Education

6,000 Seattle Teachers And Support Staff Strike

September 8, 2022 David Fitzgerald and Bryan Dyne, WSWS. Resist! Education, Seattle, Strike, Teachers, Unions

Six thousand teachers and support staff in Seattle, Washington began a strike this morning, cancelling the first day of classes for 50,000 students in the state’s largest school district. The walkout followed a 95 percent vote by teachers, paraprofessionals and office workers to authorize strike action. The Seattle Education Association (SEA) did everything it could to reach a last-minute deal but was unable to prevent a strike. Union officials have pledged to continue talks to reach an agreement to bring teachers “back to the classrooms as fast as possible.” The union also dropped its initial opposition to the district’s demands for the intervention of a mediator.

Our Business Schools Have A Blindspot

September 7, 2022 Gregory Patmore, Grassroots Economic Organizing. Create! Cooperatives, Education

Tranby is an Indigenous adult education school in the inner-city Sydney suburb of Glebe. Founded in 1957, its graduates include Eddie Mabo, who went on to win the most significant land rights legal battle in Australian history – overturning the fiction of terra nullius. What makes Tranby special is not just being Australia’s oldest not-for-profit independent Indigenous education provider. It is the type of education it provides – teaching the skills needed to manage organisations and communities democratically. It teaches co-operation, and the skills to run co-operative organisations. This makes it a rarity in business education.

Exploring Alternative Schools In Southeast Asia

September 6, 2022 Ananeza P. Aban, Resilience. Create! Alternatives, Asia, Education, Transformation

Marginalized communities and their ability to organize themselves towards a common goal would attest that even amid multiple crises, they can cultivate notable practices that produce and reproduce transformative pedagogies, especially for the young generation of learners. These four (4) cases from Southeast Asia provide a material foundation for dynamic learning processes that amplify the central role of communities in developing emancipatory pedagogies attuned to their situation, context, culture, histories, and capacities. Their ground-based undertakings dare to challenge the mainstream educational paradigm extremely influenced by market and capital.

Peace Literacy: Education For Life

September 4, 2022 H. Patricia Hynes, Portside. Create! Education, Peace, Philadelphia, Violence

Philadelphia is awash in guns: More people were shot there in 2022, hundreds fatally, than in larger cities including New York and Los Angeles. In this “country’s poorest big city,” most shootings take place in neighborhoods shattered by multiple forms of racial discrimination and endemic poverty. The market in legal gun sales is also booming in Philadelphia, the culture of fear driving citizens to carry guns for safety. Further complicating solutions is the disagreement between the progressive district attorney and the chief of police over models of crime enforcement in the city On the other side of our country, a miraculous alternative to the seeming nihilism of West and North Philadelphia neighborhoods breeds hope.

Biden’s Student Loan Scam

September 2, 2022 Margaret Kimberley, Black Agenda Report. Educate! Debt, Education, Finance and the Economy, Joe Biden, Student Loans

The Biden administration announcement of so-called student loan debt relief does little to alleviate the problem it claims to solve. Forgiving $20,000 for Pell grant holders and $10,000 for all who earn less than $125,000 is questionable for a variety of reasons. It is a midterm election bait and switch that pleases gullible democrats, helps only a minority of borrowers, and is nothing like what candidate Biden proposed during the 2020 campaign. Americans owe $1.7 trillion in student loan debt. This crisis did not occur by happenstance. Universities did not escape the neoliberal onslaught and are fund raising machines charging astronomical amounts of money for tuition and room and board.

SEIU Colludes With Columbia To Push Through Contract For Staff

September 2, 2022 Olivia Wood, Left Voice. Resist! #VoteNo, Columbia University, Education, Unions, Worker Rights and Jobs

Dining, clerical, and technical staff at Columbia University, unionized with SEIU 1199, are waging a “Vote No” campaign after their union leaders agreed to an unacceptable tentative agreement. The proposed contract offers only three-percent raises per year, when inflation is hovering around nine percent — an effective pay cut. Library officers who supervise some of these workers are receiving raises of six percent, which is also far too low. This is the result of closed-door bargaining divorced from the rank and file. Rank-and-file volunteers were recruited to serve as contract captains back in June, but were routinely excluded from the negotiations.

Teachers Union In Ohio Went On Strike For Students—And Won

August 31, 2022 Kenny Stancil, Common Dreams. Resist! Education, Ohio, Strike, Teachers, Victory

Columbus, Ohio - Students, teachers, and support staff in Ohio's largest school district returned to the classroom on Monday after the Columbus Education Association won a new contract and ended its weeklong strike. Gathered at the local minor league ballpark on Sunday, CEA members voted 71% to 29% to approve a three-year contract with Columbus City Schools that satisfies most of the union's demands, which revolved around improving students' learning environments and opportunities. "We are so excited to get back to where we belong—our classrooms—doing what we do best: educating our students and shaping the future of our great city," CEA spokesperson Regina Fuentes said at a press conference.

Organizers Have Fought For Debt Cancellation For Over A Decade

August 30, 2022 Sara Herschander, Waging Nonviolence. Resist! Education, Finance and the Economy, Joe Biden, Student Debt

Following over a decade of activism against the United States’ massive student debt crisis, President Biden announced a plan on Wednesday to cancel a significant amount of student loan debt for tens of millions of low and middle-income Americans. Many organizers, whose work made the announcement possible, have viewed the news as a major victory for their movement. However, they also see it as just a small first step in a country where many borrowers — especially Black and Brown borrowers — are saddled with far deeper debts, and the root causes of educational inequity remain largely unaddressed. “This $10,000 further marginalizes the already most-marginalized,” said Dr. Richelle Brooks, a member of the Debt Collective and founder of ReTHINK It, who currently owes $240,000 in student loan debt.

If Biden Can Cancel Some Student Debt, He Can Cancel All Student Debt In The US

August 30, 2022 Frederick Bell Jr., Truthout. Educate! Education, Finance and the Economy, Joe Biden, Student Debt

“I cosigned for 70K in loans to put my disabled grandchild through a private college that would meet his specific needs,” said a 70-year-old debtor I met during the Debt Collective’s virtual older debtors’ assembly in mid-August. “I don’t think I’ll be able to pay off these loans in my lifetime,” another debtor told me. As I listened to these stories in a Zoom breakout room, I couldn’t help but feel overwhelmed by the conclusion that debt controls the lives of millions of people in the U.S., especially our most vulnerable. The Debt Collective, the nation’s first debtors’ union, is known for opening and facilitating powerful forums for conversation that enable folks to release the burden of shame and talk about how debt has impacted their lives. I’ve been organizing with Debt Collective for a year and I have come away with the same conclusion each time I leave an assembly: Americans desperately need full cancellation, and they need it now.

Teachers Suspect Mayor Tried To Fire Them For Opposing New Scrapyard

August 27, 2022 Maximillian Alvarez , In These Times. Resist! Chicago, Education, Illinois, Teachers, Worker Rights and Jobs

Chicago, Illinois - In late July, Lauren Bianchi and Chuck Stark, two teachers at George Washington High School on the Southeast Side of Chicago, were on the verge of losing their jobs. In what Chicago Teachers Union officers suspect was an act of retaliation from Mayor Lori Lightfoot, Chicago Public Schools recommended that Bianchi and Stark be fired for their involvement in the student-, teacher-, and community-led effort to stop the relocation of the General Iron metal shredder from the wealthy Northside neighborhood of Lincoln Park to a site half a mile from their school. With the union and their community behind them, though, the Chicago Board of Education issued a stunning rejection of Chicago Public Schools officials’ recommendation to fire the two teachers.

First Columbus Teachers Strike In Almost 50 Years

August 25, 2022 Emma Lee, Left Voice. Resist! Education, Ohio, Strike, Worker Rights and Jobs

At 7 o’clock Monday morning, teachers and education workers of the Columbus Education Association union in Ohio went on strike, marking the first time teachers have gone on strike in the city since 1975. Columbus City Schools is the largest school district in the state of Ohio and the school year was originally scheduled to begin today. The 4,500-member union — representing teachers, librarians, nurses, counselors, psychologists and other education professionals — met for more than three hours to vote on Sunday. Over 94 percent of members voted to reject the Columbus City school board’s latest “final” offer and in favor of going on strike. The school district has hired 600 substitute teachers to cover for the 4,500 education workers who are currently on strike. The district is telling the parents and guardians of the nearly 47,000 students in the district to log in virtually for synchronous and asynchronous learning for the first day of classes or risk truancy — putting families at risk. In other words, the school district is trying to coerce Columbus families to cross the virtual picket line.

Cancel All The Student Debt Now

August 25, 2022 Liberation News. Educate! Debt, Education, Joe Biden, Student Debt

President Biden announced today that his administration was taking two actions with regards to the student debt crisis affecting tens of millions of people in the United States. The administration pushed back the deadline for the resumption of student loan payments until the end of the year, and up to $10,000 of student debt will be forgiven for those making less than $125,000 a year (or $20,000 for Pell Grant recipients). The cancellation of student debt – which now totals over $1.7 trillion – has been a longstanding demand of the mass movements of the past decade. The popularity of this demand and the persistence with which it has been raised has made it impossible for the politicians to completely ignore. Clearly, Biden made the calculation that he could not go to the 48 million people who have student loan debt totally empty-handed.

Columbus Teachers Strike On First Day Back To School

August 24, 2022 Samantha Hendrickson, KIRO 7. Resist! Education, Ohio, Strike, Worker Rights and Jobs

Columbus, Ohio - A strike by teachers in Ohio's largest school district entered its third day Wednesday — the first day of school for some 47,000 students, with some of those students and their parents rallying to their sides. Parents, students, teachers and other employees gathered at schools across the Columbus School District with plans to picket for hours, advocating for safer buildings, better heating and air conditioning, smaller class sizes, and a more well-rounded curriculum that includes art, music and physical education. It’s the union’s first strike in the district since 1975. Picketers blasted music on the sidewalks outside Whetstone High School in Columbus and waved to honking drivers. Some held up signs reading, “Columbus schools deserve working air,” “a history lesson in progress" and “my feet hurt but I'll walk as long as it takes.”

Graduate Students Across The US Are Organizing For Abortion Rights

August 23, 2022 Olivia Wood, Left Voice. Organize! Abortion, Democrats, Education, Student Activism

This week, graduate students from more than fifty colleges and universities across the United States launched the Graduate Student Action Network (GSAN), a coalition centered around fighting for abortion rights and other forms of reproductive justice. GSAN’s first action is to coordinate a National Student Day of Action for abortion rights, to be held on October 6, the anniversary of the day a federal judge first blocked the draconian anti-abortion law in Texas. The network includes graduate student unions, graduate student governments, and student advocacy organizations like Socialists of Caltech and CUNY For Abortion Rights.

How To Make More Teachers

August 23, 2022 Nancy Flanagan, Network For Public Education. Create! Education, Teachers, Worker Rights and Jobs

We need more teachers. Good teachers. Well-trained and seasoned teachers. Teachers who are in it for the long haul. Many of the articles floating around about the teacher shortage focus on data—What percentage of teachers really quit, when the data is impenetrably murky at best? And how does that compare with other professions? In other words, how bad is it? Really? These articles often miss the truth: Some districts will get through the teacher shortage OK. And most districts will suffer on a sliding scale of disruption and frustration, from calling on teachers to give up their prep time to putting unqualified bodies in classrooms for a whole year, sometimes even expecting the real teachers to keep an eye on the newbies.

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