“Llevaron a cabo vigilia contra Trump por el huracán María”
“Llevaron a cabo vigilia contra Trump por el huracán María”
Los oradores incluyeron a Jaime Contreras , vicepresidente del sindicato 32BJ , Mary Cathryn Ricker , vicepresidenta ejecutiva de la Federación de Maestros de EE.UU. , Jordan Haedtler , director...
Los oradores incluyeron a Jaime Contreras , vicepresidente del sindicato 32BJ , Mary Cathryn Ricker , vicepresidenta ejecutiva de la Federación de Maestros de EE.UU. , Jordan Haedtler , director de campaña del Centro para la Democracia Popular, y Tatiana Matta , puertorriqueña que aspira al Congreso por el distrito 23 de California.
Lea el artículo completo aquí.
Zara Employee Humiliated By Managers For Her Braids
Zara Employee Humiliated By Managers For Her Braids
Twenty year-old Zara employee, Cree Ballah from Toronto, Canada, has spoken out after she was recently humiliated by two of her managers for having what the fashion chain staff members deemed an ‘...
Twenty year-old Zara employee, Cree Ballah from Toronto, Canada, has spoken out after she was recently humiliated by two of her managers for having what the fashion chain staff members deemed an ‘inappropriate’ hairstyle.
Ballah, who is of African American decent, was wearing four box braids pulled into a low, simple ponytail when she was reprimanded.
Originally, the young sales assistant was told by a manager that her hair was not in keeping with Zara’s image, telling her, “We’re going for a clean professional look with Zara and the hairstyle you have now is not the look for Zara.”
Afterwards, another manager pulled Ballah aside, lead her out of the store and attempted to ‘fix’ her hair in the middle of the crowded mall, leaving the Zara employee feeling humiliated and offended.
“My hair type is also linked to my race, so to me, I felt like it was direct discrimination against my ethnicity in the sense of what comes along with it,” Ballah told CBC News in a recent interview.
“My hair type is out of my control and I try to control it to the best of my ability, which wasn’t up to standard for Zara.”
This isn’t the first time the Spanish retail giant has been in hot water for its questionable treatment of employees. Last year, a survey conducted by the Center for Popular Democracy (CDP) found Zara was demonstrating racial bias not only towards its employees but its customers as well.
The report established darker-skinned employees were far less likely to get a raise or be promoted and were twice as unhappy with their working hours compared to their fairer-skinned peers. As well as this, the report discovered employees were trained to report ‘special orders’ to in-store management.
‘Special orders’ are considered to be suspicious looking customers who, after being reported, are tailed by a Zara staff member to ensure no items are stolen. Results uncovered the majority of employees used the code on African American and Latino shoppers, and, according to the CPD survey, an actual member of staff of African American decent was deemed as a ‘special order’ when entering the store on his day off to collect a paycheque.
Adding insult to injury, the brand released a line of shirts emblazoned with the slogan ‘White Is The New Black’ on them in 2014, causing public outcry for their racially insensitive message.
And while the fashion chain has continued to escape largely unscathed under pleas of ignorance, its run-in with Ballah may be the final straw, with the ex-staffer currently pursuing her options, which include taking the issue to the Ontario Human Rights Commission.
By Isabelle Gillespie
Source
Adovates for Reading ID cards vow to continue their efforts
Adovates for Reading ID cards vow to continue their efforts
Despite collective agreement by city officials, activists say the fight for creating a Reading city ID is nowhere near over.
Make The Road Pennsylvania, a community action group leading the...
Despite collective agreement by city officials, activists say the fight for creating a Reading city ID is nowhere near over.
Make The Road Pennsylvania, a community action group leading the effort for municipal IDs, filled its Reading headquarters Thursday evening with people resolved to continue pushing for the initiative.
Reading City Council members and Mayor Wally Scott said Monday night that they would not pursue an ordinance setting up a program.
Make The Road submitted a draft ordinance for the creation of a city ID in May.
The IDs would help make everyday life easier for the elderly, undocumented immigrants, some Puerto Ricans and others who face hurdles getting ID, Make The Road says.
City officials cited several concerns about the draft ordinance, including the legality and costs of a program.
Make The Road organizers countered some of those reasons Thursday by naming 13 municipalities around the country that have already approved local IDs.
They also presented their own cost-analysis of the program which, under the group's estimates of an ID with a $30 price tag, would bring in about $130,000 for the city.
Gabriela Raful, president of the Berks County Bar Association Minority Law Committee, and Bernardo Carbajal and Abraham Cepeda, attorneys and Reading School Board members, also spoke with ID supporters.
The local bar association's board of directors endorsed the creation of a city ID Tuesday, but did not specifically endorse Make The Road's draft ordinance.
Though activists are determined, City Council President Jeffrey S. Waltman Sr. said Thursday afternoon that he doesn't think council will revisit the idea anytime soon.
"The bottom line is I don't foresee City Council taking the issue up in the near future," he said. "It deals with federal issues and with our city and our resources, we have to be focused on getting out of Act 47."
Waltman also said the draft ordinance would have to be significantly altered or completely rewritten for council to even remotely consider it.
At the council's meeting Monday, leaders expressed opposition to a stipulation in the ordinance that states the city would not be able to share cardholder information with federal authorities, such as Immigration & Customs Enforcement.
Scott did not return calls requesting comment Thursday, but expressed strong opposition at the council meeting to aspects in the draft ordinance, including the prohibition on information-sharing.
He had also questioned the constitutionality of the draft ordinance, an argument that Make The Road countered Thursday.
The Center For Popular Democracy, a social issues advocacy group based in Washington, helped craft the ordinance.
Emily Tucker, a senior staff attorney specializing in immigration law, said Thursday that in the other cities where similar legislation was introduced and passed, such as New York City and Newark, N.J., there had been no concerns from local officials about limits on information sharing.
Waltman said that the decision to not pursue the IDs is not to slight city residents, but that creating a municipal ID is an effort that the city cannot presently handle or is responsible to undertake.
Cepeda said city officials should not ignore an issue that he feels would be very beneficial to the Latino community.
"It shows that they either have an issue with the people they represent or they are clueless," Cepeda said.
By ANTHONY OROZCO
Source
The Team That Helped Elect Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez Has Its Next Mission: Lifting Kerri Harris Over Sen. Tom Carper
The Team That Helped Elect Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez Has Its Next Mission: Lifting Kerri Harris Over Sen. Tom Carper
That volunteering eventually morphed into becoming a full-time community organizer, working both for Achievement Matters, which aims to close the educational achievement gap, and with the Center...
That volunteering eventually morphed into becoming a full-time community organizer, working both for Achievement Matters, which aims to close the educational achievement gap, and with the Center for Popular Democracy. The tools she’s picked up as an organizer are now being put to work in her Senate race.
Read the full article here.
What should — and should not — be written into a new U.S. education law
Both the U.S. House and Senate are now — eight years late — debating this week how to rewrite the Elementary and Secondary Education Act, known in its current form as No Child Left Behind. Signed...
Both the U.S. House and Senate are now — eight years late — debating this week how to rewrite the Elementary and Secondary Education Act, known in its current form as No Child Left Behind. Signed into law in 2002, NCLB was supposed to have been rewritten by Congress in 2007, but sheer negligence and an inability among lawmakers to agree meant that America’s public schools were forced to live under a law that was fatally flawed.
Here is a letter that was sent to every senator about what the signatories believe should — and should not — be in any new education law. Addressed to Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky and Democratic Minority Leader Harry Reid of Nevada, the letter was sent by the Journey for Justice Alliance, a coalition of nearly 40 organizations of parents and students of color in 23 states, as well as from 175 other national and local civil rights, youth and community organizations.
Dear Senators McConnell and Reid,
The Journey for Justice Alliance, an alliance of 38 organizations of Black and Brown parents and students in 23 states, joins with the 175 other national and local grassroots community, youth and civil rights organizations signed on below, to call on the U.S. Congress to pass an ESEA reauthorization without requiring the regime of oppressive, high stakes, standardized testing and sanctions that have recently been promoted as civil rights provisions within ESEA.
We respectfully disagree that the proliferation of high stakes assessments and top-down interventions are needed in order to improve our schools. We live in the communities where these schools exist. What, from our vantage point, happens because of these tests is not improvement. It’s destruction.
Black and Latino families want world class public schools for our children, just as white and affluent families do. We want quality and stability. We want a varied and rich curriculum in our schools. We don’t want them closed or privatized. We want to spend our days learning, creating and debating, not preparing for test after test.
In the Chicago Public Schools, for example, children in kindergarten through 8th grade are administered anywhere between 8 and 25 standardized tests per year. By the time they graduate from 8th grade, they have taken an average of 180 standardized tests! We are not opposed to state mandated testing as a component of a well-rounded system of evaluating student needs. But enough is enough.
We want balanced assessments, such as oral exams, portfolios, daily check-ins and teacher created assessment tools—all of which are used at the University of Chicago Lab School, where President Barack Obama and Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel have sent their children to be educated. For us, civil rights are about access to schools all our children deserve. Are our children less worthy?
High stakes standardized tests have been proven to harm Black and Brown children, adults, schools and communities. Curriculum is narrowed. Their results purport to show that our children are failures. They also claim to show that our schools are failures, leading to closures or wholesale dismissal of staff. Children in low income communities lose important relationships with caring adults when this happens. Other good schools are destabilized as they receive hundreds of children from closed schools. Large proportions of Black teachers lose their jobs in this process, because it is Black teachers who are often drawn to commit their skills and energies to Black children. Standardized testing, whether intentionally or not, has negatively impacted the Black middle class, because they are the teachers, lunchroom workers, teacher aides, counselors, security staff and custodians who are fired when schools close.
Standardized tests are used as the reason why voting rights are removed from Black and Brown voters—a civil right every bit as important as education. Our schools and school districts are regularly judged to be failures—and then stripped of local control through the appointment of state takeover authorities that eliminate democratic process and our local voice—and have yet so far largely failed to actually improve the quality of education our children receive.
Throughout the course of the debate on the reauthorization of ESEA, way too much attention has focused on testing and sanctions, and not on the much more critical solutions to educational inequality.
In March, the Alliance to Reclaim Our Schools issued a letter to the House and Senate leadership, with four recommendations for ESEA Reauthorization.:
First, there are 5000 community schools in America today, providing an array of wrap around services and after school programs to children and their families. These community schools serve over 5 million children, and we want to double that number and intensify the effort. We are calling for a significant investment in creating thousands moresustainable community schools. They provide a curriculum that is engaging, relevant and challenging, supports for quality teaching and not standardized testing, wrap-around supports for every child, a student centered culture and finally, transformative parent and community engagement.We call on the federal government to provide $1 billion toward that goal, and we are asking our local governments to decrease the high stakes standardized testing with its expensive test prep programs and divert those funds into resourcing more sustainable community schools. Second, we want to include restorative justice and positive approaches to discipline in all of our sustainable community schools, so we are calling on the federal government to provide $500 million for restorative justice coordinators and training in all of our sustainable community schools. Third, to finally move toward fully resourcing Title I of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act, we call on the federal government to provide $20 billion this year for the schools that serve the most low income students, and more in future years until we finally reach the 40% increase in funding for poor schools that the Act originally envisioned. Finally, we ask for a moratorium on the federal Charter Schools Program, which has pumped over $3 billion into new charter schools, many of which have already closed, or have failed the students drawn to them by the illusive promise of quality. We want the resources that all our schools deserve – we don’t need more schools. We need better ones.So now we are prepared to say, clearly, that we will take nothing less than the schools our children deserve. It will cost some money to support them, but that’s okay, because we have billionaires and hedge funders in this country who have neverpaid the tax rates that the rest of us pay. We are a rich country, and we can afford some world class community schools.
As we continue to organize for educational justice, it is that tradition of struggle that will guide J4J, AROS and the scores of organizations who have signed on to this letter. We are the people directly impacted and will continue to organize in the memory of the great institution builder Ella Baker who said, “Oppressed people, whatever their level of formal education, have the ability to understand and interpret the world around them, to see the world for what it is, and move to transform it.” Our voices matter.
In Anticipation,Jitu BrownJourney for Justice Alliance
Along with…
ACTION of Greater Lansing, Lansing, MIAction NCWashington, DCAction UnitedAdvocates Building Lasting Equality (ABLE), NHAdvocating, Mobilizing, and Organizing in Solidarity (AMOS), La Crosse, WIAFT Local 2115, Birmingham, ALAlliance AFT DallasAlliance for Congregational Transformation Influencing Our Neighborhoods (ACTION), Youngstown, OHAlliance for Educational Justice (AEJ)The Alliance for Newark Public SchoolsAlliance for Public Schools, FLAlliance for Quality Education (AQE), New YorkAlliance of Communities Transforming Syracuse (ACTS),Syracuse, NYAlliance to Reclaim Our Schools (AROS)American Federation of Teachers (AFT)Arkansas Community OrganizationAROS HoustonAsamblea de Derechos Civiles, Twin Cities/St. Cloud, MNAtlantans Building Leadership for Empowerment (ABLE), Atlanta, GAAustin Voices for Education and Youth, TXBadAss Teachers Association (BATs)Baltimore Algebra ProjectBaltimore Teachers UnionBoston Area Youth Organizing ProjectBYOP/Community Labor United, Boston, MABrighton Park Neighborhood Council, Chicago, ILBoston Education Justice AllianceCalifornians for JusticeCamden Parent Union, NJCamden Student Union, NJCapital Region Organizing Project (CROP), Sacramento, CACenter for Popular Democracy (CPD)Change the Stakes, NYCChicago Teachers UnionChicago PEACECincinnati Federation of TeachersCitizen Action of New YorkCitizens for Better Schools & Sustainable Communities, Birmingham, ALCitizens for Education AwarenessCoalition of Black Trade UnionistsCoalition for Community Schools, New Orleans, LACoalition for Effective Newark Public Schools, NJColeman Advocates for Children & Youth, San Francisco, CACommunity Coalition, CACommunity Voices for Public Education, Houston, TXCommunities UnitedConcerned Citizen’s CoalitionConcerned Citizens of New Orleans, LACongregations United to Serve Humanity (CUSH), Kenosha, WIDetroit LIFE Coalition, MIDRUM, NYCEducation AustinEmpower DCEmpower DC Youth Organizing ProjectEmpower Hampton Roads, Norfolk, VAEquality, Solidarity, Truth, Hope, Empowerment, Reform (ESTHER), Neenah, WIThe Ezekiel Project, Saginaw, MIFairTest (National Center for Fair & Open Testing)Faith Action for Community Equity (FACE), Oahu/Maui, HIFaith Coalition for the Common Good, Springfield, ILFannie Lou Hamer Center for Change, MIFlorida Institute for Reform and Empowerment (FIRE)482Forward, Detroit, MIFuture of Tomorrow, Cypress Hills Local Development Corp, Brooklyn, NYGamalielGamaliel of Metro Chicago, Chicago, ILGenesis, Alameda County, CAThe Grassroots Collaborative, Chicago, ILGrassroots Education Movement, Chicago, ILGreat Public Schools (GPS) Pittsburgh, PAHouston Federation of Teachers, Local 2415, TXIndiana Organizing Project, South Bend, INInnerCity Struggle, LAInterfaith Strategy for Advocacy and Action in the Community (ISAAC), Kalamazoo, MIJoining Our Neighbors, Advancing Hope (JONAH), Eau Claire, WIJoint-Religious Organizing Network for Action and Hope (JONAH), Battle Creek, MIJustice Organization Sharing Hope and United for Action (JOSHUA), Green Bay, WIJustice Overcoming Boundaries (JOB), San Diego, CAKansas Justice AdvocatesKeep the Vote/No Takeover Coalition, DetroitKenwood Oakland Community Organization (KOCO), Chicago, ILLabor Council for Latin American Advancement, AFL-CIO (LCLAA)Long Island Organizing Network (LION), Riverhead, NYMake the Road, New York, NYMaryland Communities UnitedMassachusetts Jobs with JusticeMedia Mobilizing Project, Philadelphia, PAMetro Organization for Racial and Economic Equity (MORE2), Kansas City, MO/KSMetropolitan Congregations United (MCU), St. Louis, MOMetropolitan Organizing Strategy for Enabling Strength (MOSES), Detroit, MIMilwaukee Inner-city Congregations Allied for Hope (MICAH), Milwaukee, WIMinnesota Neighborhoods Organizing for Change (MN NOC)Missourians Organizing for Reform and Empowerment (MORE)More than A Score, Chicago, ILMOSES, Chicago, ILMOSES, Madison, WINAACP, ArkansasNAACP OregonNAACP Washington StateNAOMI, Wausau, WINC Heat/ Youth Organizing Institute, Durham/RaleighNehemiah, Petersburg, VANeighborhood Networks, Philadelphia, PANetwork for Public EducationNewark Student Union, NJNew Jersey Communities United (NJCU)The New York A. Phillip Randolph InstituteNew York City Coalition for Educational Justice (CEJ)New York City Opt OutNew York Communities for Change (NYCC)New York State United Teachers (NYSUT)Niagara Organizing Alliance for Hope (NOAH), Niagara Falls, NYNOLA Village, LANorth Bay Organizing Project (NBOP), Sonoma County, CANorthside Action For Justice, Chicago, ILOrganizers in the Land of Enchantment (OLE), NMOrganize Now, FLOur Community, Our Schools, Dallas, TXPadres Y Jovenes Unidos, Denver, COParents Across AmericaParents Across America, Roanoke Valley, VAParents for Public Schools of Greater Cincinnati, OHParents 4 Teachers,Chicago, ILParents on the MoveParents Unified for Local School Education (PULSE),Newark, NJPartnership for Renewal in Southern and Central Maryland (PRISCM),Prince George’s County, MDPaterson Education Fund, NJPatterson Education Organizing Committee, NJPennsylvania Interfaith Impact Network (PIIN), Pittsburgh, PAPIIN-Northwest, Erie, PAPilsen Alliance, Chicago, ILPhiladelphia Coalition Advocating for Public Schools (PCAPS), PAThe Philadelphia Council AFL-CIOPhiladelphia Federation of Teachers, PAPhiladelphia MoveOn.org, PAPhiladelphia Student Union, PAPittsburgh Federation of Teachers, PAPower U, Miami, FLPride at WorkProject SouthQuad Cities Interfaith (QCI), Davenport, IARacine Interfaith Coalition (RIC), Racine, WIRaise Your Voice, Chicago, ILRise Up GeorgiaRochester ACTS, Rochester, NYSave Our SchoolsSave Our Schools NJSchools and Communities UnitedSchott Foundation for Public EducationSEEK, COSistas & Brothas United, New York, NYStay Together Appalachian YouthSunflower Action, Wichita, KSSupport Our Students, Birmingham, ALStewards of Prophetic, Hopeful, Intentional, Action (SOPHIA), Waukesha, WITeachers for Social Justice, Chicago, ILTeaching for ChangeTexas Organizing Project (TOP), TXUnited Congregations Metro East (UCM), E. St. Louis, ILUnited Opt Out of NJUnited Federation of Teachers, NYCUnited Teachers of Los Angeles, CAUrban Youth Collaborative, NYVAYLA, New Orleans, LAVOICE, Buffalo, NYVoices for Education, AZWisconsin Jobs NowWISDOM (Gamaliel statewide), WIYinzercation, Pittsburgh, PAYouth Empowered in the StruggleYouth Justice Coalition, LAYouth On The Move, Bronx, NYYouth Together, Oakland, CAYouth United for Change, Philadelphia, PA
Source: Washington Post
NSEA takes stand on vouchers, charter schools
NSEA takes stand on vouchers, charter schools
The fact is that charter schools are not meeting the need they were created to fill—including to serve as lab schools to develop new teaching techniques—and many are failing their students and...
The fact is that charter schools are not meeting the need they were created to fill—including to serve as lab schools to develop new teaching techniques—and many are failing their students and families, while squandering taxpayer dollars.
Read the full article here.
Video: Grandes bancos podrían beneficiarse con el muro de la frontera
Groups Charge $30 Million in Charter School Fraud, Call for Tougher Oversight
WHYY - October 1, 2014, by Tom Macdonald - A new report is calling for holding charter schools in Pennsylvania more accountable.
Produced by the groups Center for Public Democracy,...
WHYY - October 1, 2014, by Tom Macdonald - A new report is calling for holding charter schools in Pennsylvania more accountable.Produced by the groups Center for Public Democracy, Integrity in Education and Action United, the report says the $30 million in charter school fraud already discovered in Pennsylvania could be the tip of the iceberg because there isn't enough oversight.Kia Hinton of Action United says they are calling for reforms such as targeted audits because $30 million could have been put to much better use."Do you know what that could get us? That could get us more teachers so our classrooms don't have 40 students, that could get us textbooks, so our students have textbooks and that could get us support staff to support our teachers and our students," Hinton said.The groups are also calling for a moratorium on any new charter schools until more controls are implemented.Chinara Bioaal has a child in Philly schools and says the report is just a first step to end fraud."We will be conducting information requests on all charter schools to review board minutes to determine the quality or existence of their fraud risk management programs, we will challenge charter schools to sign the fraud risk management pledge adopting fraud risk management programs," Bioaal said.The Pennsylvania Coalition of Public Charter Schools responded to the report saying it supports prosecuting fraud and mismanagement. However "the report draws sweeping conclusions about the entire charter sector based on only 11 cited incidents in the course of almost 20 years, while ignoring numerous alleged and actual fraud and fiscal mismanagement in the districts."Source
California Charter Schools Vulnerable to Fraud, Report Says
The Washington Post - March 24, 2015, by Emma Brown - Journalists, auditors and other investigators have turned up more than $80 million in charter school fraud in California to date, according to...
The Washington Post - March 24, 2015, by Emma Brown - Journalists, auditors and other investigators have turned up more than $80 million in charter school fraud in California to date, according to a new report by a coalition of left-leaning organizations, which argues that lax oversight of the state’s charter schools is leaving taxpayer dollars vulnerable to abuse.
California has more than 1,100 charter schools that serve more than a half-million students — far more than any other state in the nation. They receive more than $3 billion in public funds each year. But state and local officials don’t have a rigorous enough system to ferret out misuse of those dollars, according to the report, which says that oversight relies too heavily on audits paid for by charter schools and complaints by whistleblowers.
“Despite the tremendous investment of public dollars and the size of its charter school population, California has failed to implement a system that proactively monitors charters for fraud, waste and mismanagement,” says the report.
It was released Tuesday by the Center for Popular Democracy, an advocacy group that is allied with teachers’ unions and has published several studies of state-level charter-school fraud; the Alliance of Californians for Community Empowerment Institute, an organization that works on issues including housing and education; and Public Advocates Inc., a nonprofit law firm and advocacy organization.
The report recounts some of the charter school scandals that have come to light in California. In 2012, for example, state auditors found that the American Indian Model Charter Schools (AIMS) – an Oakland school that had won national recognition for the achievement of its low-income students — had paid its founder, his wife and their various businesses about $3.8 million. The audit was initiated after a whistleblower raised concerns.
More recently, in 2014, state auditors found that a Los Angeles charter school — the Wisdom Academy of Young Scientists Charter Schools (WAYS) — had made payments totaling $2.6 million to the school’s former executive director and her family members and close associates.
“There simply isn’t enough oversight to prevent a huge amount of fraud in the charter sector, and that’s unacceptable,” said Hilary Hammell, a lawyer for Public Advocates. “That’s unacceptable because it’s vulnerable youths and their families who suffer when money that should be spent on kids at the school level instead goes elsewhere.”
The California Charter Schools Association responded with an extensive statement that called into question the motives of the report’s authors, arguing that they had turned up no evidence of a substantial problem. Many of the examples of fraud cited in the report were old and resulted in charter revocation, overhauls in school management or changes to state law, the association said.
“We agree that inappropriate use of public dollars intended for public school students should be prevented,” the statement says. “We believe that the system that California has very carefully and thoughtfully implemented does just that.”
California school system superintendents who suspect fiscal mismanagement at charter schools can request an “extraordinary audit” from a state agency known as the Financial Crisis and Management Assistance Team. But that agency — or some other oversight body — should be auditing all charter schools on a regular basis, according to the report, which argues that absent such a systemic review, misuse of tax dollars is going undetected.
Charter schools are required to submit a number of financial documents to oversight agencies and local school superintendents, including annual audits performed by private auditors. The report’s authors argued that those audits are not designed to catch fraud, while the California Charter Schools Association questioned why charter schools should have to undergo state audits when traditional public school systems do not. “To assume that there is a greater risk at charter schools than school districts, particularly in light of all the real time oversight on financial reports, is simply unfounded,” the association said.
“The report not only provides no evidence of a systemic issue, it does not do justice to the system already in place and that is actually more rigorous for charter schools than for other LEAs in the state (e.g., school districts),” the association said.
Some critics of previous reports about charter-school fraud released by the Center for Popular Democracy have also argued that those reports did not offer equal scrutiny of fraud within traditional public school systems. Others have pointed out that the center counts teachers unions — which have been critical of the charter sector — among its allies and supporters. Randi Weingarten, the president of the American Federation of Teachers, is a member of the center’s board.
Source
Dallas Fed president will meet with Fed Up Coalition members to hear their concerns
Dallas Fed president will meet with Fed Up Coalition members to hear their concerns
After nearly two months on the job, the new head of the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas is reaching out to the community — to bunch of community, labor and consumer organizations that have...
After nearly two months on the job, the new head of the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas is reaching out to the community — to bunch of community, labor and consumer organizations that have repeatedly asked to be heard.
Dallas Fed president Rob Kaplan tomorrow will met with a variety of representatives of the national Fed Up Coalition for about 90 minutes, according to the regional bank.
The group was unhappy with the Dallas Fed’s “cryptic” search process to replace replaced former chief Richard Fisher, who retired in March, and with its lack of transparency. I wrote about it. Fed Up members in Texas and nationwide also have called for Federal Reserve to focus on full employment and higher wages for blacks and others in poor neighborhoods who have been left out of the economic recovery.
In August, the Dallas Fed named Kaplan, a former Harvard business professor and investment banker, as president and CEO starting Sept. 8. As one of 12 Fed regional bank presidents around the country, Kaplan helps set the nation’s economic and monetary policy, such as interest rates, that affects people everywhere.
The day after Kaplan’s announcement, the Texas Organizing Project’s Dallas County director Brianna Brown suggested that one of the first things he should do when he got to Dallas was to meet with her group and working families in the area. I wrote about that.
Earlier this year, the Texas Organizing Project and Fed Up asked to meet with Dallas Fed board members to seek more openness and participation in the search process. The Dallas Fed also has faced criticism from other corners for a lack of transparency and the lengthiness (nine months) of its search.
The coalition’s request was denied back then, and instead a meeting was arranged with the bank’s general counsel and senior vice president.
Now, there’s another chance.
“We want to represent the coalition in the same way that the coalition has met with other Fed presidents around the country to encourage them to keep interest rates low to help people in the communities,” Brown said today. “We’re trying to figure out a way that the coalition can be part of the process around Fed policy. How we can collaborate and work together.”
Brown said it’s not a “pie-in-the-sky” idea. She noted that a Fed Up meeting with Chicago Fed president Charles Evans led to him touring a low-income neighborhood in September.
Nearly a dozen people representing Fed Up will attend tomorrow’s meeting at the Dallas Fed. They include: Brown; representatives of the Dallas AFL-CIO, Texas AFL-CIO, Center for Popular Democracy and Economic Policy Institute; Dallas Faith leader Wes Helm; and a Walmart worker. Dallas County Judge Clay Jenkins also will attend as a guest of Fed Up, said Daniel Barrera, a Dallas organizer for the Texas Organizing Project.
Jenkins and John Patrick, president of the Texas AFL-CIO, did not end up attending the meeting. I wrote a follow-up story on Nov. 5 about the results of the meeting.
The Dallas Fed will have four people present: Kaplan, senior vice president Alfreda Norman, community development officer Roy Lopez and spokesman James Hoard .
“We want to obviously listen to what they have to say, provide any information and answer any questions they have,” Hoard said today about the meeting.
Source: The Dallas Morning News
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