Badass Teachers Association:
Locally Owned and Operated: The Logical Fallacy At the Center of Trump’s Education Plans
By: Cheryl Gibbs Binkley
Throughout Donald Trump’s campaign and in his recent announcements he has come out swinging on education that, "There's no failed policy more in need of change than our government-run education monopoly and you know that's exactly what it is."There’s just one problem. Schools are not a monopoly! In fact, they are the last vestige of the old Mom-and-Pop local democracy holding out against Corporate driven Federal takeover! They are not managed by a single entity.
There are well over 14,000 different local school districts across the country, and 80% of them are managed by locally elected school boards, providing every parent in the district with a direct conduit of someone to meet with, complain to, and fire through the next election if they don’t like the service they are getting. Each school system is directly responsible to the people who own it-- the people in that district.
Each district is different, in size, demographics, and services- just like the locally owned stores that we once had; the locally owned department stores, where you could get alteration services, often for free; the hardware stores where you could get someone who would not only sell you the part, but explain how to put it on; the medical care where you got follow up calls, free samples if the doctor knew you were laid off, and even the occasional house call. That’s the kind of service we still have available from our schools in most communities across the country.
Think about what your child’s teacher does for their classes every day: buying crayons and pencils, supplying newsprint, bandaiding booboos, and keeping extra changes of children’s clothes in their cabinet, just in case, and waiting with them for you to arrive when they miss the bus. The service our children are getting -- when the district is not impoverished, is a very person to person service.
Who then, is so dissatisfied with the schools, that they want them leveled, closed, and remade? Those who would like them to be managed by Corporations (profit and non-profit) whose offices are almost always hundreds of miles away; people like Betsy DeVos, who never attended a public school, and whose children never attended a public school, but who along with her husband contributes heavily toBadass Teachers Association:
