UPDATE on Perkins/Smikle - PERKINS WINNING BIG - Charter school lobby goes down in flames

[Hannah Bell]

Last Update Sept. 14, 11:30pm

Perkins well over 70%. Reports coming in from victory party. Wish I were there.

A correspondent reports:

I'm in Harlem canvassing for Bill Perkins with other parents. You have to see Basil Smickle's canvassers, he hired crack heads to canvass for him by wearing Vote for Basil t-shirts!!!! LOL. I'm not joking, he is paying them $200-$300 a day. Come see for yourself. That's a great use of the charter lobby money.

Just in - don't know if it will work. Direct audio from the Perkins/Smickle battle. Hear how they are getting paid - cash off the books.

http://ednotesonline.blogspot.com/2010/09/report-from-perkinssmickle-harlem.html

[Hannah Bell]

1. The prognosticators on CNN like David Gergen and Paul Begala

are already shaking their heads and clucking about the smashing of the Fenty/Rhee front for the corporate education machine. Begala is urging the audience to see the big money propaganda film, "Waiting for Superman," a documentary made by a director who gets totally snookered by producers who are funded by the billionaire boys' club. Gergen nods, yep. Another of the talking heads, a black one, notes that Fenty lost the black vote, even though he was trying to "save the schools." All three nod. And so it goes.

Will the pundits ever ask the voters why they soundly rejected the arrogant, hateful, anti-union, anti-teacher, anti-parent, anti-public school approach to reform that sees the solution to urban education as cheap charters with uncertified white short term teachers and no libraries or services for students with special needs? Cheap charters with high-priced CEOs running them, cheap charters that are based on a no excuses total compliance anti-cultural model of penal pedagogy that treats children as potential test scores who must be behaviorally and psychologically modified. Will the pundits ask the parents and the teachers and the children, all who want a say in how their public school run and their monies are spent, rather than being treated like enemies that have to be conquered?

Will Mr. Gray talk with the voters to see what kind of public school the public wants, rather than reporting to the Broad Foundation and the Gates Foundation and the Walton Foundation?

http://www.schoolsmatter.info/

[Reader Rabbit]

2. Sweet.

Let's hope this is just a preview of things to come nationwide!