FOR-PROFITS RUNNING OUR SCHOOLS? ARE WE NUTS?

OK, which fools came up with the idea that for-profit companies should be running public schools, or any schools for that matter?  Do we want companies making profits on the backs of our children.  For-profits deceive the voters with their unfounded claims that running public, tax-supported schools for profit is the American way. 

What are voters thinking?  Do voters know that when for-profits take over, they often lower salaries, decrease benefits, increase hours, and hire and fire at will.  This may sound economical on the surface, but who benefits?   The threat to workers--“If you don’t do whatever we tell you to do, with whatever resources we decide to give you, we will find someone else who will”-- is powerful.  How can employees complain?  The education of the children does not have to improve, but, who cares?  “It’s out of our hands,” the people say, and they are right.  By then, it’s too late.  The companies are accountable to no one. 

It is interesting that friends of legislators manage to open public charter schools and can make profits from running these “public schools.” Is this just another means of thanking campaign contributors?

A large segment of our government’s work has already been turned over to for-profits.  It is called outsourcing, contracting and a few other things, but it is all the same.  We citizens pay for a lot of the profits that go into the pockets of the wealthy.  Why do we allow it?  Why aren’t we screaming at this abuse of our taxes?

We are turning our children’s education over to people who seem to understand their mission as maintaining an American-born underclass to fill jobs they fear immigrants will want to come here to take.  It is also a technique for union busting since few charters have teachers who are part of a collective bargaining unit.  When private companies run charters, everything developed in their schools belongs to them and cannot be shared.  Many of us thought that charters were instituted to try out new teaching and organization strategies to improve education for all.  That’s what proponents told everyone.  I suspect that is one of the reasons the charter school movement had such momentum.

The reality is that charters, for-profit or otherwise,  are generally opened in poor communities who have already gotten the word that nothing they have to say about education or anything else matters.  Parents think they are going to get something better for their children, but that is not what happens most of the time.  Since nothing related to the basic poverty and lack of opportunity in the community changes, parents, their children, and taxpayers in general are just being taken for another ride to nowhere, and paying for the trip.

Ruth

THE EASY CAUSE

 Thursday morning, I was listening to a report on NPR about the flocking of Republican candidates to the “Right to Life” convention in Florida.  It seems that they are falling over themselves to prove that they are the most anti-abortion candidate ever.  They are even signing pledges that if elected, they will only appoint “right to life” people to positions of power in their administration. 

As I listened to the report, it came to me as it so often does that abortion is the easy cause.  All you have to do to have credentials in their group is be willing to show photos magnified a hundred times of aborted fetuses and work to cut funding for any organization that tries to help women who cannot or should not be pregnant.  Usually the spokeswomen have a bunch of kids and claim to be super religious. The men aren’t too big on women’s rights in general.

If these people are so “right to life,” where is the signed pledge that they will find funding for struggling women and children?  Where did they sign that they will do whatever necessary to be sure that even the poorest children will have an education equal to that of at least middle class kids?  Where is their signature on the promise to get businesses into poor communities that will provide jobs for the young people and prices that residents can afford?  Where are the ads and quality films that promote giving children for adoption?  I don’t see the pen on the line promising health care for all children or decent housing for their families.

What I do see is a stampede toward a cause that has all kinds of emotional ties but few real risks.  Their efforts make a small core of people think that being anti-abortion says something important about their candidate’s character.  It is not even necessary to analyze what that is.  With one hand the candidates sign a ridiculous, probably un-American pledge while they raise the other to cut spending for the programs that would support and protect the children.  It seems the group’s name should be “Right to Birth” with a subtext that states, "Every breath you take after birth is at your own risk."

Peace,

Ruth

OUR MOST VALUABLE RESOURCE

The school year has just ended for me and the news for the coming year does not look good.  Rumor has it that 40% of our teachers and support staff will be laid off.  Due to state and Federal budget crunches, our children will be sacrificed again. 

I hear so often “our children are our most valuable resource” and I even have a great T-Shirt with that thought on it.  I think that is the exact truth.  When one notes the way we treat our natural resources in general, one cannot be surprised that our “most valuable” resource should be treated so badly.  We clear-cut our forests.  We fish out our rivers and oceans.  We use our precious FRESH water to drive natural gas from deep in rocks.  We destroy our wetlands to provide entertainment spots for the wealthy.  We hunt animals to extinction.  We strip mine some of our most beautiful places. 

In that same spirit, we allow 25% and more of our children to live in poverty.  We blame teachers for student lack of success, then pile more and more children into their classes with fewer supplies, guaranteeing low success for the children in our poorest communities.  We allow for-profit organizations (charter schools) to suck the resources of the districts who are already tapping taxpayers out.  We drive our kids into prisons because we have no jobs for them.  We charge so much for college that it may take a lifetime to pay it off, that is if they can get work.

Like our other “cherished” resources, we fail to see that what we do or do not do now will sharply impact the future for generations.  What fools we are to choose to live only for the present, spouting our political nonsense while our children’s well-being goes the way of the dodo.

Peace,

Ruth