Webinar; Journey For Justice 2
Save Our Schools Webinar
Webinar; Journey For Justice 2
with Karran Harper Royal Lewis, Jitu Brown, and Zakiyah Ansari
January 15, 2013 – 8:30 PM Eastern Daylight Time [EDT}
Please Join Us!
The Civil Rights Impact of School Closings, Turnarounds, Phase-outs and Co-locations inquiry will be held on January 29th. Through this Webinar, organizers, individuals who are Leaders in their Communities, Jitu, Zakiyah, and Karran, will discuss the upcoming Department of Education Civil Rights Division Hearing.
The topic: “The ways in which these programs devastate communities of color will be studied at length.”
Statements from parents, community leaders, students and educators will address the adverse and detrimental effects of School Closings, turnarounds, co-locations and phase-outs. Speakers will share their experiences of how the impact of these programs disproportionately affects our black and brown students.
The inquiry will take place at the Department of Education offices in Washington DC.
Immediately following the Civil Rights hearing at the Department of Education, a Candlelight vigil will be held at Martin Luther King Memorial.
Please Join Us!
Speak in Support of Our Children, Our Communities and how stable Classrooms and Schools Strengthen these.
Karran Harper Royal
Karran Harper Royal – Parents Across America – New Orleans, Louisiana
Karran Harper Royal works as an Education Advocate in New Orleans. She is the Assistant Director ofPyramid Community Parent Resource Center. Her work at Pyramid involves providing one to one support to parents of children with disabilities and conducting workshops to help parents understand their rights under federal special education law. In addition to working with Pyramid, Mrs. Harper Royal is a founding member ofParents Across America, a contributor to Research on Reforms and is a consultant to the Southern Poverty Law Center.
Mrs. Harper Royal is a tireless advocate for students with disabilities and has appeared in a number of broadcasts and publications related to Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) and public education reform in New Orleans and is a member of several community groups. She is married with two sons Mrs. Harper Royal blogs at Education Talk New Orleans.
On Twitter…@KHRoyal
Jitu Brown
Jitu Brown. Organizer, Kenwood Oakland Community Organization (KOCO)
Jitu Brown, married and father of one child, is the education organizer for the Kenwood Oakland Community Organization (KOCO). Born and raised on the south side of Chicago, Jitu has organized in the Kenwood Oakland neighborhood for over 17 years bringing community voices to the table on school issues. He helped develop theMid-South Education Association, a grassroots advocacy group made up of administrators, parents, teachers, young people and local school council (LSC) members to meet the needs of schools in the area. They were the first group to certify parents as LSC facilitators, which has become a model being replicated across the city of Chicago. In addition, they successfully organized to stop several school closings in the area and secured resources for neglected neighborhood schools. The Kenwood Oakland Community Organization has served as a resource for organizations nationwide, dealing with school closings and the elimination of community voice from the decision-making process.
Jitu also teaches African-American history at St. Leonards Adult High School, the only accredited high school in that nation that exclusively serves people who have been formerly incarcerated. A believer in working locally and thinking globally, Jitu has taken youth leaders from KOCO to the United Nations, to the Passamaquoddy Native American reservation in Maine and to the UN Conference on Racism in South Africa. He has been published in the national education journal, Rethinking Schools, Ebony magazine and has appeared on several talk shows, including WBEZ’s Community Voices and CLTV’s Gerard McClendon Live, as well as Democracy Now.
Zakiyah Ansari
Zakiyah Ansari – Advocacy Director, NYC Coalition for Educational Justice (CEJ)
Zakiyah Ansar. is a parent leader with the NYC Coalition for Educational Justice (CEJ) one of NYC’s leading citywide parent organizations CEJ is organizing a movement to end the inequities in the city’s public school system. They are motivated by the urgent need to obtain a quality and well-rounded education for all students. They have been mobilizing the power of parents and the community to affect policy change and create a more equitable educational system.
Zakiyah resides in the East Flatbush neighborhood of Brooklyn, NY. She is also the mother of eight children, all of whom have or are currently attending public school.
Zakiyah has been invited to speak before parents, educators, elected officials and administrators about the importance of organizing parents and communities in schools. She is one of the parent voices in the film Parent Power produced by the Annenberg Institute for School Reform. Parent Power chronicles fifteen years of effective parent organizing in New York City – organizing that has stopped budget cuts , increased school funding, and led to the adoption of a citywide lead teacher program . She has been traveling to different parts of the country to participate in parent and community discussions about the film.
Zakiyah was in the December 2011 issue of Essence magazine where she was 1 of 3 women of color interviewed at Occupy Wall Street. She was also in the December 2011 issue of Black Enterprise entitled“Education Means Business”? where she was interviewed about organizing to effect change.
On Twitter…@zansari8
Webinar; Journey For Justice 2
with Karran Harper Royal Lewis, Jitu Brown, and Zakiyah Ansari
January 15, 2013 – 8:30 PM Eastern Daylight Time [EDT}
The Civil Rights Impact of School Closings, Turnarounds, Phase-outs and Co-locations inquiry will be held on January 29th. Through this Webinar, organizers, individuals who are Leaders in their Communities, Jitu, Zakiyah, and Karran, will discuss the upcoming Department of Education Civil Rights Division Hearing.
The topic: “The ways in which these programs devastate communities of color will be studied at length.”
Statements from parents, community leaders, students and educators will address the adverse and detrimental effects of School Closings, turnarounds, co-locations and phase-outs. Speakers will share their experiences of how the impact of these programs disproportionately affects our black and brown students.
The inquiry will take place at the Department of Education offices in Washington DC.
Immediately following the Civil Rights hearing at the Department of Education, a Candlelight vigil will be held at Martin Luther King Memorial.
Please Join Us!
Speak in Support of Our Children, Our Communities and how stable Classrooms and Schools Strengthen these.
Karran Harper Royal
Karran Harper Royal – Parents Across America – New Orleans, Louisiana
Karran Harper Royal works as an Education Advocate in New Orleans. She is the Assistant Director ofPyramid Community Parent Resource Center. Her work at Pyramid involves providing one to one support to parents of children with disabilities and conducting workshops to help parents understand their rights under federal special education law. In addition to working with Pyramid, Mrs. Harper Royal is a founding member ofParents Across America, a contributor to Research on Reforms and is a consultant to the Southern Poverty Law Center.
Mrs. Harper Royal is a tireless advocate for students with disabilities and has appeared in a number of broadcasts and publications related to Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) and public education reform in New Orleans and is a member of several community groups. She is married with two sons Mrs. Harper Royal blogs at Education Talk New Orleans.
On Twitter…@KHRoyalJitu Brown
Jitu Brown. Organizer, Kenwood Oakland Community Organization (KOCO)
Jitu Brown, married and father of one child, is the education organizer for the Kenwood Oakland Community Organization (KOCO). Born and raised on the south side of Chicago, Jitu has organized in the Kenwood Oakland neighborhood for over 17 years bringing community voices to the table on school issues. He helped develop theMid-South Education Association, a grassroots advocacy group made up of administrators, parents, teachers, young people and local school council (LSC) members to meet the needs of schools in the area. They were the first group to certify parents as LSC facilitators, which has become a model being replicated across the city of Chicago. In addition, they successfully organized to stop several school closings in the area and secured resources for neglected neighborhood schools. The Kenwood Oakland Community Organization has served as a resource for organizations nationwide, dealing with school closings and the elimination of community voice from the decision-making process.
Jitu also teaches African-American history at St. Leonards Adult High School, the only accredited high school in that nation that exclusively serves people who have been formerly incarcerated. A believer in working locally and thinking globally, Jitu has taken youth leaders from KOCO to the United Nations, to the Passamaquoddy Native American reservation in Maine and to the UN Conference on Racism in South Africa. He has been published in the national education journal, Rethinking Schools, Ebony magazine and has appeared on several talk shows, including WBEZ’s Community Voices and CLTV’s Gerard McClendon Live, as well as Democracy Now.
Zakiyah Ansari
Zakiyah Ansari – Advocacy Director, NYC Coalition for Educational Justice (CEJ)
Zakiyah Ansar. is a parent leader with the NYC Coalition for Educational Justice (CEJ) one of NYC’s leading citywide parent organizations CEJ is organizing a movement to end the inequities in the city’s public school system. They are motivated by the urgent need to obtain a quality and well-rounded education for all students. They have been mobilizing the power of parents and the community to affect policy change and create a more equitable educational system.
Zakiyah resides in the East Flatbush neighborhood of Brooklyn, NY. She is also the mother of eight children, all of whom have or are currently attending public school.
Zakiyah has been invited to speak before parents, educators, elected officials and administrators about the importance of organizing parents and communities in schools. She is one of the parent voices in the film Parent Power produced by the Annenberg Institute for School Reform. Parent Power chronicles fifteen years of effective parent organizing in New York City – organizing that has stopped budget cuts , increased school funding, and led to the adoption of a citywide lead teacher program . She has been traveling to different parts of the country to participate in parent and community discussions about the film.
Zakiyah was in the December 2011 issue of Essence magazine where she was 1 of 3 women of color interviewed at Occupy Wall Street. She was also in the December 2011 issue of Black Enterprise entitled“Education Means Business”? where she was interviewed about organizing to effect change.
On Twitter…@zansari8