For years, California schools and colleges have kicked out thousands of students, putting them at the mercy of private employers or the military. Now, state and federal officials are also pushing whole schools and colleges into the hands of private companies. These attacks on free, quality public education will only be defeated if students, faculty, staff and families directly pressure the people who were elected to serve them.
The California Department of Education dissolved the school board of the Inglewood Unified School District, naming as superintendent Don Brann, founder of the Da Vinci Schools charter school company. Talk about the fox guarding the hen house!
Meanwhile, the University of California has allowed UCLA’s Anderson School of Management to separate from its state funding, and rely instead on fundraising done by corporate leaders, as well as on charging higher tuition. The pay for Janet Napolitano that went from about $200,000 for being the head of the Department of Homeland Security (overseeing deportations and family separations) to $570,000 for the position of UC President. And in San Francisco, City College has been told it will lose its accreditation next July, by order of the Western Accreditation Commission run by the federal Department of Education. CCSF’s campuses serve 85,000 students, many of whom could end up in the clutches of private for-profit colleges.
Tens of thousands of students are tossed out of California’s public schools and colleges each year. This wouldn’t happen if we had a system that was working. Some needed help with learning English, or math in high school, but there weren’t enough teachers to give them extra attention. Others suffered extreme poverty and finally decided to go out and bring the family some money – one way or the other.
Those who do get into college witness the same problems on a higher level, as tuition, books, and supplies add to the cost of necessities that were already hard to pay for. And those whose high schools were overcrowded or lacked books must start out in college far behind students from smaller, more affluent schools. More will drop out than will ever get to the university level.
The poverty that pulled these students down is now pulling down the educators that serve them. Just as low-income students don’t do as well as students from richer families, the campuses in their communities can’t have the same graduation rates as the campuses in richer areas. So they are being taken over and may be handed over to companies who close schools, lay off teachers and staff while eliminating benefits and services.
We the people are beginning to demand that the government stop these attacks on students, teachers and our communities’ ability to survive.
Government officials created the state and federal departments now punishing schools and colleges in poor communities; those communities have to target the elected officials with the power to stop these attacks.
