Shuttered: How America is Selling Out its Schools | Dissident Voice

Shuttered: How America is Selling Out its Schools | Dissident Voice:

Shuttered: How America is Selling Out its Schools

by Peter Rugh

Boos and hisses fill the auditorium of Brooklyn Technical High as the governing board for New York City’s public schools, the Panel on Education Policy, takes the stage. It’s March 11 and the PEP is meeting to consider a proposal from Schools Chancellor Dennis Walcott to close nearly two dozen schools.
Parent after parent, teacher after teacher, student after student takes the microphone and pleads for their school to remain open.
Similar scenarios are consistently playing out in many parts of the country. Officials in Chicago last week announced plans to eliminate fifty-four schools next year in one swoop. The city’s mayor, former Obama White House Chief of Staff, Rahm Emanuel, was on vacation at the time of the announcement and could not be reached for comment.
Earlier this month twenty-three schools got the axe in Philadelphia, about ten percent of the city’s total.