KJ and Michele Rhee: Sacramento Charter High School Students Hold Walk-Out in Protest of School’s Recent Changes | FOX40

Sacramento High School Students Hold Walk-Out in Protest of School’s Recent Changes | FOX40
Sacramento High School Students Hold Walk-Out in Protest of School’s Recent Changes

SACRAMENTO -- Students at Sacramento High School in Oak Park are in open revolt; refusing to return to class until their demands are met by the school’s administration.

At issue is the dismissal of several faculty and staff over the summer and new rules for student’s uniforms and dismissal after class.

“Who’s school? Our school,” students chanted in exclamation.

Between a hundred to two hundred Sacramento High students refused to go to class today. Costing the school state money for every period they miss.

“We have been fighting for years for them to listen and support us as black and Latino kids that is the majority of our population,” stated senior Kiarah Young.

Young says students are furious they came back from summer break to find many teachers and support staff had been let go.

“We barely have any teachers of color this year, over the summer they had fired or let go a majority of them,” Young said.

Juanda Starks says after 16 years working at Sac High as a staff member, her job was cut a week after school let out for summer.

“They told us to reapply, for the positions that they had supposedly consolidated, and when we did, we were off boarded,” said Starks.

But Young says there were also other changes.

Students are now not allowed to stay on campus once school lets out.

“They lock all the doors even before we’re out of school, so nobody can even go back inside. So, we don’t get help from our teachers. And you’re pushed outside of these gates into the streets so many people can’t get picked up till a lot later,” expressed Young.

And Young says the school’s uniform dress code is unacceptable.

“We have to wear pants and it’s a hundred-degree weather,” bemoaned Young.

FOX40 attempted to reach school administrators however, calls and messages sent to St. Hopes. the non-profit which runs the charter school, were not returned.

Students continued to chant, “you can’t stop the revolution,” outside of the school and Stark said she’s proud these students are standing up for what they believe in.

“This is what we taught them, this is what we wanted them to have, self-worth,” said Stark.

Students say they also staged a walk out Monday and Wednesday.

They plan to continue full day walk-outs until school administrators negotiate with them.

Sacramento High School Students Hold Walk-Out in Protest of School’s Recent Changes | FOX40

Billionaires v teachers: the Koch brothers' plan to starve public education | US news | The Guardian

Billionaires v teachers: the Koch brothers' plan to starve public education | US news | The Guardian

Billionaires v teachers: the Koch brothers' plan to starve public education

A small group of women have succeeded in putting a state law promoted by Betsy DeVos and billionaire donors which they see as an attack on public education on the ballot in November

• Are you a teacher? We want to hear from you

rizona has become the hotbed for an experiment rightwing activists hope will redefine America’s schools – an experiment that has pitched the conservative billionaires the Koch brothers and Donald Trump’s controversial education secretary, Betsy DeVos, against teachers’ unions, teachers and parents. Neither side is giving up without a fight.

With groups funded by the Koch brothers and DeVos nudging things along, Arizona lawmakers enacted the nation’s broadest school vouchers law, state-funded vouchers that are supposed to give parents more school choice and can be spent on private or religiously affiliated schools. For opponents, the system is not about choice but about further weakening the public school system. A half-dozen women who had battled for months against the legislation were angry as hell.

Convinced that the law would drain money from Arizona’s underfunded public schools, these women complained that Arizona’s lawmakers had ignored the public will and instead heeded the wishes of billionaires seeking to build up private schools at the expense of public schools.

“We walked outside the Capitol Building, and we looked at each other, and said, ‘What now?” said one of the women, Dawn Penich-Thacker, a mother of two boys in public school and a former army public information officer. “We had been fighting this for four months. We realized that there’s something we can do about it. It’s called a citizens’ referendum. We said, ‘Let’s do it.’”

Little did they know the challenges ahead. They would need 75,321 signatures to get their referendum on the ballot to overturn the law. They formed a group, Save Our Schools, and set out to collect the needed signatures. Opposing lobbyists sneered, saying no way could they do that.

The six women inspired a statewide movement and got hundreds of volunteers to brave Arizona’s torrid summer heat to collect signatures – in parks and parking lots, at baseball games and shopping malls. Their message was that billionaire outsiders were endangering public education by getting Arizona’s legislature – in part through campaign contributions – to create an expensive voucher program.

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“We knew something was rotten in the state of Arizona,” said Beth Lewis, a Continue reading: Billionaires v teachers: the Koch brothers' plan to starve public education | US news | The Guardian

Union Membership Narrows the Racial Wealth Gap for Families of Color - Center for American Progress

Union Membership Narrows the Racial Wealth Gap for Families of Color - Center for American Progress

Union Membership Narrows the Racial Wealth Gap for Families of Color

Download the PDF here.

Wealth is critical to families’ immediate and long-term economic well-being. It helps families pay their bills if their income drops due to unforeseen events such as a layoff or medical emergency. It also allows them to invest in their future by sending their children to college; moving to a desirable neighborhood due to, for instance, better schools; switching jobs; or starting a business. Yet wealth is highly unequally distributed in the United States—particularly by race and ethnicity. (see Appendix for more information) White families, for instance, have significantly more wealth than nonwhite families.1 There are a few institutions that help shrink this systematic divide; unions are one such institution.

Unions help increase the wealth for all workers. Indeed, previous Center for American Progress Action Fund research showed that a typical worker covered by a union contract has roughly twice the wealth of a typical nonunion worker.2 And new Center for American Progress analysis shows that unions boost wealth the most for those who are nonwhite.

A note on the data

The analysis in this brief combines data for families where the heads of household identify as a race/ethnicity other than white into the single category of nonwhite families. These additional categories include African Americans; Latino/Hispanic people; and Others, including but not limited to Asian Americans. The underlying data set—the Federal Reserve’s Survey of Consumer Finances—does not publish detailed information on those self-identifying as Other. The analysis in this brief uses combined data for African American, Latino/Hispanic, and Other families to ensure sufficiently large sample sizes. The conclusions are not materially affected by combining data for families that do not identify as white. That is, the general conclusion that nonwhite households benefit more from union membership than whites holds for all groups, but the size of the effect may differ between nonwhite groups. The difference in wealth for union members, for instance, is greater than for nonmembers among African Americans, Latino/Hispanic people, and Others than for whites.3 (see Figure 1)

Being a union member creates a number of venues for workers to build more wealth than would be available for nonunion members.4 Union members bargain collectively for wages, benefits, and procedures that affect their employment, such as when and how an employer can fire an employee. As a result of being covered by a collective bargaining agreement—the contract that employers and unions regularly sign and that governs these employment-related issues—union members have higher wages, on average; more benefits; and more stable employment than is the case for nonunion members.

Higher wages then translate into more savings in absolute terms, as well as more tax incentives to save.5 Furthermore, more job-related benefits—such as health insurance, defined benefit plans, and life insurance—mean that union members need to spend less money than do nonunion members to protect their families against future income losses. Therefore, they can save more money to pursue their own goals, such as paying for their children’s college education.6 Lastly, union membership leads to greater employment stability and job protections that translate into longer tenures with one employer.7 This employment stability translates into more savings, as union members are more likely to be eligible for key benefits such as retirement savings and can better plan for their futures.8

This issue brief considers the relevant data broken down by union membership separately for whites and nonwhites. The data show that:Union Membership Narrows the Racial Wealth Gap for Families of Color - Center for American Progress

Torlakson’s California Charter Law ‘Action Team’ Has a Troubling Tilt

Torlakson’s California Charter Law ‘Action Team’ Has a Troubling Tilt

Torlakson’s California Charter Law ‘Action Team’ Has a Troubling Tilt

Thomas Ultican / Tultican

California’s lame-duck Superintendent of Public Instruction, Tom Torlakson, has formed an Action Team to review laws governing charter schools. Six of the thirteen Action Team members work for the destroy public education (DPE) movement. Ninety percent of the state’s students attend public schools yet 23% of the Action Team are charter school management executives. Also, 23% of the team are graduates of Eli Broad’s unaccredited school administrators’ academy.

Torlakson is quoted in the announcement,

“In the past few years, we have updated virtually our entire K–12 education system. Now it’s time to look at the key laws governing charter schools, which have not been significantly changed in 26 years, to see how they can be modernized to better meet the needs of all public school students, including those who attend charter schools.”

This statement is malarkey. The original 1992 law capped charters growth at 100 schools statewide with no more than 10 in any one district. In 1998, Assembly Bill (AB) 544 expanded the statewide cap to 250 and allowed for an additional 100 charters each year thereafter. In 2000, Proposition 39, which was advertised as a means to pass school bonds, had a little-noticed provision that mandated charter school co-location with public schools. Legislation enacted in 2002 created the Charter Schools Facilities Program, which authorizes bond financing for new charter school buildings. A 2004 EdSource paper stated, “Since the passage of Senate Bill 1448—the Charter Schools Act of 1992—more than 30 other laws have addressed the operation, oversight, or funding of charter schools.”

“Aren’t charter schools better quality than public schools?”

I have often heard this question from many otherwise well-informed people. It indicates a victory for marketing when this destructive myth persists.

The Executive Director of Network for Public Education (NPE), Carol Burris, spent a year studying California’s charter schools. In her 50-page finalized report called “CHARTERS AND CONSEQUENCES: An Investigative Series,” she wrote,

“The majority of charter vs public studies indicate that overall achievement of charter schools is the same Continue reading: Torlakson’s California Charter Law ‘Action Team’ Has a Troubling Tilt

Hijacked by Billionaires: How the Super Rich Buy Elections to Undermine Public Schools - NPE Action

Hijacked by Billionaires: How the Super Rich Buy Elections to Undermine Public Schools - NPE Action

Hijacked by Billionaires: How the Super Rich Buy Elections to Undermine Public Schools

CLICK HERE TO READ THE FULL REPORT

HERE'S HOW MUCH THE TOP TEN BILLIONAIRES SPENT ON RACES IN THIS REPORT

REED HASTINGS APPEARS IN THE FOLLOWING CASE STUDIES:

WASHINGTON

LOS ANGELES, CA

LOUISIANA

DORIS FISHER APPEARS IN THE FOLLOWING CASE STUDIES:

LOS ANGELES, CA

NEWARK, NJ

WASHINGTON

LOUISIANA

MICHAEL BLOOMBERG APPEARS IN THE FOLLOWING CASE STUDIES:

NEWARK, NJ

LOS ANGELES, CA

LOUISIANA

RHODE ISLAND

MINNEAPOLIS, MN

DENVER, CO

BILL & MELINDA GATES APPEAR IN THE FOLLOWING CASE STUDIES:

WASHINGTON

ELI BROAD APPEARS IN THE FOLLOWING CASE STUDIES:

LOS ANGELES, CA

RHODE ISLAND

WASHINGTON

LOUISIANA

ALICE WALTON APPEARS IN THE FOLLOWING CASE STUDIES:

WASHINGTON

LOS ANGELES, CA

LOUISIANA

DENVER, CO

JOHN & LAURA ARNOLD APPEAR IN THE FOLLOWING CASE STUDIES:

LOS ANGELES, CA

LOUISIANA

RHODE ISLAND

CARRIE WALTON PENNER APPEARS IN THE FOLLOWING CASE STUDIES:

LOS ANGELES, CA

LOUISIANA

RHODE ISLAND

JIM WALTON APPEARS IN THE FOLLOWING CASE STUDIES:

LOS ANGELES, CA

LOUISIANA

DENVER, CO

PAUL ALLEN APPEARS IN THE FOLLOWING CASE STUDIES:

WASHINGTON

CLICK ON THE IMAGES BELOW TO VIEW THE INTERACTIVE MAPS THAT ACCOMPANY EACH CASE STUDY

(Maps are best viewed on a laptop or desktop)

Hijacked by Billionaires: How the Super Rich Buy Elections to Undermine Public Schools - NPE Action

NPE Action - Political Endorsements - http://npeaction.org/ on @NPEaction

NPE Action - Political Endorsements - http://npeaction.org/ on @NPEaction

California Gives For-Profit Charters the Boot, K12 Inc. Largely the Reason | deutsch29

California Gives For-Profit Charters the Boot, K12 Inc. Largely the Reason | deutsch29

California Gives For-Profit Charters the Boot, K12 Inc. Largely the Reason

On September 07, 2018, California Governor Jerry Brown signed into law a bill authored by Assemblyman Kevin McCarthy prohibiting for-profit charter schools in California, effective July 01, 2019. From the bill:

On and after July 1, 2019, a petitioner that submits a charter petition or a charter school that submits a charter renewal or material revision application shall not operate as, or be operated by, a for-profit corporation, a for-profit educational management organization, or a for-profit charter management organization. For purposes of this section, a for-profit educational management organization and a for-profit charter management organization are entities that manage or operate a charter school.

For-profit charter schools currently operating in California must convert to non-profit management prior to each school’s renewal deadline.

For-profit virtual charter operator, K12, has a shady, self-serving history in California, including draining a school of funding and presenting the appearance of no debt (and, therefore, the appearance of a successful school) by washing the school’s books via a creation called a “balanced budget credit.” Though in July 2016, California Attorney General Kamala Harris charged that K12 funneled $168.5M via the “balanced budget credits” game, K12 settled (without admitting guilt) for $8.5M– and was still allowed to operate in California.

McCarthy’s bill prohibiting for-profit charter schools in California was first introduced in February 2017; the first analysis of the bill (California Assembly, May 09, 2017) focuses on K12’s profiteering as justification for the legislation:

Appropriate use of taxpayer dollars? While current law explicitly authorizes a charter school to operate as a nonprofit corporation, statute is silent on whether a charter school is permitted to operate as a for-profit corporation. Because of the permissive nature of the Education Code and absent a clear prohibition, several charter schools are currently operating as for-profit corporations.

The California Charter School Association indicates there are six for-profit charter schools in California. California Virtual Academies (CAVA) is California’s largest provider of online public K-12 education and a public charter school network that exists entirely online. Students take classes Continue reading: California Gives For-Profit Charters the Boot, K12 Inc. Largely the Reason | deutsch29

"We as students get to tell our story" — at the Premiere of "Personal Statement" | Schott Foundation for Public Education

"We as students get to tell our story" — at the Premiere of "Personal Statement" | Schott Foundation for Public Education

"We as students get to tell our story" — at the Premiere of "Personal Statement"

I recently had the honor of attending the premiere of Personal Statement, a film by Julie Dressner and co-directed by Edwin Martinez that follows three high school seniors who were trained to support their peers through the college application process — while applying to college themselves. Listening to the film’s protagonists speak about the power of a youth-led model to address inequity in college access, I could not help but think about all of the youth organizers from the Urban Youth Collaborative. Since 2005, UYC has been fighting to develop and get funding for a youth-led college access model as a part of their College Pathways campaign. More than 13 years ago, those youth organizers explained their motivations:

We realized that, in many of our communities, students were being pushed into GED programs and into the military, rather than being helped to realize their dreams for college. We believe that every NYC high school student has the fundamental right to obtain the counseling and academic support necessary for him or her to succeed in high school and go to college.

They advocated for Student Success Centers*, which would train high school students to work in partnership with adult counselors to support students through the college search, application, and decision-making process. Their efforts resulted in funding for Make the Road NY to open New York City’s first Student Success Center on the Bushwick Campus in November 2007 and then for Cypress Hills LDC to open the second on the Franklin K. Lane Campus in January 2008. Personal Statementfeatures these two Student Success Centers, alongside one of the many others that have been established since then in NYC. College Access: Research & Action (CARA) works with these Student Success Centers, providing 70+ hours of training for youth leaders to develop the knowledge and skills they need to do their work, and supporting their supervisors to establish needed structures and supports for effective programming.

Personal Statement shines a critical light on the complexity and challenges of the college process for low-income students, the gross inequity in available resources, and the power of young people to support their peers in realizing their college Continue reading: "We as students get to tell our story" — at the Premiere of "Personal Statement" | Schott Foundation for Public Education

Teachers Leave For-Profit Charter Schools at Alarming Rates, Report Says

Teachers Leave For-Profit Charter Schools at Alarming Rates, Report Says

Teachers Leave For-Profit Charter Schools at Alarming Rates, Report Says

Students attending many of the nation’s 6,900 public charter schools may see unfamiliar faces as they head back to school this year.

Public schools already experience high levels of turnover among educators, but school teachers are leaving charter schools managed by private, for-profit groups at an “alarming” rate, according to a new study published in The Social Science Journal.

Charter schools run by nonprofit groups also have higher turnover rates than regular charter schools, which tend to be run by local school officials and parents rather than “management organizations” that can operate several schools at once.

Public charter schools are publicly funded, but they are run by private or nonprofit groups under a contract or “charter” with a state government or local school district that holds them accountable to certain standards. From 2000 to 2016, the number of public schools operated under charter agreements nationwide increased from 2 to 7 percent, according to the National Center for Education Statistics.

Previous research has shown that teachers tend to leave their jobs at traditional public schools at lower rates than charters, and the study examines how working conditions at different types of charter schools lead to higher rates of teacher turnover. This matters because the financial cost of turnovers to schools is high, and inconsistency among educators can dampen the quality of the education that students receive.

Christine Roch, an associate professor of public management and co-author of the study, said teachers take their knowledge about students and their families, as well as expertise in working within the school’s curriculum and practices with them when they leave. This means that inconsistency among educators can have negative impacts on academic Continue reading: Teachers Leave For-Profit Charter Schools at Alarming Rates, Report Says

The fight continues: which states will teachers strike in next? | US news | The Guardian

The fight continues: which states will teachers strike in next? | US news | The Guardian

The fight continues: which states will teachers strike in next?

Last spring, a wave of teachers strikes across the United States helped spur mass support for educators – and wage raises – after decades of cuts and demonization by both Republicans and Democrats alike. As schools start again, teachers are determined to keep fighting.

As a new school year begins, teachers in California, Colorado and Illinois, among other states, are determined to continue the fight for better pay and school funding

• Are you a teacher? We want to hear from you

One major union is asking its member to strike this fall: the 34,000 members of the United Teachers of Los Angeles (UTLA). On 30 August, 98% of teachers voted to authorize a strike at the nation’s second largest school district.

While the strike in the spring focused on Republican states, a strike in Los Angeles would be the first to target Democrats, who have also promoted schemes to bust teachers’ unions and open non-union charter schools that divert funding away from unionized public schools.

“California is a Democratic state, yet we have the highest number of unregulated charter schools in the nation. And we are 43rd in the nation in terms of per pupil spending when we are the fifth largest economy in the world,” said UTLA bargaining chair Arlene Inouye.

Teachers in Washington state’s Vancouver and Ridgefield have already taken votes to authorize a strike if they can not agree a pay rise. At the end of August, teachers in Longview, Washington, walked out after decisively rejecting a 6.9% average pay raise. More strikes are being considered in Colorado and Winnebago, Illinois.

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The teacher action looks sure to spread as the school year marches on. Continue reading: The fight continues: which states will teachers strike in next? | US news | The Guardian