CAN YOU IMAGINE CLOSING ALL NEIGHBORHOOD PUBLIC SCHOOLS?

CAN YOU IMAGINE CLOSING ALL NEIGHBORHOOD PUBLIC SCHOOLS?

By Joyce Luedke

• Can you imagine closing all neighborhood public schools in a city and replacing them with 40 different privately managed charter schools, a Recovery School District, funded by taxpayers?

Can you imagine no centralized oversight of these 40 different entities to guarantee that the needs of all students are met?

• Can you imagine firing 7,000 school personnel and replacing 4500 teachers with unlicensed personnel holding alternative certificates who have no training in child development, teaching children with special needs, or other crucial courses required to be a licensed professional?

Can you imagine angry parents/grandparents standing in line for hours to enroll their child/children in a private charter school only to be given a number and told to go to a different location the next day?

• Can you imagine irate parents/grandparents who are told they need to bring their children to a supermarket by 6:00am to be bussed to different schools many miles away?

Can you imagine concerned parents/grandparents who have no recourse because leaders of the private schools are not accountable to them, the taxpayers?

• Can you imagine eliminating play in a pre-kindergarten and instead “drilling four-year olds”?

Can you imagine students in the classrooms being controlled through harsh discipline instead of engaged to become life-long learners?

• Can you imagine leaders manipulating the curriculum to teach to the test with very little time for students to participate in projects, discussion or reading literature?

Can you imagine evidence that the civil rights of children in these private schools suffer because of discrimination and score no better than children in public schools?

The chaos described above is what has happened since 2005 in New Orleans under the Recovery School District.

In 2014, the last of the public schools closed in New Orleans. The takeover of public education was completed.
Could this chaos be duplicated in Wisconsin?

Let us be very clear that the mission of the governor, the party in control of Wisconsin, and their funders is to privatize education in Wisconsin.

The 2015-2017 budget defunds K-12 public schools by $127 million on top of $793 million cuts in 2011-2013, opens the floodgates to expand the taxpayer-subsidized private/religious school voucher program , and opens the door to private, for-profit charter schools

Therefore, it comes as no surprise that Walker will be the keynote speaker for a voucher school summit hosted by the American Federation for Children in New Orleans on May 18^th.

The goal of the American Federation for Children is to privatize education and is funded by the DeVos family, the Kochs, and others.

Since 2009, Walker has received nearly $2.4 million in legalized bribes from wealthy school voucher supporters and $1.1 million in ads from AFC.

Republican legislators in Wisconsin who support taxpayer subsidized private/religious school vouchers received   $850,000 in 2014 including Representative Dave Heaton of the 85^th Assembly District.

Ten million dollars from 2003-2013 has flowed into the coffers of Republican legislators in Wisconsin from these groups who will do what it takes to privatize education.

The governor speaking at the AFC summit in New Orleans must be a warning to Wisconsinites.  After eight years of the takeover of public schools in New Orleans “the radical privatization experiment  can no longer hide its spectacular failure.”

As citizens of Wisconsin, we must do everything in our power to sound the alarm regarding the movement to privatize our great public schools in Wisconsin.

Be bold while contacting the legislators to put a stop to the privatizing of our schools.

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