hallways providing the much needed security to keep our students and staff members (and those of Opportunity Charter School) out.
This is just what I know about- I am sure there is much, much more!
I know our cafeteria staff and custodial staff members will be working longer hours (extended meal prep and serving, longer hours for custodial staff as their school day is longer and their teachers stay until 9-10 in the evening and request to come in over the weekend as well.)
Who pays for this? DOE, not HSA!
The last item I will mention- due to HSA moving in - our entire school has had to be shifted from one wing (separate building) to another and redistributed over four floors with several classes isolated either in the basement or on the third floor with the other Charter school.
Every classroom had to be moved. Every classroom teacher spent countless hours packing up during the last week of school– not just into closets,etc. as usual, but into packing boxes that could only hold a specified number of pounds. Boxes were supplied by DOE but ran short early on.
Teachers were overwhelmed with trying to teach and supervise their students while also ensure that no item was left behind. No teachers were compensated for this extra work- not in time or money. No movers were brought in until the teachers did all the packing. The movers simply moved boxes from one room to another.
Our custodial staff still had to clean up and move all the boxes themselves in order to do do. It is a MESS! Now, as we get set to return to school we are invited in to come next week- one week early, to start unpacking and setting up our classrooms.
The principal has tried- to no avail- to get DOE funding to compensate us for the amount of time it will take to start over this year. We know many teachers chose to come in early on their own - but this is not the normal new classroom set up! With everyone doing their best- boxes are still everywhere. Furniture is an issue as elementary classes will now be housed in previously middle school rooms. It will take a monumental effort an everyone's part to get classrooms up and running. However- teachers must volunteer their own time to do this. No help will be available to move boxes- many of which are stacked high- and remember what is in a classroom and imagine the weight in some of these boxes.
How can this be allowed?
How can DOE make us move and do nothing but provide one-time movers with no time, support, or understanding of what it will take to give our students warm, inviting classrooms to come back to on Sept. 9?
Forget what will be a stark and painful difference between the HSA classrooms that many of their friends, siblings and neighbors will be sitting in around the corner?
I am, and will probably remain,
SHOCKED IN HARLEM!
Good Morning All-
As some off you may have heard- DOE will not be closing the school down- they have been put off by the lawsuit! This is not a true victory however.
Please read the letter being sent to the parents carefully.
Parents are still being bullied to send their students to other schools.
Harlem Success Academy will still be placed in our building.
Middle school will be phased out.
Where will there be room for HSA? We would only lose our grade 6 students. We will be attempting to get back all of our parents who were forced to apply elsewhere- but how will they all be housed? Sharing facilities with 3 schools- how? We already do not have use of our gym- and struggle to share the other common areas with another charter school in the building. We will lose classrooms, we will lose our art room, we will have to figure out lunch and breakfast times and children will be eating at all kinds of hours.
PS 242 [another Harlem school]- has shown that three buildings cannot live peacefully and successfully in one facility without children suffering. Also- DOE says that if students come back to the school- and if 241 progresses well (by what standards and whose say so) we will stay open- otherwise we will still be closed. That means with HSA already in the building- they can take over. They will still have a way to rezone illegally in the future.
This must stop. This is not a victory- they have only shifted that battle.
and its attendant graphic
there have been some developments that make the situation worse than it seems and we may see these lines cross sooner than we thought. I actually heard another favorable report on Rhee on NPR (funded by Bill Gates) today where the commentator actually said Rhee was struggling to keep kids in the public schools. I had to pull over to the side of the road. They just don't get it. That Rhee - and Klein, et al. - were chosen to preside over the demise of the public school system, not its resurgence. Their goal is to one day have zero schools under their direct management so they can be left to go to press conferences at successful charters, whose $370,000 a year CEOs will bow and scrape in genuflecting thanks.
Gary Imhoff writes in DC-based themail
Leah Fabel’s article in the Examiner is well summarized by its headline writer:
“Enrollment in DC Schools Plunges as Students Go Elsewhere” (http://tinyurl.com/mc9moq).
“By Monday’s first school bell, charters project at least 28,000 students, or about 2,400 more than last year, while DC Public Schools expect about 45,000, or 2,000 fewer than in spring.”
Chancellor Michelle Rhee’s leadership continues to drive students away from DC public schools and to shrink the public school system, and she continues to escape public criticism for it.
But she realizes that her Teflon coating can’t last forever, so she also continues to make optimistic predictions that stand little to no chance of coming true: “Rhee said she expects regular public schools’ declines to level off by next year and enrollment to creep up soon afterward.”
One person who understands the importance of keeping an urban school district’s enrollment figures up is Robert Bobb, DC’s former city administrator and school board president, who this year is in Detroit as the emergency financial manager of its schools, trying to persuade and beg parents to keep their children in the public schools (http://townhall.com/news/us/2009/08/22/robert_bobb_hits_streets_to_coax_students_back).
Gary Imhoff
themail@dcwatch.com
And Bill Tourke (thanks to DR for the tip) in the Washington Post.
37,000 to Start D.C. Public Schools Today, Well Below Budget FigureWritten By: Washington Post
Despite an advertising campaign and an early push to sign up students, the D.C. public school system will begin classes Monday with an enrollment of about 37,000 -- 17 percent below the total at the end of the last academic year, officials said over the weekend.
Rhee, City Had Agreed to Plan on Almost 45,000 Students
By Bill Turque
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, August 24, 2009
Despite an advertising campaign and an early push to sign up students, the D.C. public school system will begin classes Monday with an enrollment of about 37,000 -- 17 percent below the total at the end of the last academic year, officials said over the weekend.
Enrollment in regular public schools often grows during the year, as students and parents complete paperwork and some transfer from public charter schools. But a spokeswoman for Schools Chancellor Michelle A. Rhee declined to predict whether the system would reach 44,681 -- the audited enrollment figure from last school year and the basis for its $760 million 2010 budget.
Moreover, because the school system moved up the start of its annual enrollment process from July to April, the late surge could be smaller than usual.
"We anticipate a much smoother start to school with fewer families needing to enroll during the first few days," said Jennifer Calloway, Rhee's spokeswoman. She added that last year at this time, only 15,000 students had completed enrollment.
In addition to a radio and bus sign ad campaign ("Go public and get a great free education!" said some spots), principals visited homes, held community barbecues and conducted enrollment fairs in concert with immunization clinics held by the District's health department.
Regular public school enrollment in the District has declined by more than half since 1980, while the public charter community has grown dramatically since the independently operated schools began in the 1990s.
More than a third of the city's public students attend charter schools, which project an enrollment of about 28,066 this fall, up more than 10 percent from last school year's 25,363. Some analysts say public charter enrollment could surpass the regular school population by 2014.
The vastly different trends have made enrollment politically contentious. Rhee has said she expects persistent declines to bottom out, with the school system's numbers perhaps starting to edge upward. But the D.C. Council voted May 12 to hold back $27 million of the 2010 budget, because it found implausible her projections for an increase of 373 students, to a total of 45,054.
Council members contended that the charter schools would be drawing more students from regular schools. The council projected regular public school enrollment at 41,541, based on trends from the previous three years. Both sides eventually agreed to use last school year's number -- 44,681 -- as the benchmark.
D.C. Council Chairman Vincent C. Gray (D) said Sunday that the 37,000 total is "probably low," given the school system's history of late enrollment. But he added: "I do question the likelihood of getting 7,681 enrolled between now and the first of October," when the first official count is taken.
Middelhoff, Joel Klein's former boss, laughing at the joke of a NYC School system he helped bring about through his promotion of Joel Klein.AT COUNTERPUNCH
Inside the New Print Edition of Our Subscriber-Only Newsletter!
New York Times Director Probed for "Breach of Trust"
To the Sulzberger family that controls the New York Times he has been the ultimate Good German. High-flying Thomas Middelhoff took New York by storm, buying Random House for Bertelsmann, invited onto the NYT board, a member of its compensation committee. Read Eamonn Fingleton’s exclusive on how Middelhoff has crashed to earth and how the NYT has buried the story.| In Wake of Bankruptcy, a German Executive Faces Two Inquiries |
Steven Brill has a reputation for being a media wise man—a deep-thinking mogul who's always spotting the opportunities of The Future. Which is kind of strange, since the majority of his projects have been ostentatious failures.
Brill's latest company, "Clear," which was supposed to save rich people a half hour standing in security lines at airports in exchange for $128 a year, is shutting down. Let's do a quick and dirty balance sheet of Brill's successes and failures—keeping in mind that to do your best is all your mom really asks.
Successes
The American Lawyer: Brill launched what would become the nation's leading legal magazine in 1979. This is not an unqualified success, though, since American Lawyer Media (now Incisive Media) is having problems right now.
Court TV: Brill created the network (now truTV) in 1991. After receiving a huge popularity boost from the OJ Simpson trial, it was sold it to Time Warner in 1997. For which Brill got a tidy sum.
Emily Brill: Steven's daughter, the ultimate narrator.
Failures
Brill's Content: Launched in 1998, this mediacentric mag was supposed to capitalize on America's insatiable thirst for news about the news! Turned out not that many people really care about the news about the news. Not enough to pay money, at least. Stopped publishing in 2001.
Contentville.com: A website selling "a variety of content ranging from thesis papers to ebooks." Closed in 2001.
Inside.com: The legendary media site that launched the careers of many top media reporters and also failed to make any money. The magazine version of Inside was merged with Brill's Content, and the website was part of a convoluted plan with Primedia to corner the market on media trade publications, but the whole thing was shuttered in 2001.
Clear: In the post-9/11 world, Brill noticed, airport security sure was a hassle. People would pay to be "verified" beforehand so they could breeze right through! Right? 165,000 people did, reportedly, and Clear raised more than $100 million from investors, but now it's dead, unable to afford to keep going.
Brill also wrote a couple books which didn't sell all that well and a column for Newsweek, but you can judge those on their own merits. He's not out of the game, though—his other ongoing venture is Journalism Online, a company that plans to help various magazines and newspapers charge readers for online access. Bet on it!
The picture was mixed for 10 schools overseen by appointees of Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa. At one school, Markham Middle School in Watts, test scores declined slightly. On the brighter side, test scores bumped up strongly at 99th Street Elementary.
Overall, scores at these schools rose, but so did scores at most other district schools, and the mayor’s schools did not ostensibly separate themselves from the pack.
