Best opening speech of the school year?

I'm nominating Charlotte Hummel.

Despite the national and state political movements which purport to improve education – movements I think of as being based on the idea that “the beatings will continue until morale improves,” I have come to firmly believe that those of us who know what public education is really about – like those of us in the William Penn School District family – those of us in this room, others who work for the students in the district, the parents, students and community – must adopt and live by our own philosophy, a new approach to how we approach public education and that is: “We are wearing our own Ruby Slippers.”

Of course, where national and state policy and practice make sense we should embrace it; but where it doesn’t make sense -- like funding schemes that ensure apartheid education and community disintegration, the turning of children into data generators, teachers into script readers and test proctors and administrators into Pavlovian competitors for the next race for the money – in those instances, we should and will speak up, point out that the emperor has no clothes and take the rational albeit radical path of resistance.

We must not, as they used to say in the civil rights movement – participate in our own oppression. So it’s a good thing that WPSD has one of the most radical superintendents and school board presidents in the state when it comes to speaking truth to power. We are wearing our own Ruby Slippers and you’d better not be stepping on our toes.

Way to speak it, Ms. Hummel!