First read Teresa Watanabe and Howard Blume's obsequious homage to the corporate school privatizers in this story. Here's my quick response:
Big news! Ben Austin helps the wealthy Vielka McFarlane, owner of the Celerity corporate charter-voucher chain, increase her market share and revenue stream. Too bad for the community. For anyone deluded enough think that Ben Austin cares about anyone's kids, try taking a look at Part VII of his 501c3's 990 form.
Austin's quote about transferring power to the parents is laughable considering that parents are POWERLESS over CMO charters -- maybe the parents should have asked how much decision making power they would have once the school was seized by McFarlane and her board. Of course, Austin never addresses those questions. Remember when Austin and his privatization junta hid cowardly while parents from his previous parent organization were cast to the curb when Marco Petruzzi shut down Animo Justice by fiat declaration? Was that a "unapologetic transfer of raw power?" The community, on the other hand, protested the gross injustice at the hands of the corporate charter-voucher sector's elite executives.
Give Austin some credit, for a guy on the corporate payroll, he sure finds creative ways to co-opt the language of struggle. A "revolution" funded by Wal-Mart and Microsoft? Please!
Wait until McFarlane and company start pushing out children impacting their inflated API scores like they have in all their other schools. Sorry, but if a school takes public funds, it should be OBLIGATED TO EDUCATE EVERY CHILD.
Today we've seen yet another "unapologetic transfer of" public funds into private hands.
2 comments:
I was an insider to the event and said very little for fear of losing my job. The decision was made by Grace Canada, (Korean but married to a Black man) who was then principal of Celerity Nascent Charter School, to not have the Emmett Till performance. She said her school was about respecting women. She read the first sentence of the presentation where Emmett Till supposedly whistled at a girl. Grace Canada immediately nixed the presentation, which caused a huge furor in the community, and rightly so. Vielka McFarlane immediately supported Grace Canada. Here is what you should know: Grace Canada is retarded (she even claims she never heard of Fulbright and Rhodes Scholars - absolutely had never heard of them). But Vielka McFarlane, the CEO/General/Tyrant/Exectuive Director, absolutely loves Grace and never did any oversight of her decisions. So that's the story. A stupid principal and a domineering leader.
http://firedoglake.com/2007/03/21/la-charter-school-emmett-till-deserved-to-die/#comments
We want to watch our use of the "R" word, since our mentally challenged brothers and sisters deserve our respect, and are smarter than any charter executive or administrator than I'm aware of.
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