Monday, August 20, 2012

All power to…. « Deborah Meier on Education

All power to…. « Deborah Meier on Education:




All power to….

For some time parents have been the target of the new orporate “reformers” – promoting power to the parent as their rallying cry. The tool? They are called “Trigger Laws”–which enable schools to be take over by private charter companies if 51% of the parents vote to do so. They have hold of a legitimate idea–more on that later. But it’s worth noting that once they decide they decide “yes”, the parents lose all their new-found voting power, furthermore the law does not give them the right to vote to go back to being public. (Nor can other charter parents reverse the process with a 51% vote.) Along with vouchers–an outright proposal to pay parents a flat fee if they


Supporting the Chicago Teachers

Kipp Dawson, again:
Kipp Dawson2:00pm Aug 20
CHICAGO teachers on the front lines for ALL of us. PLEASE share this and let’s make support for the Chicago Teachers Union part of what we do when we go back to work. Thank you, good people everywhere!
http://chicago.cbslocal.com/2012/08/20/chicago-teachers-picket-demand-new-contract/


Organize

I liked this e-mail piece from Kipp Dawson.
From
Kipp Dawson9:22am Aug 2
…Since I posted this link an hour ago, this additional comment has been posted: “So many teachers here are suffering economically and their own families’ lives are suffe
ring. Overloaded classrooms, overloaded grading and stress get carried home to families. The furlough days are now moving into furlough week(s) and any new expenditure from the system is met with fatalistic response from teachers, oh well, ….. Teachers who can retire have done so….. Stand up for Chicago, Stand UP for teachers.Let them do their jobs.”
Thanks Kipp, especially for the details in all those responses. A old-time unionist (Joe Hill) once said, “Don’t mourn, organize”–and it’s become an old-hat slogan. I might add, “do’t whine” to it. So it makes me happy to see organized teachers in Chicago using their solidarity to restore a balance of power. It’s harder in NYC (where strikes are both illegal and fiscally expensive), but we need the equivalent. It’s not easy for teachers to realize