ALL 7,500 New Orleans Public School Teachers Fired

Way to support these residents of NO. This story unfolds on Democracy Now today.

http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=06/06/20/142204

All New Orleans Public School Teachers Fired, Millions in Federal Aid Channeled to Private Charter Schools


Immediately after Hurricane Katrina hit, the Louisiana state legislature voted to take over most of New Orleans' public schools and effectively fire the 7,500 teachers who work in them. The city schools are now part of the state-run recovery school district and control of many of schools is being given to private charter organizations. We speak with a member of the United Teachers of New Orleans. We go now to New Orleans to look at the ongoing efforts to rebuild the city in the wake of the Hurricane Katrina disaster. After the storm hit, the city's infrastructure was virtually wiped out. Public housing units, hospitals, schools and universities were closed down because of physical damage. But many of these public institutions have not been re-opened. And some contend that this is part of an effort to privatize New Orleans.

We first look at the New Orleans public school system. Immediately after Hurricane Katrina hit, the Louisiana state legislature voted to take over most of the city's public schools and effectively fire the 7,500 teachers who work in them. The city schools are now part of the state-run recovery school district and control of many of schools is being given to private charter organizations. Just last week, Secretary of Education Margaret Spellings announced $24 million dollars in federal aid to Louisiana for development of private charter schools which doubles the amount the state has already received. This federal grant was made only to charter schools - not traditional public schools. Many parents and teachers have expressed concern the move towards private charter schools is being done with little public discussion about curriculum, the efficacy of the schools, and working conditions for teachers.

* Joe DeRose, Communications Director for the United Teachers of New Orleans.

We invited a member of the Louisiana Board of Elementary & Secondary Education to join us but they declined our request.

I'd like to hear more about this.

one of my friends has been re-hired but is out on medical leave for major surgery so at least good benefits are still being provided if you are re-hired by a charter school, this lady lost everything, not just a job but house, car, every scrap of everything she ever owned, plus becoming ill, so i haven't really wanted to probe abt the job too much


you must keep in mind that the modest neighborhoods where most orleans teachers lived are now uninhabitable, hell, even the fine neighborhoods where many professors lived (lakeview) were destroyed

so everyone has an awful lot on the plate

Heard it an hour or so ago. Checkout her website, http://democracynow.org. She interviewed (did not catch his name) on this exact issue.

Edited to Add: Here it is -- http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=06/06/20/142204

Snip

"All New Orleans Public School Teachers Fired, Millions in Federal Aid Channeled to Private Charter Schools

Immediately after Hurricane Katrina hit, the Louisiana state legislature voted to take over most of New Orleans' public schools and effectively fire the 7,500 teachers and employees who work in them. The city schools are now part of the state-run recovery school district and control of many of schools is being given to private charter organizations. We speak with a member of the United Teachers of New Orleans."

Now I see why BushCo lets NO go by the wayside. They can claim that due to the continued emergency, extraordinary takeover powers are needed to get the schools back on track. Then they install their own people to educate the kids.
:wow:

n/t

Democrats control the Governor's mansion and the state legislature in LA.

in knowing how many of the NO teachers were rehired by the new system, or rehired elsewhere. I have read on professional blogs (I'm a teacher) that most of the teachers who relocated were immediately hired by the district where they were staying (even in shelters) to help with the influx of NO displaced students.

I don't know much about how it all works, but I do know that a school district that is no longer functioning can't pay their teachers. We had a storm here that kept us out of work for two weeks and we didn't get paid for them. But Florida has an educational system that is VERY tied to the State Legislature.

This is an interesting sitution to me. I wonder how many NO schools are open again?

It's not like there is a pool of teachers waiting to take the fired teachers' places. The teaching shortage nationwide is extreme.

weren't absorbed into the new system. Maybe Democracy Now will elaborate. The transcript should be up later today if you can't catch the show.

that was my first thought too... that this was a ruse to eliminate the Teachers Union in NO. Looks like they're gonna go the way of Auto workers and Airline workers... slashed bennies, paycuts, no arbitration, no representation, reduced Vacation and sick time, etc.

State workers are next... i'll bet they make it so that State employees are no longer required by law to be Unionized...
:mad:

think the BFEE is involved somehow, lining yet another crony's pockets.

cast of criminals involved. Gotta be links back to Norquist, Neil Bush, etc.

son Neal's education company (or something) for her NO charitable contribution? I remember reading something about that.

"charity."

It wouldn't surprise me if that software showed up in NO schools, though.

Former first lady's donation aids son
Katrina funds earmarked to pay for Neil Bush's software program
By CYNTHIA LEONOR GARZA
Copyright 2006 Houston Chronicle

Former first lady Barbara Bush donated an undisclosed amount of money to the Bush-Clinton Katrina Fund with specific instructions that the money be spent with an educational software company owned by her son Neil.

Since then, the Ignite Learning program has been given to eight area schools that took in substantial numbers of Hurricane Katrina evacuees.

"Mrs. Bush wanted to do something specifically for education and specifically for the thousands of students flooding into the Houston schools," said Jean Becker, former President Bush's chief of staff. "She knew that HISD was using this software program, and she's very excited about this program, so she wanted to make it possible for them to expand the use of this program."
http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/metropolitan/3742329.html

involved with, I think.

Edit to add: Democracy Now just said it was Neal's software program that Babs contributed to 'charitably'.

Norquist protege's push for charter school privatization plan in Southern California worries educators
http://rawstory.com/news/2005/K_Street_pushes_charter_school_plan_0125.html

not making any money. I'm not sure of the legality of the situation, however, if there is a surplus where it would go. Our charter schools have to be approved by our school board.

I'm not even sure whether they would be considered "private" or not because the teachers are still part of the retirement system.

I guess each state has their own statutes about them.

or anything, but NO has been quite good over the years of...shall we say...keeping certain pockets lined?

But they sure know how to have a good time.

It is a public good which pays dividends later in the future. You cannot expect quarter after quarter of short term products and expect to have an educated group coming out of it.

Maybe your charter schools are like magnet schools, schools that specialize in the arts or math or are set up in some other particular way that is out of the routine curriculum and discipline structure. A boot camp type school could be a charter, and still be a public school if the district approved it.

Private charters may have some of the same unique aspects, but they're run by companies. Bill Bennett has a software company called K12 that has a fully designed curriculum for every grade. It's primarily targeted at homeschoolers, but I could see a private charter using it too. With the homeschoolers, a district in the state agrees to oversee the students. The state pays the full fee as if the student is in school, the district gets a small portion for recordkeeping, the rest goes to Bill Bennett's software company.

There are all kinds of private education "programs" that are being peddled out there. I can't blame the state for wanting to do something different about a failed NOLA education system, but they're turning the city into another free market petri dish and from what I've seen of a lot of these private school reforms, they're ust another opportunity to funnel money to Republican cronies. The public school charters aren't always any better. I've heard of people running off with funds from those schools too.

http://chron.com/disp/story.mpl/headline/metro/3742329.html
Former first lady's donation aids son
Katrina funds earmarked to pay for Neil Bush's software program (Ignite!)


By CYNTHIA LEONOR GARZA
Copyright 2006 Houston Chronicle

Former first lady Barbara Bush donated an undisclosed amount of money to the Bush-Clinton Katrina Fund with specific instructions that the money be spent with an educational software company owned by her son Neil.

Since then, the Ignite Learning program has been given to eight area schools that took in substantial numbers of Hurricane Katrina evacuees.

"Mrs. Bush wanted to do something specifically for education and specifically for the thousands of students flooding into the Houston schools," said Jean Becker, former President Bush's chief of staff. "She knew that HISD was using this software program, and she's very excited about this program, so she wanted to make it possible for them to expand the use of this program."

The former first lady plans to visit a Houston Independent School District campus using the Ignite program today to call on local business leaders to support schools and education.

The trip to Fleming Middle School is intended to showcase Bush's commitment to education for both Houston-area and New Orleans evacuee students, according to a press release issued Wednesday by Ignite.

All the usual suspects will be happy to swoop in and "save the day"...Bye bye unions...

Privatization is a DISEASE that makes the wealthy, wealthier. Private school districts will get laws passed so they don't have to deal with teachers' unions. Private school districts will treat poor kids like shit - more than if the districts are public.

Ask yourself this: "Once a school or utility or road goes private - can we control what happens with it?" No. You can use it or not, but the rules of engagement - how much you will pay, whether you will be allowed access at all, who runs it - all depends on people who you cannot influence.

If the district is public we have public control -- everytime they privatize a resource that was OURS they take a big whack at the base of the tree that is democracy.

:puke:

into methane, saves democracy, provides heating for the winter.
I say it is a win-win!

Maybe you could make biodiesel out of the really fat ones.

"The creatures outside looked from pig to man, and from man to pig, and from pig to man again; but already it was impossible to say which was which."

George Orwell
Animal Farm

Gitcher red hot no bid contracts here!

she needs brought down

what else she did or didn't do.

she needs brought down

Charter schools. Marvelous. Show me one successful charter school program.

Nope, this is yet another race to the bottom of the barrel. Profit Uber alles. Fly-by-night operators with political connections. Mismanagement of funds. Grossly substandard conditions. Call me psychic.

Don't look for America's best and brightest coming out of NO for a generation to come. They'll be lucky to find service industry jobs.

I strongly believe most of what has been said here but you asked a question and I thought I would answer it.

My kids go to a Charter school and it is VERY successful. It is so successful that they had to add an extra kindergarten class last year.

We love the school as opposed to the public one my oldest went to last year where they literally put his best friend's health in jeopardy....that was when the kindergarten teacher made his friend walk around the entire day with his shoes tied together. This did not bother the principal in the least! They also did not address racism issues when I brought up how a child would not lend my son an eraser because 'it is only for black people to use'.

Fast forward to this year and a charter school. My oldest had a teacher who should be on television teaching. She is so good I had my husband take a day off work to watch her teach. He agreed that she needs to get an agent and teach in an acting job. She is just that good. I wish my teachers had been as wonderful as her.

Oh, and just a few weeks ago a little girl turned to my son and said 'White people don't know anything'. The little girl was in my care since I volunteer at the school and I took them out to the reward store. (they get play money for doing things right and then every week they go out to but things with their money)I told the little girl we needed to go see her teacher and she refused as the teacher came out into the hall. I discreetly mentioned the incident and she was dealt with swiftly by the teacher.

The teacher was not mean, I have never seen her be mean. The teacher said they should go into a quiet corner together and they talked. Later the teacher came up and thanked me for letting her know about the incident and said it was taken care of. This is a HUGE contrast from last year. Last year they even made public examples of the kindergartners by placing them in a corner away from everyone - permanently! And they never addressed big problems.

This year my youngest went to kindergarten. My oldest let me teach him everything he needed before he went to school. This one would get mad if I tried to teach him anything. We were afraid they would say he was too under developed and to come back next year. He was accepted and we were thrilled. My son could hardly read a word at the beginning of the year. He is now past the point of where his brother was this time last year.

They all have teaching assistants and a lot of parents chip in as well. Near the end of the school year I asked what the students needed to work on and the teacher let me take them out for one on one lessons so they could get stronger. This was, of course, during non-work time. They would not have the children miss valuable new work and get further behind.

These are teachers who truly care about the kids. Their information packet told how much they cared but I wondered how true it was. There was a kindergarten child with a lot of mental trouble. Perhaps she acted out because of neglect but she had real problems. She always begged me to take her home because no one was home when she would get home. It is sad being a latch key kid at 5 years old. The teacher took her home a few times but she also confided that she needed to keep her distance somewhat because of being the teacher.

I have not had a bad interaction even one time during the school year.At one point a child in grade one said 'bitch' and my son repeated the word - almost in a question form since he had not heard it before. Both went down to the office. My son's teacher came to my car to personally tell me of the incident and said not to worry that he was not in trouble since he was questioning what the word meant. Then the vice-principal,who was directing traffic, stopped to come over and tell me about the incident!!! Neither of the employees were upset, the way the school works is they want to keep parents involved and in the know. We all work together to make everything smoother.

I do know a charter school that works. Ours works.

I think this sentence is most important to your argument.
Public schools do not have any other option BUT to accept.

I disagree, my cousin was turned down in a public school. They said she was young and not developed enough. Her Mom kept her home an extra year.

The young child I talked about with mental problems was right on the cusp of being too young. Her birthday was the day before cut off. The teacher confided that she told the parents it would be better to keep her home and go next year instead. They declined and the school accepted the child. The child will be repeating kindergarten next year!

This school cares enough that with any other school she would have been thrown out. Any public school would have kicked her out in the first half of the year. This child had big problems which even made me worry for my child but I saw how they handled everything and it gave me confidence in the school.

Also, the city where our charter school is, the schools don't have a choice but to accept. There are no school districts. You choose which school you want your child to attend and that is where they go. These are public schools.

especially right before state tests.

You are so right. Charters get to pick and choose their kids. Public schools have to take every kid who walks in the door - and the public schools can't kick them out like the charters can.

I have been teaching nearly 3 decades and if I could pick kids, you bet I would have nothing but success.

Comparing public schools to charter schools is an apples and oranges argument.

So students with physical or mental health conditions are excluded from the school.

But you are right - in many states they don't have to take those kids. And here, they can still be picky about who they accept. Special ed kids are more expensive to educate and so they are often rejected by charter schools.

And it's good to see that they've hired good, capable and caring teachers. Maybe I was hasty in condemning all charter schools as badly run.

However. This is NO we're talking about. They've never had the kind of education funding that was available in NC (which I assume you're from). And now, in the midst of disaster, they're planning to just throw public education into the private sector with no public consultation or discussion. NO has become their "guinea pig" for the idea of abolishing publicly funded education altogether.


Quite a different scenario from yours, which was probably very orderly with plenty of community involvement.

My problem with charter schools are two-fold. First, there's the myth that public institutions are inefficient and expensive and that only profit-driven schools will drive a competition for excellence. Nonsense. Private companies are never driven towards excellence unless absolutely necessary. And with virtual monopolies in certain areas, there's no incentive to even compete.


Second, charter schools have attracted the worst kind of profiteers because they know the present administration will spend huge amounts of money with very little regulation or quality control.
And that leads to the examples below, the result of a few minute's googling:


"Collapse of 60 Charter Schools Leaves Californians Scrambling"
http://select.nytimes.com/gst/abstract.html?res=F60B14F73D5D0C748DDDA00894DC404482

"Accountability woes cause first charter school collapse"
http://www.educationnews.org/writers/daniel/accountability-woes-cause-first.htm

"Edison Schools flirting with disaster"
http://www.workingforchange.com/article.cfm?ItemID=14103

I'm glad to hear things worked out for you. I'm not so convinced it will work for everyone.

I totally agree and that is why I started out stating that I agree with most everything that had been stated. I love our school and we are very lucky, but I think what is going on in NO is a travesty. I believe most of what is happening under the * regime is a nightmare.

When the discussion is about the happenings in NO I am in total agreement with you. I was just really addressing the comment about all charter schools. Stating that my charter school is good is not stating that all charter schools are good. The same goes for public schools. Stating our first one was bad does not mean they are all bad.

I will say that the public school kindergarten, we attended, lost six students going into grade one. A lot of parents were not happy with the school. One woman gave up custody of her child just so he would be in a different school district (in a city 4 hours away)!

I do not pretend all charters are good or that all public schools are bad. Before our kids ever went to school we researched all the magnet, private and charter schools in the five surrounding cities. We visited the public school who we were assigned to and we researched their report card. It did give us pause that over 50% of white males failed at this school. We even had a meeting with the principal and asked what she was doing to address this. All told, that first year we must have researched schools for well into 60 - 80 hours. We toured 5 different schools, we went to the magnet fairs and we did a lot of leg work online. In the end, we did decide to give the public school a try.

I may have stayed with the public school if it was only the teacher but it was not. My children are too precious to test out a school grade by grade especially when I heard horror stories from the higher grades.

Our school does very well in fund raising and I am not sure how much they get from the government. We do everything from Box Tops For Education to selling items. We have a computer lab chock full of computers and now, this year, all of our classes have computers as well. I have seen the principal take weeks and weeks to hire a teacher just so they get the right one. My kindergarten teacher went three months without an assistant because they would not hire just anyone. I know it was three months because there was hardly a day that went by that I was not in that class filling in for the assistant that left.

Maybe we were just lucky. We have a school that is a dream as far as teachers and education go. Your links certainly should give people pause. I would not tell anyone that a charter school would be right for them just because it is right for us.

But this thread is about NO and I hope no one thought I was defending what they are doing there. I may defend my charter school but what in the hell do they think they are doing? All those teachers have families and lives. I think these actions just go to show what little respect they do have for the education system. Teachers are the crafters of our children's minds and they should not be discarded like yesterdays garbage.

having lived in NO, I would argue that decent education now has a chance of developing. Anyone that could afford it got thier kids out of the NO public school system. They either moved to Jefferson Parish or put thier kids in private schools. In a state that used to race Mississippi for the bottom of US states rated on education, NO had the worst schools in the state.

Pretty much any forced change to the NO school system is a good change.

against public schools.

conservatives want public education to fail so they set up these ridiculous testing agenda which is bound to fail.

My 2nd grade daughter spent more time this year learning how to take a test then she did learning anything else.

So if schools begin to fail these tests, the asswipes can shut a school down, then turn them over to privatized education facilities or charter schools. Which is their plan to begin with.

No child left behind has been a failure in other countries too. Jordon ( yes freepers Jordon where the terrorist boogie men come from) does it and a friend on mine from Jordon stated his brother did not pass high school until he was 21 due to these tests.

Good god. It's like something out of science fiction... Robocop?

I'd guess not, but at least they "fixed" the schools...

As i find myself saying ever more often these days: makes perfect sense in an upside-down world.

abt a month ago they repaired the levees at buras, where katrina made landfall, the new levee promptly collapsed

repairing all the levees around orleans, st. bernard, and plaquemines parish is going to take a v. long time to do right

don't come here if you can't afford to maintain a dependable car or miss several days of work for evacuations -- there will now have to be evacuations called even if there is only a cat 2 storm, in some situations, there may be evacuations for tropical storms! i don't know how people paid by the hour are supposed to tolerate all these evacuations and the missed income, as my husband falls in that category will just have to hope the storms go to jebbie world this year (sorry florida)

Seriously. Nobody should apply to a charter school.

That's what this is. EVERYTHING they have done is ILLEGAL. As soon as they are out of power everything this little freak has done should be rolled-back.

House: 65-39

Senate: 24-15

They can't except thst they are wrong.

the NOLA public schools were nothing to write home about. While Katrina was a catastrophe, it granted a once in a lifetime opportunity to get rid of all the problems and set things right. Something that could never have been done under "normal" circumstances.

Now, the question is: is this the right direction? I am not sure but it makes absolutely no sense whatsoever to rebuild the system back to the way it was before.

why rebuild a system that couldn't accomplish its stated objective: to teach the children. if they can correct the problem and set the course properly, wouldn't that be worth a few teachers union member's jobs?

or, as the talk radio types constantly harp: has the education system become more about the system than the education of our children?

nt

to which part?

no to the right direction?


no to the rebuilding it to a model that would do better than what came before?
How can you say that with, by some reports, 70% of the 8th graders aren't proficient in math, 74% lack proficiency in english? What came before was fatally incompetent - a complete disservice to its constituents. So do we rebuild to recreate or do we build to create?


no to correcting the problem being worth a few jobs?

if you could set 10,000 kids/year off on the righr foot: providing them with the educational foundation necessary to succeed, wouldn't that, in the long run, be worth 2000 union jobs? if you think that is not the case and you are representative of American educators, then the wingnuts are right - the education system has become more about perpetuating itself than what succeeding in what it is intended to do = teach our children and our future.

How does destroying the unions "correct the problem"?

How does destroying public education "correct the problem"?

Tell me how this magically will create better education for children. The only thing this has done is tear down public education, bust unions, and redistrubute the wealth upward.


Take a good look at NO today. This is what they would like to do to the entire nation. It's a neocon's wet dream.

Over and over, having to respond to this type of, uh, DUer.

what you mean by that?

that I am not toeing his/her view of the ideological line and if that line is crossed the transgressor should be, virtually, cast out, banished from the sight of the true believers.

Ideology, while it should be consistent, should also be tempered with the ability/knowledge/wisdom of knowing when it should be flexible, tactically, to meet the overall strategic goal.

NOLA has been granted something that almost never happens: the ability to almost wipe the slate clean and start from scratch (and hopefully do it right)

NOPA has been, in the past, one of the (if not the) worst performing, most corrupt public school systems in the nation. It makes no sense to re-create the school system in that image and return it back to the pre-katrina status quo.

To do this right and make this a shining example of how a public school system should look and operate, ALL facets of the operation must be open for review, criticism, enhancement, or even elimination. That will include (and not a complete list):

Where the schools will go
What they will look like
How big (or how small) the facilities should/can be
Curriculum (changes? if so what should be enhanced? eliminated? kept the same?)
Who will do teaching
How will they teach
What the requirements will be

and some of these are going to either piss people or organizations off but do them we must and we can not, in all good conscience, allow the ultimate goal of a school system to be obstructed or diverted to meet some other, non-educationally focused agenda. If this includes steamrolling over petty political ideological bickering then so be it. While I normally despise the far overused justification of "but its for the children", in this case it most definitely the case. we can not lose sight of that fact.

Firing EVERY teacher, when there is a severe shortage, is just plain dumb. I can't imagine who they are planning on hiring. Sounds like there will be no more public schools in New Orleans.

Privitization can only make a bad situation worse.

into a lather! "HOW DARE THEY WANT MONEY TO FIX PUBLIC EDUCATION!" Yeah, go ahead and privatize everything! Just accelerate our rapid decent into corporate fascism! Yay! :(

House: 65-39

Senate: 24-15

a comeback. Privatizing everything doesn't automatically make things better. I can't believe Louisiana's' Leg doesn't know that. :eyes:

Actually, after looking at Texas and how our Legislature runs I'm not surprised in the least.

They are a public school operated independently of the local school board, often with a curriculum and educational philosophy different from the other schools in the system.

So where do school taxes go? Do charter schools still get money from local taxpayers?

The author of the article has some serious issues with charter schools. Enough to cause them to lie by calling these schools 'private.'

n/t

They take advantage of a national disaster and abolish the public schools, get rid of the teachers union,and get public funds to go support private schools which in turn will donate to the repubs. This is what they want to do nationally. In Texas, they have passed the so-called School Finance Bill in the Texas Legislature that starts to set up the schools to fail and then mandates the teachers and principals be fired in low performing schools and the failing public school must be privatized. All schools must constantly improve or be deemed failing--even the ones performing o.k. It is a nightmare.

House: 65-39

Senate: 24 15

came from NO and that city is no longer city and for her to win the next election, she need to pander to RW and this is exactly what she is doing. She is no longer Dem.

they plan to legally teach the bible in school. Get the kids while their young and build a goose stepping army of Conservatives. The Cons have very long term plans.

To transform once-free, once-proud America into just another Third-World Enclave.

Death by 1000 cuts.

A relatively rich (at least until our debt catches up with us), but still Third-World nation. What is happening in New Orleans, pretty much nonstop since Katrina, are things one would expect by Third-World Leadership.

Like 9-11, another hideous tragedy has been turned into a criminal and political windfall for the Imperial Family and their chums.

The LA legislature and governor's mansion are both controlled by Democrats.

nt

Only faux democrats would do that.

Perhaps you know what's better for LA that the people of LA do. :shrug:

that's what this is about.

The inheritence tax loop-hole allows aroud 7.500 families to get a monster tax break, costing our government billions, at a time when we really need the money to pay for Iraq.

and passed overwhemingly in the State Legislature, which, as has been repeatedly pointed out, is controlled by Dems.

http://www.nola.com/search/index.ssf?/base/news-2/113204011827870.xml?nola

our system in my parish (county). We had no choice....if they ended up in our parish, we had to find them jobs in our parish school system. All other parishes were told the same thing. So, if those N.O. teachers moved to other parts of LA, they are still working in the state public school system.

So, I guess it's up to the LA taxpayers to get the public school system up and running in Orleans Parish? Interesting to see how it competes with that well-financed charter school system.

Welcome back to "Separate but Equal."