Schools

Teachers Union Suing District Over Asbestos In Schools

January 22, 2020 Staff, Apnews.com Resist! Lawsuit, Philadelphia, Schools, Teacher's Union, Toxic Chemicals

PHILADELPHIA (AP) — The union representing public school teachers in Philadelphia is suing the district over its handling of asbestos contamination in schools, the union said Monday. The Philadelphia Federation of Teachers suit comes after the city school district was forced to close a north Philadelphia elementary school for a second time Friday after tests demanded by teachers and union leaders showed elevated levels of asbestos, a known carcinogen, in the air.

In Sacramento, Youth Activists Push To Get Police Out Of Schools

January 9, 2020 Susan Abram, Chronicleofsocialchange.org Resist! California, Police, Schools, Student Activism

Her brother had bumped into the officer and apologized, Lopez said. But the officer proceeded to question him and asked him for his ID. “It was all new to me,” said Lopez, now 17 and a senior, of the aggressive approach the officer used with her brother. “When I was younger, I wanted to be a police officer. When I got to high school, I finally saw what it’s like for us, for people of color. It really angered me, because I didn’t notice it in my childhood.”

Schools Are Using Facial Recognition To Try To Stop Shootings. Here’s Why They Should Think Twice.

December 30, 2019 By Rebecca Heilweil, Vox.com Educate! Facial Recognition, Schools, Surveillance

For years, the Denver public school system worked with Video Insight, a Houston-based video management software company that centralized the storage of video footage used across its campuses. So when Panasonic acquired Video Insight, school officials simply transferred the job of updating and expanding their security system to the Japanese electronics giant. That meant new digital HD cameras and access to more powerful analytics software, including Panasonic’s facial recognition, a tool the public school system’s safety department is now exploring.

NYC Students Strike To Demand Racial Equity In Nation’s Largest—And Most Segregated—School District

November 27, 2019 By Julia Conley, Commondreams.org Resist! Education, New York (NY), Racism, Schools, Segregation

For the second consecutive week, students in New York City went on strike Monday morning to protest persistent segregation in their schools more than six decades after the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that schools must serve children of all races equally. Led by the grassroots campaign Teens Take Charge, hundreds of students from several city high schools demanded an end to New York's "screening" system which has made the United States' largest school district also its most segregated. "We've met with politicians time and time again to urge them to integrate our schools," Marcus Alston...

The Hidden Costs Of High-Tech Surveillance In Schools

October 30, 2019 Priyam Madhukar, Brennancenter.org Educate! Mass Surveillance, Schools, Technology

The phrase “school-to-prison pipeline” has long been used to describe how schools respond to disciplinary problems with excessively stringent policies that create prison-like environments and funnel children who don’t fall in line into the criminal justice system. Now, schools are investing in surveillance systems that will likely exacerbate existing disparities. The costs of overly harsh measures fall mostly on students from marginalized backgrounds. For example, Black girls are six times more likely to receive an out-of-school suspension compared to their white counterparts.

The Delicate Ethics Of Using Facial Recognition In Schools

October 21, 2019 Tom Simonite and Gregory Barber, Wired.com Educate! Facial Recognition, Schools, Technology, Youth

A growing number of districts are deploying cameras and software to prevent attacks. But the systems are also used to monitor students—and adult critics. On a steamy evening in May, 9,000 people filled Stingaree Stadium at Texas City High School for graduation night. A rainstorm delayed ceremonies by a half hour, but the school district’s facial recognition system didn’t miss a beat. Cameras positioned along the fence line allowed algorithms to check every face that walked in the gate.

“Pay No Attention To That Man Behind The Curtain!”

October 14, 2019 Carl J. Petersen, Medium.com Educate! Charter Schools, Education, Schools

Despite the fact that the California Charter School Association’s (CCSA) confidential plan to steal facilities from public school students was uncovered months ago, their lackeys continue to insist that Nick Melvoin’s School Performance Framework (SPF) is the only way for parents to understand how to evaluate schools. Instead of demanding transparency with access to the raw data and information about the services that schools provide, they want bureaucrats to decide what information is important and present a ranking system that eliminates the ability of parents to make their own decisions.

School Strikers Threaten To Boycott RSC Over BP Sponsorship

October 3, 2019 Staff, Bp-or-not-bp.org Resist! BP, Climate Change, Schools, Strikes

Today, school strikers from twelve cities, towns and regions will send a letter to the Royal Shakespeare Company calling on it to immediately drop BP. The oil giant currently sponsors the theatre company’s £5 ticket scheme for 16-25-year-olds, but following the record-breaking protests last Friday, the school strike movement is turning its attention to the way in which BP is targeting their age-group directly through arts sponsorship.

How To Start An Anti-Racist Student Group In Your School

August 26, 2019 Staff, Waethnicstudies.com Organize! Anti-Racism, Schools, Youth Activism

The painful truth about public education is that racism is as common as bored students and overworked teachers. While many in our home of Seattle take pride in the city’s “progressive” reputation, the students of Seattle Public Schools, especially students of Color, know reality starkly contrasts with this reputation. In fact, Seattle Public Schools is home to some of the worst racial disparities in the entire country – and the district has known about them for decades and decades. Yet little has changed – exemplified recently by a white teacher calling 911 on a 10 to 11-year-old Black child.

Ed Reform vs. Democracy

August 10, 2019 Staff, Curmudgucation.blogspot.com Educate! Education, Reform, Schools

It was not that long ago that I wrote a piece about how school choice, by shifting the locus of control for the education purse strings, tends to undermine democractic processes. After all, if only parents of school age children, or only rich folks who contribute to tax credit scholarships, get to decide which schools get paid, then the non-parent taxpayers who are footing the bills don't really have much say, and the duly-elected school board has nothing much to do or say, either. School choice is, often...

Lead-Based Paint Found In Half Of All Inspected Schools

July 29, 2019 Marilynne R Wood, Theconversation.com Educate! Contamination, Lead Poisoning, Schools, Water

With all the emphasis that has been placed on making sure children are safe from the hazards of lead-based paint at home, similar efforts would seem just as important for America’s schools. After all, outside of the home, young children spend the majority of their day – 6.8 hours a day – at school. Yet a new federal report found that an estimated 15.2 million children in the U.S. go to schools in school districts that found lead-based paint. This is happening more than 40 years after the United States’ 1978 ban on the use of lead-based paint in housing.

Manila’s New Mayor Wants Solar Panels, Rainwater Collectors For City’s Schools

July 11, 2019 Olivia Rosane, Ecowatch.com Create! Electoral Politics, Philippines, Schools, Sustainability

Manila's new mayor wants to turn the city's public schools into a living lesson in sustainability. Mayor Francisco "Isko" Moreno Domagoso unveiled a plan Tuesday to install solar panels and rainwater collectors on the roofs of primary and secondary schools in the Philippines' capital city, the Manila Bulletin reported. He said the initiative would raise environmental awareness in students. "If they are seeing these types of facilities, and it can be done since it's not even rocket science, they will know how to care for the environment," Domagoso told reporters, according to the Manila Bulletin.

School Board Drops Bid To Obtain Rockwool Property By Eminent Domain

July 10, 2019 By Anne Meador, Dcmediagroup.us Educate! Education, eminent domain, Schools, West Virginia

Ranson, W.Va.–The Jefferson County Board of Education will no longer pursue condemnation of Rockwool’s property to build a educational center to provide services for student with special needs. The school board abandoned its bid to obtain the Rockwool site via eminent domain in a settlement agreement announced today by the two parties. Rockwool in turn dropped its lawsuit against the Board of Education which sought to block the condemnation. The Board of Education proposed to build a Regional Student Support Center on the Rockwool site across from North Jefferson Elementary to provide services for special needs students.

Computers In The Classroom May Do More Harm Than Good

June 15, 2019 Tom Jacobs, Pacific Standard Mag. Educate! Computers, Education, Schools, Technology

Initiatives to provide every schoolchild with a laptop or tablet computer have, to date, been well-publicized failures. And perhaps they were bad ideas to begin with. Computers can certainly be effective tools for teaching children of certain ages specific subjects. But a large new study suggests their presence in the classroom is far from universally positive. "Students worldwide appear to perform best on tests when they report a low-to-moderate use of school computers," Helen Lee Bouygues, president of the Paris-based Reboot Foundation, argues in a just-released report. "When students report having access to classroom computers and using these devices on an infrequent basis, they show better performance," Bouygues writes. "But when students report using these devices every day, and for several hours during the school day, performance lowers dramatically."

Thousands Of Charter Schools Perform Poorly

May 29, 2019 Shawgi Tell, Dissidentvoice.org Educate! Charter Schools, Education, Privatization, Schools

“Performance-based accountability” is a hackneyed, Skinnerian, neoliberal buzz-phrase often repeated dogmatically by charter school promoters in order to falsely claim that privately-operated nonprofit and for-profit charter schools are more accountable and higher-performing than public schools. But it is becoming clearer to everyone with each passing day that charter school promoters have long vastly over-promised and under-delivered, while rapidly enriching themselves at the expense of students, parents, the public, the economy, and the national interest.

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