The proposal that each PTA member is to receive and review regarding charter schools only has a pro side. No opinions are offered providing another viewpoint. Apparently this is how they roll in the state of Washington and I can attest to that during my time as a PTA Legislative Chair. At the PTA legislative session last year where the guest speaker was Bill Gates, Sr., there was an ed reform proposal for merit pay and the only voice in the wilderness at the time against this plank was mine. There was no one there to officially provide a “con” to every “pro” that was proposed. So much for fair and balanced.
Then I found out this morning who the guest speakers were to be for the PTA legislative session and who should be on it? None other that George Scarola, Legislative Director with the “facts don’t matter” League of Education Voters (LEV), a Gates backed organization that has beat the drum for charter schools since last year when they started a speakers series on the subject. The speakers included the ed reform all-star list of Richard Barth, President and CEO of the KIPP charter franchise, his wife Wendy Kopp, founder of Teach for America, Inc., Steve Barr, founder of the Green Dot charter franchise, Ben Austin of the failed Parent Revolution, Tom Vander Ark former Executive Director of Education for the Gates Foundation and now failed charter school entrepreneur, John Danner, who assisted in the creation of a charter school law in Tennessee and subsequently founded 12 charter schools in that state and then to top it off, Kevin Johnson who spoke to an almost all African-American audience at Mt. Zion Baptist Church talking about his charter school St. Hope Academy. And now LEV’s lobbyist will be speaking to the PTA legislative session about all things ed reform including charter schools and their next big push, online learning.
This is really disheartening and perhaps criminal. I am really depressed about the ability of the School District and the State Office of Sup. of Ed. to override anything they choose to irregardless of ethics, morality, laws, or the will of the vox populi. We get stonewalled, Gates gets a foothold on privatization of public education in Seattle, and our student population gets shafted. This is a good reason to take all money out of elections and provide really free elections with no financial influences. It would be much less expensive both economically and socially.
The state legislators give Gates and other billionaires big tax write-offs depriving the public education system of much needed funding, then these revenues are placed in tax-sheltered investment portfolios, like the Gates Foundation, collecting even more tax free money and finally the profits are used to privatize the very education system that has been denied essential funding in the first place thanks to Gates and his cronies. What a racket!
Without campaign funding Gates wouldn’t get the tax write-off’s in the first place, not to mention the conflict of interest involved with using so-called non-profit foundations for political purposes such as influencing state legislatures on policy decisions like public education. This is not a democracy.
Charter schools have not met the test of time and there is no reason for our students to be the lab rats for Gates, Broad, the hedge fund millionaires and the rest of the folks who are looking for personal financial gain by using public money.