‘Go Public’: A Film That Champions Public Education
By Anita Merina
It’s a familiar story. A tax bill designed to generate much-needed funding for local public schools is soundly defeated by voters, who, post-election polling reveals, cite images of failing schools, teachers who care little for the students in their classrooms, and parents who’d rather leave the public school system.When this happened in Pasadena, California, filmmakers and public school parents Jim and Dawn O’Keeffe didn’t get mad, they got busy. “We were told by people that the main source for voters’ negative views about our public schools were films like Waiting for Superman, and anti-public education campaigns by so-called education reformers, they never went inside our schools to see what they were really like,” explains Jim O’Keeffe, a director and cinematographer and professor at USC School of Cinematic Arts. “We realized this was our chance to give the public a look at what’s really happening inside our schools. If the voters had been in the schools and seen the great things happening there, perhaps the parcel tax vote outcome would have been different.”
The result? Go Public: A Day in the Life of an American School District, a documentary in which 50 small-camera crews followed a wide-ranging group of individuals who attend, support, and work in the Pasadena Unified School District, a racially and economically diverse district of 28 public school campuses. Screening in theaters during American Education Week and in the coming months. Go Public tells the story of one full day, from sun up to long after sundown.
“Teachers, students, custodians, principals, volunteers, and parents are shown during a typical day, doing all of the things to make a public school district function,” says Go Public producer Dawn O’Keeffe. “Too much focus has been placed on what supposedly is broken in public school education. Our documentary
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‘Go Public’: A Film That Champions Public Education
By Anita Merina It’s a familiar story. A tax bill designed to generate much-needed funding for local public schools is soundly defeated by voters, who, post-election polling reveals, cite images of failing schools, teachers who care little for the students in their classrooms, and parents who’d rather leave the public school system. When this happened in Pasadena, California, filmmakers and public school parents Jim and Dawn O’Keeffe didn’t get mad, they got busy. “We were told by people that the main source for voters’ negative views about our public schools were films like Waiting for Superm
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