Sunday, August 19, 2012

School Tech Connect: Come Out To The Heartland!

School Tech Connect: Come Out To The Heartland!:


Come Out To The Heartland!

On my calendar for August 28, at Heartland Cafe:

Dangerously informed, ordinary citizen Don Washington is hosting a Tutorial Fund Raiser for Raise Your Hand on education. On the eve of a possible strike in a city that can find $5.3 million to finance a billionaire member of the unelected school board’s latest hotel and millions for turnaround and charters while disinvesting in neighborhood schools surely there is a logical explanation. Such are the ironies and absurdities under the rule of our new Mayor/Overlord Rahm Emanuel. Did teacher’s pensions and lavish pay cause the city all this financial trouble? Aren’t Charter Schools far and away the best schools in Chicago? Isn’t an elected school board the worst idea in a democratic state? We'll be playing games, learning things, taunting the powerful and answering all of these questions and more!

Raise Your Hand For Illinois Public Education is worth $25, and so is an evening with Don Washington. In the time since I transformed this space from a tech blog to a war blog, what I've learned is that the good guys are already organized and that the people fighting for the great American public school system are already going door-to-door with clipboards. Come out and meet them! 

I have a crazy little prediction, by the way. I was thinking about how Rahm has been governing, and it occurs to me that he thinks that the 23% of registered voters that he won last time comprised some kind of mandate to act like Napoleon. Well, I'm just here to say that I think that the elected, representative school board question is going to get at least that. And then what? Will the people be wrong? 

Oh, and by the way, follow @MSGunderson. She rocks.