Friday, March 7, 2014

Save our schools from a mean-spirited corporate reform model and Mayor Mike Rawlings hostile takeover

“Find out just what a people will submit to, and you have found the exact amount of injustice and wrong which will be imposed on them; and these will continue until they are resisted with either words or blows, or with both.” Frederick Douglass
Mayor Mike Rawlings blamed the economic problems of the city on Dallas ISD at a press conference yesterday.

This was selling fear to the citizens of Dallas - fear mongering.

This is all about politics, power and money - not education.
With Mayor Mike Rawlings' constant unethical meddling into Dallas ISD affairs and Superintendent Mike Miles doing more harm than good, the result is a Dallas ISD teaching staff that appears to be more broken in spirit than I have seen in the 8 years I have served as a Trustee.
Authoritarians always want all power. 

They never want to share it. 

If they cannot get their way democratically, they change the rules and the game or take power by force.

Physician, first do no harm.

They laughed in city hall Wednesday. 

A city councilman asked Todd Williams of Committ what he thought of Dallas ISD governance. He refused to answer the question. They laughed. I guess it was funny. It felt belittling. 

Todd Williams (Mayor Rawlings' education advisor) did support the current SOPS (Support Our Public Schools) deceptive takeover petition that gives unlimited power to an unelected Charter Commission. 

The right of citizens and taxpayers to vote for school Trustees will likely be removed. That is the purpose - to get rid of those pesky voters.

Will Dallas ISD be turned into one big charter district like Louisiana state politicians imposed on the poor and powerless after the ethnic cleansing of New Orleans following the hurricane Katrina disaster?

See Rawlings, Support Our Public Schools unveil home-rule goals for Dallas ISD

This is turning into the ethnic cleansing of New Orleans-Naomi Klein

New Orleans is the example Mayor Rawlings used yesterday as the desirable model.

We might now be in for one of the most divisive times in Dallas ISD history if this group succeeds with the next ruthless takeover by those who will take away your right to vote and call it 'a civil rights issue.'

Civil rights should be protected - not taken away. 

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From "Save Our Schools" 
"Over the last 30 years, succeeding administrations have employed conservative solutions to social problems, significantly reducing federal programs to provide equal opportunities for the poor and minorities. Federal officials have redefined and curtailed assistance to combat hunger, insufficient income, poor housing, unemployment, and poor health care, leaving teachers as the only public workers charged with the responsibility to help Americans (regardless of their backgrounds) prepare themselves morally and mentally to compete in the world."  Save Our Schools - The Case For Public Education.
"Remember public schools were once expected to fashion a common national culture and prepare young people to be reflective and critical citizens in our Republic. The result of NCLB is that education will become a private matter in which individuals choose their futures, rather than a public responsibility of all citizens to each citizen. Save Our Schools -The Case For Public Education .
 "Advocates of NCLB will shout that because each individual is afforded this private educational choice, all American children enjoy equal opportunity to pursue the American Dream. Yet, as the hoax of the "Texas Miracle" clearly demonstrated, NCLB sacrifices our dreams to achieve lower taxes, political advantage, and business profits. Unless significant changes are made in the tenets and system of NCLB, the next decade will be a sad end to the most ambitious American experiment - universal free public education." Save Our Schools - The Case For Public Education.