Minnesota pension board looks at private equity strategy
Minnesota pension board looks at private equity strategy
Toys R Us has not fared well in recent years. And critics, led by New York’s populist-leaning Center for Popular...
Toys R Us has not fared well in recent years. And critics, led by New York’s populist-leaning Center for Popular Democracy, accused the huge equity-investment firms of making hundreds of millions in fees and dividends on the failed retailer over the years.
Read the full article here.
Photo Flash: Scarlett Johansson's OUR TOWN Reading Raises $500K for Puerto Rico Relief
Photo Flash: Scarlett Johansson's OUR TOWN Reading Raises $500K for Puerto Rico Relief
"We are deeply grateful to Scarlett Johansson, Kenny Leon and everyone involved in the production of this play for...
"We are deeply grateful to Scarlett Johansson, Kenny Leon and everyone involved in the production of this play for stepping up and contributing their talent to help towards the equitable and just rebuilding of Puerto Rico. This event demonstrates the importance of collective solidarity and responsibility and how powerful it is when we come together to help our communities," said Xiomara Caro, Director of New Organizing Projects for the Center of Popular Democracy and coordinator of Maria Fund.
Read the full article here.
Charter Schools and the Waltons Take Little Rock Back to its Segregated Past
Charter Schools and the Waltons Take Little Rock Back to its Segregated Past
Stories about historic efforts to address racial segregation in American public education often start with Central High...
Stories about historic efforts to address racial segregation in American public education often start with Central High School in Little Rock, Arkansas in 1957. But the story of Little Rock and segregation badly needs updating.
Central High became one of the first practical tests of principles established in Brown v. Board of Education, the Supreme Court ruling that overturned racially separate public schools. When nine black students showed up for opening day of the historically all-white school, Arkansas Governor Orval Faubus called in the National Guard to prevent them from entering. President Dwight Eisenhower responded by calling in federal troops to escort the students into the school, and Faubus eventually backed down.
But the story of racial integration in Little Rock shouldn't be confined to Central High. The same year Central was integrated, another school, Hall High, opened in the all-white part of town with an all white student body. Hall would not integrate until 1959 (Faubus closed all Little Rock high schools in school year 1958-59 to protest federal intervention), when three black girls were allowed to attend.
By the late 1970s and early 80s, through busing and other efforts, Hall had become a more racially diverse school, according to Kathy Webb, who graduated from Hall in 1967.* Webb, who is white, currently represents Ward 3 on the Little Rock City Board and has served in the Arkansas state legislature.
In a phone conversation, Webb tells me that she remembers Hall High as a racially diverse school with an academically solid reputation and a relatively high graduation rate. But then, she notes, something happened: Hall High underwent a profound change.
By 2002, when Webb returned to live in Little Rock after decades away, Hall looked more like a school from the segregationist past than the model of progressive integratio it had once been. Today, the student population of Hall is just 5 percent white, with 70 percent of students having incomes low enough to receive free or reduced price lunch. Hall has also become a school with a reputation for low academic achievement, and in 2014, the state placed Hall on a list of six Little Rock schools in "academic distress."
And while Central High continues to be more racially balanced—54 percent black, 34 percent white—Little Rock School District as a whole is racially imbalanced, as CNN recently reported, with a school population that is 70 percent black in a city that is 55 percent white.
"People have been oblivious to this," Webb says about the re-segregation of the community and Hall High in particular.
What happened to Hall High is an example of what has been happening nationwide, according to a flurry of high profile media stories. Progress on racial integration in schools achieved during the Civil Rights period has gradually eroded, and in many cities, schools are now nearly as racially divided as they were 40 years ago.
"Integration as a constitutional mandate, as justice for black and Latino children, as a moral righting of past wrongs, is no longer our country’s stated goal," writes Nikole Hannah-Jones for the New York Times Magazine.
Hannah-Jones explains how, despite research studies showing the negative effects of racially segregated schools on children's education and long term success, Republican presidents since Eisenhower have appointed conservative Supreme Court judges who have whittled away at court-ordered integration plans until "legally and culturally, we’ve come to accept segregation once again."
But lengthy presentations of statistical data and litanies of high court decisions tend to overlook places where the fight to uphold the vision of a pluralistic school system is still very much alive—places like Little Rock, where the fight is still going on. The fight is inflamed with the same themes from when Ike invaded the district; the belief that "separate would never be equal" and that deep divisions in society have to be overcome by intentional policy decisions.
But now, the actors have changed. This time, those being accused of segregating students aren't local bigots. Instead, Little Rock citizens see segregation as being imposed upon them by outsiders, operating under the guise of a reform agenda.
In this conflict, the issue of local control—the cause Faubus and white Little Rock citizens held high in their fight against federal intervention—has been completely turned on its head, with the state government teaming up with wealthy allies to remove decision-making power from the community. And new entities, such as charter schools (publicly funded schools that are privately operated) and private foundations controlled by a small number of rich people, sow divisions in the community.
Once again, the fate of Little Rock's schools is a test of principles that may be adopted nationwide; only this time, in an effort to divide communities rather than unite them.
‘We Are Retreating to 1957’
"Most people [here] have been escaping rather than preparing for how to confront a world that is becoming more diverse," Arkansas State Senator Joyce Elliott tells me in a phone conversation. Elliott, who is black, is a Democratic member of the Arkansas Senate, representing the 31st District, which includes part of Little Rock.
The means of escape in Little Rock has changed over time, according to Elliott. Private schools enabling white flight from LRSD proliferated in the 1970s and '80s. In addition, district leaders, pressured by wealthy white citizens, redrew attendance zones to separate neighborhoods and avoid busing, a practice still in use today.
As John Kirk and Jess Porter explain in an overview of Little Rock's struggle with segregation appearing in the Arkansas Times, the city has been racially divided for decades by interstate highways, housing policies, and urban planning. Kirk and Porter, both history professors at University of Arkansas at Little Rock, note that segregation has been "consciously created by public policy, with private sector collusion."
"We are retreating to 1957," Elliott believes. Only now, instead of using Jim Crow and white flight, or housing and highways, the new segregationists have other tools at their disposal. First, education funding cuts have made competition for resources more intense, with wider disparities along racial lines. Second, recent state takeover of the district has spread a sense throughout the community of having lost control of its education destiny. Parents, local officials, and community activists continuously describe change as something being done to them rather than with them. And third, an aggressive charter school sector that competes with local public schools for resources and students further divides the community.
And lurking in the background of anything having to do with Little Rock school politics is the Walton Family Foundation, the philanthropic organization connected to the family that owns the Walmart retail chain, whose headquarters is in Bentonville, Arkansas.
A Struggle Over Resources
Arkansas is one of the many states that funds schools less than it did before the Great Recession. According to data compiled by the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, between 2008 and 2014, school funding in Arkansas declined by more than 9 percent, while during those same years, student enrollment grew by 1.5 percent, according to the most recent measures and projections by the federal government.
Although the state's economy has recovered somewhat from the downturn, the state's politically conservative leadership continues to make cuts to public schools. The budget austerity is particularly harmful to schools that serve higher percentages of low-income children, as Little Rock's does.
According to a district-by-district map of poverty rates created by EdBuild, an education finance reform consultancy, the Little Rock School District, and its adjacent North Little Rock neighbor, are tasked with educating some of the poorest students in the state, with poverty rates of 26.9 percent and 33 percent, respectively, compared to school districts surrounding them, where poverty rates are much lower, around 17 percent.
State budget cuts prompted a $40 million decrease in school spending in Little Rock in early 2015. Then, later that year, a federal judge overturned the state's long-standing obligation to help fund Little Rock's expenses for desegregation. The payments had amounted to more than $1 billion in 60 years. That additional cut helped prompt another round of spending decreases in 2016.
"We are constantly having our resources taken away," Toney Orr tells me in a phone interview. "Families with means are moving on" to higher wealth schools that surround the district. "But if you’re a family without means, you can't move on," he says.
Orr, an African American father of twin sons in the Little Rock schools, tells me the general lack of resources in the district is leading to a more segregated system as "power struggles between the haves and the have-nots" have intensified.
An article in The Atlantic cites from a lawsuit brought by Little Rock parents that found huge differences between resources in schools with very high percentages of black students versus schools that enroll mostly white students. School conditions and access to computers vary considerably, with schools that are mostly white students having newer, cleaner buildings and plentiful computers while schools with almost all-black and brown students are more apt to be in decaying and decrepit buildings with few computers.
"We have created the conditions for undermining the schools," state senator Elliott says in describing the lack of resources in Little Rock schools, especially those serving low-income, non-white children.
For her part, Elliott has pushed for increases in education spending, particularly for a statewide early childhood education program for low-income kids and for dyslexia interventions in schools. Her Republican colleagues in state government tend to oppose these measures.
'A Very Racist Decision'
Not only does Little Rock have fewer resources for schools, local citizens now have less say in determining how those resources are managed.
In January 2015, the state board of education, an appointed board whose members are selected by the governor, voted to take over the district, dissolve the locally elected school board, and hand authority over to a governor-appointed Education Commissioner.
The takeover, according to an Arkansas independent news outlet, was justified largely on the basis of a previous decision to designate six schools, including Hall High School, as academically distressed. The same news article quotes a Little Rock minister calling the state takeover, "a very racist decision.”
Why racist? State takeovers have been occurring for years, for many reasons, but "racial issues" have long cast a "cloud" over these actions, according to a report by Education Week in 1998. That article quotes numerous sources who argue takeover efforts frequently have "singled out predominantly minority districts and violated the rights of voters to choose their local education policymakers."
The reporter cites survey results showing "out of 21 districts that have ceded power to mayors or state agencies in recent years … all but three have predominantly minority enrollments, and most are at least 80 percent nonwhite. Of eight districts that have been threatened with takeovers, all but two have populations that are predominantly minority, and three are at least 93 percent nonwhite."
More recently, the Alliance to Reclaim Our Schools (AROS), a national alliance of 10 community organizations and rights groups, published a report titled, ”Out of Control: The Systemic Disenfranchisement of African American and Latino Communities Through School Takeovers." The report examined state takeovers of local schools in New Jersey, Louisiana, Michigan, Illinois, New York, and Pennsylvania and found takeovers consistently produce increased racial segregation and loss of public institutions in communities of color.
Earlier this year, AROS director Keron Blair, in an article in Think Progress, compared takeovers "in predominantly black and Hispanic neighborhoods to the voter ID laws that prevent many people of color from casting a ballot, saying they are both examples of distrusting people of color to govern themselves."
Proponents of the takeover of LRSD deny race has anything to do with their actions, and claim that state takeover is simply about improving academics. But there are plenty of reasons to doubt this claim.
‘No Clear Evidence’: What Takeovers Don’t Do
"The rationale for the state takeover was never about academic distress," says Arkansas State Senator Linda Chesterfield, who represents District 30 that includes part of Little Rock. In a phone conversation, she tells me that the Little Rock district—Arkansas' largest—consists of 48 schools in all, some of which had been awarded for being the "most improved" schools in the state, including one of the schools deemed academically distressed.
Adding to Chesterfield's suspicion is the fact that just 15 percent of the schools in Little Rock were judged to be in academic distress, while other districts have higher percentages of struggling schools. In Forest City, for example, three of the district’s seven schools have been labeled academically distressed. In Blytheville, the district's only middle school and only high school are labeled academically distressed. And in Pine Bluff, the district's only high school and one of the two middle schools are labeled academically distressed. Proportionally, Little Rock doesn’t even come close.
Whatever intentions drove the decision, an additional problem is this: state takeovers of local schools have rarely produced academic improvements.
A recent report, “State Takeovers Of Low-Performing Schools,” examines the track record of district and school takeovers in states that have employed this governance method the longest: Louisiana, Michigan and Tennessee. The report concludes, “There is no clear evidence that takeover districts actually achieve their stated goals of radically improving performance at failing schools.”
The report, by the Center for Popular Democracy, finds that wherever the state takeovers occur, “Children have seen negligible improvement—or even dramatic setbacks—in their educational performance.”
A ‘Sharecropper’ School District
What state school district takeovers can do very well, though, is disenfranchise local voters.
As Senator Chesterfield, who was a school board member before running for statewide office, explains, "With [elected] school boards, you have a person you can go to if you have a complaint." But in a state takeover situation, "You can't go to the state commissioner."
"We've been turned into a sharecropper school district," says Orr.
Orr’s reference is to the agricultural system that emerged in America's post-Civil War Reconstruction period where white landowners, instead of giving up property to freed blacks, allowed former slaves to stay on the white man's land as long as the black farmers—and some poor white farmers—turned over a portion of their crops each year to the owner.
In Orr's sharecropper analogy, he likens state education commissioner Johnny Key to the landowner and the appointed superintendents that have churned through the system as the field bosses. In a sharecropper arrangement, "The landowner gave you what he thought you deserved," Orr explains. And in the case of Little Rock, what the district seems to "deserve" is less voice in how the district is run.
The disenfranchisement of Little Rock citizens became especially apparent recently, when Commissioner Key suddenly, and without explanation, terminated the contract of Baker Kurrus, until then the superintendent of the Little Rock School District. (Key had originally appointed Kurrus himself.)
As veteran local journalist for the Arkansas Times Max Brantley explains, Kurrus was initially regarded with suspicion due to the takeover and the fact he was given the helm despite his lack of education background. But Kurrus had gradually earned the respect of locals due to his tireless outreach to the community and evenhanded treatment of oppositional points of view.
But many observers of school politics in Little Rock speculate Kurrus was terminated because he warned that charter school expansions would further strain resources in the district. In advising against expansions of these schools, Kurrus shared data showing charter school tend to under-enroll students with disabilities and low income kids.
He came to view charter schools as a "parallel school system" that would add to the district's outlays for administration and facilities instead of putting more money directly into classroom instruction.
"It makes no sense" to expand charter schools, he is quoted as telling the local NPR outlet. “You’d never build two water systems and then see which one worked … That’s essentially what we’re doing” by expanding charters.
Kurrus also came to believe that increasing charter school enrollments would increase segregation in the city.
"Kurrus amassed significant data illustrating that charter schools have tended to take higher income and white students from the LRSD … further segregating education," Brantley reports. "Compared to the LRSD," Brantley adds, "eStem and LISA [the predominant charter networks in the city] contain lower percentages of children who live in poverty, African-American and Hispanic students, English-language learners and special education students – all of which give the charters a strong demographic edge.
Because of the state takeover and subsequent firing of Kurrus, the citizens of Arkansas are "basically powerless," says Kathy Webb, when it comes to governing their own schools.
"I don't see a master plan for fixing the district," says Antwan Phillips. Phillips is a Little Rock attorney and currently serves on an advisory board for the schools. (He was appointed by Kurrus.)
In a phone conversation, he tells me that if the district were a sick patient visiting a doctor, there would be some kind of diagnosis and prescription, yet none of that has been put forward by the state. And although there may not be a declared plan for Little Rock schools, the undeclared plan seems to call for rapid expansion of charter schools.
'A Parallel School System’
Charter schools existed in Little Rock before the state took over the district. But many people in the city believe the purpose of the takeover is to expand these charters further and add new ones.
The two most influential charter networks in the city, eStem and LISA, both started before the state takeover but were recently expanded by the state oversight board, despite an outpouring of opposition from the community. The expansions will double student enrollment in both charter networks. A third charter school has been given a three-year extension despite "struggling academically," according to a local reporter.
The takeover "is about money," Chesterfield claims. She points to the district's annual budget of $319 million – the largest in the state – and asks, "Why else would LRSD become the focal point of charters" when there are other districts with higher percentages of struggling schools and other districts with significant achievement gaps?
There's certainly not a lot of evidence that expanding charter schools will improve the overall academic performance of the district.
A report on the academic performance of charters throughout the state of Arkansas in 2008-2009 found, "Arkansas’ charter schools do not outperform their traditional school peers," when student demographics are taken into account. (As the report explains, "several demographic factors" – such as race, poverty, and ethnicity, – strongly correlate with lower scores on standardized tests and other measures of achievement.)
Specifically in Little Rock, the most recent comparison of charter school performance to public schools shows that a number of LRSD public schools, despite having similar or more challenging student demographics, out-perform LISA and eStem charters.
There's also evidence charter schools add to the segregation of Little Rock. Soon after the decision to expand these schools, the LISA network blanketed the district with a direct mail marketing campaign that blatantly omitted the poor, heavily black and Latino parts of the city, according to an investigation by the Arkansas Times.
The charter network's executives eventually apologized for the selective mailing. In their apology, they admitted working with state education officials—the very people who are tasked with overseeing charter operations—on a marketing plan that relegated low-income households to digital-only advertising, which makes no sense because these homes are the least apt to have computers and Internet connections.
With so much evidence that charter schools are both underperforming academically and increasing segregation in Little Rock, it’s worth asking: why is this expansion happening?
What Walton Wants
What's happening to Little Rock is "happening everywhere," according to Julie Johnson Holt, a Little Rock resident with children who went through the public schools in the district.
Holt, who is white, now runs a public relations consultancy but is the former communications director for the Arkansas Attorney General and the Department of Education.
More specifically, what's happening in Little Rock, according to Holt, is the outcome of a well-financed and strategically operated effort to target the community for large charter school expansions. "The charter movement has gotten very organized and very determined," she observes.
Holt attributes much of the strategy and wealth behind the effort to expand charter schools in Little Rock to the Walton Family Foundation, whose influence "is much bigger than I realized" she says, recalling her days working inside state government.
Indeed, the Waltons' influence features prominently in virtually every major decision concerning state governance of LRSD.
In the state board's vote to take over the district, as Brantley reports for the Times, members who voted yes had family ties to and business relationships with organizations either financed by the Walton Foundation or working in league with the Waltons to advocate for charter schools.
In another recent analysis in the Times, reporter Benjamin Hardy traces recent events back to a bill in the state legislature in 2015, HB 1733, that "originated with a Walton-affiliated education lobbyist." That bill would have allowed an outside non-profit to operate any school district taken over by the state. The bill died in committee when unified opposition from the Little Rock delegation combined with public outcry to cause legislators to waver in their support.
So what the Waltons couldn't accomplish with legislation like HB 1733 they are currently accomplishing by influencing official administration actions, including taking out Kurrus and expanding charters across the city.
In one case, as Brantley reports again, a Little Rock charter is being expanded via the waiving of certain state requirements – thereby allowing the expansion to be "fast-tracked."
Brantley notes the expansion is being enabled through relocation to a new, larger site in close proximity to an existing public school that is considered "struggling" but is actually higher-rated than the charter school by the state's school evaluation system. The new site is owned by a leasing agent with an address "that happens to be the mailing address for Walton Enterprises, the holding company for the vast wealth of Walton heirs."
Most recently, WFF announced it would commit $250 million to help charter schools in 17 urban district finance access to facilities. One of the urban districts Walton intends to target is Little Rock.
So what are Waltons' intentions for Little Rock? Do they really want to re-segregate schools and take the community back to 1957?
In a recent investigative article I wrote on the influence of the Walton Foundation on education policy, I asked Jeffrey R. Henig what motivates the Waltons' efforts. Henig is a political science and education professor at Teachers College, Columbia University and a co-editor of the book The New Education Philanthropy.
Henig believes the goal the Waltons have in mind is for school districts across the country to be more decentralized and for the expansion of charters to allow for more "more variety" of schools, especially for schools that reflect "differing value systems or ideas of what is a good school."
One of the "value systems" Henig believes the Waltons would like to see more accommodated in public education is more schools that are "rooted in conservative tradition."
It's not hard to believe that an accommodation of more conservative tradition in public education, especially in the South, is the same thing as what Senator Elliott calls "the Old Southern economic structure."
She adds, "We know how that movie ends."
It Doesn't Have To Be This Way
Of course, the movie doesn’t have to end that way.
Arkansas state lawmakers can choose to bring education funding back to levels at least as generous as what was spent in 2008. The funding can be made more equitable by having in place distribution formulas that ensure money goes to schools that need it most.
Also, state leadership can choose to return control of LRSD to a locally elected school board and give people in Little Rock the power to determine the role of charter schools in the district.
And the citizens of Little Rock will need to choose whether to be further divided or unify in support of their historic public schools.
"I'd like to see people in Little Rock deliberately want to have children go to school together," says Elliott.
There are signs Little Rock may be doing that. As Times reporter Hardy notes in his analysis cited above, there is a unified energy throughout all racial populations in the community to take back control of their schools.
"There's been an awakening," city director Kath Webb agrees, noting the number of Hall High School alums who now volunteer in the school to mentor and tutor students and support school events.
When people living around Hall High, where Webb lives, considered renaming the Hall High Neighborhood Association to something that didn’t include the school name, homeowners decided otherwise and retained Hall High.
And the school itself, despite being stigmatized with the label of "failure" and being redesigned around racial imbalance, has chosen to keep in its mission statement a commitment to being a place for "positive learning" and "diverse cultures."
Political leaders in Arkansas should support that mission too.
*Correction: The original version of this article stated that Hall High diversified in the late 1960s. It has been corrected to indicate that that transformation happened in the late 1970s and early 1980s.
By JEFF BRYANT
Source
Aeropostale, Disney and other retailers pledge to stop on-call shift scheduling
Aeropostale, Disney and other retailers pledge to stop on-call shift scheduling
Imagine waking up and not knowing whether you were scheduled to work. Add on to that the chaotic burden of finding a...
Imagine waking up and not knowing whether you were scheduled to work. Add on to that the chaotic burden of finding a babysitter last minute.
These six companies — Aeropostale, Carter’s, David’s Tea, Disney, PacSun and Zumiez — all required their employees to call an hour or two before a scheduled shift to find out if they would be assigned to work that day.
But no more.
A coalition that included New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman announced today that on-call shift scheduling has come to an end for those companies.
“Today, we are seeing retailers across America take steps to curb unnecessary and unfair on-call scheduling," said Carrie Gleason, director of the Fair Workweek Initiative at the Center for Popular Democracy. "We are especially glad that employers like Disney and Carter's, whose brands promote putting families first, will stop using on-call shifts that are notorious for wreaking havoc on families' balance and puts undue stress on children."
The announcement follows an inquiry by Schneiderman and eight other attorneys general to make sure that more than 50,000 workers nationwide will no longer be subject to such a "burdensome scheduling practice." The agreements with these six companies are the latest in a series of groundbreaking national agreements secured by the New York Attorney General’s office to end on-call scheduling at a number of major retailers.
Fifteen large retailers received a joint inquiry letter in April seeking information and documents related to their use of on-call shifts. Other than the six mentioned, the list included American Eagle, Payless, Coach, Forever 21, Vans, Justice Just for Girls, BCBG Maxazria, Tilly’s, Inc. and Uniqlo. The letter stated that unpredictable work schedules "take a toll on employees."
"Without the security of a definite work schedule, workers who must be 'on call' have difficulty making reliable childcare and elder-care arrangements, encounter obstacles in pursuing an education, and in general experience higher incidences of adverse health effects, overall stress, and strain on family life than workers who enjoy the stability of knowing their schedules reasonably in advance," the letter continued.
After discussions with the Schneiderman and his fellow AGs, none of the retailers will be using on-call shifts. Also, Disney and others have agreed to provide employees with their work schedules at least one week in advance of the start of the work week as a way to plan child care and other obligations ahead of time.
“People should not have to keep the day open, arrange for child care, and give up other opportunities without being compensated for their time,” said Schneiderman. “I am pleased that these companies have stepped up to the plate and agreed to stop using this unfair method of scheduling.”
The announcement marks a continuation of Schneiderman's mission, which began last year when Abercrombie & Fitch, Gap, J.Crew, Urban Outfitters, Pier 1 Imports, and L Brands — the parent company of Bath & Body Works and Victoria’s Secret — all agreed to end the practice of assigning on-call shifts.
New York State has a “call-in-pay” regulation that provides, “An employee who by request or permission of the employer reports for work on any day shall be paid for at least four hours, or the number of hours in the regularly scheduled shift, whichever is less, at the basic minimum hourly wage.” (12 NYCRR 142-2.3).
By Anthony Noto
Source
Groups Across NYC Hold a Protest against Amazon’s HQ2
Groups Across NYC Hold a Protest against Amazon’s HQ2
Other participants include: Make the Road New York, New York Communities for Change, The Retail, Wholesale and...
Other participants include: Make the Road New York, New York Communities for Change, The Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union (RWDSU), UFCW, Laundry, Distribution and Food Service Joint Board of Workers United, SEIU, VOCAL New York, The People for Bernie Sanders, Warehouse Workers Stand Up, Color of Change, Citizen Action NYC, Center for Popular Democracy, Jews for Racial and Economic Justice, The Graduate Center PSC, MPower, Progressive HackNight, Caaav, Drum, Hand in Hand, NYC-Democratic Socialist of America, Tech Action, Human-scale NYC, PrimedOutNYC.
Read the full article here.
Thanks to York School Board for Rejecting Charter Takeover
York Daily Record - November 4, 2014, by Rev. Aaron Willford, Sandra Thompson and Clovis Gallon - Over the past few...
York Daily Record - November 4, 2014, by Rev. Aaron Willford, Sandra Thompson and Clovis Gallon - Over the past few months, something remarkable happened in York. Parents, teachers, students, neighbors and faith leaders united to send a clear message that the education of York's children is more important than the profit margin of an out-of-state charter operator.
On behalf of that community, we would like to thank the York City School Board for standing up for our students, making sure their education comes first, and rejecting a charter takeover of our schools.
When the school board met on Oct. 15, Chief Recovery Officer David Meckley pressured board members to vote on an incomplete, poorly researched charter plan that was rolled out less than a week before. With so little time to review the plan and so many unanswered questions about it, the community urged the board to cast a no vote.
Rejecting the charter plan was not an easy decision for the school board, but it was the right decision — and we applaud their courage. If the plan had been enacted, money that should support students in the classroom would have flowed to a for-profit management company instead. City school children would have been treated like guinea pigs in a radical experiment, and their parents would have lost any say in how their neighborhood schools are run.
Perhaps the school board was looking into a crystal ball when it cast that vote. Just a week later, a federal judge appointed a receiver for Mosaica Education Inc., one of the two charter companies initially in the running to take over York city's schools. The heavily indebted Mosaica was sued by its primary lender in September after defaulting on its debt.
AdvertisementImagine where York's students would be if a charter operator took over their schools and, right out of the gate, found itself under enormous financial pressure for "a series of bad business decisions," as lender Tatonka Capital Corp. claims in its lawsuit against Mosaica.
The case against Mosaica followed a string of troubling studies questioning charter school oversight and accountability in Pennsylvania. A spring report from Auditor General Eugene DePasquale found that a lack of state oversight of charters was creating problems — with some observers comparing the current charter environment to the "wild, wild west."
A blistering report from the Center for Popular Democracy this fall revealed more than $30 million in proven or alleged fraud, waste, or abuse in Pennsylvania's charter school system over the past 17 years.
Giving Meckley a blank check on charterization in York would have been a big mistake.
Fortunately, the school board recognized how fraught with risk this plan was and chose to maintain local control of all the city's schools.
Now, it is critical for the school board to work in partnership with York's educators to improve the city's schools and give every child a shot at success.
Educators and administrators are already implementing a road map to fiscal recovery that will strengthen educational programs. We are glad that the school board is giving this "internal option," as it is known, an opportunity to work before taking any action that will negatively impact our schools, our students, or our community.
York city schools, like many other districts across the commonwealth, face a funding crisis created by deep cuts in state funding for public schools. All Pennsylvania school children deserve better from Harrisburg. It is high time our elected leaders reverse those cuts and put our schools back on track.
Until that happens, York's children should not be treated any differently than other Pennsylvania students. They shouldn't be guinea pigs in a charter experiment. And they shouldn't be deprived of the opportunity to attend their neighborhood schools.
Our school board agrees, and now it is up to all of us to take responsibility for the future of our city's public schools and the students who learn there.
We have no doubt that the York community is strongly committed to making our schools the best they can be. Working together, we can achieve truly remarkable things.
Rev. Aaron Willford is a member of York Concerned Clergy. Sandra Thompson is president of the York NAACP. Clovis Gallon is a teacher and York Education Association member.
Source
Ana María Archila: Low Wage Workers are Paving the Way to Democracy
GRITtv - February 18, 2014, by Laura Flanders - Bill de Blasio campaigned on ushering in a new era in New York City...
GRITtv - February 18, 2014, by Laura Flanders - Bill de Blasio campaigned on ushering in a new era in New York City and actively pursued low-wage voters. Now that he is Mayor, what can the people who elected him do to influence what happens next? It is a question grassroots groups grapple with around the country. On GRITtv this week, Ana María Archila shares a few ideas. Archila was a founder of one of the most effective community groups in New York; now she's heading up a regional initiative that seeks to build popular democracy, not only at the ballot box, but in between elections.
From the school to prison pipeline and stop and frisk to immigration reform and workplace safety regulations, New Yorkers are eager to seize the moment for political change, says Archila. For evidence, consider the crowds that gathered at the Talking Transition Tent which was set up in downtown, immediately following last fall's elections.
Mayor Bill de Blasio seems to be listening. Less than two months into his term he has expanded paid sick leave for hundreds of workers around the city, one of the central demands of low wage workers. But how do people ensure that this momentum continues?
"He is only listening because low wage workers are extremely organized," Co-Executive Director for the Center for Popular Democracy Ana María Archila tells GRITtv. "New Yorkers are demanding more."
In addition to paid sick leave, organizers with Make the Road New York (the community organization that Archila describes as her "organizing home") are campaigning for a raise in the minimum wage and increased work place safety regulations. Organizing locally and creating small scale initiatives, like worker or consumer co-ops, can help engage people and address some immediate needs, but ultimately, low wage Americans need to build political power.
"The biggest co-operative we have is our own government and we need to make sure that it works for us," she says.
For more on ushering in a new progressive era, watch our interview with Joo-Hyun Kang on ending the Stop and Frisk regime.
Source
Warren met privately with 'Draft Warren' supporters
Elizabeth Warren says she has no intention of jumping into the 2016 race, but she recently met behind closed doors with...
Elizabeth Warren says she has no intention of jumping into the 2016 race, but she recently met behind closed doors with members of a movement that’s urging her to run.
The Massachusetts senator held a private meeting April 22 with a small group of progressive leaders from across the country — including some vocal “Run Warren Run” supporters who continue to hold out hope that she’ll enter the presidential race.
In an hourlong meeting with her staff and a 30-minute meeting with Warren, the group of about a half-dozen top progressive activists — including three who are active in the movement — did not discuss the draft campaign. Instead, the conversation focused on issues of social and racial justice. The activists highlighted specific issues the senator can use to influence the presidential debate in 2016 and, they hope, push Hillary Clinton to the left on issues including police brutality, immigration reform, prison privatization, and reducing fees to promote naturalized citizenship, among others.
The meeting’s purpose was to see “how Elizabeth Warren, with her platform, could work with us to move a progressive vision for the country and really engage with communities of color,” said attendee Jonathan Westin, director of New York Communities for Change. “That goes hand in hand with what she’s already doing.” Warren is addressing problems that are “part and parcel of what we believe is wrong with this country,” he said.
An aide to Warren maintained that the senator did not know the group she was meeting with had any connection to the Run Warren Run campaign until POLITICO informed her office. “The point of the meeting was to discuss economic and social justice issues,” the aide said. “As Sen. Warren has said many times, she does not support the draft group’s efforts and is not running for president.”
But Westin is a vocal supporter of the campaign to draft Warren and, as a co-chair of New York’s Working Families Party, voted last February for the political party to join the “Run Warren Run” coalition. Just weeks before the sit-down with Warren, he wrote a blog post for MoveOn.org calling for her to run for president. His co-author on the piece, Katelyn Johnson, executive director of Chicago’s Action Now Institute, also attended the sit-down with Warren.
“Elizabeth Warren is not the only candidate who could ensure a robust presidential primary, but she is the best,” they wrote. “[Warren] is the one who can truly give Clinton a run for the money and yes, even has a shot to win the nomination. We urge Warren to acknowledge the importance of this political moment and enter the race.”
At the meeting with Warren, they were also joined by Daniel Altschuler, managing director of the Make the Road Action Fund, which is also on the advisory council of the Working Families Party and supports the draft Warren movement. But no effort was made during the meeting to urge the senator to enter the race.
“This was about someone who we want to be sharing the issues that are affecting communities of color and working-class communities to make her the strongest possible champion on those issues,” Altschuler said. “The senator has been a tremendous champion on issues of the financial system run amok and income inequality. We think that a lot of the issues affecting our communities are tied to those big financial systems; we wanted to share some of the issues we’re working on.”
Some in the group — which included Shabnam Bashiri from Rise Up Georgia; Bill Bartlett from Action United, a Pennsylvania group; and Brian Kettenring, co-executive director of the Center for Popular Democracy — privately pointed out that November 2016 is a long way off and insisted there is still plenty of time for Warren her to get in the race if she decides to do so.
If Warren wants the group to stand down, the meeting with some of its diehard supporters did little to advance that goal.
“I would still love to see her run for president,” said Westin, speaking after the meeting. “Connecting with the grass-roots groups is a very big piece of how we continue to amplify her message. People are getting away with murder — literally and figuratively, on Wall Street.”
The Run Warren Run campaign was launched in December by Democracy for America and MoveOn and coordinates with Ready for Warren, another group urging the senator to run. In a letter to the Federal Election Commission from her attorney last August regarding the Ready for Warren PAC, Warren said she “does not, explicitly or implicitly, authorize, endorse, or otherwise approve of the organization’s formation or activities.”
But many who met with her last month share the position that Clinton needs a serious primary challenger.
“The Democratic Party needs a contested primary,” said Jennifer Epps-Addison, director of Wisconsin Jobs Now, who also was in the Warren meeting. “Black folks in our communities have been systematically attacked. It’s not simply about police brutality. Our goal in talking to Warren was to make those connections the same way we did during the civil rights movement.” She said her goal is to get Warren “to be talking about racial justice as part of her progressive message.”
While she is not part of the movement to draft Warren, Epps-Addison added, “We feel that many Democrats are not speaking truthfully to the values that many of the base and voters are concerned about, including black folks.”
In the absence of a competitive Democratic primary, however, some progressives are hoping they can at least push Warren to be the party’s agenda-setter.
“For Sen. Warren, you’re seeing her evolve from a very effective advocate on a set of issues into more of a movement leader and a party leadership role,” said Kettenring. “We’re all evolving, and she is, too. That’s part of the dynamic at work here. Some of the people I know who were in the ‘draft Warren’ movement are people we work with and know, because they’re part of the broader progressive ecosystem. I’d say more of us are stepping up to define the terms of the debate.”
Read more: http://www.politico.com/story/2015/05/warren-met-privately-with-draft-warren-supporters-117671
New York City Schools' Discriminatory and Damaging School-to-Prison Pipeline
New York City Schools' Discriminatory and Damaging School-to-Prison Pipeline
New York City schools feed young black and Latino youth into a school-to-prison pipeline by leveling criminal...
New York City schools feed young black and Latino youth into a school-to-prison pipeline by leveling criminal punishments on students for small infractions and normal youthful behavior.
Read the full article here.
Activists Protest Universities Over Investments In Puerto Rico Bondholders
Activists Protest Universities Over Investments In Puerto Rico Bondholders
A coalition of social and economic justice groups has launched a one-week campaign to end what they view as problematic...
A coalition of social and economic justice groups has launched a one-week campaign to end what they view as problematic university investments. The New York-based Center for Popular Democracy (CPD) and partner organizations including three Make the Road branches will hold six protests along the East Coast, calling on Columbia, Harvard and Yale to pull their investments out of hedge funds that hold Puerto Rican debt and have advocated austerity measures in the U.S. territory, leading to mass school closings and higher tuition costs.
Read the full article here.
1 month ago
1 month ago