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Public Schools / Board

1 24 primary on taRGET crt bs

note mcmahon trump doge killed dept of education

oddly? blank 519 see main cat schools

aha, part of the commons

merri ok

see charter homeschool PAROCHIAL

see local takeover

see censor

see CRT RUFO --> TRUMP 2 WOKE DEI STORY 1

see also school bd, // public library = commons

SEE TEACHERS UNION PUBLIC

see voucher/ charter "gov't schools" devil term

see textbooks

aha gop hypocrisy on local control is best, cf takeover /emergency mgr and other efforts for state legis to leverage control

SEE CIVICS ED robt r says ~ NCLB

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AN 2 26

Teacher sues after GOP policy labels 'everyone is welcome' sign as anti-Trump resistance

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rww

Mark Meckler tells Christian parents to remove their children from public schools: "You are sacrificing your children to Moloch if you leave them in those schools. You are leaving them to the mercy of demons and people who hate the Creator." 2 26

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an 9 25

Florida Attorney GeneralJames Uthmeier (R) has announced the launch of a new tool for members of the public to report “acts or threats of political violence" as well as social media posts of public school teachers, according to the Tampa Bay Times.

Uthmeier, chairman of the ironically named far-right "Florida Freedom Fund" political action committee associated with Governor Ron DeSantis (R-FL), has the backing of Florida Education Commissioner Anastasios Kamoutsas, who, recently sent a letter to public school superintendents threatening teachers who publicly express negative opinions about deceased far-right activist Charlie Kirk.

In a statement attached to Uthmeier's announcement, Kamoutsas said that “any educator who makes vile, despicable comments celebrating and encouraging violence in schools will be investigated and held accountable.”

According to The Tallahassee Democrat, Uthmeier said that "while the First Amendment will be upheld, threats of violence won’t be tolerated."

In the wake of Kirk's death, several Florida public school teachers have lost their jobs and status or been put on leave, including Karen Leader, an associate art history professor at Florida Atlantic University, placed on leave for posting about the right-wing podcaster's history of hate speech.

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A retired University of Florida professor lost his honorary title after posting about Kirk, “I did not want him to die. I reserve that wish for Trump," and other professors' posts are under investigation by the state along with teachers at several K-12 schools throughout the state.

“I didn’t say anything or do anything that encouraged violence at all,” Leader told Hyperallergic.“I did not say or do anything that celebrated his death, that said he deserved it, that in any way, shape or form, condoned violence.”

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7/18/2022

Stuck on the Rufo Road

by Jennifer Berkshire

Jennifer C. Berkshire hosts the education podcast Have You Heard. She is the author, with Jack Schneider, of*A Wolf at the Schoolhouse Door.

Last spring, taking a break from waging conspiratorial campaigns against the republic, an assortment of luminaries associated with the Claremont Institute gathered to lay out a plan to foment a culture war against the nation’s schools. The Clubhouse event, entitled “Building A New Right: Red States vs. Wokeness,” featured a grab bag of Claremont fellows and friends. The star attraction was Manhattan Institute agitprop specialist Christopher Rufo, chief sower of the panics against critical race theory (CRT) and “grooming.”

In a now familiar exercise, Rufo sketched out his campaign to make CRT toxic as part of a larger propaganda war against public institutions. The ultimate goal, he explained, was essentially to do away with those institutions and redirect school funding to families and individuals based on their “values.” Rufo waxed apocalyptic about the scourge of “wokeness,” and yet he struck a hopeful note. After all, he reminded listeners, it had only taken the country a few years to go from the Black Panthers to Nixon.

In the ensuing months, Rufo’s propaganda campaign would grow increasingly lurid, but on this occasion, he urged his audience to raise the discussion to a higher level. Focus on “excellence,” he admonished them, and attack public schools for failing to meet that standard. Conservative communications guru David Reaboi, who helped seed a previous moral panic on the right against the sinister spread of Sharia law, weighed in with some messaging advice of his own: Go full bore against the teachers unions. Do damage.

Today, this coordinated plan to wage a public relations war against the nation’s public schools is an undeniable success. Forty-two states have moved to restrict teaching about oppression, race or gender. According to one estimate, more than one third of students in the country attend school in a state where educators are now subject to some kind of classroom gag order.

The achievement of Rufo and his allies is all the more astonishing, given the deep unpopularity of the policies they champion. Polls consistently show that voters across party lines are repelled by the GOP’s education extremism. Across the chasm of our current political divide, bipartisan majorities are largely in agreement that banning books and gagging teachers is bad.

And for all of the insurgent right’s bold rhetoric about mining parent outrage for electoral gold, the polls that matter most have shown remarkably poor results for candidates running on scorched-earth education platforms. In New Hampshire, New York, Montana, Georgia, Wisconsin and beyond, voters are rejecting right-wing culture warriors, often by wide margins—a movement that might be summed up as “keeping the crazy away from the kids.”

There’s just one problem, though: The leadership of the Democratic party doesn’t seem to have gotten the memo.

Read entire article at **The Forum

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mma

  1. ### Jesse Watters brushes aside talk of a Trump enemies list: “Who’s Trump arrested other than bad hombres and the linebacker in Congress?”

05/29/25

Jesse Watters: “Teachers are too stupid and too lazy to buckle down and really go the extra mile for these kids”

05/29/25

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an no lnx

'A boon to far-right extremists': Alarm sounded over new Trump appointee

U.S. President Donald Trump speaks in the Oval Office of the White House in Washington, D.C., U.S., February 11, 2025.

REUTERS/Kevin Lamarque

Jordan Green February 27, 2025

Dan Bongino, the right-wing podcast host tapped by FBI Director Kash Patel to serve as deputy director of the agency, has a history of downplaying white supremacist extremism, the violence committed by Trump supporters at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, and threats against school board members.

Bongino suggested during a podcast recorded in September 2022 that the FBI under former Director Christopher Wray pursued investigations of “white supremacists who are terrorists” because of political pressure from President Joe Biden and Attorney General Merrick Garland. He did not mention the deadly Buffalo mass shooting carried out four months earlier that year or dozens of neo-Nazi accelerationist terror plots foiled by the FBI that would warrant such a focus.

“Biden and Garland say, ‘We need white supremacist, domestic violent extremists’ — you know, we learned in the Salem witch trials: If you’re looking for a witch, you’re going to find one, even if there isn’t one,” Bongino said.

The statement was made during an interview with Kyle Seraphin, an FBI agent who was suspended after raising questions about an email from FBI leadership flagging threats against school board members and later separated from the agency after refusing to take the COVID-19 vaccination.

“The idea that you could have this file on you about what you’re surfing online — not criminal, maybe untoward, maybe nasty — but the fact that this happened because you showed up at a meeting and said something is really horrifying,” Bongino said.

In a second interview with Seraphin that was published the following day, Bongino ridiculed the agency for tasking agents with following up on leads that flooded the FBI from members of the public days after thousands of Trump supporters stormed the Capitol and disrupted Congress’ certification of the electoral vote in the 2020 presidential election.

“You know, I get it — I would have not preferred January 6th turned out differently as well,” Bongino said. “I think any sane person would have. But to take six-figure FBI earners with a set of skills and let them run out all across America taking tips about a guy you met potentially in eighth grade showing up on January 6th sounds a little Orwellian.”

President Trump issued blanket pardons to the nearly 1,600 people charged with crimes related to that Jan. 6 siege of the U.S. Capitol, but threats from white supremacist terrorists seeking to cause a collapse of society remain an ongoing concern for law enforcement. Last month, the U.S. State Department named the white supremacist group Terrorgram, whose leaders face charges for soliciting the murder of federal officials among other offenses, a specially designated global terrorist entity.

The mass murder of 10 African Americans in a grocery store in Buffalo, N.Y., in 2022 underscored the threat posed by white supremacist terrorism, while a car-ramming attack by an ISIS sympathizer that killed 14 people celebrating New Year’s Eve in New Orleans provided a reminder that Islamic extremism also remains a threat. Meanwhile, school shootings in recent months have revealed a bewildering array of motivations that include white supremacy, inceldom and nihilism.

“At a time when the violent extremist threat is as diverse and unpredictable as any time in recent years, unqualified conspiracy peddlers and election deniers are running the FBI,” Jon Lewis, a research fellow at the Program on Extremism at George Washington University, said in an email to Raw Story. “It is a boon to far-right extremists in particular, who will undoubtedly feel emboldened counting senior officials like Patel and Bongino among their compatriots.”

Bongino did not respond to an interview request submitted to the press office at FBI headquarters.

Similar to Jan. 6, when Trump supporters angered by false claims that the 2020 election was stolen wound up turning on the U.S. Capitol police, violent white supremacists often target law enforcement, along with Jews, people of color, and LGBTQ+ people.

In one such case, the FBI filed charges against Kyle Christopher Benton, a Washington state man, for unlawful possession of a machine gun, after he posted on social media that he was joining multiple internet chats to encourage other users to commit mass shootings.

In a filing arguing for continued pre-trial detention, the government said that an investigation for domestic violence conducted by the Army Criminal Investigation Division in 2019 revealed that Benton operated social media accounts that promoted white supremacist and antisemitic propaganda. Benton’s partner allegedly told investigators that he wanted to shoot up the “alphabet boys” — a common reference to federal law enforcement — or a local police station.

“At a time when FBI agents are facing calls of retribution following the January 6 pardons, the nomination of a podcast host who has repeatedly promoted harmful conspiracies aimed at delegitimizing the FBI sends a dangerous message,” Lewis said.

During his interview with Seraphin in 2022, Bongino charged that the agency “bought into the hype” that the Jan. 6 attack was an event of the same magnitude as Pearl Harbor or 9/11. He went on to accuse agents of “locking up people for a January 6th insurrection — or whatever, grandma, who trespassed — because you don’t like their politics.”

Bongino and Seraphin’s discussion of Jan. 6 focused on trespassing and other misdemeanor offenses. Still, about 608 out of the nearly 1,600 defendants were charged with assaulting law enforcement or obstructing officers during a civil disorder, according to the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Columbia. Of those, 174 were charged with using a deadly or dangerous weapon or causing serious injury to an officer.

Emblematic of the administration’s efforts to whitewash the violent attempt to overturn the 2020 election, the webpage detailing the crimes committed on Jan. 6 was taken down shortly after Trump returned to office. But an archived page itemizes the array of weapons rioters used or carried at the Capitol: firearms; OC spray; tasers; edged weapons, including axes, hatchets, knives and a sword; makeshift weapons, including destroyed office furniture, fencing, bike racks and stolen riot shields; baseball bats, hockey sticks, flagpoles, PVC piping and reinforced knuckle gloves.

During his appearance on Bongino’s podcast in September 2022, Seraphin outed himself as the source of an email obtained by Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH). The email from FBI leadership mandates the use of specific threat tags to track “threats specifically directed against school board administrators, board members, teachers and staff.” Jordan, as the then-ranking member of the House Judiciary Committee, seized on the email as proof that the FBI was “using counterterrorism tools to investigate parents,” even though the email doesn’t specifically mention parents.

“Essentially, they’re asking to tag these inbound threats,” Seraphin told Bongino. “And we don’t have time for those kinds of threats. We really don’t. In the real FBI, there’s not time for threats from some guy who’s yelling at the school board…. But it’s very difficult to convince me you would say that this is a real threat that exists all over the country….”

“Right,” Bongino agreed. “Worthy of FBI resources.”

The threats were, in fact, real.

In November 2021, the mayor of a small city in Ohio accused school board members in Summit County of “distributing essentially what is child pornography.” The accusation reportedly resulted in dozens of threats from around the country. Although the county prosecutor declined to file charges against the mayor, she issued a statement that “these allegations were false and caused numerous public servants to be victimized.”

In another incident, a woman protesting a masking requirement told the Page County Public School Board in Virginia in January 2022, “My children will not come to school on Monday with a mask on. All right. That’s not happening. And I will bring every single gun loaded and ready to — I will.”

As an indication of the turmoil surrounding COVID-19 restrictions and books addressing sensitive topics surrounding race and sexuality during that period, ProPublica reported that 59 people were arrested at school board meetings across the country from May 2021 through November 2022, most of them charged with trespassing, resisting an officer, or disrupting a public meeting.

In 2023, Garland reportedly told a House panel that the FBI received 22 reports of threats against school officials, and the agency referred six cases to state and local authorities to investigate.

“So, if I have a file on the CT side — the counterterrorism side — for showing up at a school board meeting and saying something — it may not have been appropriate thing to say, but it certainly isn’t a terroristic threat, you could have this big body of information available for you to make a criminal prosecution easier is where I’m going with that,” Bongino said during his interview with Seraphin. “The building blocks are already there.”

In at least one instance, a counterterrorism investigation did bring FBI agents to a parking lot outside a school board, if not into the meeting room.

Steve Friend, a former FBI agent, testified before a congressional panel that he had been tasked with surveilling an individual at a school board meeting as part of an open counterterrorism investigation. Based on the date of the subject’s arrest — Aug. 24, 2022 — House Democrats surmised that the subject under surveillance was one of four members of a Three Percenter militia called Guardians of Freedom who were charged with offenses related to the Jan. 6 attack. (A fifth would be arrested separately at a later date.)

“So, essentially we just documented the license plates of the people that were parking at the school board meeting who were January 6th subjects, or people that were in the parking lot with them interacting that we thought could be in their sphere of influence, and then we left,” Friend testified.

One member of the militia had boasted on social media on July 2021 that he was “continuing to build my 3% army so I can overthrow the federal government,” according to the charging document, and he said that 80 percent of the local sheriff’s office was “on our side,” but he didn’t plan on “ever seeing the inside of a cell.”

Ultimately, the five members of Guardians of Freedom were convicted of various charges related to their conduct at the Capitol on Jan. 6, and received sentences ranging from two years of probation to five months in prison, only to be pardoned last month by President Trump.

Bongino, who worked as a New York City police officer and later for the Secret Service before becoming a podcaster, has never worked at the FBI.

But he expressed disdain for FBI upper management when Seraphin told him a colleague reported to Peter Strzok, the former deputy director of the FBI’s counterintelligence division. Strzok, in turn, reported to Andrew McCabe, who served in the role that Bongino now holds—deputy director.

“The trajectory for someone like that is they show up at a field office; they’re there for two and a half years,” Seraphin told Bongino during the September 2022 interview.

“What the hell do you learn in two to three years to be managing cases like yours out in the field?” Bongino scoffed.

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October 9, 2024, edition of Fox News' Mornings with Maria Bartiromo

MARIA BARTIROMO (HOST): Just recently there were concerns about school boards telling kids, "Look, if you want to have transgender operations, just don't tell your parents."

LEE CARTER (GUEST): Well, it's a real thing.

BARTIROMO: It's a real thing, yeah.

CARTER: One of my daughter's very close friends, her older sister is in first grade, and they were read a book in school about crayons. Now, that sounds like nothing to be concerned about, except it was a red crayon who felt it was blue on the inside —

BARTIROMO: The crayon.

CARTER: The crayon. And it was okay that it was really a blue crayon even though on the outside, its label, was red. The answer was to go tell your teacher. Not to tell your parents. And this is what they're being read in school in first grade in a public school in Westchester County in New York. And that that scares me. I don't want the answer to be go to the teacher to have that conversation, I love teachers. I love my daughter's teacher. But I don't want her to be the one to have that kind of a conversation with my if daughter in the first grade.

BARTIROMO: You've got to be the last line of defense. The mother.

CARTER: Yeah. Absolutely. And that really, really does terrify me. And my husband and I have had conversations about this. If it ever gets to that point, would we keep them in public school, and that's, that's a terrifying thought because I believe in the public school system. I believe in public education. I believe in all of these, you know, access to opportunity for all. But I am very, very afraid that I'm not going to have the -- our family isn't going to have the decision making on how she's raised.

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an 9 24

Deep-red states meet 'wall of hostility' in forcing Christian nationalism on public schools

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Matt Walsh: “The public school system should be totally abandoned”

07/17/24

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anti-commie teachers new?

rww 2 24

Former Trump aide Stephen Miller told the MAGA activists gathered near Washington, D.C. last week for the annual Conservative Political Action Conference that conservatives must be willing to use power more aggressively against their opponents. He railed against district attorneys and other officials for not arresting teachers who violate new state laws that restrict teaching on race, gender, and sexuality.

Miller, an architect of the Trump administration’s anti-immigration policies, has been promising MAGA activists that if Trump returns to the White House, he “will unleash the vast arsenal of federal powers to implement the most spectacular migration crackdown.” Miller’s America First Legal group is part of the far-right Project 2025, which has prepared a battle plan for the movement to “take the reins of government” in a new Trump administration. The Heritage Foundation, ringleader of the Project 2025 scheme, was at CPAC recruiting foot soldiers willing to carry out the plan.

In a recent article for Political Research Associates’ “The Public Eye” magazine, I noted that Project 2025 reflected a “movement-level, ideological shift away from a libertarian mistrust of government power and toward an authoritarian view of government power being used ruthlessly—whether as a righteous force wielded to advance a ‘biblical worldview’ or turned against an ‘administrative state’ supposedly captured by a radical Marxist left.”

Miller provided ample confirmation about the MAGA movement’s intentions, down to his dismissal of libertarianism as “a terrible ideology” that might be fine for academic debates but not in the real world, where he said public officials have a responsibility to “defeat evil.”

Excerpts from Miller’s appearance on a Friday, Feb. 23 CPAC panel:

Call it a mental illness, call it a spiritual failing, call it a moral deficiency, call it weakness, softness, or just being pathetic. There is something really broken in the conservative brain. They’re afraid not only of conflict, we know that. But there’s an even deeper fear, a deeper fear than all that, which is having power, and using power. Conservatives are addicted to the language of libertarianism, which is fine–you know, it’s a terrible ideology, but in an academic setting, okay, have these debates. …

You elect a state supreme court justice, you elect an Attorney General, and so on and so forth, to have an office with specific powers, duties, and responsibilities, with the expectation that they will use that authority to defeat evil, to protect the good, and to accomplish positive change in society. And you have to use that power fearlessly. …

A number of states, for example, have passed laws, saying that you can’t have this in the curriculum, or you can’t have that in the curriculum, and you can’t teach DEI and so on and so forth. Without exception, I can promise you, all the commies in the classroom changed the name of their lecture, changed one word, changed one little paragraph in the syllabus and did the exact same damn thing every single day because they’re communists and that’s what they do. Were they sued? No! Were they arrested if they broke a law and it’s applicable? No! Did any D.A. anywhere, if you’re talking about trans issues, think of arresting somebody for abusing children with trans ideology? No, we write blog posts about it. That’s what we do. So until we get serious, all the way down to the local DA, all the way up to the state A/G. and every office in between, including judges, electing people who have power and will use that power and measure their success by change in the real world, then we aren’t going to be able to beat the left.

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an 2 24

built in 1910, James Elementary is a three-story brick school in Kansas City, Missouri’s historic Northeast neighborhood, with a bright blue front door framed by a sand-colored stone arch adorned with a gargoyle. As bustling students and teachers negotiate a maze of gray stairs with worn wooden handrails, Marjorie Mayes, the school’s principal, escorts a visitor across uneven blue tile floors on the ground floor to a classroom with exposed brick walls and pipes. Bubbling paint mars some walls, evidence of the water leaks spreading inside the aging building.

“It’s living history,” said Mayes during a mid-September tour of the building. “Not the kind of living history we want.”

The district would like to tackle the US$400 million in deferred maintenance needed to create a 21st century learning environment at its 35 schools – including James Elementary – but it can’t. It doesn’t have the money.

Property tax redirect

The lack of funds is a direct result of the property tax breaks that Kansas City lavishes on companies and developers that do business there. The program is supposed to bring in new jobs and business but instead has ended up draining civic coffers and starving schools. Between 2017 and 2023, the Kansas City school district lost $237.3 million through tax abatements.

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Kansas City is hardly an anomaly. An estimated 95% of U.S. cities provide economic development tax incentives to woo corporate investors. The upshot is that billions have been diverted from large urban school districts and from a growing number of small suburban and rural districts. The impact is seen in districts as diverse as Chicago and Cleveland, Hillsboro, Oregon, and Storey County, Nevada.

The result? A 2021 review of 2,498 financial statements from school districts across 27 states revealed that, in 2019 alone, at least $2.4 billion was diverted to fund tax incentives. Yet that substantial figure still downplays the magnitude of the problem, because three-quarters of the 10,370 districts analyzed did not provide any information on tax abatement agreements.

Tax abatement programs have long been controversial, pitting states and communities against one another in beggar-thy-neighbor contests. Their economic value is also, at best, unclear: Studies show most companies would have made the same location decision without taxpayer subsidies. Meanwhile, schools make up the largest cost item in these communities, meaning they suffer most when companies are granted breaks in property taxes.

A three-month investigation by The Conversation and three scholars with expertise in economic development, tax laws and education policy shows that the cash drain from these programs is not equally shared by schools in the same communities. At the local level, tax abatements and exemptions often come at the cost of critical funding for school districts that students from low-income households and who are racial minorities.

In Missouri, for example, in 2022 nearly $1,700 per student was redirected from Kansas City public and charter schools, while between $500 and $900 was redirected from wealthier, whiter Northland schools on the north side of the river in Kansas City and in the suburbs beyond. Other studies have found similar demographic trends elsewhere, including New York state, South Carolina and Columbus, Ohio.

The funding gaps produced by abated money often force schools to delay needed maintenance, increase class sizes, lay off teachers and support staff and even close outright. Schools also struggle to update or replace outdated technology, books and other educational resources. And, amid a nationwide teacher shortage, schools under financial pressures sometimes turn to inexperienced teachers who are not fully certified or rely too heavily on recruits from overseas who have been given special visa status.

Lost funding also prevents teachers and staff, who often feed, clothe and otherwise go above and beyond to help students in need, from earning a living wage. All told, tax abatements can end up harming a community’s value, with constant funding shortfalls creating a cycle of decline.

Incentives, payoffs and guarantees

Perversely, some of the largest beneficiaries of tax abatements are the politicians who publicly boast of handing out the breaks despite the harm to poorer communities. Incumbent governors have used the incentives as a means of taking credit for job creation, even when the jobs were coming anyway.

“We know that subsidies don’t work,” said Elizabeth Marcello, a doctoral lecturer at Hunter College who studies governmental planning and policy and the interactions between state and local governments. “But they are good political stories, and I think that’s why politicians love them so much.”

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Academic research shows that economic development incentives are ineffective most of the time – and harm school systems.

While some voters may celebrate abatements, parents can recognize the disparities between school districts that are created by the tax breaks. Fairleigh Jackson pointed out that her daughter’s East Baton Rouge third grade class lacks access to playground equipment.

The class is attending school in a temporary building while their elementary school undergoes a two-year renovation.

The temporary site has some grass and a cement slab where kids can play, but no playground equipment, Jackson said. And parents needed to set up an Amazon wish list to purchase basic equipment such as balls, jump ropes and chalk for students to use. The district told parents there would be no playground equipment due to a lack of funds, then promised to install equipment, Jackson said, but months later, there is none.

The temporary site where Fairleigh Jackson’s daughter goes to school in East Baton Rouge Parish lacks playground equipment.

Fairleigh Jackson, CC BY-ND

Jackson said it’s hard to complain when other schools in the district don’t even have needed security measures in place. “When I think about playground equipment, I think that’s a necessary piece of child development,” Jackson said. “Do we even advocate for something that should be a daily part of our kids’ experience when kids’ safety isn’t being funded?”

Meanwhile, the challenges facing administrators 500-odd miles away at Atlanta Public Schools are nothing if not formidable: The district is dealing with chronic absenteeism among half of its Black students, many students are experiencing homelessness, and it’s facing a teacher shortage.

At the same time, Atlanta is showering corporations with tax breaks. The city has two bodies that dole them out: the Development Authority of Fulton County, or DAFC, and Invest Atlanta, the city’s economic development agency. The deals handed out by the two agencies have drained $103.8 million from schools from fiscal 2017 to 2022, according to Atlanta school system financial statements.

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What exactly Atlanta and other cities and states are accomplishing with tax abatement programs is hard to discern. Fewer than a quarter of companies that receive breaks in the U.S. needed an incentive to invest, according to a 2018 study by the Upjohn Institute for Employment Research, a nonprofit research organization.

This means that at least 75% of companies received tax abatements when they’re not needed – with communities paying a heavy price for economic development that sometimes provides little benefit.

In Kansas City, for example, there’s no guarantee that the businesses that do set up shop after receiving a tax abatement will remain there long term. That’s significant considering the historic border war between the Missouri and Kansas sides of Kansas City – a competition to be the most generous to the businesses, said Jason Roberts, president of the Kansas City Federation of Teachers and School-Related Personnel. Kansas City, Missouri, has a 1% income tax on people who work in the city, so it competes for as many workers as possible to secure that earnings tax, Roberts said.

Under city and state tax abatement programs, companies that used to be in Kansas City have since relocated. The AMC Theaters headquarters, for example, moved from the city’s downtown to Leawood, Kansas, about a decade ago, garnering some $40 million in Promoting Employment Across Kansas tax incentives.

Roberts said that when one side’s financial largesse runs out, companies often move across the state line – until both states decided in 2019 that enough was enough and declared a cease-fire.

But tax breaks for other businesses continue. “Our mission is to grow the economy of Kansas City, and application of tools such as tax exemptions are vital to achieving that mission, said Jon Stephens, president and CEO of Port KC, the Kansas City Port Authority. The incentives speed development, and providing them "has resulted in growth choosing KC versus other markets,” he added.

In Atlanta, those tax breaks are not going to projects in neighborhoods that need help attracting development. They have largely been handed out to projects that are in high demand areas of the city, said Julian Bene, who served on Invest Atlanta’s board from 2010 to 2018. In 2019, for instance, the Fulton County development authority approved a 10-year, $16 million tax abatement for a 410-foot-tall, 27,000-square-foot tower in Atlanta’s vibrant Midtown business district. The project included hotel space, retail space and office space that is now occupied by Google and Invesco.

In 2021, a developer in Atlanta pulled its request for an $8 million tax break to expand its new massive, mixed-use Ponce City Market development in the trendy Beltline neighborhood with an office tower and apartment building. Because of community pushback, the developer knew it likely did not have enough votes from the commission for approval, Bene said. After a second try for $5 million in lower taxes was also rejected, the developer went ahead and built the project anyway.

Invest Atlanta has also turned down projects in the past, Bene said. Oftentimes, after getting rejected, the developer goes back to the landowner and asks for a better price to buy the property to make their numbers work, because it was overvalued at the start.

Trouble in Philadelphia

On Thursday, Oct. 26, 2023, an environmental team was preparing Southwark School in Philadelphia for the winter cold. While checking an attic fan, members of the team saw loose dust on top of flooring that contained asbestos. The dust that certainly was blowing into the floors below could contain the cancer-causing agent. Within a day, Southwark was closed – the seventh Philadelphia school temporarily shuttered since the previous academic year because of possible asbestos contamination.

A 2019 inspection of the John L Kinsey school in Philadelphia found asbestos in plaster walls, floor tiles, radiator insulation and electrical panels. Asbestos is a major problem for Philadelphia’s public schools. The district needs $430 million to clean up the asbestos, lead, and other environmental hazards that place the health of students, teachers and staff at risk. And that is on top of an additional $2.4 billion to fix failing and damaged buildings.

Yet the money is not available. Matthew Stem, a former district official, testified in a 2023 lawsuit about financing of Pennsylvania schools that the environmental health risks cannot be addressed until an emergency like at Southwark because “existing funding sources are not sufficient to remediate those types of issues.”

Meanwhile, the city keeps doling out abatements, draining money that could have gone toward making Philadelphia schools safer. In the fiscal year ending June 2022, such tax breaks cost the school district $118 million – more than 25% of the total amount needed to remove the asbestos and other health dangers. These abatements take 31 years to break even, according to the city’s own scenario impact analyses.

Huge subsets of the community – primarily Black, Brown, poor or a combination – are being “drastically impacted” by the exemptions and funding shortfalls for the school district, said Kendra Brooks, a Philadelphia City Council member. Schools and students are affected by mold, asbestos and lead, and crumbling infrastructure, as well as teacher and staffing shortages – including support staff, social workers and psychologists.

More than half the district’s schools that lacked adequate air conditioning – 87 schools – had to go to half days during the first week of the 2023 school year because of extreme heat. Poor heating systems also leave the schools cold in the winter. And some schools are overcrowded, resulting in large class sizes, she said.

Horace Furness High School in Philadelphia, where hot summers have temporarily closed schools that lack air conditioning.

Nick-philly/Wikimedia, CC BY-SA

Teachers and researchers agree that a lack of adequate funding undermines educational opportunities and outcomes. That’s especially true for children living in poverty. A 2016 study found that a 10% increase in per-pupil spending each year for all 12 years of public schooling results in nearly one-third of a year of more education, 7.7% higher wages and a 3.2% reduction in annual incidence of adult poverty. The study estimated that a 21.7% increase could eliminate the high school graduation gap faced by children from low-income families.

More money for schools leads to more education resources for students and their teachers. The same researchers found that spending increases were associated with reductions in student-to-teacher ratios, increases in teacher salaries and longer school years. Other studies yielded similar results: School funding matters, especially for children already suffering the harms of poverty.

While tax abatements themselves are generally linked to rising property values, the benefits are not evenly distributed. In fact, any expansion of the tax base due to new property construction tends to be outside of the county granting the tax abatement. For families in school districts with the lost tax revenues, their neighbors’ good fortune likely comes as little solace. Meanwhile, a poorly funded education system is less likely to yield a skilled and competitive workforce, creating longer-term economic costs that make the region less attractive for businesses and residents.

“There’s a head-on collision here between private gain and the future quality of America’s workforce,” said Greg LeRoy, executive director at Good Jobs First, a Washington, D.C., advocacy group that’s critical of tax abatement and tracks the use of economic development subsidies.

Roxborough High School in Philadelphia.

As funding dwindles and educational quality declines, additional families with means often opt for alternative educational avenues such as private schooling, home-schooling or moving to a different school district, further weakening the public school system.

Throughout the U.S., parents with the power to do so demand special arrangements, such as selective schools or high-track enclaves that hire experienced, fully prepared teachers. If demands aren’t met, they leave the district’s public schools for private schools or for the suburbs. Some parents even organize to splinter their more advantaged, and generally whiter, neighborhoods away from the larger urban school districts.

Those parental demands – known among scholars as “opportunity hoarding” – may seem unreasonable from the outside, but scarcity breeds very real fears about educational harms inflicted on one’s own children. Regardless of who’s to blame, the children who bear the heaviest burden of the nation’s concentrated poverty and racialized poverty again lose out.

Rethinking in Philadelphia and Riverhead

Americans also ask public schools to accomplish Herculean tasks that go far beyond the education basics, as many parents discovered at the onset of the pandemic when schools closed and their support for families largely disappeared.

A school serving students who endure housing and food insecurity must dedicate resources toward children’s basic needs and trauma. But districts serving more low-income students spend less per student on average, and almost half the states have regressive funding structures.

Facing dwindling resources for schools, several cities have begun to rethink their tax exemption programs.

The Philadelphia City Council recently passed a scale-back on a 10-year property tax abatement by decreasing the percentage of the subsidy over that time. But even with that change, millions will be lost to tax exemptions that could instead be invested in cash-depleted schools. “We could make major changes in our schools’ infrastructure, curriculum, staffing, staffing ratios, support staff, social workers, school psychologists – take your pick,” Brooks said.

Other cities looking to reform tax abatement programs are taking a different approach. In Riverhead, New York, on Long Island, developers or project owners can be granted exemptions on their property tax and allowed instead to shell out a far smaller “payment in lieu of taxes,” or PILOT. When the abatement ends, most commonly after 10 years, the businesses then will pay full property taxes.

At least, that’s the idea, but the system is far from perfect. Beneficiaries of the PILOT program have failed to pay on time, leaving the school board struggling to fill a budget hole. Also, the payments are not equal to the amount they would receive for property taxes, with millions of dollars in potential revenue over a decade being cut to as little as a few hundred thousand. On the back end, if a business that’s subsidized with tax breaks fails after 10 years, the projected benefits never emerge.

And when the time came to start paying taxes, developers have returned to the city’s Industrial Development Agency with hat in hand, asking for more tax breaks. A local for-profit aquarium, for example, was granted a 10-year PILOT program break by Riverhead in 1999; it has received so many extensions that it is not scheduled to start paying full taxes until 2031 – 22 years after originally planned.

Kansas City border politics

Like many cities, Kansas City has a long history of segregation, white flight and racial redlining, said Kathleen Pointer, senior policy strategist for Kansas City Public Schools.

James Elementary in Kansas City, Mo.

Troost Avenue, where the Kansas City Public Schools administrative office is located, serves as the city’s historic racial dividing line, with wealthier white families living in the west and more economically disadvantaged people of color in the east. Most of the district’s schools are located east of Troost, not west.

Students on the west side “pretty much automatically funnel into the college preparatory middle school and high schools,” said The Federation of Teachers’ Roberts. Those schools are considered signature schools that are selective and are better taken care of than the typical neighborhood schools, he added.

The school district’s tax levy was set by voters in 1969 at 3.75%. But successive attempts over the next few decades to increase the levy at the ballot box failed. During a decadeslong desegregation lawsuit that was eventually resolved through a settlement agreement in the 1990s, a court raised the district’s levy rate to 4.96% without voter approval. The levy has remained at the same 4.96% rate since.

Meanwhile, Kansas City is still distributing 20-year tax abatements to companies and developers for projects. The district calculated that about 92% of the money that was abated within the school district’s boundaries was for projects within the whiter west side of the city, Pointer said.

“Unfortunately, we can’t pick or choose where developers build,” said Meredith Hoenes, director of communications for Port KC. “We aren’t planning and zoning. Developers typically have plans in place when they knock on our door.”

In Kansas City, several agencies administer tax incentives, allowing developers to shop around to different bodies to receive one. Pointer said he believes the Port Authority is popular because they don’t do a third-party financial analysis to prove that the developers need the amount that they say they do.

With 20-year abatements, a child will start pre-K and graduate high school before seeing the benefits of a property being fully on the tax rolls, Pointer said. Developers, meanwhile, routinely threaten to build somewhere else if they don’t get the incentive, she said.

In 2020, BlueScope Construction, a company that had received tax incentives for nearly 20 years and was about to roll off its abatement, asked for another 13 years and threatened to move to another state if it didn’t get it. At the time, the U.S. was grappling with a racial reckoning following the murder of George Floyd, who was killed by a Minneapolis police officer.

“That was a moment for Kansas City Public Schools where we really drew a line in the sand and talked about incentives as an equity issue,” Pointer said.

After the district raised the issue – tying the incentives to systemic racism – the City Council rejected BlueScope’s bid and, three years later, it’s still in Kansas City, fully on the tax rolls, she said. BlueScope did not return multiple requests for comment.

Recently, a multifamily housing project was approved for a 20-year tax abatement by the Port Authority of Kansas City at Country Club Plaza, an outdoor shopping center in an affluent part of the city. The housing project included no affordable units. “This project was approved without any independent financial analysis proving that it needed that subsidy,” Pointer said.

All told, the Kansas City Public Schools district faces several shortfalls beyond the $400 million in deferred maintenance, Superintendent Jennifer Collier said. There are staffing shortages at all positions: teachers, paraprofessionals and support staff. As in much of the U.S., the cost of housing is surging. New developments that are being built do not include affordable housing, or when they do, the units are still out of reach for teachers.

That’s making it harder for a district that already loses about 1 in 5 of its teachers each year to keep or recruit new ones, who earn an average of only $46,150 their first year on the job, Collier said.

East Baton Rouge and the industrial corridor

It’s impossible to miss the tanks, towers, pipes and industrial structures that incongruously line Baton Rouge’s Scenic Highway landscape. They’re part of Exxon Mobil Corp.’s campus, home of the oil giant’s refinery in addition to chemical and plastics plants.

Exxon Mobil Corp.’s Baton Rouge campus occupies 3.28 square miles.

Sitting along the Mississippi River, the campus has been a staple of Louisiana’s capital for over 100 years. It’s where 6,000 employees and contractors who collectively earn over $400 million annually produce 522,000 barrels of crude oil per day when at full capacity, as well as the annual production and manufacture of 3 billion pounds of high-density polyethylene and polypropylene and 6.6 billion pounds of petrochemical products. The company posted a record-breaking $55.7 billion in profits in 2022 and $36 billion in 2023.

Across the street are empty fields and roads leading into neighborhoods that have been designated by the U.S. Department of Agriculture as a low-income food desert. A mile drive down the street to Route 67 is a Dollar General, fast-food restaurants, and tiny, rundown food stores. A Hi Nabor Supermarket is 4 miles away.

East Baton Rouge Parish’s McKinley High School, a 12-minute drive from the refinery, serves a student body that is about 80% Black and 85% poor. The school, which boasts famous alums such as rapper Kevin Gates, former NBA player Tyrus Thomas and Presidential Medal of Freedom recipient Gardner C. Taylor, holds a special place in the community, but it has been beset by violence and tragedy lately. Its football team quarterback, who was killed days before graduation in 2017, was among at least four of McKinley’s students who have been shot or murdered over the past six years.

The experience is starkly different at some of the district’s more advantaged schools, including its magnet programs open to high-performing students.

East Baton Rouge Parish, marked in red, includes an Exxon Mobil Corp. campus and the city of Baton Rouge.

Baton Rouge is a tale of two cities, with some of the worst outcomes in the state for education, income and mortality, and some of the best outcomes. “It was only separated by sometimes a few blocks,” said Edgar Cage, the lead organizer for the advocacy group Together Baton Rouge. Cage, who grew up in the city when it was segregated by Jim Crow laws, said the root cause of that disparity was racism.

“Underserved kids don’t have a path forward” in East Baton Rouge public schools, Cage said.

A 2019 report from the Urban League of Louisiana found that economically disadvantaged African American and Hispanic students are not provided equitable access to high-quality education opportunities. That has contributed to those students underperforming on standardized state assessments, such as the LEAP exam, being unprepared to advance to higher grades and being excluded from high-quality curricula and instruction, as well as the highest-performing schools and magnet schools.

“Baton Rouge is home to some of the highest performing schools in the state,” according to the report. “Yet the highest performing schools and schools that have selective admissions policies often exclude disadvantaged students and African American and Hispanic students.”

Dawn Collins, who served on the district’s school board from 2016 to 2022, said that with more funding, the district could provide more targeted interventions for students who were struggling academically or additional support to staff so they can better assist students with greater needs.

But for decades, Louisiana’s Industrial Ad Valorem Tax Exemption Program, or ITEP, allowed for 100% property tax exemptions for industrial manufacturing facilities, said Erin Hansen, the statewide policy analyst at Together Louisiana, a network of 250 religious and civic organizations across the state that advocates for grassroots issues, including tax fairness.

The ITEP program was created in the 1930s through a state constitutional amendment, allowing companies to bypass a public vote and get approval for the exemption through the governor-appointed Board of Commerce and Industry, Hansen said. For over 80 years, that board approved nearly all applications that it received, she said.

Since 2000, Louisiana has granted a total of $35 billion in corporate property tax breaks for 12,590 projects.

Louisiana’s executive order

A few efforts to reform the program over the years have largely failed. But in 2016, Gov. John Bel Edwards signed an executive order that slightly but importantly tweaked the system. On top of the state board vote, the order gave local taxing bodies – such as school boards, sheriffs and parish or city councils – the ability to vote on their own individual portions of the tax exemptions. And in 2019 the East Baton Rouge Parish School Board exercised its power to vote down an abatement.

Throughout the U.S., school boards’ power over the tax abatements that affect their budgets vary, and in some states, including Georgia, Kansas, Nevada, New Jersey and South Carolina, school boards lack any formal ability to vote or comment on tax abatement deals that affect them.

Edwards’ executive order also capped the maximum exemption at 80% and tightened the rules so routine capital investments and maintenance were no longer eligible, Hansen said. A requirement concerning job creation was also put in place.

Concerned residents and activists, led by Together Louisiana and sister group Together Baton Rouge, rallied around the new rules and pushed back against the billion-dollar corporation taking more tax money from the schools. In 2019, the campaign worked: the school board rejected a $2.9 million property tax break bid by Exxon Mobil.

After the decision, Exxon Mobil reportedly described the city as “unpredictable.”

However, members of the business community have continued to lobby for the tax breaks, and they have pushed back against further rejections. In fact, according to Hansen, loopholes were created during the rulemaking process around the governor’s executive order that allowed companies to weaken its effectiveness.

In total, 223 Exxon Mobil projects worth nearly $580 million in tax abatements have been granted in the state of Louisiana under the ITEP program since 2000.

“ITEP is needed to compete with other states – and, in ExxonMobil’s case, other countries,” according to Exxon Mobil spokesperson Lauren Kight.

She pointed out that Exxon Mobil is the largest property taxpayer for the EBR school system, paying more than $46 million in property taxes in EBR parish in 2022 and another $34 million in sales taxes.

A new ITEP contract won’t decrease this existing tax revenue, Kight added. “Losing out on future projects absolutely will.”

The East Baton Rouge Parish School Board has continued to approve Exxon Mobil abatements, passing $46.9 million between 2020 and 2022. Between 2017 and 2023, the school district has lost $96.3 million.

IFrame Content

Taxes are highest when industrial buildings are first built. Industrial property comes onto the tax rolls at 40% to 50% of its original value in Louisiana after the initial 10-year exemption, according to the Ascension Economic Development Corp.

Exxon Mobil received its latest tax exemption, $8.6 million over 10 years – an 80% break – in October 2023 for $250 million to install facilities at the Baton Rouge complex that purify isopropyl alcohol for microchip production and that create a new advanced recycling facility, allowing the company to address plastic waste. The project created zero new jobs.

The school board[approved it by a 7-2 vote] vid]

(https://youtu.be/k-Ry-veRlM4) after a long and occasionally contentious board meeting.

“Does it make sense for Louisiana and other economically disadvantaged states to kind of compete with each other by providing tax incentives to mega corporations like Exxon Mobil?” said EBR School Board Vice President Patrick Martin, who voted for the abatement. “Probably, in a macro sense, it does not make a lot of sense. But it is the program that we have.”

Obviously, Exxon Mobil benefits, he said. “The company gets a benefit in reducing the property taxes that they would otherwise pay on their industrial activity that adds value to that property.” But the community benefits from the 20% of the property taxes that are not exempted, he said.

“I believe if we don’t pass it, over time the investments will not come and our district as a whole will have less money,” he added.IFrame Content

In 2022, a year when Exxon Mobil made a record $55.7 billion, the company asked for a 10-year, 80% property tax break from the cash-starved East Baton Rouge Parish school district. A lively debate ensued.

Meanwhile, the district’s budgetary woes are coming to a head. Bus drivers staged a sickout at the start of the school year, refusing to pick up students – in protest of low pay and not having buses equipped with air conditioning amid a heat wave. The district was forced to release students early, leaving kids stranded without a ride to school, before it acquiesced and provided the drivers and other staff one-time stipends and purchased new buses with air conditioning.

The district also agreed to reestablish transfer points as a temporary response to the shortages. But that transfer-point plan has historically resulted in students riding on the bus for hours and occasionally missing breakfast when the bus arrives late, according to Angela Reams-Brown, president of the East Baton Rouge Federation of Teachers. The district plans to purchase or lease over 160 buses and solve its bus driver shortage next year, but the plan could lead to a budget crisis.

A teacher shortage looms as well, because the district is paying teachers below the regional average. At the school board meeting,Laverne Simoneaux,

vid]

an ELL specialist at East Baton Rouge’s Woodlawn Elementary, said she was informed that her job was not guaranteed next year since she’s being paid through federal COVID-19 relief funds. By receiving tax exemptions, Exxon Mobil was taking money from her salary to deepen their pockets, she said.

A young student in the district told the school board that the money could provide better internet access or be used to hire someone to pick up the glass and barbed wire in the playground. But at least they have a playground – Hayden Crockett, a seventh grader at Sherwood Middle Academic Magnet School, noted that his sister’s elementary school lacked one.

“If it wasn’t in the budget to fund playground equipment, how can it also be in the budget to give one of the most powerful corporations in the world a tax break?” Crockett said. “The math just ain’t mathing.”

Christine Wen, Assistant Professor of Landscape Architecture & Urban Planning, Texas A&M University; Danielle McLean, Freelance Reporter and Editor, The Conversation; Kevin Welner, Professor of Education Policy & Law; Director of the National Education Policy Center, University of Colorado Boulder, and Nathan Jensen, Professor of Government, *The University of Texas at Austin

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

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'Seriously concerned': School board may sue new far-right chair with alleged militia ties

York County, Virginia school board chair Lynda Fairman (Image: Screengrab via WAVY / York County)

Carl Gibson

February 21, 2024

A three-member faction on a local school board in Virginia has come under increased scrutiny by both other elected officials and concerned parents, and litigation may be pursued against the board's newest chair.

According to local news outlet WAVY, York County School Board chair Lynda Fairman and two other members — Kimberly Goodwin and Zoran Pajevic — were elected in November 2023 on a far-right "parents' rights" agenda, and have since provoked a "tsunami of discontent" in recent months. WAVY reported that during a recent work session, board members James Richardson and Mark Shafer publicly voiced their opposition to their new colleagues' latest actions, which include allegedly sending a militia group to a local school to record a sex education session.

"What really concerns me, majorly, is that board members have been notified by our board attorney that the board may be liable because of retaliation claims made by the superintendent. This could open the board and division up to possible litigation," Richardson said. "I’m seriously concerned about that."

READ MORE: Far-right 'Moms for Liberty' school board candidates lose races in 5 states

Fairman was accused of sending a militia group to Dare Elementary School last month to film a "Family Life" sex education presentation. According to an online pamphlet, those sessions emphasize abstinence from sex before marriage, argue in favor of adoption over abortion and promote the "benefits of marriage." Richardson noted that he watched a video the group posted in which participants said they were "sent here by Ms. Fairman." However, Fairman strongly disputed the allegations.

"I am not a part of that, absolutely not, and I do not support that name being changed, and that was news to me," Fairman said in response. "... There were several citizens, who when they found out about the Family Life, I asked them 'I said I can't go, can you please go?'”

"[T]hat’s my mistake for how I presented it to them. It was not intended to be that way," Fairman added, saying she had hand-written apology letters to school counselors.

The group in question — York County Poquoson Community Missions (YCPCM) — is led by Yorktown resident Bob Herget, who runs a local pest control business. However, in a video he posted to YouTube that has since been labeled as private (part of which has been uploaded to TikTok), he referred to his group as the "York County Poquoson Constitutional Militia." Herget's Facebook page is populated with content critical of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI) initiatives, clips from various right-wing influencers like Tim Pool and Joe Rogan and content praising former President Donald Trump. YCPCM's website has since been taken down.

READ MORE: Moms for Liberty: 'Joyful warriors' or anti-government conspiracists?

Click here to read WAVY's full report.

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mma 1 24

Right-wing media figures are systematically attacking a variety of initiatives intended to increase racial equity and inclusion in America’s education system. Since 2021, they have attacked or rebranded certain related concepts in order to vilify them: critical race theory; diversity, equity, and inclusion; and affirmative action.

Schools in Oklahoma and Florida are even starting to partner with right-wing media’s PragerU and “parental rights” group Moms for Liberty, which spread conservative propaganda in public schools. These ongoing strategic assaults from right-wing figures and outlets are poised to make education a culture war issue for the 2024 election.

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https://www.alternet.org/alternet-exclusives/a-handy-guide-for-translating-republican-speak-into-plain-english/

alternet no lnx

A handy guide for translating Republican-speak into plain English

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Thom Hartmann

January 15, 2024

Ron DeSantis and Nikki Haley had a spitting match Wednesday night on CNN as they fought for, well, something. Vice president? Unlikely. Beating Trump? Probably not. Book deal? Who knows?

Anyhow, during the “debate,” they both threw out numerous Reagan-era GOP talking points that most people probably poorly understand, so here’s a handy guide to translate Republican-speak into plain English.

Haley: “I think we have to acknowledge that Republicans and Democrats have both done this. I mean, the fact that they’ve done all of this wasteful spending, they did a $2.2 trillion COVID stimulus bill that expanded welfare that’s now left us with 80 million Americans on Medicaid, 42 million Americans on food stamps. That’s a third of our country.”}:

Reality: The economy crashed in 2020 (due to Covid) in a way that hadn’t been seen since Republican President Herbert Hoover oversaw Black Tuesday, 1929, which kicked off the start of the Republican Great Depression. Covid initially cost our economy an estimated $14 trillion, throwing 3 million Americans out of work. Donald Trump was the first president since Hoover to see significant job losses during his presidency. Unemployment hit 15% (Hoover’s was 23.6%).

While a loose money policy by the Fed helped, the main thing that prevented America from sliding into a second Republican Great Depression was Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s success in shepherding through Congress legislation that softened the impact of Trump’s 15% unemployment; without it, if those unemployed people had lost all their demand-creating spending power (which is what drives economies), the nation would almost certainly have slid into a long-lasting depression.

That was apparently what many in the GOP wanted: in May 2020, for example, when Pelosi shepherded through the House a nearly-$3 trillion coronavirus relief bill, only 44 Republicans voted for it, while 130 voted against it. Although it saved America, Republicans like Haley and DeSantis are still complaining about it.

Currently there are around 84 million low-income Americans on Medicaid, our country’s largest and most successful single-payer healthcare program. It’s far more efficient than any for-profit health insurance programs (no executive salaries, dividends paid to stockholders, or commissions to salespeople) and, with tweaks, could be the foundation of a Medicare-for-All national system like Canada, Costa Rica, and most of Europe have.

Republicans see this as a bad thing, though, because they want all our healthcare to be paid for by private, for-profit health insurance companies that will then kick back part of their profits to GOP political campaigns and other now-legal (Citizens United) bribes.

Food stamps (SNAP), on the other hand, reflect a failure of the rules that govern the American economy. Every family should have enough money to buy food, but, with 20 mostly Red states (including all 13 former Confederate states) keeping their minimum wage at or below the federal minimum wage of $7.25/hour, in virtually all of those states full-time minimum-wage workers can’t afford to provide their families with shelter, transportation, and food.

Nonetheless, Republicans would like to eliminate that food support. After all, they believe, when poor people are down they will only get up if you kick them hard enough.

Haley: “We’ll go and instead of 87,000 IRS agents going after middle America…”}:

Reality: This wild exaggeration of the number of IRS agents funded by the Inflation Reduction Act is a simple lie, promoted by think-tanks funded by America’s rightwing billionaires. Because nearly every time Republicans control the House, Senate, and White House they cut funding to the IRS, it’s been decades since that agency could effectively audit the nation’s largest tax cheats: those very same billionaires.

While the IRS has 79,000 employees, the largest block (13,000) are customer service representatives, and another 10,000 are seasonal employees who file mail or record data. There are lawyers, office staffers, administrators, etc. Only about 10,000 are agents, and that number would expand with the new money available in the Inflation Reduction Act, but not by more than a few thousand, virtually all of whom would direct their efforts to catching billionaire tax cheats.

This is why the “compromise” legislation being worked out right now between the House and Senate, at Republican insistence, contains a $10 billion cut to the IRS budget: they want to again kneecap the agency so their billionaire patrons can continue to steal our tax dollars.

It’s also worth noting that every $1 spent by the IRS investigating tax cheating by billionaires typically returns between $6 and $12 to the federal treasury. The fastest and easiest way to lower the national debt without raising taxes is to audit billionaires, but Republicans will lay down on railroad tracks to try to prevent that.

DeSantis (arguing for a flat tax): “We have a spending problem in this country. It’s not a tax problem in this country. And if you had something that was simple and transparent, not only would that [be] better for economic growth, it’s also better to end the weaponization of government.}:

“The IRS has been weaponized against conservatives going back to the Obama administration. I was there for that. No one’s been held accountable for doing that. … [T]he weaponization of federal power ends the day I become the president of the United States.”}:

Reality: Last year, the US government spent 22% of GDP, covering everything from the military (the largest single expenditure) to Social Security, Medicaid, Medicare, all social safety net programs, education, and administration. But by comparison with other OECD countries, we’re misers: France spends 58.34%, Japan 44.09%, the United Kingdom 44.3%, Sweden 47.32%, Spain 47.11%, and Italy 56.74%

These countries spend more because they cover all or nearly all of the healthcare and educational costs of their citizens, as well as providing quality housing support, unemployment, paid sick and maternity leave, and other benefits.

The rightwing billionaires who own the GOP don’t want our government to do this because they fear their income taxes may be raised — like in those other countries — to fund quality-of-life programs for average and poor people.

A “flat tax” — where billionaires pay the same rate as average working people — has long been a dream of Republicans, with rightwingers like Ted Cruz and Rand Paul pushing it for years. They cite Hungary’s 15% flat tax, although Hungary’s billionaires routinely avoid paying anything close to that by living off money borrowed against assets instead of paying themselves wages (a trick emulated by most American billionaires, which is why they only pay 3%). They’ll also live off capital gains, which are taxed at a lower rate and almost entirely benefit the morbidly rich at a scale capable of supporting a wealthy lifestyle.

The net effect of instituting a flat tax in America would be that low-income people, who currently don’t pay income taxes or pay a very low rate, would have to start paying far more, while billionaires could still run their shell game with regard to their own living expenses. Squeezing the lowest income Americans hard to pay America’s bills is a very attractive prospect to Republican politicians and their billionaire owners.

DeSantis: “We’re looking forward to be able to open up energy production… We’re going to be able to open up production. We’re going to choose Midland over Moscow. We’re going to choose the Marcellus Shale over the mullahs. And we’re going to choose the Bakken over Beijing.}:

“Energy independence isn’t even -- it’s not -- it’s good for consumers. It’s good to reduce inflation. And it’s one of the best things we can do for our national security. So we’ll do that on day one, and we are going to reverse Biden’s green new deal and the electric vehicle mandates. We’ll save the American automobile.”}:

Reality: DeSantis and Haley, afraid to offend the fossil fuel billionaires who’ve funded a massive national support network of think-tanks and get-out-the-vote efforts for the GOP, argue that we should largely abandon any effort to cut oil, coal, or methane production and instead increase our dependence on the rightwing fossil fuel billionaires’ products.

Somehow, they manage to ignore the fact that producing electricity by wind or solar is now cheaper than any fossil fuel, and water power has been for centuries. They claim to love the “free market” but will go to the mat to defend hundreds of billions of dollars a year in federal and state subsidies (including military subsidies) to the fossil fuel industry.

Additionally, electric cars are becoming much cheaper to produce than internal combustion engines (they only have a handful of moving parts, never require oil changes or fluids, and don’t even have a transmission), save thousands a year for the average driver on the cost of gasoline, and are fun to drive (they take off like rockets because they have such great torque).

There are now multiple electric cars available at the very bottom end of the new car market, so affordability is no longer an issue, either. All we need is a national network of charging stations, which is what Biden’s “Green New Deal” (actually, it’s the Inflation Reduction Act) is funding over the next few years.

This GOP fealty to fossil fuels and the billionaires the industry produces could all be described as, “Don’t bite the hand that feeds you.”

DeSantis: “I supported Trump’s policy vis-a-vis Russia, Ukraine, and it was successful. You know, the Biden policy has not been. But, Nikki Haley is basically a carbon copy of what Biden is. It’s an open-ended commitment. They want another $108 billion. They will not tell you when the -- they have achieved their goal. And this is going to go on maybe hundreds of billions more into the future. I think a lot of people have died. We need to find a way to end this, because our priorities for national security, of course, the border, which we talked about, and people like Nikki Haley care more about Ukraine’s border than she does about our own southern border, which is wrong.”}:

Reality: Trump is owned by and terrified of Putin, a vicious fascist dictator who routinely murders his political opponents and imprisons journalists. Putin has ordered Trump to stop the US from further funding Ukraine, so he can add that nation — the largest country in Europe, about the size of Texas, with some of the most productive farmland and largest oil and natural gas reserves on the continent — to his empire.

DeSantis, trying to do whatever Trump wants so he doesn’t offend Trump’s fascist base, is willing to sacrifice a fellow democracy (Ukraine) just to curry favor. It’s frankly pathetic. And Ukrainians, trying to defend their own country, are dying every single day under Russia’s brutal attacks. As Republicans continue to withhold aid to Ukraine, blood is on their hands.

On this one issue, Haley is right and deserves credit for telling the truth.

Jake Tapper: “Governor [DeSantis], just a point of clarification, do you want to implement Florida’s education policies nationwide?”}:

DeSantis: “It depends on the policy. School choice universal, yes. I don’t want a nationalized curriculum. I think that that’s a bottom up thing. I want to get rid of the federal Department of Education, get that weight off the backs of the state and local governments. …”}:

Haley: “I have fought for school choice in my entire career because I think parents know their children best, and I think we should always do that. That's why we passed charter school legislation in our state. That’s why we empowered homeschoolers in our state. …”}:

Reality: The entire “school choice” movement emerged in America following the 1954 Brown v Board of Education Supreme Court decision ordering the desegregation of America’s schools. DeSantis and Haley — both governors of former Confederate states that exploded in response to that decision — know this well.

Prior to that time, Republican presidents from Teddy Roosevelt to Dwight Eisenhower were promoting public schools and helping build them as fast as possible.

The second major change in Republican attitudes around public education came in 1980, when David Koch ran for vice president on the Libertarian ticket and part of the billionaire’s platform explicitly demanded public schools in America be shut down:

“We advocate the complete separation of education and State. Government schools lead to the indoctrination of children and interfere with the free choice of individuals. Government ownership, operation, regulation, and subsidy of schools and colleges should be ended. … We condemn compulsory education laws, which spawn prison-like schools with many of the problems associated with prisons, and we call for the immediate repeal of such laws.”}:

Reagan, enchanted by Koch’s suggestion, put Bill Bennett in charge of his Education Department — the guy who said we could reduce crime in America by “aborting every Black baby” — and called for massive cuts to federal aid for education. The result was that many American students today are largely ignorant about civics and college debt has gone from negligible in 1980 to a nearly $2 trillion drag on American families and our economy today. But it’s very profitable for the banks that donate to the GOP.

jake Tapper (about raising the Social Security retirement age): “Just a clarification, Governor Haley, in 15 seconds, should voters in their 20s plan on having to work until they’re 70?”}:

Haley: “They should plan on their retirement age being increased, yes. We’re going to change it to reflect more of what life expectancy should be.”}:

Reality: Reagan, using the same rationalization of “rising life expectancy” lifted the Social Security retirement age from 65 to 67, made Social Security benefits taxable, and refused to index them to the inflation gauge that reflects the needs of the elderly. Republicans have hated Social Security — calling the program “socialism” or “communism” — ever since it was passed in 1935 as part of FDR’s New Deal.

Now they want to raise the qualification age to 70. As Haley pointed out about DeSantis’ years in Congress: “Three years in a row, he voted to raise [the Social Security retirement age] to 70 years old, three years in a row. Go to desantislies.com and you'll see it. So, now suddenly he's going to tell you because he's running for president and he's not going to do it, you can't trust him.” Well said.

DeSantis: “So, number one, we need term limits for members of Congress.”

Reality: This has been another Republican wet dream ever since the Reagan Revolution for a very simple reason: it increases the power of lobbyists.

Historically, when a new lawmaker comes into office, he or she will hook up with an old-timer who can show them the ropes, how to get around the building, where the metaphorical bodies are buried, and teach them how to make legislation.

With term limits, this institutional knowledge is largely stripped out of a legislative body, forcing new legislators to look elsewhere for help.

Because no Republican has ever, anywhere, suggested that lobbyists’ ability to work be term-limited, in those states with term limits the lobbyists end up filling the role of permanent infrastructure to mentor and guide new lawmakers.

Of course, lobbyists — and the billionaires and corporations that pay them — love this. It dramatically increases lobbyists’ power and influence, giving them an early and easy entrée into the personal and political lives of the individual legislators who lean on them for guidance.

Haley: “And I think we have to always be strong on the fact that, look, we want fair elections and we saw some discrepancies in those elections in 2020 that should be concerning. That’s why I passed voter I.D. in South Carolina. That’s why I think when absentee ballots go out, you should be able to verify signatures.”

Reality: Republicans want to make it harder to vote. As Paul Weyrich, co-founder of the Heritage Foundation, told a group of Reagan campaign workers in a Dallas church in 1980:

“How many of our Christians have what I call the goo-goo syndrome: good government? They want everybody to vote. I don’t want everybody to vote. Elections are not won by a majority of people. They never have been from the beginning of our country, and they are not now. As a matter of fact, our leverage in the elections quite candidly goes up as the voting populace goes down.”

For over a century, most states used biometrics to verify voter identity. Signatures done in front of a witness are nearly impossible to fake (unlike IDs, which can be easily faked). Polling place workers would compare the original registration signature with the signature of the person signing in to vote, and if they didn’t match, the worker would disqualify the voter.

When the Motor Voter Act was passed in 1993, not a single state required proof of citizenship to vote, and there was no national problem of voter fraud. The threat of a few years in jail was more than enough to discourage even the most ardent partisan from trying to double-vote or fraudulently vote.

But when Republicans realized that many Democratic voters — low-income people living in cities with mass transit — didn’t have drivers’ licenses, they began a campaign to require “voter ID” not just to register but to vote. It was a solution for a problem of “voter fraud” that didn’t exist: the first Red state to put mandatory ID laws into place as a way of suppressing the urban vote was Republican-controlled Indiana in 2005.

Now they’ve taken it a step further. Because mail-in and absentee ballots — heavily favored by Democratic voters — are authenticated by a signature on the outside of the ballot envelope, the GOP is sending people into ballot-counting venues in Blue cities to challenge signatures.

Once your signature is challenged, your ballot is removed from being counted until you can show up in person at a state or county elections office to produce ID and confirm your identity. Because most people never do this — most don’t even know their ballot has been challenged (it varies from state to state) — this has become one of the GOP’s favorite way of discarding Democratic votes. (See: The Hidden History of the War on Voting.)

— Haley argued that the solution to healthcare unaffordability was to publish prices, so people could comparison shop hospitals and doctors as the ambulance is carrying them from the scene of their car crash. She also argued for expanding the Medicare Advantage scam, because “seniors love it.”

Haley added: “We’re going to pass Tort Reform around this country” because why should you be able to sue a doctor or hospital who harms you? They need to make a buck, too, plus they’re big donors to the GOP.

— Both Haley and DeSantis feigned lack of concern about climate change by claiming that Obama has a big house and John Kerry has a private jet. This is a common diversion from the topic promoted by climate change denial groups funded by fossil fuel billionaires.

— Both also trash-talked trans kids and adults, arguing, as Haley said, “Boys need to go into boys’ bathrooms, girls need to go into girls’ bathrooms.” The medically sound reality of gender dysphoria, known for literally centuries under a variety of names across virtually every culture throughout history, has become a simple punching bag for Republicans. And it’s driving suicides across the country.

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an 8 23 ni lnx

Texas eighth graders will soon be required to learn about climate change — but not without a showdown

man and woman sitting on chairs

Erin DouglasandThe Texas TribuneAugust 30, 2023

Starting next year, Texas will require that eighth graders learn about climate change as part of a science curriculum overhaul approved two years ago.

But which textbooks they’ll use to learn about it will largely depend on the state board charged with setting curriculum standards, and questions during a Tuesday meeting to hear testimony on the proposed teaching materials showed that the 15-member body — which has taken a rightward turn since 2021 — could make its decision along partisan lines.

One Republican member of the State Board of Education asked whether students ought to learn about the benefits of burning fossil fuels. Meanwhile, Democrats advocated for texts that emphasized the scientific consensus on climate change.

Dozens of publishers submitted textbook proposals for the state’s overhaul of its science curriculums. Any resident of Texas can submit written comments on the instructional materials before Oct. 30. The board plans to adopt instructional materials in November; the new science standards and textbooks will take effect at the beginning of the 2024-2025 school year.

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Many critics say the new curriculum standards, called the Texas Essential Knowledge and Skills, don’t go far enough to teach kids that climate change is caused by human activities, primarily burning fossil fuels. And while the TEKS changes will require eighth graders to describe how human activities “can” influence climate, students won’t be required to learn about how “a reduction in greenhouse gas emissions” could mitigate climate change after the board previously declined to include that language.

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Publishers can choose to include information in textbooks that go beyond the state’s new minimum requirements for teaching climate change — the question is whether the board, which strengthened its Republican majority during last year’s election, will approve such textbooks.

The board’s decision could impact how science is taught in Texas classrooms for years. And while school districts aren’t required to use board-approved textbooks, many do so for the assurance that those materials meet the state’s standards.

At least one Republican board member, Will Hickman, who represents Houston, indicated that he’d advocate for instructional materials that do not include climate change solutions in science courses. He argued those solutions would be a better fit in social studies.

Hickman also asked one testifier if the textbooks should “also include the benefits we get from burning carbon,” arguing that many facets of modern society, such as air conditioning, are powered by fossil fuels. Hickman, an attorney who was elected to the board in 2021, has worked as in-house counsel forShell OilCompany since 2004.

The testifier, Susan Meredith, an Austin-based energy and education consultant who had testified that students should be presented with instructional materials that prepare them for climate change related jobs in the future, told Hickman he was conflating topics.

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“What you’re collapsing is that electricity has to come from gas and oil, and it doesn't,” Meredith said.

Another Republican SBOE member, Pat Hardy, who represents Tarrant and Parker counties and parts of Dallas County, has previously said she wants children to learn about the good fossil fuels have done for human society, such as helping the Texas economy grow. Texas is the nation’s largest oil and gas producing state.

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Texas is one of only six states that does not use the Next Generation Science Standards to guide its K-12 science curriculum. The standards — developed by states and a committee convened by the National Research Council in 2013 — emphasize that climate change is real, severe, caused by humans and can be mitigated with actions that reduce greenhouse gasses in the atmosphere.

A 2020 analysis of science curriculums in all 50 states by the National Center for Science Education and the Texas Freedom Network Education Fund gave Texas an F grade for how well schools in the state taught about the scientific consensus on climate change.

Some Democrats on the board pushed back on the soft-on-fossil-fuels language proposed by their Republican colleagues.

“We absolutely should say humans do impact climate change,” said Marisa Perez-Diaz, a Democrat who represents San Antonio on the board, in an interview with The Texas Tribune. “It doesn’t have to be political — it is just fact. But I think because sometimes we get into these culture-war conversations, it blurs what should and shouldn’t go into the standards.”

Although all the textbooks that have been submitted for approval explain that climate change is happening and “can” be due to human activity, not all of them explicitly say that human activities are the primary reason or include information on how to mitigate climate change. In other words, some of the textbooks don’t say that humans will need to quickly and dramatically cut greenhouse gas emissions, largely by phasing out fossil fuels, to avoid the most devastating impacts of climate change, as international climate scientists have long warned.

During the Tuesday board meeting, Perez-Diaz asked the other board members to be cautious of only supporting textbooks that meet the state’s minimum requirements and nothing more.

“When publishers take the time to include additional information past the TEKS [standards], for me, that is a text that stands out above and beyond the others,” she said.

Some educators, former teachers and education advocates are concerned that the political influence of the fossil fuel industry in Texas has prevented, and may continue to block, robust education on climate science ahead of the board’s November vote on science instructional materials.

“Climate change might be politically controversial, but the scientific consensus is clear,” said Carisa Lopez, a senior political director for Texas Freedom Network, during a Tuesday press conference. “It’s past time for the board to be clear about textbooks: that textbooks in public schools should teach the truth.”

Judy Dickey, a graduate lecturer at Texas A&M in the department of atmospheric sciences, said she thought some of the textbooks were trying to “soft-peddle” climate change by not explicitly saying humans were the cause, casting doubt on the scientific consensus or not including solutions.

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But Dickey, who reviewed the textbooks for a Texas Freedom Network analysis of the proposals, said most of them did a good job of explaining climate science, treated climate change seriously and explained how it occurs.

“To me, that is a huge step forward,” said Dickey, who was previously a science teacher in Florida. “I was pleasantly surprised. … It was nice to see that no one was trying to pretend it was volcanoes.”

One 11th-grade student who testified during the Tuesday meeting, Marygrace Beinke, said none of her teachers have ever told her that climate change is a hoax or that evolution isn’t real. She emphasized to the board that all students in Texas should be given the opportunity to learn about those topics, which she said have reinforced her faith in God.

“I’ve never felt closer to God as when I’ve been learning about how fragile, beautiful and complex our Earth is,” Beinke told the board.

Geoff Carlisle, who taught eighth-grade science at a KIPP school in Austin for a decade, said in an interview with the Tribune that like Beinke’s teachers, he taught his students about climate change, even though it was not required by the state’s standards. Carlisle incorporated information about climate science into his own lesson plans — something he said most teachers in Texas don’t likely have the time or resources to do.

He said many of his students understood that climate change was happening and that it might have something to do with burning fossil fuels, but they could not explain the greenhouse gas effect or what role burning fossil fuels had in it. He wants the state to go further and require climate science to be taught at all levels. Other states, such as New Jersey, have such standards.

“When I think about the alarming emergency that our students are going to face or are facing, it’s unethical to not be talking about this in all grade levels,” Carlisle said. “Our students deserve the right to understand what’s happening.”

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an 8 23 chaplain

https://www.alternet.org/schools-ohio/

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another stopped tanehasi coates betw world and me; youth poet laureate

teacher taught racism

https://www.alternet.org/i-did-not-feel-safe/

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https://www.alternet.org/school-districts-book-ban-investigation/

no lnx

School district’s book ban under investigation for potential civil rights violations

David Badash andThe New Civil Rights Movement May 22, 2023

A U.S. Dept. of Education investigation into how a Georgia school district chose to remove almost a dozen books, mostly with Black and LGBTQ characters, finds it created a hostile environment for students and may have violated their civil rights. The DOE’s Office of Civil Rights says the effects of the book removals were so “harsh” they led at least several students to be afraid to go to school.

The Washington Post calls the investigation’s conclusion “a move that could affect how schools handle book challenges.” The Forsyth County, Georgia school district has “agreed to offer ‘supportive measures’ to students affected by the book removals and to administer a school climate survey,” according to a letter from the Dept. of Education’s Office for Civil Rights (OCR).

The extensive and detailed letter notes that the district weighed multiple methods to handle parents’ complaints about several books, and took steps, albeit insufficient, to attempt fairness. But it also makes clear extremist parents’ demands played a role in its decision to remove certain books. The letter also includes comments from students.

READ MORE: Moms for Liberty Leader Says Biden Behind High-Level, Coordinated Effort to Make Kids LGBTQ (Video)

In March of 2022, a local CBS affiliate in Georgia ran a news report detailing the remarks of some parents. That report largely focused on parents who were demanding books be banned. It did not include any students. It also alleged the books were inappropriate: “A slew of inappropriate books in Forsyth County school libraries is causing outrage amongst some parents,” the video’s written statement on YouTube reads.

“During a February 15 District school board meeting, which the District’s Superintendent attended, multiple parents and students spoke about the District’s removal of books,” the Office of Civil Rights’ letter reads, referring to an earlier meeting. “Many parents called for the removal of additional books, with most of their comments focused on sexually explicit content; however, some comments focused on removing books for reasons related to gender identity or sexual orientation. Also, some parents made negative comments about diversity and inclusion or critical race theory.”

“The students’ comments at the board meeting focused on the gender identity, sexual orientation, and race or color of authors or characters in the books. Some students also raised concern about the impact of removing the books. One student stated that the book ban immediately made the environment more harsh for students; people like him who are not in the closet are watching their safe spaces disappear, and he is sick of being fearful at school,” OCR states. “A student who identified herself as Asian said it is hard for her to find books with main characters who are of her race; she knows that people of other minority backgrounds have the same struggle and banning books written with diversity silences mainly minority voices.A third student — who characterized the District’s actions as singling out books by authors who are gay, supporters of the LGBTQI+ community, women and people of color — expressed the belief that the District does not care about diversity.”

In its letter, the Office of Civil Rights sys it “has a concern the District received notice that its media center book screening process may have created a hostile environment for students, yet the District’s responsive steps related to the book screening process were not designed to, and were insufficient to, ameliorate any resultant racially and sexually hostile environment.”

READ MORE: Chris Hayes Decimates DeSantis’ ‘Dystopian’ Hypocrisy of Taking Away Rights of Parents to Decide Trans Kids’ Health Care

It also “recognizes the District Media Committee rejected suggestions to handle challenged books in ways that it believed would target certain groups of students and that the District posted a statement on media centers’ websites that they ‘provide resources that reflect all students within each school community’ and that ‘If you come across a book that does not match your family’s values and/or beliefs, and you would prefer that your child does not check that book out, please discuss it with your child.’ OCR also recognizes the District limited its book screening process to sexually explicit material.”

But OCR makes clear the district’s attempts were insufficient, noting that “communications at [school] board meetings conveyed the impression that books were being screened to exclude diverse authors and characters, including people who are LGBTQI+ and authors who are not white, leading to increased fears and possibly harassment.”

“District witnesses reported to OCR that the District has not taken steps to address with students the impact of the book removals. In light of these communications and actions, OCR is concerned a hostile environment may have arisen that the District needed to ameliorate.”

Watch the video above or at this link.

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'Get this porn out of our schools': Parent challenges Utah book ban by requesting the Bible be removed ›

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https://www.rightwingwatch.org/post/gop-va-senate-candidate-claims-public-schools-poisoned-the-mind-of-his-nonbinary-child/

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lISA BOOTHE (GUEST CO-HOST): You know Reverend, you referenced a lot of the things going on in the country. It feels like there's a battle between good vs. evil, a spiritual battle that is brewing in America, especially when you look at some of the things children are being subjected to these days. Talk a little bit about that.

FRANKLIN GRAHAM (PRESIDENT AND CEO, THE BILLY GRAHAM EVANGELIST ASSOCIATION): Well, we have no question, our country is deteriorating morally and spiritually, and we see just how far our country has slid when you see what's happening, especially to our children and these whole issues of confusion that our teachers and our politicians are allowing to be taught concerning gender and so -- parents need to be parents. Parents need to stand up. Parents need to be involved in the school boards, and parents need to get involved and run for school boards. We need Christian men and women running especially for school boards all across this country. Let's take our school boards back and let's get control of our education in this country and it can be done if Christian men and women would get out there and run and win these elections. 

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https://www.rightwingwatch.org/post/heritage-foundations-new-model-legislation-combines-attacks-on-trans-youth-and-public-education/

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rww 3 23

rick Scarborough—a self-described “Christocrat,” strident anti-LGBTQ activist, and longtime critic of public education—has his sights set on taking over public education in Texas this year. He intends to do so by taking over school boards and fearmongering about public school students “being groomed by homosexuals and the trans perverts [and] recruited into their evil lifestyles.”

Last week, Scarborough revealed another aspect of his strategy.Speaking about his intention to take over school boards at an event organized by the Texas Tea Party Republican Women, Scarborough admitted that he is trying to “take over America” for Jesus and is working to “expunge this entire state of every immoral book in the library.”

Scarborough began his remarks by recounting how, earlier in his career, he had been portrayed in the media a right-wing theocrat intent on forcing his far-right Christian views on the nation. That was an accurate assessment, Scarborough now admits.

“They went after me as trying to take over the town, trying to take over America,” Scarborough said. “And, in all honesty, I was, but I couldn’t say that. I mean, why not take it over for Jesus?”

“Sixty-eight percent of the teachers in Texas, by poll …  now believe that the LGBTQ agenda should be taught and embraced,” Scarborough complained later in his speech. “We’re grooming our children for pedophiles. That’s what’s happening. Now, let me tell you what I’m going to spend the rest of my life doing—and by God’s grace, if I can raise the budget and get people behind me: In four years, I want to expunge this entire state of every immoral book in the library. Call me a Nazi, call me a book-burner, I’ve been called worse." [vid]

scarborough has plenty of company. Right-wing politicians and political groups are restricting the freedom to learn by demanding the removal of books they don’t like—often those featuring Black or LGBTQ characters—from schools and public libraries​. In Texas, the author of the state’s anti-abortion bill is drafting local ordinances that would allow citizens to sue librarians over “immoral content.”

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sTEVE DOOCY(CO-HOST): Battle for the American Mind, Uprooting a Century of Miseducation, a brand new book that hits the shelves today. In it, Pete Hegseth and David Goodwin discuss how American education has been destroyed and what we can do to restore it. Here's an excerpt. "Make no mistake about it the historical singularity that was America's founding was a result of classical Christian education. Full stop. Our founders did not stumble their way to brilliance of 1776. They were forged in the foundry of the education of their time." And Pete and David join us live right now. And they've got the number one book in the world. Who's who?

PETE HEGSETH (AUTHOR, FOX AND FRIENDS WEEKEND CO-HOST): Pete. David.

DOOCY: Thank you very much. David, it's very nice to meet you. We were talking to Pete about this yesterday. This is part of a master plan that a lot of people don't have any idea has been going on for decades.

DAVID GOODWIN (AUTHOR): Right.

DOOCY: Regarding education in the country.

GOODWIN: Yes. Well, you know, that's when I was doing the research, some of the research through the original book, which The New Republic in the early part of the 20th century. I thought I would find a lot about labor unions and a lot about minimum wage, a lot about, you know, the things that we know that the progressives were talking about at the time. But education was in every issue. And I was wondering, why.

DOOCY: Right. And Pete who would –who drew up this master plan?

HEGSETH: Well, there were a lot of – there wasn't one master architect, John Dewey's the father of the progressive educational system.

DOOCY: But they were like-minded.

HEGSETH: Very like-minded. Almost all atheists. Almost all socialists. Eventually, almost all Marxists.And they had a plan to capture the minds of our youngest kids. And we're not talking about the lunacy of higher education. This is K through 12. They knew the affections of young people. Elementary school students would shape the way they view America, their faith, for the rest of their life. And so they set it out on a course. They didn't know exactly where it would lead, Steve. All of these architects of progressives, but they knew where it wouldn't lead: Not toward Biblical wisdom, not toward appreciation for our founding documents.And people say to David I all the time, How do I not know this history?

DOOCY: Right.

HEGSETH: 100-year history. You know why? Because the progressives write the history. They write the textbooks.

DOOCY: Right.

HEGSETH: So, David and I had to dig underneath everything that's hidden to find out the real story of how they captured K through 12.

DOOCY: You know, and David, we've known for a long time that America's colleges, for the most part. are way to the left, very progressive. But I don't think a lot of people realized until the last decade or so when they started looking in America'stextbooks,how far to the left aome are trying to drag K through 12.

GOODWIN: Well, they've had the advantage. When you have the college system, you control the instruments of education all the way down to the kindergarten. Right. Because you train the teachers, you train the administrators, you train the curriculum providers. You're the ones doing the accreditation, the college – at the college level. All of that flows right from the, you know, kind of nodes of control that the progressives had.

DOOCY: And, you know Pete, so many parents got a good look at what their kids were doing during COVID-19. Your first chapter is our COVID 1619 moment.

HEGSETH: It's exactly right. You're at home looking at your kid's curriculum through your laptop, and suddenly there's a new founding date on their screen, 1619 or they're talking about gender pronouns for seven or eight-year-olds.[note no eg]  So we start with the problem, and the first step to any recovery is understanding the depth of your problem. And we outline that. But the best part of the book, in our opinion is those five chapters at the end that are about the solution. AndDavid runs the Association of Classical Christian Schools.

DOOCY: Right.

HEGSETH: Classical Christian Dot Org. There are hundreds of wonderful brick-and-mortar schools across the country that are the exact opposite of what our government schools provide right now. There are online options, there arehomeschoolcurriculum options. The insurgency to take our classroom back has begun, and that's the preferred form of ideological warfare of the weak against the small. You do not have to default to progressive public schools, because otherwise, you're going to war with an educational complex that has 40 hours a week to capture your kid's mind. And that's why we call it a battle. It really is for parents and grandparents.

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yikes just collateral damage from pedo pink pill qanon moral panic, "gov't school" or target b/c bannon takeover fail?  CRT big winner 2022 so extension?

picked a fight with Disney, biggest employer and beloved corp?!  Gavvin made offer to refugees?!

no lnx vid twt

https://www.alternet.org/2022/04/fox-news/

Fox News dangerously declares war on teachers: Calls for violence, accusations of 'inclination' to pedophilia

David Badash and The New Civil Rights Movement April 11, 2022

From Tucker Carlson to Laura Ingraham to Mark Levin, Fox News propagandists have declared war on public school teachers. The dangerous attacks follow the right’s misleading claims – fueled by Florida’s “Don’t Say Gay” legislation – about children inappropriately being taught about sex, homosexuality, bisexuality, sexual orientation, and gender identity starting as early as kindergarten.

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Last month, just days afterFlorida Republican Governor Ron DeSantis’ spokesperson Christina Pushaw charged that anyone who opposed the “Don’t Say Gay” bill was “probably” a “groomer” – essentially, a pedophile, pedophile enabler, or pedophile supporter, Fox News propagandist Laura Ingraham jumped into action.

“When did our public schools, any schools, become what are essentially grooming centers for gender identity radicals?” Ingraham asked, as Media Matters reported. The chyron was less ambiguous: “Liberals are sexually grooming elementary students.”

In fact, on Monday Media Matters’ Matthew Gertz wrote, “With Florida’s ‘Don’t Say Gay’ law, Republicans have weaponized their Fox News base against teachers.”

Sunday night Fox News’ far-right “fringe” host Mark Levin hosted award-winning playwright David Mamet, who has no degree in childhood development, education, or sexual studies, to discuss public schools. He declared that teachers, especially male teachers, are “sexual predators.”

“Teachers are inclined, particularly men because men are predators, to pedophilia,” Mamet charged, pointing to no study that proves his claim.

That claim came just days after Fox News’ top propagandist, Tucker Carlson, called for men to engage in verbal or physical abuse of school teachers, as Media Matters reported.

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“I don’t understand where the men are. Like where are the dads? You know, some teachers pushing sex values on your third grader why don’t you go in and thrash the teacher? Like this is an agent of the government pushing someone else’s values on your kid about sex, like where’s the pushback?

But Insider reports that Carlson was “repeating calls for violence he has made previously.” And The Daily Beast apparently agreed: “The Fox News host yet again suggested that violence against educators is called for.”

Rather than apologize for its hosts and guests, Fox News is doubling down.Monday morning the conservative outlet published an article claiming: “CNN, Washington Post, Vice and more fret that Republicans are worried about child grooming, pedophilia.”

On Twitter, Media Matters Matthew Gertz adds to points he made in his article.

“Florida’s ‘Don’t Say Gay’ law effectively deputizes the most Fox-News-and-Facebook-addicted members of the GOP base to act on frenzied smears that LGBTQ teachers are ‘grooming’ children,” he writes.

“This vague law is then enforced by parents suing their school districts. Suits will inevitably come from the most anti-LGBTQ parents, and school districts will chill discussion of a wide range of topics to try to avoid getting mired in lawsuits,” Gertz adds.

“These baseless accusations that the right’s political opponents are actually pedophiles overlap with – and at times become indistinguishable from – the QAnon conspiracy theory,” he concludes, “which is moving ever closer to the GOP mainstream.”

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koch network is running TP ACA town hall play again:[bus tour?] sign: i will not let my child be your sci experiment; hands off my body ~ abortion  https://www.msnbc.com/maddowblog

// Koch-backed group fuels opposition to school mask mandates, leaked letter shows wapo

A template letter circulated by Independent Women’s Forum offers a glimpse into a well-resourced campaign against public health regulations

Protesters are escorted out of a school board meeting in Las Vegas. Opposition to mandates is being fueled, in part, by well-funded conservative groups whose methods mask the coordinated nature of the backlash. )

By Isaac Stanley-Becker

October 1, 2021 at 1:00 p.m. EDT

The letter sounds passionate and personal.

It is motivated, the author explains, by a desire to “speak up for what is best for my kids.” And it fervently conveys the author’s feelings to school leaders: “I do not believe little kids should be forced to wear masks, and I urge you to adopt a policy that allows parental choice on this matter for the upcoming school year.”...

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see // kirk tpusa on mask CRT moral panic

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requested fed protection from rw wackos

like

QAnoner wielding a tomahawk is now crashing school board meetings

Meaghan Ellis

October 16, 2021

Parents in Ankeny, Iowa, were not pleased with the school board's decision to reinforce its mask mandate to mitigate COVID-19. In fact, many outraged parents responded with lambasting remarks toward school...

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// koch network town hall mtgs on ACA?

1021 an

https://www.alternet.org/2021/10/supreme-court-2655250387/

Yesterday, I described a situation in which local boards of education are being squeezed between two separate but related forces. On the one hand are shadowy nonprofit organizations funded by the very obscenely rich that are staging "protests" against masks, vaccines, the teaching of anti-racism and other things they don't. I call them the death-threat squads. They harass, intimidate and threaten board members in such numbers as totrigger waves of resignations. Their goal isn't changing minds. It's silencing enemies. The tactic works.

But it only works due to the help of a tandem force in question. On the other hand are local law enforcement officers, even whole police and sheriffs' departments, who do not or will not enforce the law in order prevent such crimes from being committed. Why? Because they are sympathetic to the interests of those who are committing the crimes. For this reason, a national school board group called on the president to help. The US attorney general is now taking steps to investigate.

I'm summarizing yesterday's column, because I want to stress this pattern — the squeeze play — that's between active agents of the very obscenely rich and passive agents of the state. I want you to be aware of how these lawless forces work in tandem, though not necessarily in explicit coordination, to shape not only our views of politics but our understanding of freedom, too. I want you to see more fully that what they are doing now is how they want America to be, a nation in which the in-group can harass, intimidate and threaten the out-group, and the out-group is legally and constitutionally bound to put up with it.

Consider an upcoming case to be heard before the United States Supreme Court. It's the biggest case on Second Amendment rights since Heller in 2008. Heller established the right to self-defense. The state is forbidden to outlaw guns for personal use and safety. In New York State Rifle & Pistol Association v. Bruen, plaintiffs hope to take Heller a step further to establish the right to conceal one's weapon.

It's important to understand the context of Bruen. Heller was decided before America elected its first Black president. After the election, the"gun-rights" movementsprang into action. I said this yesterday, but didn't say why. It's because democracy "unexpectedly" empowered non-white people. For many white people, empowered non-white people, especially Black people, means disempowered white people.

Something had to be done. Since American democracy could no longer be trusted, they turned to their guns. They turned to tactics to fight the feeling of being "enslaved." Thanks to Heller, they could legally carry their guns in public, in places where they'd never need a gun, like the library. They said they were exercising their rights. They were lying. They were doing exactly what the school board death-threat squads are doing now. (Local law enforcement officers said then as now that nothing can be done.) They were harassing, intimidating and threatening people they don't like. They were doing that because harassing, intimidating and threatening people makes them feel free.

The need among some white people to feel "free" in the face of a treacherous democracy that empowered non-white people — thus robbing white people of their freedoms — was so fierce that a day that might otherwise have triggered a national reckoning on gun violence was barely noticed. While most Americans saw the slaughter of 20 innocents at Sandy Hook as an overwhelming reason to increase gun regulation, the "gun-rights" movement was focused on something else: the 2012 reelection of Black president and chief avatar of tyranny.

I used to say the Republican reaction to the Sandy Hook massacre was the rapid expansion of laws deregulating access to firearms and their use. I was wrong. Those laws, including concealed carry laws, were a reaction to Barack Obama's reelection. They were a reaction to American democracy betraying white people for a second time. (The good guy with a gun is not just a good guy who shoots back. He's a white guy who's "free" to shoot whomever he pleases. That's what makes him good.) It is the expansion of these laws, and all they symbolize, that's set to be heard by the Supreme Court. I don't have reason to doubt this court will establish a concealed carry right. Once that happens, the right to military weapons might not be far behind.

Thus the high court will do its part in squeezing freedom out of Americans. On the one hand, the in-group gets to harass, intimidate and threaten the out-group with guns, concealed and/or open. One the other, local law enforcement gets to shrug, pointing helplessly to the Supreme Court and its interpretation of the Constitution. The out-group does indeed have the right to equal protection. What we're seeing, in stages, is a slow-motion conspiracy to pretend otherwise.

Which is the point. Freedom for the out-group is equal to tyranny for the in-group. More accurately, freedom for the in-group is dependent on the out-group living in fear of the in-group. Without that fear, the in-group just doesn't feel free enough. That's why freedom isn't and can't only be doing whatever you want. Freedom must mean harassing, intimidating and threatening the out-group while enacting laws and interpreting the Constitution so the out-group can't fight back.

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prn runs on AP and yahoo news finance with video?! also big logo

PR Newswire

Independent Women's Network Launches

July 26, 2021·2 min read

New Nationwide Network For Women

Members-only community will unite women across the country

WASHINGTON, July 26, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Independent Women's Network (IWN)—anew groundbreaking network for women—launched. The subscription-based, members-only platform is a community of strong, smart, and independent women who care deeply about our country and want the opportunity to discuss the most pressing issues facing our country freely.

IWN members can join honest conversations about everything from politics and culture to education and family. It's a place where members can share their thoughts and feelings, gain knowledge, and have lots of fun.

"In my role, I frequently talk with women across the country who feel like they cannot share their true beliefs on an issue for fear of being censored, blacklisted, or canceled," saidCarrie Lukas, president of Independent Women's Forum. "That's why we are so excited to launch IWN."

Julie Gunlock,content director of Independent Women's Network, said, "IWN features exclusive content—videos, chats, and commentary—from dozens of conservative leaders; and I know some of the best content is going to come from our members, who are thoughtful, informed, and have great ideas that need to be heard throughout the country."

"Our goal in creating IWN is to provide an exclusive community for independent- and open-minded women," said Independent Women's Voice Vice President of Communications Victoria Coley. "Millions of women across the country want to make a difference in their local communities but do not know where to start, and Independent Women's Network will provide unparalleled support."

Visit Independent Women's Network at iwnetwork.com.

Independent Women's Network, a project of Independent Women's Voice, in partnership with Independent Women's Forum, is a private community for women to come together to inspire, interact, influence, and have impact.

Independent Women's Voice is an advocacy501(c)(4) that fights for women and families by effectively expanding support among women, independents, and millennials for policy solutions that aren't just well intended, but actually enhance freedom, opportunities, and well-being.

Contact: meghan.agostinelli@iwnetwork.com, 508-728-4140

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https://www.rightwingwatch.org/post/family-research-council-raises-money-for-right-wing-school-board-takeover-campaign/

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an

worse than Betsy DeVos: The disturbing story of 2020 school board elections

Jeff Bryant Our Schools

December 02, 2020

When a Biden victory in the 2020 presidential election became certain, supporters of public education gleefully took to social media to say good riddance to U.S. Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos. DeVos cam...

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dn 820

White House Declares Teachers “Essential Workers” as Unions Threaten Strikes over Coronavirus

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trump threatened to pull fed $ if not reopen 720

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Gorka pushed for schools to reopen: “Put the bloody teachers in body condoms. I don't care."

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https://www.washingtonpost.com/education/2020/02/18/what-it-really-means-when-trump-devos-their-allies-refer-public-schools-government-schools/

some lnx not here

Answer Sheet

Analysis

What it really means when Trump, DeVos and their allies refer to public schools as ‘government schools’

[pix President Trump and Education Secretary Betsy DeVos, shown in2017, refer to public schools as “government schools.” (Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post)]

By

Valerie Strauss

Feb. 18, 2020

If you were listening to President Trump deliver his State of the Union address this month, you heard him refer to public schools as “government schools.” It was not the first time, and you can expect to hear it with increasing frequency from him, Education Secretary Betsy DeVos and their allies as they push to increase programs that use public money for private and religious school education.

Trump and DeVos use the term most often with the adjective “failing” attached as a broad denunciation of the public school system, which advocates see as the nation’s most important civic institution. The president and education secretary say their goal is to provide families with the most education options even as they disparage the one that enrolls most of America’s schoolchildren and continues to get high marks from the public.

It isn’t entirely clear where “government schools” originated in this context. This term showed up in a1929 encyclical from Pope Pius XI on Christian education in which he calls “unjust and unlawful” any “monopoly, educational or scholastic, which, physically or morally, forces families to make use of government schools, contrary to the dictates of their Christian conscience, or contrary even to their legitimate preferences.”

In 1954, a white Southern segregationist [not confed dabney/]who opposed school desegregation used it, as did free-market economist Milton Friedman in 1955. In the mid-2010s, conservatives in Kansas invoked the term during a battle over public education funding. Now, Trump and DeVos use it as they push their No. 1 education priority: Getting Congress to pass a $5 billion tax credit program that would allow use of public money for children to attend private and religious school.

“Government schools” is invoked mostly by people who are suspicious of public institutions and see government as a problem rather than a solution. That sentiment was perhaps best encapsulated by President Ronald Reagan in an Aug. 12, 1986, speech in which he famously said, “'The nine most terrifying words in the English language are: I’m from the government, and I’m here to help.'”

In this line of thinking, schools should be operated like businesses because the private sector and competition always produce better results, which critics say is not supported by evidence. Many of the people who use the term “government schools” also oppose unions and have been antagonistic to the two major teachers unions — the National Education Association and the American Federation of Teachers — and the right of public workers to bargain collectively.

Traditional public schools continue to enroll the vast majority of American schoolchildren despite the growing number of alternatives, and opinion polls shows the public still supports them despite serious problems in some districts. The latest and best-known poll on the subject, the 2019 PDK poll of the public’s attitudes on public schools, found that 76 percent of parents with children in kindergarten through 12th grade gave their own child’s school an A or B grade, even though just 19 percent of Americans overall gave the nation’s schools an A or B.

Trump has been saying “government schools” ever since he took office in 2017 to appeal to people who are suspicious of government. DeVos has been using the phrase even longer.

In her home state of Michigan, she and her husband, Amway heir Richard DeVos Jr., spent millions of dollars on an unsuccessful effort in the early 2000s to change the state constitution to allow school vouchers and successfully pushed for a law that would allow for charter schools to open there. The DeVoses have long supported Christian schools, too, and have donated millions of dollars to them over the years.

In 2015, DeVos made clear her position on traditional public schools: She called them “a dead end” during a speech at the SXSW EDU conference in Austin that year. She said:

“We are the beneficiaries ofstart-ups, ventures, and innovationin every other area of life, but we don’t have that in education because it’s a closed system, a closed industry, a closed market. It’s a monopoly, a dead end. And the best and brightest innovators and risk-takers steer way clear of it. As long as education remains a closed system, we will never see the education equivalents of Google, Facebook, Amazon, PayPal, Wikipedia or Uber. We won’t see any real innovation that benefits more than a handful of students.” [mrs zuck fail NJ? Gates fdn?]

That speech is why the education world was stunned when Trump tapped DeVos to be education secretary, and why her confirmation became controversial: It was the first time that a Cabinet member was confirmed by the Senate only after the vice president, in this case Mike Pence, broke a tie vote.

In 2002, DeVos’s husband used the phrase “government schools” in a speech he gave at a conservative think tank about expanding school vouchers across the country.He offered a four-part strategy and encouraged choice advocates to stop using the term “public schools.” His comments offered one of the common rationales given by pro-choice supporters for a change in terminology:

“l’ve used the word public schools a fair bit [but] I am beginning to change my own terminology. I would encourage you to either improve on mine or adopt it. ‘Public schools’ is such a misnomer today that I really hate to use that. I’ve begun to use the word ‘government schools’ or ‘government-run-schools’ to describe what we used to call public schools because it’s a better descriptor of in fact what they are. Because the public school creates this aura that if anyone walks in off the street into a quote unquote public school they would be welcome. And you and I both know that in America today, unfortunately, if you don’t live in the appropriate school district you are about as welcome in a particular public school as a virus is welcome on a cruise ship." [PRESUMABLY REFERS TO POOR POC WHO TRY TO ENROLL IN BETTER SCH FROM RICHER NEIGHBORHOOD?]

Traditional public schools are required to accept all students who live in their district or who have been assigned to them by lottery. Private and religious schools are not required to accept any students, and religious schools are allowed to legally discriminate against some students, such as LGBTQ students. [IN FACT CREAM FOR TEST SCORES]

In any case, Richard DeVos also made clear that choice advocates should tread lightly, urging them to “be cautious about talking too much about these activities” so the issue is not “appropriated” and viewed as “only a conservative idea."

Betsy DeVos and her allies are trying to redefine ‘public education.' Critics call it ‘absurd.'

Three years before Richard DeVos’s speech, the term “government schools” was prominent in a 1999 school choice primer for "freedom in education” issued by the ultraconservative Michigan-based Mackinac Center for Public Policy.[LINK]

The center was founded with a big contribution from the DeVoses, and it hosted an event in 2013 at which Jeb Bush, the former governor of Florida and a prominent DeVos ally, said: “Our governance model includes over 13,000 government-run monopolies run by unions.” He also said, “We can’t just outsource public education to bureaucracies and public education unions and hope for the best.”

Richard DeVos has had a long history, too, of opposing unions; he and his family were instrumental in the Michigan legislature passing a law eliminating union contracts between companies and labor unions that charge dues to members, making it a “right to work” state after it had long been union-friendly.

Interestingly, Friedman — the man many people credit with coining “government schools,” or at least the philosophy behind it — did not support right to work laws.Friedman, a Nobel laureate who advocated free markets, has been called the father of the school voucher movement because of a 1955essay, “The Role of Government in Education.” In it, he argues government’s role should essentially be limited to paying for education, not operating schools. He wrote:

In terms of effects, the denationalization of education would widen the range of choice available to parents. Given, as at present, that parents can send their children to government schools without special payment, very few can or will send them to other schools unless they too are subsidized. Parochial schools are at a disadvantage in not getting any of the public funds devoted to education; but they have the compensating advantage of being run by institutions that are willing to subsidize them and can raise funds to do so, whereas there are few other sources of subsidies for schools. Let the subsidy be made available to parents regardless where they send their children — provided only that it be to schools that satisfy specified minimum standards — and a wide variety of schools will spring up to meet the demand.

A year before that essay, Mississippi segregationist Tom P. Brady gave a speech (later expanded into a book) that became an informal manifesto for Southern segregationist leaders. In “Black Monday,” Brady wrote: “The public school is a socialized or politically monopolized institution, and suffers from weakness inherent in all monopolies."

According to Steve Suitts, an academic and author of the new book, “Overturning Brown: The Segregationist Legacy of the Modern School Choice Movement”: “Southern segregationists used the term ‘government schools’ throughout the 1960s to discredit public schools. In 1964, for example, Mississippi white Citizens Council leader William Simmons condemned the monopoly of ‘government school systems.’ The Mississippi Citizens Council later worked to develop a private school system of choice, supported by vouchers, as their leaders condemned ‘government schools’ as ‘socialism in its purest form.’”

The phrase continued to be used by those opposing the system of common schools open to all and funded, operated and governed by the public through local governments.

Strauss is an education writer who authors The Answer Sheet blog. She came to The Washington Post as an assistant foreign editor for Asia in 1987 and weekend foreign desk editor after working for Reuters as national security editor and a military/foreign affairs reporter on Capitol Hill. She also previously worked at UPI and the LA Times

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https://www.alternet.org/2020/05/government-leaders-including-betsy-devos-push-their-personal-agendas-as-economic-tsunami-crashes-into-americas-schools

Due to the coronavirus pandemic, nearly all states have ordered or recommended school buildings stay closed for the rest of the academic year, according to Education Week’s most recent count, and “schools are likely to stay shut for months,” according to the New York Times. Teachers are responding to the crisis by continuing their heroic efforts to ensure students are getting fed, staying engaged, and receiving ongoing instruction via remote learning in some form. Meanwhile, economists and policy leaders are warning that public schools are headed toward a financial crater unless governments at all levels come up with emergency funds for schools.

But instead of rushing to rescue schools from financial calamity, many government leaders—including U.S. Education Secretary Betsy DeVos—are using the pandemic to advance their personal agendas, whether it’s to privatize public education or balance budgets on the backs of school kids.

The predicted shortfalls will compound harm that’s been done to a public education system already in financial trauma.

Public schools haven’t fully recovered from the beating they took as a result of the Great Recession, argues a new report from the Albert Shanker Institute, a research center affiliated with the American Federation of Teachers. The downturn in the nation’s economy that started in 2007 hit schools hardest in 2009 to 2011, after states had slashed education budgets and aid that came from the federal stimulus package had run out. The results were “fewer teachers and support staff, larger classes, and a narrower array of academic and extracurricular programs,” the report explains.

The report’s authors, Rutgers professor Bruce Baker and Shanker Institute senior fellow Matthew Di Carlo, call on the federal government to respond to the pandemic with a large aid package for public schools and requirements for states to direct money where it’s needed most—to high-poverty communities in deepest distress and “according to student needs.” State leaders, the authors contend, must move to restore state funding levels to what they were before the recession hit.

Instead of taking this advice, what we see are political leaders in both parties going in the opposite direction.

DeVos Doubles Down on Privatization

It’s bad enough that emergency aid for schools provided by the federal government is woefully short of what is needed, according to a broad coalition of education groups, but what’s worse is that some of it is in danger of being hijacked by Secretary DeVos.

As Matt Barnum reports for Chalkbeat, DeVos has announced she will direct $180 million in federal coronavirus relief for schools into grant programs for funding two of her pet projects: turning public education into a voucher system and transferring learning from classrooms to the internet.

“It’s the latest example of the department aligning its coronavirus response to the Trump administration’s political preferences,” Barnum writes.

The vouchers, what DeVos calls “microgrants,” mimic what are commonly called education savings accounts (ESAs), a policy idea promoted by right-wing policy advocates including the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), former Florida governor and failed presidential candidate Jeb Bush, and Charles Koch and his late brother David.

ESAs are “the most market-based and the least accountable” form of school choice, says Carol Burris, executive director of the Network for Public Education, which has called on Congress to stop DeVos from going forward with these options.

The way the programs work, Burris explains, is that tax dollars designated for education are given to parents in a “savings account” with a debit card that can be used to pay for education products and services such as tutors, home schooling, online courses, and private school tuition.

ESAs were first created in Arizona, Tennessee, Florida, and Mississippi as a way around prohibitions against using public dollars for religious schools. The vast majority of parents who participate in Arizona’s program use the money to pay for private school tuition, according to the New York Times. Given that most private schools in Arizona are religious schools, it’s likely ESAs are mostly used to supplement parents choosing to opt out of public schools for religious reasons.

DeVos’s second option for states to expand online learning programs is also problematic. A widely cited national study found students enrolled in full-time, online-only schools lost an average of about 72 days of learning in reading and 180 days of learning in math over a 180-day school year—meaning, in math, an entire year of lost instruction. Studies of statewide online learning programs have found disappointing results, including those in Colorado, Indiana, Kansas, Maine, and Ohio.

DeVos wraps her ideas in the bold rhetoric of “rethinking” education, but “the secretary is a longtime advocate of alternatives to public schools,” notes NPR’s Anya Kamenetz in her report on DeVos’s announcement, pointing to DeVos’s years of supporting home schooling and vouchers.

DeVos’s determination to direct more public money to private pockets is explicitly written into the new grant program’s instructions that students who attend private schools must be eligible to participate.

Averting ‘An Educational Catastrophe’

While DeVos’s efforts to direct federal emergency aid for schools toward privatization efforts are perhaps expected, what’s more than disappointing are reports that a number of state governors are already calling for deep cuts to public schools.

Similar to what happened in response to the Great Recession, these leaders are looking to balance the state’s books by cutting spending rather than increasing taxes, and education and health care will suffer most.

Among the state leaders calling for deep cuts to education is New York’s Democratic Governor Andrew Cuomo, who “plans to slash aid to localities by $8.2 billion and cut state agency budgets by 10 percent,” according to City & State New York. “Cuomo has made a big point of opposing tax hikes all year long,” the local outlet notes, and the governor answered a reporter’s question about what local officials should do by saying, “Call Washington.”

No doubt, states and cities are heading into uncharted financial territory. Big city school districts including Denver, New York City, and across Ohio are expecting severe budget trauma. A survey of city leaders found nine in ten believed budgets were headed to shortfalls, and they were already planning to cut services, including education.

Unless the federal government and state leaders take action to increase funding for local schools, there will be an “educational catastrophe,” warn the leaders of the nation’s largest school districts in a letter to Congress, and as many as 275,000 teachers would lose their jobs.

“For states facing catastrophic revenue declines, asking more of taxpayers with a clear ability to pay is far preferable to cutting state budgets, which would lead to mass layoffs, steep cuts in public services, and a downward spiral in the economy,” write fiscal policy analysts in a report for the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy.

They point to a range of sources state leaders should consider tapping to shore up funding for local schools, including personal and corporate income taxes, sales and consumption taxes, and getting rid of laws that restrict taxation.

New York is an excellent example of a state that has for too long neglected to address the wealth and power structures that limit funding for public goods and services like education.

In response to Cuomo’s budget warning, public school advocacy group the Alliance for Quality Education New York states, “There are 112 billionaires in New York that have a combined wealth of $525 billion—almost 5 times New York State’s annual budget. A small tax on New York’s ultra-rich would close the budget deficit, without sacrificing our children and their future.”

“We cannot avoid a budget crisis, but we can attenuate its negative effects and shorten its duration,” write Baker and Di Carlo in their Shanker Institute report.

But ideologues like DeVos and state governors like Cuomo who want to use a crisis to advance their own beliefs and careers are making matters worse.

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aha: there is no left incubator (some scattered organizer training? by unions?) but school bd trad 1st rung

diane ravitz // MI emergency manager: in tx one fail school gets district taken over --> charters?

https://www.c-span.org/video/?468918-1/slaying-goliath

broad gave yale 100m to tke over failed org;

refs takeover bk, outside dark$ local sch bd, 1st rung of pol ladder.

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https://theconversation.com/the-made-up-crisis-behind-the-state-takeover-of-houstons-public-schools-128346

school bd pipeline for ppl of color into politics, TX abbott

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https://www.alternet.org/2020/03/this-is-wrong-bipartisan-lawmakers-slam-betsy-devos-for-yanking-funds-from-800-schools

no lnx

‘This is wrong’: Bipartisan lawmakers slam Betsy DeVos for yanking funds from 800+ schools

Written by Igor Derysh / Salon March 3, 2020

Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos came under fire after her department made a bookkeeping change that would result in major funding cuts for America’s rural schools.

The Department of Education quietly informed state education officials that it would change how districts report the number of students who live in poverty, which could result in funding cuts for more than 800 of the “poorest” and “most geographically isolated” schools, according to The New York Times.

The changes to the Rural and Low-Income School Program came after the department found that some districts “erroneously” received funding despite being ineligible. The department previously allowed schools to report the percentage of students who qualify for free or reduced-price lunch, which it used to calculate poverty rates, for nearly two decades. Under the new rule, districts will be required to use data from the Census Bureau’s Small Area Income and Poverty Estimates to determine if they meet the threshold of 20% of students living below the poverty line to qualify for the program.

Education spokeswoman Liz Hill told The Times that the department’s new rule follows existing law, but added that it had “drafted the legislative fix needed to use a free-and-reduced-lunch funding formula.”

“When you discover you’re not following the law Congress wrote, you don’t double down. You fix it,” Hill said. “If that’s what Congress wants, Congress should pass it, and the Education Department will happily implement it. We will also continue to look for ways to help ensure students are not unnecessarily harmed.”

The move stunned rural school leaders, who said they rely on the funding.

“Rural districts have budgeted for these resources, and the administration has given no consideration to how they will be impacted by this immediate cut to their funding,” Sasha Pudelski, the advocacy director at the School Superintendents Association, told The Times.

Some southern states are expected to be hit especially hard.Oklahoma, for example, will likely see the number of schools eligible for the program shrink by half. Matt Holder, the superintendent of Sulphur Public Schools in Oklahoma, said the cuts will force him to cut resources for students in a district where 60% live in poverty.

“It’s important for us to have someone on staff to work with these students and get them where they need to be,” Holder told the outlet. “I feel like we’re cutting from the most vulnerable.”

The move was met with bipartisan criticism. Sen. Lamar Alexander, R-Tenn., the chairman of the committee which oversees education, said he was “very concerned” about the rule change. Alexander vowed to work with Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine, to “solve this problem for hundreds of rural schools around the country,” a committee spokesperson said in a statement.

“There is no reason that a change was made this year and the Department of Education should listen to Congress and fix this problem quickly,” the statement said.

Collins, one of the authors of the Rural Education Achievement Program, said in a letter to DeVos that 100 of the 149 Maine schools that qualified for the program would lose funding, which would result in about $1.2 million in cuts.

“If this decision is not reversed,” Collins said, “the department risks denying thousands of students living in rural Maine the chance to reach their full potentials.”

Sen. Jon Tester, D-Mont., wrote to DeVos that impoverished school districts would lose $400,000 from the rule change.

“The department should be focusing on elevating school districts with the fewest resources instead of punishing small schools with harmful, last-minute policy changes,” Tester said.

The funding cuts come as rural schools struggle to stay afloat. The nonpartisan advocacy group Rural School and Community Trust issued a report warning that many of these districts “face nothing less than an emergency.”

“Many rural students are largely invisible to state policymakers, because they live in states where education policy is dominated by highly visible urban problems,” the report said.

Alan Richard, a board member of the group, shared his hope with The Times that the Trump administration would focus on rural issues because rural voters played such a large part in his election.

“Rural education advocates definitely hoped that a president elected, in part, because of rural and small-town voters would pay more attention to rural children,” he said. “Even after the last election, with all the attention to rural America, little has been done to correct the inequity so many rural students face.”

“This is wrong,” Sen. Amy Klobuchar, D-Minn., one of the remaining Democratic presidential candidates, tweeted.

Former Democratic presidential candidate Tom Steyer added that the move was an example of Trump’s “war on America’s rural communities.”

“First, it was the tariffs that hurt farmers, now he’s targeting students in rural school districts,” he wrote.

“Providing a quality public school education is one of government’s biggest responsibilities. With this decision, Trump and DeVos earn yet another ‘F,'” said Rep. Carolyn Maloney, D-N.Y., the chairwoman of the House Oversight Committee, adding that the move was particularly suspicious because Trump is “also doing everything in his power to undermine he accuracy of the 2020 census.”

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2/20 d ravich new book Yale Broad-ies

1/2 kids in public school elig free lunch, 20% really poor?

DR says billionaires admit charters do not work, but persist? eg bloomberg

Goliath 50M$  440M$ betsy has control

NH, MI, WI ~ refuse to meet w/ besty and v pence?!

reed hastings ~ school bd, just corps?!

ALEC walton koch devos;

joann weiss sp?

uniform nat stds common core boon to vendors

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aha: recall family foundations were formed in the 1st place as a tax shelter and their primary/initial purpose was to undermine the estate tax (eg mars); kochs weaponized/politicized $;  at odds with self made man free mkt MERITOCRACY BS

kochs built a shadow GOP (then rented out trump admin, more progress in X years than y years;)

waltons #1 in charter schools, // devos:public schools the great equalizer, source of meritocrisy); betsy supports scam colleges and stops debt relief.

11/19 public schools are the commons; they are human infrastructure; JC CC allow MC or level up to 4 yr college MODERATION vs 1119 riots in multiple countries b/c young ppl do not see a future/shot

mercers gave us trump and brexit (the end of the brit empire?!)

scaife gave us crooked hillary

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ref seidel

https://religiondispatches.org/amid-reality-tv-gimmicks-and-xenophobic-rhetoric-trumps-sotu-appeals-to-evangelicals/

no lnx

since late December, 2019, when retiring editor-in-chief of Christianity Today Mark Galli published his infamous “Trump Should Be Removed from Office” editorial, there’s been a great deal of buzz in the pundit class over whether Trump, after a highly publicized impeachment trial, needs to be concerned with possible defections in his white evangelical base. From an analytical standpoint, the buzz is mere noise, horse race politics nonsense from people who don’t understand that most white evangelicals have long since come to regard CT as “too liberal.” As John Stoehr observed on RD back in December, “It’s not going to change much.”

And, what many failed to notice or recall, is that the editorial itself was entirely milquetoast, attacking only Trump’s “gross immorality and ethical incompetence,” while agreeing with Trump-supporting evangelicals that “his Supreme Court nominees, his defense of religious liberty, and his stewardship of the economy” are among “the president’s positives.”

Although this editorial was never going to make a dent in the unflagging support Trump counts on from his white evangelical base, he seems to have been scared enough by the furor around it to start ramping up his evangelical outreach. It’s probably no coincidence that Trump recently became the first U.S. president to address the radical anti-choice “March for Life” event in person.

Given that the vast majority of white evangelicals, America’s single most right-wing demographic, are Christian nationalists, we should have expected a substantial presence of Christian nationalist rhetoric in yesterday’s State of the Union Address, along with coded nods to specific evangelical concerns about abortion, schooling, and “religious freedom.”

Indeed, all these elements were present in a speech packed chock-full of “lies, damned lies, and statistics,” along with reality-show gimmicks including a surprise reunion of Trump guest Amy Williams and her husband, Sgt. 1st Class Townshend Williams, andawarding the Presidential Medal of Freedom to right-wing radio charlatan Rush Limbaugh, whose advanced lung cancer diagnosis does nothing to erase his substantial contributions to the destruction of America’s information ecosystem.

Trump’s appreciation for post-truth bluster and militarism are certainly among the characteristics that endear him to the Christian Right. And while he remains most in his element with the jingoistic rhetoric of borders, “heroes,” economic protectionism, and “criminal” immigrants, over the last few years Trump has become visibly more comfortable using language that more directly appeals to the conservative, mostly white evangelicals and radical traditionalist Catholics who represent his base, and with whom he has surrounded himself.

To those with “eyes to see,” Trump’s first clear appeal to the Christian Right came in his use of the phrase “failing government schools” in the midst of his calling for the expansion of “school choice” voucher policies. As a few observers on Twitter pointed out, notably religious studies professor Julie Ingersoll, the pejorative term “government schools” is a hallmark of Christian Reconstructionism,a radical theocratic ideology whose exponents believe that public education should be abolished in favor of homeschooling and/or Christian schools.

As Ingersoll’s research demonstrates, such ideas have been mainstreamed in evangelicalism precisely through the spread of Christian schooling and the deregulation of homeschooling, thanks to Christian Reconstructionist influence on curricula.

julie ingersoll

@julieingersoll

Trump calls public schools "government schools," a dog whistle to evangelicals and an indication of wide-ranging influence of Christian reconstructionism #SOTU @C_Stroop @profagagne

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6:43 PM - Feb 4, 2020

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Chrissy in the Dumbest Dystopia

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@C_Stroop

Replying to @cutrightest @julieingersoll

They’re not exactly the same thing but Christian Reconstructionism is very racist. But I guess the rhetoric is older:

https://t.co/3ng03XqUNY https://twitter.com/julieingersoll/status/1224899037117272065?s=21 …

julie ingersoll

@julieingersoll

I suspect #Rushdoony got it from J. Gresham Machen in the 20s. https://twitter.com/C_Stroop/status/1224898284491173888 …

julie ingersoll

@julieingersoll

I'd say that Rushdoony brought the language into modern popular Evangelical usage as he developed the "biblical" defense of Christian education and the rejection of public education.

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7:40 PM - Feb 4, 2020

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Trump’s subsequent appeals to his white evangelical base were more obvious.Right after touting the confirmation of new federal judges on his watch, including “two brilliant new Supreme Court Justices, Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh,” the president boasted about his administration’s “defense of religious liberty, [which] includes the Constitutional right to pray in public schools.” While this right has never in fact been contested, it’s a longstanding evangelical tactic to disingenuously conflate the constitutional ban on school-sponsored prayer with the generic “prayer in schools,” which makes for a more effective rallying cry to agitate the faithful.

From here, Trump launched into a bizarrely manic description of what “we” do in America, rhetoric that reinforces the authoritarian urge to define “the nation” or “the people” in a way that excludes othered groups:

In America, we do not punish prayer. We do not tear down crosses. We do not ban symbols of faith. We do not muzzle preachers and pastors. In America, we celebrate faith. We cherish religion. We lift our voices in prayer, and we raise our sights to the Glory of God!

Few Americans would disagree with the first four sentences, all of which, with certain caveats, represent clearly protected First Amendment freedoms. (If, for example, the proverbial cross happens to be located in a public space that doesn’t permit equal representation to other faiths, then yes, the cross might be removed according to the Constitution.)

The last three sentences, however, are a different matter, as they’re clearly meant to define America as a religious nation to the exclusion of non-believers. And, given the proximity of these statements to Trump’s invocation of crosses, it’s no stretch to read these sentences as defining America as a specifically Christian nation.

Trump’s awkward transition from this Christian nationalist rhetoric to invoking the Second Amendment’s “right to keep and bear arms” may seem out of place to some observers. As I’ve argued previously, however, the coziness of God and guns makes perfect sense to Trump’s Christian Right base. Likewise, Trump’s subsequent lines on “manifest destiny,” “frontiers,” and defeating terrorism are red meat for Christian nationalists (if rather bizarrely thrown together with assertions that America will send the first woman to the moon and be the first nation to plant a flag on Mars).

Trump drove his speech to a close with more secularized and—despite references to Frederick Douglass and Harriet Tubman—racist nationalist appeals to “pioneers,” “settl[ing] the New World,” and “the beautiful, beautiful Alamo.” This language of “national greatness,” it’s worth noting, may be regarded as the expression of a type of political religion, an essentially secular expression that Christian nationalists nevertheless embrace enthusiastically. In the end, for those worried about attacks on the separation of church and state and about the unwavering support for Trump among white evangelicals, the 2020 State of the Union will do little to assuage these concerns.

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Chrissy Stroop

A prominent ex-evangelical writer, speaker, and advocate, Chrissy Stroop is (with Lauren O’Neal) coeditor of the essay anthology Empty the Pews: Stories of Leaving the Church. A senior correspondent for Religion Dispatches, her work has appeared in Dame Magazine, Foreign Policy, Playboy, Political Research Associates, and other outlets, including peer-reviewed academic journals. Holding a Ph.D. in modern Russian history from Stanford University, Stroop is a Senior Research Associate with the University of Innsbruck’s Postsecular Conflicts project. In 2019 Chrissy came out as a transgender woman and began her journey of medical transition. She resides in Portland, Oregon.

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Fox Business host Stuart Varney says he's "a little worried" that teachers who donate to Bernie Sanders might beteaching kids socialism in school.

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https://www.rightwingwatch.org/post/devos-slams-union-bullies-for-opposing-her-plan-to-send-federal-tax-dollars-to-private-and-religious-schools/

w. kellyanne at aei]

US. Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos was the headliner at an American Enterprise Institute event Tuesday morning to promote “Education Freedom Scholarships,” the Trump administration’s education tax credit proposal. In her remarks, DeVos attacked opponents of the plan as “union bullies” and declared that “union bosses don’t put kids first.”

Vilifying teachers’ unions is standard operating procedure for DeVos. In January, she used a Heritage Foundation event marking the avowedly “nonpolitical” National School Choice Week to complain that teachers’ unions were “the only thing standing in the way” of more “school choice.”As Right Wing Watch noted at the time:

DeVos is an old hand at this. She has, in the words of Mother Jones’s Krisina Rizga, been “trying to gut the public schools for years.” Indeed, DeVos and her allies have spent many years and many millions of dollars engaged in bare-knuckled politics to elect politicians who will advance an anti-public-education, anti-labor, pro-privatization agenda, and her family has played a key role in building right-wing anti-public-education infrastructure.

At AEI, DeVos and White House spokesperson Kellyanne Conway promoted the administration’s plan, which was proposed in February but hasn’t moved through either house of Congress. One news report from today’s event called it DeVos’s effort to “breathe new life” into the proposal by “calling out Republicans in Congress who have refused to entertain the idea and conservative education policy experts who’ve opposed the plan.”

At AEI, DeVos and Conway said conservatives who worry about increasing federal involvement in education are off-base, because states would have the freedom to use the federal money to design their own programs or simply supplement existing programs.

State “tax credit scholarship” programs are basically a way for legislators to divert tax dollars to private and religious schools without using vouchers, which have been consistently unpopular with voters. The Trump-DeVos proposal would allow for up to $5 billion every year in federal tax credits for businesses and individuals who donate to state-based “scholarship granting organizations.”

In response to a questioner who said he was from the Alliance Defending Freedom, DeVos said the administration’s proposal included language that would require participating states not to prevent religious schools or nonprofits from accessing the tax dollars. DeVos has previously slammed state restrictions on public funding for religious schools.

DeVos and Conway had a lot of praise for Florida, one of the states that has most aggressively pushed “school choice” proposals. RWW’s Adele Stan reported last year that DeVos and her family had pumped hundreds of thousands of dollars into a political action committee promoting voucher proponent Ron DeSantis, who narrowly defeated Andrew Gillum in last year’s governor’s race.

Following DeVos’ and Conway’s appearance was a panel conversation featuring officials from Arizona, Pennsylvania, and Tennesseetouting their own school–choice programs and backing the administration’s proposal.

When Trump announced DeVos’s nomination, People For the American Way called it “a high-water mark in the right wing’s long war on public education.”When DeVos was confirmed, the secretive right-wing Council for National Policy had its own ambitious policy agenda for her: “a gradual, voluntary return at all levels to free-market private schools, church schools and home schools as the normative American practice.”

Tags: Betsy DeVosKellyanne ConwayChurch-StateSchool ChoiceVouchersAmerican Enterprise InstituteTrump Administration

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https://www.alternet.org/2019/08/how-the-koch-brothers-co-opted-minority-groups-in-a-push-for-a-profit-based-approach-to-education/

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How the Koch brothers co-opted minority groups in a push for a profit-based approach to education

Written by The Conversation August 23, 2019

Under the mantra of civil rights, billionaires such as Eli Broad, Bill Gates and the Koch Brothers and the powerful corporate-funded lobby group the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) are using venture philanthropy and the political process to press for school reforms in the United States.

The ongoing Vergara law case in California in which nine students are suing the state over teacher tenure laws, is backed by Student Matters, a non-profit that has received donations from the Broad Foundation and the Walton Foundation, run by the Walton family that founded supermarket chain Wal-Mart.

The driver behind the case is a campaign to loosen labour rules in order to make it easier to fire “bad” teachers, under the argument that their presence discriminates against disadvantaged children. Opponents of the case argue that it is a blatant attempt to change the conversation from the realities of California’s divestment in education — the state is 46th in the nation in spending per student in 2010-11, and 50th in the number of students per teacher.

What these organisations and other others such as the the Koch brothers, Bradley Foundation, Heritage Foundation, Students First and Jeb Bush’s Foundation for Excellence in Education – all supposedly supporters of school reform – have as a common denominator is a vision of a profit-based market approach to education.

School vouchers are one of the primary education reform policy approaches pressed by the billionaires and the business lobby. Voucher programs, which provide public funding for students to attend private schools, have become more popular in the US in the past several decades.

Most existing school voucher programs in the US have been small-scale and targeted at low-income students, such as the Milwaukee Parental Choice Program, the Cleveland Scholarship and Tutoring Program, and the Washington DC program. But there has recently been a push to expand programs to include students from middle income families.

Notably, a small, but vocal cadre of civil rights advocates from US minority groups have allied with the billionaires and business lobby via groups such as the Black Alliance for Educational Options (BAEO), pushing for school vouchers and other neoliberal education reforms.

Have they been hoodwinked or led astray? It is understandable that minority groups are searching for alternatives to the status quo, as the US has a history of consistently and purposefully underserving students of colour. In fact, we still do. For example, one wealthy suburban district in Texas recently spent nearly $120m on a football stadium and performing arts centre, while poorer districts have struggled to afford adequately trained and certified teachers.

School reform advocates in the US are often a motley alliance between civil rights proponents whose primary focus is greater opportunity for historically underserved students of colour, and neo-liberals who desire to reduce the role of the state in public education and shift the education system towards a profit-making enterprise.

Vouchers aren’t the answer

In the case of vouchers, the long-term impact on civil rights is already known. A decade of peer-reviewed research in Chile has demonstrated that a voucher market has increased inequality for students living in poverty and closed public schools.

A voucher approach escalates inequality because capital rules the day. Test scores become negotiable capital in addition to hard currency. Students without this capital are denied access to attractive schools because there are other individuals in the market that are more desirable to schools.

School choice becomes exactly that in a voucher system — schools choose. So, if you are a proponent of school “choice” and interested in civil rights and equity —- vouchers will not help you realise your goals. But if you are a neoliberal, you are in business.

How can we conceive choice and education reform differently? If you don’t like the choices that have been forced upon you for decades, then you are going to want access to alternatives. Are vouchers the choice parents should have? Turns out that vouchers show very little promise in analyses of peer-reviewed research literature for improving student success or equity at large.

However, there are gold standard reforms in the peer-reviewed research literature that show at much more impact on student success than vouchers. These include full-day pre-kindergarten education. Underserved communities should have access to empirically-supported choices rather than ideological ones. Parents in Milwaukee and elsewhere should also be able to choose schools that are attractive and well-resourced like the private and public schools across the tracks or river or highway. Why don’t US high-poverty communities have these choices?

Pressure on public school funding

In Florida, Ohio, Arizona, Texas we have seen billions of dollars in fiscal cuts to schools while school vouchers, Teach For America, and charter schools are peddled by ALEC and the usual billionaire proponents as an alternative to the restoration of school funding for public schools.

In Texas and elsewhere, legislatures have used politics to force inadequate funding of US public schools while at the same time arguing that the schools are inadequate. The response from coalitions of citizens across the US has been a slew of lawsuits aimed at states over inadequate public funding to force politicians to respond.

Colin Powell once said, “If you break it you own it.” That’s the end game for these education “reformers” backed by billionaires and corporations. First, they seek to transfer the cost of education from the state budget to the family, household budget. Second, civil rights and equity are not their true priorities.

Instead these special interests are supporting vouchers and other neoliberal reforms contrary to the interests of students of colour. In doing so they will shift the US education system to maximise corporate profits, while limiting democratic control of public schools.

These same billionaire “reformers” have co-opted the equity discourse by offering a carrot to minority groups. This can sometimes be in the form of millions of dollars as in the case of the Black Alliance for Educational Options and Parents for Educational Freedom in North Carolina. But all this hides the inequity that profit-based approaches to education foment.The Conversation

By Julian Vasquez Heilig, Associate Professor of Educational Policy and Planning, University of Texas at Austin.

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https://www.commondreams.org/views/2019/06/07/curious-case-elizabeth-warren-and-charter-school-lobbyist-who-wasnt

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https://www.alternet.org/2019/05/how-our-public-schools-are-still-separate-and-unequal/

Desegregated busing still exists—only the children have changed. This transferring of children outside their local districts has grown even stronger. Instead of Black children being bused in, there’s an increase of White children being bused out in order to attend schools in less-diverse areas.

As we approach the 65th anniversary of the historic Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka—where the United States Supreme Court ruled unanimously that “in the field of public education the doctrine of ‘separate but equal’ has no place,” and therefore is unconstitutional—we are now more than ever dealing with the repercussions of separating children by race.

Decades later, this continued practice proves the lengths people will go to separate their children.

I work in a public middle school that is over 90% students of color. It’s located in one of the most desirable neighborhoods in Brooklyn, and yet many of the people living here choose to send their children to schools outside of the neighborhood. Ours is a reputable school, with a competitive arts program, regents’ classes, and children who get into specialized high schools, including Stuyvesant. Yet the parents would rather take buses, scooters, or SUVs instead of having their children attend their zoned school.

I can’t help but think that if our population were 90% White, parents would be scrambling to get their children in, maybe even bribing their way in.

Meanwhile, a mere zip code away, hundreds of parents are fighting for coveted seats to higher-achieving schools. Many of those families are relocating, thus forcing rents to increase to exorbitant prices—thereby taking away homes and spots of deserving families who can no longer afford to live there.

Not only do these schools have students entering their system with higher test scores, but having wealthier parents allows them to raise hundreds of thousands—sometimes millions—of dollars to pay for special programs and materials that schools in lower economical standing cannot afford to do.

Hence, separate and unequal.

Furthering this already yawning gap between schools is the influx of charter schools. Some sing their praises without considering their effects, claiming they give underserved communities the chance for a better education. Charter schools are not only cherry-picking top students, but they are also siphoning off the money that had once been traditional public school funds. In addition, they make it so that local children and active parents have to move to other locations—further depriving local districts.

Public schools need strong parental involvement to succeed. We need families that live in the community to go to schools in the community. And we need the funds that have been siphoned off for charters to be redirected back to public schools.

Otherwise, these schools cannot remain equal.

The biggest target for inequality is the middle schools. Next year begins a new initiativeto integrate middle schools in two popular regions in New York City. Instead of this opportunity being embraced to finally balance the schools, the result for many is more busing—more distance. I’ve met a number of families who have left the city altogether in fear that their children won’t get into a “good” school. Believe it or not, some have even left the country. A privilege many don’t have.

People walk around wearing T-shirts and paraphernalia espousing their pride in Brooklyn, but few are willing to allow their children to experience the learning that comes from mixing races and backgrounds. One experience I believe to be the best part of city life.

While there may have been small gains in access to education for some students of color, it hasn’t been enough to rid us of the separate and unequal status in our public schools.

If we truly want that change to happen, we all must take part in the process. Parents have to stop taking their kids away from the communities they live in and instead see what they can do to make them better.

We need to carefully review leadership and integrate our schools from the top down. We need to bring back the premise behind public education, that all children are entitled to a free and fair education.

Separate but equal has no place in our public school system. We need to put an end to transporting students away from their zoned schools and start working together as communities to make them better—for all students.

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