Tag: public schools

Promising school safety bill introduced

March 28, 2013 at 9:14 amCategory:Uncategorized

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From crack child advocate Rob Thompson at the Covenant with North Carolina’s Children:

House members introduce bipartisan school safety bill
Bill includes needed funding for mental health support staff

RALEIGH – Representatives Glazier (D), Faircloth (R), Holloway (R) and Lucas (D) introduced legislation (H452) Wednesday aimed at making North Carolina schools safer and preventing tragedies like Newtown. Specifically, the bill provides funding for local school districts to add School Resource Officers (SROs) and support staff, including school counselors, social workers and psychologists. The bill also requires school districts to take specific steps to respond effectively to a future crisis.

“This legislation provides what resource-starved school districts need more than anything – money for staff,” stated Rob Thompson, Executive Director of the Covenant with North Carolina’s Children. “We’re particularly pleased to see legislators take concrete steps to address the mental health issues that are at the root of school violence.”

The bill allocates $5 million Read More…

Report: Ryan budget would harm NC’s schools, public health and safety

March 27, 2013 at 3:08 pmCategory:Uncategorized

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Just in from the Budget and Tax Center Center…

RALEIGH (March 27, 2013) — Critical federal funding for North Carolina’s schools, health care, clean water, law enforcement, and other key services would be slashed under the federal budget proposed by House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan and passed by the U.S. House of Representatives last week, according to a new report released today by the non-partisan organization Center on Budget and Policy Priorities.

“Chairman Ryan’s budget would place the burden of deficit reduction squarely on the backs of North Carolina’s low-income and middle class families while providing a windfall in tax cuts to corporations and the wealthiest individuals,” said Allan Freyer of the Budget & Tax Center, a project of the North Carolina Justice Center. “Another round of deep funding cuts to our schools, public safety, and health would harm our families, communities and economy.”

Congressman Ryan’s budget would cut the part of the federal budget that supports Read More…

The assault on public schools continues

March 1, 2013 at 12:01 pmCategory:Uncategorized

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Two new items of note in Raleigh’s News & Observer highlight the ongoing existential threat to the future of public education in North Carolina posed by the state’s conservative political leadership.

Item #1 is an excellent editorial entitled “Voucher ploy could be disastrous to public schools.” In it, the paper rightfully blasts the legislature’s growing infatuation with privatizing public schools through the introduction of vouchers:

“Now, once again, some in the General Assembly want vouchers. The idea is presented as an opportunity for lower-income people, targeted to them in order to provide them with an educational ‘option.’ But the logic sounds more like a way to get a voucher foot in the door of the public bank. Read More…

An education message we could use in North Carolina

February 28, 2013 at 9:22 amCategory:Uncategorized

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Last Saturday, a local school superintendent from Texas named John Kuhn spoke at a “Save Texas Schools” rally in the Lone Star state. Yesterday, one of the nation’s foremost education policy experts, Diane Ravitch, posted his comments on her blog. Today, we are happy to reproduce them here. You may want to consider distributing/forwarding them as well.

Are there any teachers in this crowd?

I want to say something to teachers that our lawmakers should have said long ago: Thank You! Thank you for keeping our children safe. Thank you for drying their tears when they scrape their knees, for cheering on our junior high basketball players, for going up to your room on Sundays to get ready to teach my kids on Monday. Gracias por cuidarlos! As a dad, I thank you.

Coaches, thank you for fixing little girls’ softball swings and for showing our boys how to tie their ties. Thank you for getting our children safely home on the yellow dog after late ballgames, marching contests, and one-act plays.

Thank you for buying all those raffle tickets, hams, pies, discount cards, Girl Scout cookies, insulated mugs and pumpkin rolls, for buying more playoff shirts than any one person could possibly need and on top of all that spending your own money on pencils and prizes and supplies for your classroom.

There are those poor deluded souls who say you take more than you give, and I disagree with them with everything I am. Don’t let them get you down. They wouldn’t last a day in your classroom. You are NOT a drain on this economy; you are a bubbling spring of tomorrow’s prosperity. Read More…

New Policy Watch news story shows the “genius of the market” at work in education

February 14, 2013 at 3:34 pmCategory:Uncategorized

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Cameron Creek Charter SchoolAnyone who pays any attention to the debate over public education knows the rap consistently advanced by the pro-vouchers/pro-privatization crowd: “We need to bring the ‘genius’ of the free market to education so that schools will compete with each other and thereby drive up the overall quality of education.” This is the same argument under which charter schools are supposed to be “incubators of innovation” that hatch all sorts of brilliant ideas that then percolate  throughout the K-12 system.

A key and obvious flaw in this logic, of course, is its blind and absurd glorification of the private sector. Here’s the real truth about the ”free market” in the U.S.: For all of its many strengths as a wealth producer, it is also frequently a ruthless and cutthroat world in which most new enterprises fail and in which many actors are driven by (and act upon) less-than-honorable motives — most notably greed.

To see evidence of this hard reality in North Carolina’s just-underway move to bring market forces to bear upon K-12 education, check out this story by NC Policy Watch reporter Sarah Ovaska: “Charlotte charter founders accused of plagiarizing, school may not open.”  

It turns out that a new charter school applicant in Charlotte basically lifted the language in its application, word for word, from another applicant. And what is perhaps even more disturbing, Read More…