Grassroots Education Movement
The Inconvenient Truth Behind Waiting For Superman
The Truth about Charter Schools
Are They Really the Solution to the Crisis in Public Education?Charter schools continue to expand into the Harlem community and communities throughout NYC and the entire country. They purport to stand for more parent choice and power and for an opportunity for quality education for students who have been historically denied that opportunity. But what … Continue reading
The dismantling of the MS 126 library
Watch the story of how the John Ericsson Middle School library in Greenpoint, Brooklyn, lost its space to charter school needs. Updated Video here . . .
Oct. 20th GEM meeting to focus on strategy
Do you have a charter school in yourpublic school building? Will a charter take over your school’sart, music, AIS, library or science rooms? If the answer is Yes, you are not alone. More and more charter schools are pushing into our public school buildings. Help build a grassroots movement of educators to mobilize against this … Continue reading
An expendable library in Brooklyn
We were following this story last week about the unjustifiable conversion of great middle school library in Brooklyn into a room for planning, meetings and small classes. That’s because the three charter schools sharing the building with JHS 126 have the clout under BloomKlein’s charterization campaign to get what they want when they want it. … Continue reading
STD testing and the DoE
There’s an “education and testing” program for sexually transmitted diseases coming to 100 high schools citywide this year set up by the NYC Department of Health and the DoE. Apparently they hit 110 schools last year. High school teachers were told to distribute letters addressed to Parents and Guardians to their students. These letters contained … Continue reading
Vending junk food and sugar
Parents and teachers met with Deputy Mayor Dennis Walcott this summer to ask that all junk food be removed from school vending machines. They report that effective October 1st, all vending machines were filled with baked products.” This is a victory, but in one sense only: Reason prevailed in this particular case. The people in … Continue reading
"DC is definitely a mess."
There was an article in the Washington Post yesterday about the more than 220 teachers who lost their jobs and the “abrupt loss” of 300 security guards whose company went out of business the night before. Protests resulted in skirmishes and arrests at more than one school. This is all happening under the chancellorship of … Continue reading
Two articles in the Daily News
Another article in the Daily News on what’s going on over at PS 15 with the PAVE charter school asking for an extension to share its space. Also today, Diane Ravitch on “The Charter School Problem: results are much less positive than a new study suggests”.
Investing in charter schools, or outright speculation?
An easy-to-read article by Daniel Wolff in Counterpunch starts off with a quote by the CEO of a real-estate trust who sunk many millions of dollars into charter schools: “We’re not speculators. We’re investors.” That’s frightening, particularly when you think that BushBama has been pushing the charter school agenda for a decade. What’s good about … Continue reading
Military recruitment, student privacy
How our country beefs up the military (in the past eight years through the Patriot Act of 2001 and its reauthorized version in 2006) figures strongly in a presentation to be given at the UFT headquarters on October 7th by two ICE members, Gloria Brandman and Lisa North, who also work with the Students or … Continue reading
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