Seattle Schools Community Forum

I previously posted the long memo called Real Choice vs. False Choice: The Repercussions of Privatization Programs for Students, Parents, and Public Schools that Senator Patty Murray sent to her colleagues in late March about the privatization of public schools. She does credit in laying out real world examples of how privatization has not worked in the U.S. Her most basic point? Privatization efforts provide a false sense  of choice for many students and families.  From the Network for Public Education comes the NPE Toolkit: School Privatization Explained on Privatization .  There are a variety of topics covered about charter schools as well as tax credit and voucher programs.  They give Washington State a "C" for school privatization.  Here's some of what Senator Murray's memo says:

You'd think our current Democratic administration would have more to do than host a convention for "100 young philanthropists and heirs to billionaire families" at the White House but apparently not.  From the NY Times : Their name tags read like a catalog of the country’s wealthiest and most influential clans: Rockefeller, Pritzker, Marriott. They were there for a discreet, invitation-only summit hosted by the Obama administration to find common ground between the public sector and the so-called next-generation philanthropists, many of whom stand to inherit billions in private wealth. Policy experts and donors recognize that there’s no better time than now to empower young philanthropists. Professionals in the field, citing an Accenture report from 2012 , estimate that more than $30 trillion in wealth will pass from baby boomers to younger generations by around 2050. At the same time, the Dorothy A. Johnson Center for Philanthropy (no relation to this rep...

You may recall our discussion about whether charter schools are really public schools ?  This particular thread was around rights students/staff may have under the U.S. Constitution and the Ninth Circuit Court ruled that for staff, charters aren't public schools. Now, there is yet another case - this around the public funding of charters - out of California.  Here's the headline from Ed Week's " Living in Dialogue " - Charter School Defenders Insist They are "Private Entities." A California couple, Yevgeny "Eugene" Selivanov and Tatyana Berkovich, who were convicted in April of multiple counts of fraud related to their practice of using their charter school bank account for personal expenses and thousands of dollars worth of meals.   According to the LA School Report ,  The couple is appealing their conviction, however, asserting that this amounts to a misunderstanding over the nature of charter school finances. An amicus brief ...

Paul Krugman wrote a column about government spending in which he suggests that the decision comes down to either bombs or bridges. Rep. Barney Frank calls some of his colleagues "Weaponized Keynesians". He defines them as people who believe "that the government does not create jobs when it funds the building of bridges or important research or retrains workers, but when it builds airplanes that are never going to be used in combat, that is of course economic salvation." Mr. Krugman says that the difference is that bridges get used and bombs don't. He defers to Mr. Keynes who noticed that wholly "wasteful" government spending (on weapons that will never be used) was preferred to partly "wasteful" forms, which, because they are not wholly wasteful, tend to be judged on strict "business" principles. Mr. Krugman accepts the idea that government spending on weapons systems is preferred because it cannot be compared to any private spe...

From Reuters . New Jersey Governor Chris Christie announced a pilot program on Thursday that would allow private companies to run public schools in some of the state's chronically underperforming school districts. The public-private partnership would authorize school management organizations to operate five schools, and would target some of the 100,000 New Jersey students now enrolled in 200 chronically failing schools, the governor's office said.

September 10th Forum: Privatization 7:30 to 9:00 PM Seattle First Baptist Church 1111 Harvard Ave. (Harvard and Seneca) Seattle, WA Who should run our schools, our prisons, our parks and our highways? And who should pay? This month’s program topic is privatization, the political movement to shift services, functions and assets from government to the private sector. What are the consequences for residents, both as taxpayers and as beneficiaries of these services? The September forum will feature a panel of local experts, presenting their views on the benefits and dangers of privatization, as well as a local perspective on its realities. The panel will include Bob Williams, Evergreen Freedom Foundation; Gary Chamberlain, Seattle University Professor; Don Comstock, Antioch University Faculty; and Saroja Reddy, King County Government Policy Staff Director. All forums are free and open to the public. For more information contact the Leag...