The role of public schools questioned

[mmonk]

Source: The News & Observer

RALEIGH -- Ron Margiotta, who heads the board of the 140,000-student Wake County public schools system, also serves on the board of an Apex private school, whose owner says the traditional primacy of public schools will dwindle under a challenge from private schools.

And board member John Tedesco, a chief architect of the community schools approach that won voters over last year, says he would support a tax break to help families afford private schools if their needs are better served that way.

"I'm not afraid of open-market competition," Tedesco said.

Triangle businessman Bob Luddy, the largest donor to the ruling majority on the Wake County school board, is the owner of three private schools. Margiotta serves on the board of one of them,Thales Academy in Apex, and says there's no conflict between the roles....


"As the county and city and state are more and more in debt, in public education there's very little except for for the best and brightest," Luddy said.


Read more: http://www.newsobserver.com/2010/04/12/433559/for-schools-a-bigger-agenda.html#ixzz0ktPIXbvd

---

Clearly an attack at the very idea of a public school system.

[pattmarty]

1. This may turn out to be the "disaster" of the new century.................

.........We'll end up with all private schools and if you don't have the money, well tough shit. Hell, to work and McDonalds or the other fast food places and Wal mart you don't need no steenkin education.

[mmonk]

4. Yes. A true unraveling.

[tonysam]

6. It's worldwide, too.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=219x23551

[Dinger]

9. Well, I For One Won't Take This Laying Down

When I'm backed into a corner, I bite, HARD.

[yurbud]

20. and a president and sec of ed who support this shit won't slow it down.

[Javaman]

30. I've been saying it for a while now, we are entering into a corporate fueled dark ages.

I suspect by the time I'm ready to leave this world, in a few decades, everything that was once public will be corporate controlled.

we are entering into a period of intellectual darkness. there are other factors that I feel contribute to this as well, but I don't have the time at the moment to expound upon them.

[mbperrin]

2. Fox not only guards this henhouse, he's in charge of maintaining it.

Death of the US is near when public education is finally killed.

[mzteris]

3. the worst thing is

they're doing away with any semblance of "balancing".

Wake county would bus kids based on economic equity, not race. It was a model for the country.

It may bite these specific jerks in the @ss seeing as how their private schools were being supported by rich people who didn't want their darling going to school with the - gasp! - poor (of whatever color)!

[Mark D.]

5. Edutainment

From FAUX Snooze is all they need. While I don't mean to dis private schools, the problem is that they are not accessible to everyone, and don't have uniform standards. Any idiot can see the nations with the higher IQs, and much better numbers in every measurement of what constitutes a successful population (crime, teen pregnancy, infant mortality, you name it) are those with the most sensible public investment.

It means education, health care, etc.. The 'states-rights' folks want to see all Fed funding of education gone. Then the GOP (and sometimes Dem) governors will attack it on the state level to allow for tax cuts they can campaign for re-election on. Then cities have to struggle to make up the difference, or face either property tax hikes or closure of those schools. Great, screw the homeowner or the kids.

You can bet anti-tax folks will fight the latter in favor of the former. You can bet many of them will be 'pro-life' but see that value for 'children' expire at birth in this example. They just don't want to pay anything out of pocket to help anyone else they don't want to help. That's the whole idea of the jerk who threw dollar bills at a Parkinson's sufferer at a Heath Care rally/protest. He said: "I'll decide where to be charitable".

Anyone who can't think racism, nationalism, homophobia, i.e. general xenophobia doesn't play a role is ignorant. That's the idea. They'll home school their kids to keep them away from the 'others' who may 'corrupt' them. They'll get them all gun-happy and govt. hating so they can resent the growing number of poor in America for supposedly bringing it on themselves. Right.

Heaven forbid those tax dollars they hate to pay (well, nobody likes taxes, but some know they have a purpose) go to anyone they would rather see suffer (ie. non-white, non-hetero, non-American, you name it). The amount of declining investment in the US citizens, especially compared to other nations that ARE capitalist, but are dishonestly called socialist, is amazing.

YET, while this happens, Bachmann and Palin are talking about how we are going in the OPPOSITE direction. No better way to get a common-sense foot off the accelerator and slammed on the brakes than to tell folks that vehicle that's going nowhere in actuality is moving too fast forward. No wonder the world laughs and mocks the utter stupidity of so many Americans who think like that, at the expense of those of us who do not. They should speak for us, but they often do.

[mzteris]

8. careful on the "homeschool" judgement -

there are as many reasons as there are kids for homeschooling. . . And a whole damn lot of people hs for EDUCATIONAL reasons - or because their kid is the one being bullied due to being "different". . . (DU even has a "homeschool" group!)

[joeglow3]

13. Now, that is a bit narrow-minded

I went to a private high school and my kids are in a private grade school. We personally donate to scholarship funds for lower socio-economic studies and both schools heavily recruited them.

And the VAST majority of people at our son's schools (us included) are "rich." We just have different priorities. We live in older, smaller houses, drive older cars, don't take vacations.

[mzteris]

14. um - do you or have you lived

in the Wake county area?

Or other "southern areas"?

You're right, I was over-generalizing - but - seeing as how I know people who send their children to these schools - I'm speaking from "my personal experience" in these particular schools.

And there's nothing wrong with being "rich". There's nothing wrong with going to a Private school if you're not going for the "wrong reasons". Fact remains, a lot of the people there, do. Same reason SOME of them send their kids to "Church schools" and SOME of the "homeschool", too. Racism - alive, well, and ugly in Wake County, NC. :(

[joeglow3]

19. Fair enough

I went to public schools for 9 years and was a failure. I was smart, but was a constant discipline problem that no one wanted to deal with.

My parent's sent me to a Jesuit college prep school (my dad had to bust his ass on side jobs as a carpenter to pay for it) and they turned me around in my first semester (graduated with a 4.0 in mostly all Honors/AP courses).

My wife went to 13 years of Catholic schools and loved it, so we decided to make the sacrifices to send our kids there. I can count on 2 hands the number of families I know who are rich. However, we also live in a 40-50 year old parish, so it is a middle income/working class neighborhood.

One of the things I loved about my high school was their active recruitment of poor and minority students. Fortunately, there is a Fortune 500 company here that basically picks up the tuition for all of these students. I would say I was exposed to a much greater cross-section of society than I would have been had I gone to the public high school.

[Lucky Luciano]

7. Privatizing schools is definitely the road to fascism. Ugly. nt

[Blackhatjack]

10. This was a well-funded RW Repub take over of the School Board...

These people who were elected to the new Repub Majority all have conflicts of interests, sitting on boards of private schools who stand to benefit if vouchers and tax credits are paid to parents of children sent to private schools.

One of the Republican Party's richest families(The Popes) were the top 1-2 campaign contributors for this bunch.

The chairman of the school board is paid no salary or benefits, and yet Chairman Tedesco says he is quitting his job to devote his full attention on the job of Chairman --and this is a man with NO CHILDREN making these decisions.

Meeting times have been changed at the last minute. Items have been brought up out of the blue without appearing on the agenda. Attendance at public meetings has been limited to those who could obtain a ticket to get inside.

These folks are dangerous to the health of the public school system as we know it.

[proud2BlibKansan]

12. Are there no Sunshine Laws in this state?

How do they get away with requiring tickets to get into a school board meeting???

[mzteris]

16. are you kidding? They don't want vouchers.

They don't want THEIR kids going to school with THOSE kids, doncha know!

[mmonk]

23. Yes, that was the general gist of my general discussion post

and blog post along with the North Carolina Open Records Request concerning the Civitas Institute "training" the school board. Cronyism to the core. NC has a cap on Charter Schools but that is one of the things they are pushing.

[proud2BlibKansan]

11. Let me get this straight

A man who OWNS three private schools is on the local public school board?

:wtf:

[mmonk]

24. And one of the Wake school board members is on the board of

one of them (new majority).

[bobburgster]

15. It will happen eventually. IMO

[KansDem]

17. "I'm not afraid of open-market competition"

Yes, you are, Mr. Tedesco. You and every other fucking Corporatist.

Why, then, did your ilk complain so bitterly about a government-supported public option? Because you could not compete with it! You and the rest of you fucking leeches would have been put out of business!

Yes, Mr. Tedesco, you fear competition...

[Odin2005]

18. This is insanity.

[yurbud]

21. Obama applied the right logic on student loans, but won't transfer it to health care or K-12 ed

private contractors skim funds for profits that could go to provide actual services, in this case, education.

Privatization of government functions is prima facie evidence of corruption, and the pols who suggest it should automatically be subject to an audit and criminal investigation.

[november3rd]

22. Hard To Believe

It's hard to believe that voters would be wooden-headed enough to put double dealing profiteers on the school board!

School is not about "free market competition!" Schools in America have always been about the communities cooperating and working together to help everybody they can, so that LIVING standards are raised in the community, the state, and the country.

To talk about profit-driven education is to talk about something other than education.

[mmonk]

25. It was an off year election and only 4.5% of the voting electorate

in Wake County participated. The well organized right wing took advantage.

[mzteris]

26. Wake County schools are seriously overcrowded.

The "busing" is a real nuisance - but a necessary one, IMO.

I know that I'm sometimes torn about the whole "neighborhood" school thing. I mean, being able to walk or ride your bike to school every day. Going to school with the kids in YOUR neighborhood so you live near all your friends - that's nice. My kids did the magnet thing and then a charter school for one in Wake county - hell, we lived about 20-30 minutes NORTH of Raleigh, and their friends - of course - always lived about 20-30 minutes SOUTH of Raleigh. Heck, it made DATING difficult for kids sometimes 'cause their parents wouldn't let them drive "that far".

Every traditional school in Wake County has trailers for students in the their parking lots. Brand new schools, by the time they're finished being built, are too small and they have to add the damn trailers.

Magnet schools were one way to achieve "diversity" on a volunteer basis, but over time the lure of that faded a bit, especially as Raleigh became more spread out and "white flight" became more and more prominent. Then you had the "hispanic neighborhoods" AND the "african american neighborhoods" to blend in, too. To refute charges of Racism, Bill O'Neal - I superintendent I used to like (until OUR foul story of the system) - implemented "busing based on economic status" method. It worked really well in terms of diversity on top of the magnet schools.

Then Charter public schools started to open and that also helped to maintain reasonable levels of numbers of students in a classroom, plus greater diversity (contrary to popular opinion, Charter public schools are NOT "racist" - though sometimes the numbers seem to indicate such just because of where people are choosing to go to school. However, no on is PREVENTED from going to any charter school based on "race" OR INCOME.)

FYI - there are hundreds of "church schools" in the area. Dozens of expensive private schools. And Wake County boasts thousands and thousands of homeschoolers - of all stripes. One of the positives of WC was the alternative educational choices embraced and supported by the community at large.


Oh - oh - oh - the YEAR ROUND SCHOOLS! They are totally AWESOME!! But again, some people didn't like that that year-rounds were becoming mandated and no longer a CHOICE for those who wanted it. Though the vast majority of people, once they were in one, wouldn't leave if you paid them. Teachers most especially. Again - the year rounds were a response to the severe overcrowding in the schools.



edit: aacgh - too damn many typos to ignore. (I've GOT to get a new keyboard!!!)

[bvar22]

27. And the declining American Empire crumbles a little more...

:patriot:

[New Dawn]

28. School, Inc. -- where each "teacher" is a sales representative.

[Dinger]

29. Damn, You Nailed It

That is all.

[Solly Mack]

31. People have lost their fucking minds

K&R