Education is the Civil Right of the 21st Century: Whose Vision? Duncan? Bloomberg/Klein? Weingarten? Increasingly the Department’s Children First Initiative Is Being Perceived As a Powerful, White, Elite Plutocracy Imposing Their Will on Communities of Color. � Ed In The Apple

Education is the Civil Right of the 21st Century: Whose Vision? Duncan? Bloomberg/Klein? Weingarten? Increasingly the Department’s Children First Initiative Is Being Perceived As a Powerful, White, Elite Plutocracy Imposing Their Will on Communities of Color. � Ed In The Apple:

Over two thousand parents, kids, teachers, and just plain angry folk in the cavernous Brooklyn Tech auditorium and another thousand or so outside. The crowd, with signs and flyers and pins, black and brown and white, young and old, confronting the members of the Panel on Educational Priorities (PEP) and Department higher ups, almost all white.

 

For nine hours speaker after speaker confronted PEP Chair David Chang and Joel Klein. Impassioned pleas from current and former students, from parents, from teachers, from outside agencies who work with the school, electeds and Community Education Council (CEC) members.

 

Many of the speakers were community members, Afro-Americans, who accused the officials on the stage of racism  to exuberant cheers from the immense crowd. More than nine hours later, after hundreds of speakers the mayoral appointees plus the Staten Island rep voted to close the nineteen schools.

 

Can a Mayor and a Chancellor survive growing accusations of racism?