Three to read which give some insight into the state of school governance

•  First up, do read Matt Barnum in the Wall Street Journal on the effort to desegregate districts. But don't call it busing (...sigh. Such a terrible understanding we have of busing)
  'Though it comes pretty far in, I thought this part was really key:
  

  Advocates now emphasize voluntary strategies to achieve integration, rather than mandatory cross-district busing, an approach that can “generate enormous amounts of public opposition,” said R. Shep Melnick, a political scientist at Boston College. 

  Gary Stein, a retired New Jersey Supreme Court justice who led the suit in that state, said plaintiffs are seeking to create new magnet schools to attract white families into urban districts and to allow students in urban areas to transfer to suburban school. 

  “We don’t think that forced busing and countywide school districts are options that at the moment are politically palatable,” he said.

• Turns out that those pushing for state funds to be available for homeschoolers may have just triggered a pushback on what has been a few decades long effort to dismantle state oversight.
  

  ...home-school advocates are also facing pressure from an unlikely source: the school-choice movement, which pushes for families’ access to tax dollars for private education. Although both movements believe public schools are failing America’s children, school-choice advocates are more open to accountability measures, such as standardized tests, in exchange for public funding.
  
  After years of pushing vouchers for private-school tuition, those advocates are now championing more flexible spending accounts that could be used by home-schoolers, too. But the proposals have divided America’s home educators, with many arguing that accepting government money and oversight is a surrender of the liberties the movement worked for 40 years to achieve.

• And speaking of school funding, the push to create a Catholic charter school in Oklahoma gets a close look in this Politico piece.
  

  Behind the effort to change the law are Christian conservative groups and legal teams who, over the past decade, have been beneficiaries of the billion-dollar network of nonprofits largely built by [Leonard] Leo, the Federalist Society co-chairman.

Liberty and justice for whom?

 I haven't been blogging on "Moms for Liberty" the group out of Florida that started during the pandemic about masking, but shifted into book bans, anti-diversity work, and more; there's also a close relationship/overlap with Christian nationalism. They had a national gathering last week in Philadelphia, though, and the mainstream press did a not-great job in outlining what they're about, so I thought I'd share some links here to be sure we're more clear.

The claim is that this is "parent voice," but which parents advocating for what is very specific. 

Recommended reading (I'll add more if more comes to my attention): 

• Inside Moms for Liberty’s summit: Big money and even bigger conspiracy theories from Media Matters for America
  In session after session, speakers offered a warped view of reality aimed at manipulating parents into believing they’re righteous liberators battling some ambiguous enemy located in public schools. They warned audience members that the teachers unions and other school officials that are “indoctrinating our kids” are on a mission to do everything from grooming their children to securing “world domination.”
  I’ve been following Moms for Liberty for over two years, and it’s now the fastest-growing self-described “parental rights” organization in the United States, hiding behind the innocuous descriptor to covertly push a far-right agenda. Its meteoric rise has coincided with an alarming increase in harassment and threats directed at teachers, administrators, and school officials across the country — so much so that the Southern Poverty Law Center designated Moms for Liberty as an extremist group this year. 
  
  
• Moms for Liberty is part of a long history of rightwing mothers’ activism in the US from The Guardian
  More broadly, the group’s mission resonates with an established history of rightwing mothers’ movements that focused on schools in order to block movements for social equality and to preserve structures of white supremacy.

• My Deeply Unsettling Return to the Moms for Liberty Conference from Mother Jones:
  Reading ABC’s piece a few days after the conference ended, I marveled not at its neutral tone, but at how much simply had been ignored.
  
  
• Moms for Liberty flexes its muscle--and faces pushback from The Hechinger Report/Salon:
  This year, the disinformation about what actually happens in public school took on the sheen of familiarity. Strategy sessions covered ground that had become mainstream to many in attendance: “Comprehensive Sex Education: Sex Ed or Sexualization,” “Protecting Parental Rights,” “Protecting Kids from Gender Ideology,” “Cracking the SEL Code: The Manipulative Double Speak of Social Emotional Learning.” 
  
  
• At Moms for Liberty Summit, 'Mama Bears' declare spiritual war on the 'radical left' from Religion Dispatches
  The vibe was strange, eerie, and excited—a cross between a White supremacist sorority meeting; a capitalist love-fest with deep bonding over hatred for “the Left,” the LGBTQ+ community, and anti-racism efforts (all dressed up as expressions of love for their children); and a pentecostal revival with some distinct NAR overtones.
  
  
• Six reasons why Moms for Liberty is an extremist organization from The Hill
  Despite (or because of) the overheated rhetoric, many Americans appear to have very little substantive knowledge about Moms for Liberty.

Worcester School Committee meets Thursday, October 18

You can find the agenda here. There is again not a report of the superintendent (...are we going to talk about accountability at some point, here?). There are a number of recognitions.
Miss Biancheria has filed for reconsideration of her item on snow removal equipment (is she questioning the referral?).
Miss McCullough's item on on I'm Not Scared; I'm Prepared is back on the agenda (?).
Mr. Monfredo is requesting a report on cursive writing.
Because there are still a number of homeschooling families receiving run-around on getting their plans approved by the district (and with an utter lack of consistency), homeschooling plans are back on the agenda on an item filed by Mr. O'Connell.
As you may have read, the House Worcester 17th district race got a Worcester Public Schools crossover this week:

[17th Worcester district Republican candidate Paul] Fullen and Jeff Creamer, principal of South High, are pictured shaking hands with the front facade of South Community High School displayed prominently in the background. It also includes a plug from Creamer, which, importantly, attributes him as the principal.

Creamer is now vigorously denying that he ever endorsed Fullen, and Superintendent Binienda says that Creamer didn't ask what Fullen was going to do with the photo of he, a candidate for public office wearing a suit, shaking hands with Creamer, the principal of South High, in front of South High. Okay, then.
In any case, the item from Mr. Comparetto that made it on the agenda for Thursday reads:

Request that the Administration interact with the City Manager and City Solicitor to make certain that all City of Worcester employees are fully informed about the State's guidelines regarding appointed and public employees’ public participation in political fundraising efforts and endorsements.

...which would seem to be only part of the problem (as Binienda is saying that she understands this not to be a conflict, which in case can someone get an actual OCPF ruling?); the other problem (as Bill Shaner covered in "Worcesteria" in the first link) is the principal of a predominately children of color school has endorsed, in appears, a candidate with openly racist views. Training in campaign finance isn't all that's needed here; administrators in Massachusetts are in part evaluated on culturally proficient communication (indicator III C) and on cultural proficiency itself (indicator IV B), and while this is hardly the only indication that WPS has a serious issue on cultural proficiency, it certainly is an important additional one.

Mr. Comparetto also is asking about the cost of high stakes testing (any chance we could examine the USE of high-stakes testing, as well, since we seem to be doing a nice job of channelling a lot of privileged kids into "gifted" programs using them now?).

Miss Biancheria is asking about the use of In Force Technology which is software that allows teachers to call 911 directly in case of an emergency, per the item. (er...)  And here's that article again on how much money is being made on school safety in the current atmosphere.
Miss Biancheria also would like a report on environmental management, including the number of employees involved.

There are two requests for prior fiscal year payments: $200.00 to the Educational Development Center (EDC) Learning Transforming Lives for the 2018 Urban Collaborative Spring Meeting Registration and $1,150.00 to Taft Education Center for services rendered in FY18.

There are also two (BIG) grants: the Skills Capital Grant ($495,575) for robotics equipment at Worcester Tech, and $150,000 from the Barr Foundation for what looks like research on post-secondary success of WPS students, in connection with the strategic plan.

There is also executive session posted for negotiations with Plumbers and Steamfitters and with Tradesmen.

Hey, guess who's now a PAC?

Stand for Children!
Not only that, they've now joined forces (check the addresses) with our old friends, Democrats for Education Reform (hereafter, DFER). You'll remember that this comes (not coincidentally) at exactly the same time as Stand's atrocious ballot initiative, tying all decisions around teachers to student test scores (it's called, with the ed reformers' genius for Orwellian language* "Great Teachers Great Schools").
Gee, you think they're planning on spending some money?



*and totally lack of attention to punctuation. But I digress.