Kudos to Rick Callihan who posted ten audio files he obtained from a recent Georgia School Board Association conference now documented on his Dunwoody Talk blog which substantiates the basis of the law suit mentioned. Mr. Callihan states that the goal of the Georgia School Board Association is to limit choice, maintain their monopoly, and not to allow local parents and business owners to organize their own local board and charter school. This conference was paid for by taxpayer money and the association is now alleged to be using those public funds to train educators to illegally influence an election.
Georgia School Boards Association Using Public Funds to Sway Votes?
GSBA Georgia School Boards Association Interested in Control, Not Parents and Children
Sis
Henry GSBA Against Charter School Competition
Parents file suit against 180 school districts on charter amendment
A group of Georgia taxpayers announced they have sued the Fulton County School System and the Gwinnett School District. The group wants to immediately stop Georgia from using taxpayer funds to campaign against Amendment One, the charter school amendment of the Nov. 6 ballot. The parents and taxpayers are represented by Attorney Glenn Delk.
Delk said his clients have evidence that in June, the GSBA held a training meeting attended by board members funded by taxpayers on how to defeat the Amendment. Delk claims to have an audio copy of the meeting.
Delk also said in August, State Supt. John Barage issued a press release with anti-Amendment material. He used state resources to disseminate the material to all the school districts and posted the materials on the official DOE website.
"My clients have reluctantly sued to stop the school districts from using some of the $18.5B taxpayers spend annually on K-12 education, not to educate children, but to conduct an illegal political campaign to return their monopoly control over the money," said Delk.
But, yet, many find it A-OK, that outside companies and individuals, who only care not about the education of out children, but, how much money they will make off the charter schools, are financing the pro-Charter School Amendment?
ReplyDeleteAmazing and disappointing.
In my opinion, it has become apparent, based on action of the last week or so, that the Charter School Amendement proponents are attempting to stifle any and all opposition to this bill.
ReplyDeleteDunwoody Mom,
ReplyDeleteOutside companies and individuals profit every day from the current school system. public and private. Simply take a look at the text book mess in DeKalb and other districts. The text book industry profits are in the millions. How about the construction companies building the schools? These are not built by the Civilian Conservation Corps of the 1930s. School are built (and sometimes maintained) by private contractors. All sorts of vendors profit from schools in the current system. And we in DeKalb have seen the Friends and Family system in place, creating jobs for not the best applicant, but for the best connected candidate.
The best part of a charter school that chooses to hire a for-profit education company to help manage the charter school is that the local board can fire said private company. Sure wish we had the power to fire central office and local school staff now (the ones who are not needed or not doing their job well).
ReplyDeleteI'd prefer to not have school boards at all. Rather, schools would be run out of the local municipality. Imagine having only one set of local government & elected officials that you would have to deal with. So if you live in an incorporated city, your mayor & council members would be the ones you'd be working with. They'd have a Department of Education, just like they have other departments.
ReplyDeleteA few days ago I watched Bill Moyers and Company on PBS. The show was about ALEC. If you haven't heard of ALEC, or haven't seen this show, I encourage you watch it. Here's the link: http://billmoyers.com/episode/full-show-united-states-of-alec/
ReplyDeleteI was a public school teacher for 18 years, 16 years in California. At that time, California schools were rated above 5th in the nation. Now they are somewhere near the bottom. In the 90s the state legislature spent more on prisons than it did on schools. Around the time I was leaving the school system to become a minister, business entered the field of education. The public was told that business could run schools better than the public system. Privatization of education had begun.
On the show this past weekend, Bill Moyers exposed ALEC which are businesses and mostly Republican state legislators subverting the lobbying system. Business interests provide suggested business friendly legislation to be introduced in the various states which the state legislators (who have been wined and dined by those business interests) take back to their states and present as their own legislation to be passed. Privatization of Education has been one of the objectives of ALEC during the past 20 years or so and public dollars to education have been reduced and reduced and reduced.
One of the states where ALEC has been able to get the appropriate legislation, (Bill Moyers talked about it on the show, I don't recall which one) public dollars for education were given to business interest for education purposes.
This may not seem like a big deal, after all, aren't these businesses educating kids? Consider this, if business takes over the majority of education, it will mean the business has a right to refuse service to anyone it doesn't want to serve, or require something from its patrons, as well as payment.
I taught in a low-wealth district. The private school kids usually outscored our kids. As public school teachers we used to complain that our test scores weren't higher because we had to educate everyone. Kids with problems are not less intelligent. They are dealing with more issues outside of the classroom. We couldn't refuse these students as private schools could. I now see that as a blessing.
This change to Georgia's constitution sounds a lot like ALEC legislation and if it passes, business will be more fully involved in education in Georgia. Just take a look at who's for the change - Wal-Mart, Multinational Conglomerate Koch Industries, 10 big-dollar out-of-state donors, Gov. Nathan Deal, Don Balfour, Chip Rogers.
Please join me by voting NO on the charter school amendment in order to keep big business and the right-wing agenda out of our public schools. Do you want a school system where intelligent design instruction is required, but evolution and global warming theories are banned, and scientific thought is continually denigrated? Of course not! Vote NO on the charter school amendment!
I also recall a while back a local blogger, who had thoughts of grandeur of running for office himself, but thankfully that attempt was thwarted by clearer heads and never came to fruition, trashed a teacher at one of our schools in his blog because he in his narrow ethnocentric mind didn't care for the song choices (feeling they were too ethnic) included in her musical program. Do we want that type of near-sighted control over our teachers? No! Vote NO on the charter school amendment!
When less than 25% of what is collected in tax reaches the classroom, and they are packing 30+ kids to a classroom, something must change. Charter Schools will provide slight improvement, but it doesn't solve the centrally planned race to the bottom.
ReplyDeleteThe system has failed at least one generation... and by looking at the post above, it has likely failed more.