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Sunday, April 21, 2013

RPNPS Voices: Some Excellent Recent Reading

RPNPS Voices: Some Excellent Recent Reading:

Some Excellent Recent Reading

Two really remarkable essays, in case you missed them.

First, Schools Are The Foundations of Communities, by Professor Timuel D. Black. It's a beautiful piece of writing, about a notion of public education that totally escapes the current administration.
I am old enough to know the story. Once these public assets are given away to private charter school operators, or sold off to condominium developers, that is public space we can’t get back. Once it’s gone, it’s gone. We need only refer to the parking-meter debacle to understand how poor a decision it is to give up control of public assets and public space. The notion that this will somehow be a money-saver (or a money-maker) for the school system is at best an illusion. Is it possible that the real mission of the proposed school closings is to clear out the schools and hand them over to private operators? It appears today that our public schools — the institutions which have transmitted democratic values to our young — are being transferred from the less fortunate to the more fortunate.
Second, a ranging yet completely lucid history called Here's where we've been, Barbara Byrd Bennet, written by Karen Fraid in response to another one of Ms. Byrd Bennett's