Public schools

Bill Would Empower Parents To Remove Books From School Libraries

December 30, 2021 Julia Conley, Common Dreams. Educate! Censorship, LGBTQ, Oklahoma, Public schools

A bill proposed by a Republican state senator in Oklahoma would empower parents to have books that discuss gender identity removed from public school libraries—a measure that rights advocates warned could have life-threatening consequences for LGBTQ+ children across the state. Under Senate Bill 1142, introduced earlier this month by state Sen. Rob Standridge, just one parent would have to object to a book that includes discussion of "sexual perversion, sex-based classifications, sexual identity, or gender identity" and other related themes in order to begin the process of removal. Upon receiving a written request to remove a book, a school district would have 30 days to eliminate all copies of the material from circulation.

Inside A Rural School District Suing State For More Equitable Funding

December 14, 2021 Mallory Falk, WHYY. Resist! Education, Infrastructure, Pennsylvania, Public schools

Panther Valley is a poor, rural district with more than 1,600 students from Carbon and Schuylkill Counties. Its elementary, intermediate, and junior/senior high schools serve four Pennsylvania towns: Summit Hill, Coaldale, Lansford, and Nesquehoning. “It’s in the heart of what we used to refer to as the coal region of Pennsylvania,” said the district’s superintendent, David McAndrew. As the country moved away from coal mining, residents lost work. Now, jobs are hard to come by. Fifty-six percent of children in the district are classified as economically disadvantaged, though McAndrew believes the figure is closer to 70%. “We have very few businesses,” McAndrew said. “The businesses we have, unfortunately, seem to be leaving us.”

Tulalip Flag Soars At Every Marysville School District Campus

December 6, 2021 Michael Rios, Last Real Indians. Create! Indigenous Activism, Indigenous Sovereignty, Public schools

For the first time ever, the red, white and black colors of the Tulalip flag are soaring over every Marysville School District campus. Tulalip’s iconic orca was raised up at each elementary, middle school, high school, and even District headquarters during the week of November 17th. In each instance, the 3 foot by 5 foot cloth signifying the Tulalip Tribes as a sovereign nation was raised by a proud student representative and young Tulalip culture bearer. “About a decade ago, my coworker Ricky Belmont and I started asking the schools we work at to fly the Tulalip Tribes flag out of recognition for the tribe being a sovereign nation and to honor the treaty lands that schools are built upon,” explained Matt Remle, Indian Education Program Coordinator for Marysville School District.

School Bus Drivers In Nationwide Strikes Over Poor Pay And Covid Risk

November 17, 2021 Michael Sainato, The Guardian. Resist! Bus Driver, COVID-19, Public schools, Strike, Worker Rights and Jobs

Yellow school buses are part of the American streetscape, familiar to families across the US and an easily recognizable symbol the world over. But the drivers of the vehicles that shuttle America’s children to and from school are now caught up in the wave of labor unrest sweeping across the US in the wake of the Covid-19 pandemic. Strikes, walkouts, protests or sick-outs among school bus drivers have taken place this fall in many states including North Carolina, New Mexico, Maryland, Florida, Indiana, Georgia Pennsylvania and New York among others. Some school districts have periodically closed schools due to bus driver shortages or changed school schedules to accommodate the shortage. Other districts have raised pay and offered sign-on bonuses to try to lure workers into vacant school bus driver positions.

If You’re Afraid Kids Will Learn Racism Is Bad, Perhaps Public School Is Not For You

October 20, 2021 Steven M. Singer, Gadfly On The Wall. Educate! Education, Public schools, Racism, White Supremacy

Some people are terrified that kids will learn about racism. Especially white people. Especially that white KIDS might learn about it. How would that affect a white child’s self-esteem, they say. Imagine learning that racism existed in the United States. A country founded by white people. (Taken from brown people. Made largely profitable by the enslavement of black people.) Wouldn’t that make white kids feel bad? It’s a strange question. First of all, wouldn’t it make the black and brown kids feel worse than the white kids? After all, it was their ancestors who were brutalized and subjugated. Second of all, what does history have to do with your feelings? This isn’t aroma therapy or yoga. It’s the past.

In A California Desert, Sheriff Deputies Settle Schoolyard Disputes

October 7, 2021 Emily Elena Dugdale And Irena Hwang , Black Agenda Report. Educate! Black America, Criminal Justice and Prisons, Public schools, Racism

Barron Gardner, a high school history teacher in Southern California’s Antelope Valley, stared down Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department deputies during an online meeting in April, trying to keep his composure. Gardner, 41, had become a reluctant spokesperson for a growing movement, driven primarily by Black and Latino residents, to get LASD deputies off school campuses. His wife, who's also a teacher, worried about the repercussions for their family. What if he lost his job? What if he became a target of discrimination or worse? After all, this valley at the western edge of the Mojave Desert, population roughly 500,000, has a long history of racial tension, including white supremacist attacks on Black community members.

Cutting Food Waste: A Lesson In Climate Awareness And Environmental Literacy

October 5, 2021 Agya K. Aning, Inside Climate News. Create! Food and Agriculture, Food Waste, Maryland, Public schools

Baltimore, MD - As a “farm to school specialist” in the Baltimore City public schools, Anne Rosenthal splits her time between an office and Great Kids Farm in Catonsville, a 33-acre plot of land, complete with forests, a stream, greenhouses and a barn with animals, owned and operated by the school district. “A lot of students have never had the opportunity to plant a seed or a small plant, or harvest straight from plants and taste farm-fresh produce,” Rosenthal said. When kids have that first experience of “picking a cherry tomato off the plant and putting it in their mouths,” she said, “they’re much more apt to be excited to see that cherry tomato on their school lunch tray.”

A Network Of Military-Related Programs Is Spreading In Schools

September 19, 2021 Gary Ghirardi, San Diego Union Tribune. Create! Education, Public schools, Wars and Militarism, Youth

Seventy-six years after the U.S. dropped atomic weapons on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, I am reminded of my own mindset during the Cuban missile crisis when American President John F. Kennedy and Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev were threatening a nuclear confrontation. I remember feeling that my life would soon end, clearly embracing a comprehensible existential threat even at the age of 7. I now understand the weapons of mass destruction deployed against the Japanese in 1945 as the two most horrible “singular event war crimes” ever committed by a state actor. Coming from and living in the most militarized culture of scale in history, I work to promote non-military careers for youth most susceptible to military recruitment offers.

Returning To ‘Normal’ In Education Is Not Good Enough

August 29, 2021 Bob Moses, The Imprint. Create! COVID-19, Education, Public schools, Youth

As a nation, we stand with bated breath — waiting for public schools to reopen and for “a return to normal” while ignoring that for many, normal is not only not good enough, it was also never really good. Historical inequities and disparities in our public schools, as across all our public systems, operate along a constitutional fault line — an embedded caste system — that we need to find our way across. It is a fault line that is not only about race: class, identity and disabilities also block the path to equal educational opportunity for millions of students. Just like the right to vote in the 20th century, the lack of equal access to a quality education in the 21st century threatens to limit the future life choices for too many young people.

At Schools Named For Robert E. Lee, Students Led The Way Toward Change

July 15, 2021 Coshandra Dillard, Learning For Justice. Organize! Confederate Monuments, Education, Public schools, Student Activism

Gertrude “Trude” Lamb, 16, describes herself as a shy person. She never wanted to be the center of attention. But, in the summer of 2020, when Trude became the face of a movement to rename Robert E. Lee High School in Tyler, Texas, she was suddenly in a spotlight she’d never imagined. A friend nudged her to join a local campaign and send a letter to the school board, but she wasn’t sure why. Trude, who emigrated from Ghana in 2014, wasn’t familiar with Lee or anything related to the Confederacy. So, she began to research. “At school, they usually just teach the good part about somebody,” she says. “They don’t teach the bad part.” A star athlete on her school’s varsity cross-country team, she’d penned a letter to school board members stating she’d no longer wear a jersey that bore the name of an enslaver.

Governor Signs Law To Stop Teachers From Talking About Racism

June 25, 2021 Jennifer Bendery, Black Agenda Report. Educate! Education, Public schools, Racism, Texas

Texas Republican Gov. Greg Abbott on Tuesday signed one of his party’s top legislative priorities into law: a bill aimed at stopping teachers from talking about racism and any current events that may be contentious. The legislation, supported by virtually every GOP state legislator, states that social studies teachers in public K-12 schools “may not be compelled” to talk about current events or public policy or social issues considered controversial. If they do talk about such things, they are required to present the issue “without giving deference to any one perspective.” The law specifies all the things that social studies teachers aren’t allowed to talk about. They can’t make it part of a course to talk about the concept that “one race or sex is inherently superior to another race or sex.”

What’s Up With The Sudden Attacks On Schools That Teach Critical Race Theory?

June 4, 2021 Jeff Bryant, LA Progressive. Educate! Critical Race Theory, Education, Public schools, Racism

When North Carolina public school teacher Justin Parmenter penned an opinion piece for the Charlotte Observer about the difficulties of teaching in hybrid mode during the pandemic, with students both in-person in the classroom and remote online, he didn’t expect to get called out by a legislator on the floor of the state House of Representatives.

Financialization Created Chicago Public Schools’ Fiscal Crisis

May 6, 2021 Stephanie Farmer, Jacobin Magazine. Educate! Chicago, Debt, Public schools, Wall Street

Chicago Public Schools (CPS) is in a deep and enduring fiscal crisis. After decades of budget cuts, Chicago’s public K–12 schools have been hollowed out, magnifying the hardships of stagnant wages, rising housing prices, and more faced by the city’s working class. Pundits have predictably blamed CPS’s fiscal crisis on either the greedy teachers’ union (Republicans’ and a few austerity-minded Democrats’ scapegoat) or on conservative suburban and rural “downstate” politicians in Illinois hostile to urban children’s plight (most Democrats’ scapegoat). But Chicago is a one-party city, controlled by the Democrats, in a solidly blue state, where Democrats usually control the state government.

The Country Moves Forward, Education Falls Back

April 16, 2021 Gayle Greene, Counterpunch. Educate! Department of Education, Education, Public schools, Testing

There’s hope in the air, a scent of spring, anticipation of change, democracy may pull through. Why, then, with K-12 public schools, the broken promise, the dismay? Biden raised hopes when he promised, Dec 16, 2019, that he’d “commit to ending the use of standardized testing in public schools,” saying (rightly) that “teaching to a test underestimates and discounts the things that are most important for students to know.” Yet on Feb 22, his Department of Education did an about-face, announcing, “we need to understand the impact COVID-19 has had on learning …parents need information on how their children are doing.” How the children are doing? They’re struggling, that’s how, doing their best, and so are teachers and parents.

Students Lead US Push For Fuller Black History Education

April 9, 2021 Mike Catalini, AP News. Create! Black History, Public Education, Public schools, Youth Activism

Trenton, NJ - Ebele Azikiwe was in the sixth grade last year when February came and it was time to learn about Black history again. She was, by then, familiar with the curriculum: Rosa Parks, the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. and a discussion on slavery. Just like the year before, she said, and the year before that. Then came George Floyd’s death in May, and she wrote to the administration at her school in Cherry Hill, in New Jersey’s Philadelphia suburbs, to ask for more than the same lessons. “We learned about slavery, but did we go into the roots of slavery?” Ebele, 12, said in an interview. “You learned about how they had to sail across, but did you learn about how they felt being tied down on those boats?”

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