Tuesday's elections disastrous for inBloom: Seven states out, two to go
Big News from Jefferson County, the only inBloom pilot district in Colorado. Anti-inBloom candidates swept the school board elections on Tuesday night, on Thursday their Superintendent resigned, and the existing school board unanimously voted to scrap inBloom. The school board president, Leslee Dahlkemper, was quoted as saying, "We decided that it was important to listen to the community." Congrats to the parents of Jefferson County, and especially activist Rachael Stickland who led the fight! SeeColumbine Courier, Colorado News, Michelle Malkin’s column , Politico and EdWeek.
Now, only two states remain from the nine original inBloom “partners”: New York and Illinois.
In Illinois, parent coalition More than a Score, along with the Chicago Teachers Union, have just begun the fight. The Illinois Federation of Teachers passed a resolution against sharing any personal student data to vendors without consent, and I am going to speak at apublic forum on inBloom in Chicago on November 21.
Here in New York, we are gaining strength every day. On Tuesday, New Yorkers elected Bill de Blasio as Mayor by a huge margin. De Blasio is already on record against inBloom, having written a letter last spring to the State Education Department and the NYC DOE opposing this, repeating his opposition this fall, and vowing to pull student data out of the inBloom cloud as soon as possible.
District leaders and schoolboards throughout the state are speaking out in protest, turning back Race to the Top funds, and refusing