Because I know sometimes it helps to read what others have written...

...here's what I sent in yesterday:

Dear Senators Chandler and Moore, and Representatives Spellane, O'Day, Pedone, Fresolo, and Binienda:

I am writing to urge you to vote against the Education Reform Act of 2009.

The original proposal has been a negative one for Worcester from the beginning; as you may know, lifting the charter cap in Massachusetts and thus allowing two more charter schools in Worcester would cost the city $5 million next year. As the school budget is projected to be running a $26 million deficit next year already, this is not going to help.

It also has had a sketchy at best relationship with teachers, as it has moved away from the contractual relationship our unions have had with districts. Though the claim has been that such a new "flexibility" is necessary, the variety of working conditions that teachers in Worcester have under contract shows that not to be so.

For both of these reasons, I went into the State House to testify against the original three bills in September.

The bill's evolution while in the Joint Committee on Education has only made it worse. It now strips teachers' unions of arbitration, a basic right allowing the unions to represent for their members. It strips School Committees of the power to negotiate with unions, centralizing that power in the superintendent, and further removing the power of the purse from the people (whom the School Committees are elected to represent). The bill pushes us down a road to greater privatization of public schools, giving very vague outlines for the sequence by which schools would be declared "chronically underperforming" and be privatized. It also allows for privatization of the bottom 20% of schools, and there is always a bottom 20%, even if all schools are performing well.

All of this from the progressive state of Massachusetts, the home of public education?

This bill, if passed would be a disaster for Worcester. The charter school cost I've mentioned above, in particular, will add to an already difficult situation. Worcester is also bound to be hard hit by the privatization plan, as we have schools that are declared "chronically underperforming" under some of the rules of No Child Left Behind (Ieading, in some cases, to schools being praised by the state and criticized by the fed, or vice versa). This will not improve our relationship or negotiating position with the teachers' union, to say the least. Taking the power of negotiation from School Committees, moving it farther away from the people, is moving in the wrong direction.

I ask you to please, please vote against this bill.