Trinational Coalition's statement of support for teachers in Mexico

LETTERS TO THE GOVERNMENT CAN BE SENT TO:
LIC. ENRIQUE PEÑA NIETO
Presidente Constitucional de los Estados Unidos Mexicanos
enrique.penanieto@presidencia.gob.mx

LIC. OSORIO CHONG MIGUEL ANGEL
Secretario de Estado
secretario@segob.mx

LIC. CHUAYFFET CHEMOR EMILIO
Secretaria de Educación Pública
emilio.chuayffet@sep.gob.mx

SEND COPIES TO:
seccionmexicana.coali@gmail.com
Maestra Graciela Rangel de Michoacán sección XVIII: rasagas@live.com
Prof. Eligio Hernández de Oaxaca XXII: eligiogonzalez@hotmail.com

We stand in solidarity with the teachers of CNTE in Mexico who are calling upon the government for a genuine dialogue, that their demands be acknowledged and that violent repression not be used against the nationwide movement in defense of public education as it was today in Mexico City. The rights to assemble and express legitimate concerns are rights that are inalienable rights that are part of the civil and democratic freedoms for which humanity has fought and died for during the last two centuries.

WHEREVER POSSIBLE, ORGANIZE DEMONSTRATIONS IN FRONT OF MEXICAN CONSULATES AND TAKE PHOTOS TO BE SENT TO THE SAME ADDRESSES AS THE COPIES OF PROTEST LETTERS. Even a photo of 5 people in front of a consulate is a tremendous morale booster for our brothers and sisters fighting against the destruction of teacher unions & public education!

http://www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/news/world-news/police-end-teachers-city-protest-29578115.html

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Hi all,

Here is a copy of the letter that the US section of the Trinational Coalition to Defend Public Education to Defend Public Education send to the protesting teachers in Mexico. Use it as a template and send copies to:
seccionmexicana.coali@gmail.com
Maestra Graciela Rangel de Michoacán sección XVIII: rasagas@live.com
Prof. Eligio Hernández de Oaxaca XXII: eligiogonzalez@hotmail.com

MEXICO D.F., MEXICO
September 13, 2013

Dear Brothers and Sisters,

The Trinational Coalition to Defend Public Education-USA extends our support for your valiant and militant struggle to defend not just your rights as teachers and trade unionists, but the Mexican people's right to a public education that is guaranteed in your federal constitution. We applaud your courageous resistance against implementation of the present changes in the constitution which would use standardized tests for teachers to be hired and to keep their jobs, standardized tests for students that will limit their future opportunities in life as well as reducing federal funding to state and local schools. These changes will have the worst impact on the poorest states and communities, especially those whose population mainly speak languages other than Spanish.

We face similar attacks in the United States of America under the guise of “reform”. Your struggle for educational and union justice is an inspiration to us about how teachers and communities can unite to defend public education. You have clarified for the world that the forces behind these so-called reforms are powerful corporate interest that intend to privatize public education.

YOUR STRUGGLE IS OUR STRUGGLE!
In solidarity,
Rosemary Lee,

for

Trinational Coalition to Defend Public Education-section USA

Joining Forces for Education's statement on using Broad's Jaime Aquino's resignation to push for authentic reforms

"Once Broad alumni are working inside the education system, they naturally favor hiring other Broadies, which ups the leverage…" — Sharon Higgins

While Los Angeles' corporate media bemoans scoundrel Jaime Aquino's resignation, replete with descriptions of tears from fellow Broadyte John Deasy, there are other voices that see the fall of one of Eli Broad's key chess pieces as an opportunity to demand genuine community input into the hiring of high level administrators running 333 S. Beaudry Avenue (aka Broad's Eastern Palace). Joining Forces for Education, an organization formed in response to Ben Austin and Parent Revolution's vicious attack on the former Weigand principal, issued a powerful statement and call to action today in response to Aquino's resignation.

I'm including the unedited letter from Joining Forces for Education in its entirety here. This needs to be disseminated far and wide. Their call not only for community participation, but for an end to Deasy's abject reign dovetails neatly with the LAUSDHope Campaign to remove Deasy and give the public authentic input into his successor.

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Time is of the Essence to raise public voices in the choice of new senior LAUSD administrators.

With the resignation on Friday, Sept. 13.  of Asst. Supt of LAUSD, Jaime Aquino, we, the public, have an opportunity to influence the hiring of new administrators. 

Since Supt. Deasy will be evaluated by the Board at their next meeting, and his contract is in real jeopardy due to the iPad fiasco for which we California taxpayers will be on the hook for decades, possibly a search will be made for both a Supt, and an Asst. Supt.  There will be a closed meeting this Tuesday of the LAUSD School Board, at 200 S. Beaudry Street location.  Some people have asked me to announce that a community group is forming and will be on the sidewalk with signs and handouts.  Any readers here who are with media, please note this, and readers feel free to send this entire email to others.

1.  FACTS....

When Supt. Deasy was hired, we know there was no search and no competition. Eli Broad mandated to the Board that they hire Deasy, and they did and Aquino was their choice for second in command.  Now we have a new composition on the Board who could be better overseers of public schools and taxpayer money in the future.

With all the Deasy messes at LAUSD,

....and his questionable PhD credentials, and his work for the privatizers like Broad whose Academy trained and graduated him, and Gates who hired him for a short time....

....and his generous fee paid to his academic mentor (who awarded him the questionable doctorate in a few months and with only 9 units) by hiring him as a consultant, raising the issue of quid pro quo at a cost of taxpayer funds of approximately $375,000 (with this mentor now in prison for defrauding millions from the U. of Louisville),

....and for a plethora of poorly conceived decisions like 'teacher jail'  and his hidden actions with Miramonte School,

....and the arbitrary firings. 

For these, and those many things that have been done so 'rapidly' like the shutting down of successful bottom-up programs at Crenshaw HS (where, last week he fired all the teachers who complained including math teacher of 20 years Alex Caputo-Pearl who is/was running for President of UTLA), Verdugo HS, Hamilton HS, and others, where he derided programs designed from bottom-up with teacher/community success, and shut them down in favor of his own administrators and even embedded some charters. 

For all this, perhaps the LAUSD School Board will decide he is a detriment to LA's schools, students, and taxpayers, and will fire him in their next evaluation this month.  Also, since the preponderance of teachers voted 'no confidence' in him, the Board will do a fair and proper search for the two top positions in LAUSD. 

2.  SOLUTIONS....

Let's all join together NOW and make our voices heard by demanding of the Board that they stop being ruled by Eli Broad and his profiteer ilk, and that they institute a new regime of fairness by having a committee comprised of local citizens, local educators, local parents all involved in the wide search for a new Asst Supt, and may be for a Supt...but these all vetted carefully by real people in conjunction with the Board.  We should not have input from politicians and privatizers, but only from sincere supporters of public schools. No Blue Ribbon Committee needed or wanted...none of those who impede a fair selection such as charter promoters Melendez, Sullivan, Riordan, Mrs. Eric Garcetti, Eli Broad, Villaraigosa, Nunez and his boss, Rhee.  Just we plain folks who know the issues and we who pay for all this.

3.  SPEAK OUT NOW by...

writing/calling the LA Times and the LA Weekly, the State Supt. of Education, the Governor, the LA Board of Supervisors, the LA City Council,

contacting other media sources and all the teachers' unions,

and contacting each LAUSD School Board member.

Urge them all to do the right thing for public education and never again be duped and ruled by Broad and his other free market investor-minded cohorts such as Gates, Bloomberg, Murdoch, and the Waltons.  Students and education cannot be successful if run on a profit making business model, and students are not widgets that can all fit into the same sort of testing mode as Common Core which Deasy pushes. 

4. Conclusions...

Billionaire investors who see public education as a great profit opportunity should not be influencing public school board elections such as our recent two, and others nationwide, with huge donations to candidates who are willing to sell themselves for profit. We beat them  this year at this intrusive undemocratic venture by electing teachers Steve Zimmer and Monica Ratliff, who both campaigned on a pittance in comparison with their billionaire financed opponents.

They showed us that change can happen.

Even Governor Jerry Brown, with vast public and teacher pressure, has done an about face on the Obama/Duncan Common Core edicts, and Brown seems to agree with slowing down the process of CC testing. This past weekend was monumental with two of our legislators writing and carrying a bill to NOT test California students on Common Core in 2014 as mandated, but to wait until the students at least study this curriculum before testing.  Brown will probably sign this immediately.   The LA Times and other news sources had reported this testing would be done in January, 2014, and only grades 3 - 8 plus 11 would be electronically tested...but the big caveat was that NO ONE would see the results, not parents, nor teachers, nor the public. This certainly would have been to protect the CC 'pushers' from the scathing results that NYC recently proffered whereby around 90% of students were labeled as failures. It is all online for you to research.  Of course, it would also have meant that 8 year olds would take the test with no keypads, and no ability to even use a keypad, this due to the failure of Deasy and Aquino whose outrageously expensive iPad decisions were so ill-conceived.  This test is mandated for English Language Learners, and also Special Education and Learning Disabled students...and it is time-specific.  Visualize all this...and ask yourself how the outcomes of this testing could ever be accurate.

5. DO IT NOW...

Please get involved Right Now...and join in on this and educate and encourage your own constituencies to immediately write/call all suggested contacts and insist on this public, not political, committee to vet all candidates.   If the Board agrees right now, we can tap volunteers for the committee make up.  This can all be done rapidly online with the active participation of all of us.

Joining Forces for Education
joiningforces4edfoo@aol.com

Susan Ohanian: LAUSDHOPE I admire this spirit and purpose. ¡Venceremos!

#LAUSDHOPE I admire this spirit and purpose. ¡Venceremos! http://t.co/iNTvoKEkVn

— Susan Ohanian (@susanoha) July 14, 2013

¡Venceremos! Join the community search for a new LAUSD superintendent!

An open letter and call to action to our LAUSD community and national education experts like Professor Ravitch regarding the urgent search for a new LAUSD Superintendent

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UPDATE August 2014

Dubious PhD, felonious Felner, SAP round 2, DIBELS, AGT, PSO/iPadGate, MiSiS cRiSiS, and more! Three strikes? Deasy is way past that. #LAUSD

— Robert D. Skeels (@rdsathene) August 24, 2014

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If the union is sound and the teachers voted of their own free will, then the relationship between the school superintendent and the teachers is not simply bad, but dysfunctional of historic proportions. — Professor Bill Tierney

When John Deasy was proffered by Eli Broad and Mayor Villaraigosa as the sole candidate to replace the retiring Ramon C. Cortines, there was no attempt to consider the appropriate superintendent for the community. Even the typically equivocating Los Angeles School District (LAUSD) Board Member Steve Zimmer voiced serious concerns:

"We didn't have a process — internal or external — for the most important job in public education in the United States right now," he tells the Weekly. "It has nothing to do with John Deasy. I'm a big fan. ... But I can't be sure that I got the best person for the job if I didn't get to even talk to anybody else."

Democracies depend on processes. There was no process with Deasy. No vetting. No considering the pro and cons of multiple candidates. The only words that could begin to describe his installment are coronation and ordination.

Far more corporate executive than educator, Deasy's reign as LAUSD Superintendent been an abject exercise in neoliberalism. Marked first by a rash of school closures, reconstitutions, and new school giveaways to private institutions, Deasy made it clear to Los Angeles that he would indeed put his ideology derived from his stints at at the Broad Superintendents Academy and the Gates Foundation before the needs of students and community. There's a litany of complaints against Deasy, most of which are related to callous cuts to vital programs, wasteful and inappropriate spending priorities, adoption of discredited and unproven policies, defiance towards our publicly elected schoolboard, and open hostility towards the very educators tasked with teaching our community's children.

However, this isn't the space to discuss Deasy's glaring shortcomings and myriad failures as superintendent. Given that his only supporters are billionaires, nonprofits that are funded by those selfsame billionaires, and the disgraced former Mayor, there is no longer any reason for this individual to continue his neoliberal project of dismantling our public commons. Instead we are commencing the search for a new superintendent now so that we don't end up in the same situation as we did when Deasy was crowned.

To that end, we are soliciting a list of viable superintendent candidates we feel will best serve the students of Los Angeles. We are also soliciting a list of attributes the community wants our next superintendent to have. Some starter items are here, but it's important that this is a community project, so we want people to submit their suggestions here. Both of these lists will be continually updated. Join us. We can identify the next superintendent candidates who will serve our community. ¡Venceremos!

Candidates for LAUSD Superintendent

Responses to the campaign have been both encouraging and overwhelming. Over the weekend dozens of candidate names have been submitted, and we haven't even reached out to local grassroots groups for their suggestions. There is now a easy to fill out form at the bottom of this post.

Qualities we want in our next superintendent

Either enter qualities wanted in the comments below or email suggestions. If necessary, we'll create another form, but will continually update this list as needed.

• Believes in educating the whole child
• Believes in educating the children of every community.
• Determined to listen to the community
• A professional educator who has had at least some classroom teaching experience
• Understands the relation between poverty and test scores, and advocate to ameliorate the devastating effects of poverty outside as well as inside schools
• Bilingual or multilingual a big plus, but openness to openness to learning the languages of the community

Social media campaign

We intend to launch a social media campaign in support of this historic community project to find the right superintendent for our community. Stay tuned for details.

• Twitter Hashtag #LAUSDHOPE
• Shortlink to this page http://j.mp/LAUSDHOPE
• facebook
• Petition
• QRCode Image

Candidate Suggestions

Petition by iPetitions