Remember the Biblical warning? "As you sow, so shall you reap." The
American Corporate Empire(ACE) ruling class, through its emphasis on
Profit over Education, is teaching our children a lesson that will
come back to bite the Empire in its backside.
Self serving and Greed go hand in hand down that broad, smooth road to
self destruction.
Carl Jarvis
On 11/10/17, Miriam Vieni <miriamvieni@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
What I heard on yesterday's Flashpoints, was a story about a very well
functioning community public school, cleaned up by the community, which was
not permitted to re-open, while a badly damaged, poorly run school was
re-opened. This was in San Juan.
Miriam
Making Puerto Rico the New New Orleans – Steal the Schools and Give Them to
Big Business to Run For Profit
Published on
Friday, November 10, 2017
by
Common Dreams
Making Puerto Rico the New New Orleans – Steal the Schools and Give Them to
Big Business to Run For Profit
Celebrating teachers who refuse to back down despite the forces of
prejudice
and commerce stacked against them
by
Steven Singer
Mercedes Martinez, president of the Federacion de Maestros of Puerto Rico,
was among those unionized teachers recently arrested protesting the
attempted takeover of the island's public schools. (Photo: Courtesy of the
author)
Charter school backers can’t help it.
They see a bunch of black or brown kids displaced by a natural disaster and
they have to swoop in to help…
Help themselves, that is.
They did it in 2005 to New Orleans schools after Hurricane Katrina. Now
they
want to do it again in Puerto Rico after Hurricane Maria.
“This is a real opportunity to press the reset button,” said Puerto Rican
Secretary of Education Julia Keleher.
“…this [is a] transformational opportunity for us to start to think
fundamentally differently about what it is to be in school, and how one
goes
about getting an education.”
IMG_8573
A dozen years ago in Louisiana, that meant stealing almost the entire New
Orleans public school system in the aftermath of Katrina. About 90 percent
of the city’s 126 schools were given to the Louisiana Recovery School
District, which turned them all into charter schools.
In effect, Louisiana state officials elected by the white majority stole
control from local school boards elected by the city’s black majority. More
than 7,000 teachers most of whom were people of color and had been
displaced
by the hurricane found themselves replaced by mostly white teachers brought
in from other parts of the country.
Now, more than 10 years later, the New Orleans experiment has been shown to
be a failure. Scores on standardized tests have improved (kinda), but the
curriculum has narrowed, teacher turnover has doubled, disadvantaged and
special education students have even fewer resources while schools fight
over high achieving children, students spend hours being bused to schools
far from their homes, communities have been erased, and parents have less
control over how their own tax dollars are spent.
That is what Keleher and others want to repeat in Puerto Rico – wrest
control away from the public and give it to big business all wrapped up in
a
bow.
Screen Shot 2017-11-09 at 12.34.02 PM
Why?
Public schools come with expensive perks like local control, transparent
budgets and regulations to ensure all the money is being spent on students.
It’s much cheaper to run these districts with unelected bureaucrats,
closed-door budgets and the ability to grab as much of the cash as possible
and stuff it into their own pockets.
It’s not like anyone’s going to complain. These schools aren’t for rich
white kids. They’re for poor brown ones.
It’s just colonialism, 2017 style!
IMG_8572
Jeanne Allen thinks that’s a great idea.
The founder and CEO of school privatization lobbying group, the Center For
Education Reform, said that charterization is the best thing that could
happen to Puerto Rican schools.
After dealing with the immediate effects of the hurricane, reformers
“should
be thinking about how to recreate the public education system in Puerto
Rico.” And she should know. Allen was also involved in the New Orleans
fiasco turning that system over to big business.
She added that charter school operators across the nation, including cyber
charter school managers (whose schools often have even more wretched
academic results), should be thinking about how to get involved in Puerto
Rico post-Maria.
Keleher has already begun laying the groundwork.
Even though many Puerto Rican schools are only operational because of the
work of teachers who have cleaned them up and have opened them despite
being
told not to by Keleher’s administration, the Education Secretary has
pledged
to lay off massive amounts of teachers and permanently close more schools –
even schools that are structurally sound.
“Consolidating schools makes sense,” Keleher said in October. “They can go
out and protest in the streets, but that doesn’t change the fact that we
can’t go back to life being the same as it was before the hurricane.”
Puerto Rican teachers aren’t letting the vultures swoop in without protest.
IMG_8571
Just this week twenty-one teachers in the capitol of San Juan were arrested
during a rally at the Education Department headquarters. They were
demanding
all structurally sound schools be opened immediately.
“Our schools have served students well and although we recognize that it
can
be expensive to repair some schools, what we are asking is that schools
that
are ready be opened,” said social worker Alba Toro just before the arrests.
Administration officials are claiming the teachers were taken into custody
because they physically attacked the civil servants, but witnesses say the
protest was entirely peaceful.
image
According to Education Safety Commissioner César González, the protesters
assaulted at least three security employees and a public relations employee
while inside the building.
However, protestors dispute this version of events. Eulalia Centeno, who
was part of the group that went inside the building, but left before the
arrests began, said that no violent acts were committed and that the
protesters only demanded to see the secretary to request the opening of
public schools.
Seven weeks after the hurricane, less than half of the island’s nearly
1,200
public schools are open in any capacity. Though many schools endured severe
storm and flood damage, others were repaired and cleaned to shelter
hurricane victims and are ready to take in students.
“Keleher is using the crisis as an opportunity to close hundreds of public
schools, lay off senior teachers and privatize public education,” says
Mercedes Martinez, President of the Federacion de Maestros of Puerto Rico,
an island teachers union.
IMG_8570Martinez was one of the teachers arrested during the protest.
When she was taken out of the building in handcuffs, her son was
photographed leaning over a railing and patting his mother on the shoulder.
This is what real heroes do.
They refuse to back down despite the forces of prejudice and commerce
stacked against them.
Will we let the charter school vampires suck Puerto Rico dry?
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0
License
