Wednesday, October 19, 2011

Bringin' the heat! OWS Committee for Public Education Issues Call to Action

Julie Cavanagh, an organizer with the Grassroots Education Movement who will be participating in ODOE, said the OWS message and practices reflect education activists concerns.
“There is no greater representation for the lack of democracy in what’s happening in public education policy right now than the PEP,” said Cavanagh, who works a special education teacher. “It’s a group of people who believe they are accountable to one man as opposed to 1.1 million school children. That’s wrong. We want the representational democracy we’re entitled to.”
Good Gotham Schools article: Inspired by Wall St. protest, activists vow to ‘Occupy the DOE’


Hello all!

Next Tuesday labor groups, community groups, teachers, students, parents and advocates will be occupying the Mayor's Panel for Educational Policy (the former democratically elected Board of
Education). The Panel is a 13 member group that has a eight member majority are appointed by the mayor to rubber stamp the damaging corporate educational "reforms" he is forcing upon public schools.

We, like the 99%, believe that decisions that impact public schools should be made democratically, by the people that are involved in the system such as parents, students, teachers, and administrators. For that reason, we will be holding the first DEMOCRATIC General Assembly for Public Education at the Panel for Educational Policy from 5:30-8pm.

We are calling on all people that believe in the principles of Occupy Wall Street and the 99% to join us in showing the mayor, the chancellor, and the PEP what real democracy looks like. We would love
for you to support us in the struggle to stop the attack on public schools.
When: Tuesday, October 25th @5:30PM
Where: Seward Park High School
350 Grand Street (near Williamsburg Bridge)

In solidarity,
The OWS Committee for Public Education

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2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Not to be pedantic, but while the local school boards were elected, members of the old Board of Education were political appointees. Nevertheless, there was a far less dictatorial and explicitly destructive environment prior to mayoral control. Natural enough, since Bloomberg doesn't believe in public education.

ed notes online said...

No one is calling for a return to the old system the way it was. The old "elected" local boards were barely elected in elections run by political patronage machines. One theory is to break them down into smaller entities to make them less difficult to control.

As for a central board - elect them too even if subject to Bloomberg buying that election too, if we have a big batch of people on the board it would be more difficult to control.

But lots to talk about in drafting a new governance structure. ICE did a lot of work on that idea in offering an alternative to the UFT support for mayoral control.