From a teacher’s perspective: The PTA needs to do their homework on Democracy. Go to an Occupation
Written by Dan Trocolli, a Seattle Teacher and member of Social Equality Educators
I started my Saturday morning going to the Washington State Parent Teacher Association (PTA) Legislative Assembly to assist parents in Parents Across America-Seattle, an activist group of parents, in opposing charter school legislation in the state of Washington. It wasn’t easy waking up at 6:00 AM on a Saturday, but I knew it was important that people know the negative effect that charter schools can have on our public schools.
As a teacher, one would think that parents in the PTA would be very interested in hearing from teachers about significant changes to Washington laws on delivering public education to their children, particularly given the fact that teachers are underrepresented in PTA’s around the country. Imagine my shock when approaching a group of parents in the hotel lobby with flyers, one woman tore the flyers out of my hand in a hysterical rage then went up to my colleague, another teacher, and ripped the flyers from her hands as well and then threw them in the trashcan!
I wanted to let delegates in the PTA know how charters have a higher teacher turnover, unfairly exclude under-performing students and siphon money from other public schools. However, we were unable to continue handin
