Florida teachers' unions, Hillsborough County schools join Walmart foundation for vouchers...

[madfloridian]

for poor students to private religious schools. These vouchers are paid for with public tax money. My money is going to private religious schools.

Two are mentioned in the article...Bible Truth Ministries in Tampa and Tampa Bay Christian Academy.

This article was written by Tom Marshall, and it makes the partnership between Hillsborough public schools and the Sam Walton Foundation seem like a dream come true. It is what one would call propaganda because it only presents one side.

Taking public tax money and giving it to private religious schools is breaking down important barriers between religion and state...and the writer of this article is praising it.

Hillsborough schools and teachers' union join hands with Florida voucher advocates to train private school teachers

In a move that experts are calling nearly unprecedented, the Hillsborough County schools and teachers' union have joined forces with a nonprofit Florida voucher group to help train private school teachers.

Step Up for Students — which runs the state's tax credit voucher program — plans to spend at least $100,000 on classes for teachers who serve its scholarship students, among the county's most economically disadvantaged children. The school district and union will provide space in the jointly developed Center for Technology and Education.

"Bottom line is these are our children, they are disadvantaged children, and they often return to our public schools," said Jean Clements, president of the Hillsborough Classroom Teachers' Association. "I want them to get the best possible education, wherever they get it."

Most of the children, who receive up to $3,950 a year in tuition under the Florida Tax Credit

I have a question...why not give them that education in public schools? Or is the power of the millions poured into the anti-public school campaign by Walmart and other corporations.

I knew that Walmart had been investing 50 million a year for a charter school crusade, but now I realize they are into vouchers as well.

The Waltons specialize in giving money to opponents of public education.

The Walton Family Foundation of Wal-Mart is the single biggest investor in charter schools in the United States, giving $50 million a year to support them. The Waltons specialize in giving money to opponents of public education. “Empowering parents to choose among competing schools,” said John Walton, son of Wal-Mart’s founder, “will catalyze improvement across the entire K–12 education system.”

According to a National Committee for Responsive Philanthropy (NCRP) report, “Some critics argue that it is the beginning of the ‘Wal-Martization’ of education, and a move to for-profit schooling, from which the family could potentially financially benefit. John Walton owned 240,000 shares of Tesseract Group Inc. (formerly known as Education Alternatives Inc.), which is a for-profit company that develops/manages charter and private schools as well as public schools.”23 Wal-Mart is a notorious union-busting firm, famous for keeping its health-care costs down by discouraging unhealthy people from working at its stores, paying extremely low wages with poor benefits, and violating child labor laws. The company has reportedly looted more than $1 billion in economic development subsidies from state and local governments.24 Its so-called philanthropy seems also to be geared to the looting of public treasuries.

As for a coordinated effort, the private incursion into public schools is being pushed by a band of jackals grouped around Bill Gates and the $2 billion that his Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation have sunk into the education “reform” movement. The foundation funded a 2006 study by the New Commission on the Skills of the American Workforce called Tough Choices or Tough Times, “signed by a bipartisan collection of prominent politicians, businesspeople, and urban school superintendents,” which "called for a series of measures including: (a) replacing public schools with what the report called “contract schools,” which would be charter schools writ large; (b) eliminating nearly all the powers of local school boards—their role would be to write and sign the authorizing agreements for the contract schools; (c) eliminating teacher pensions and slashing health benefits; and (d) forcing all 10th graders to take a high school exit examination based on 12th grade skills, and terminating the education of those who failed (i.e., throwing millions of students out into the streets as they turn 16)"

Take money away from public schools. Use it for forming other types of schools that don't have to adhere to the same standards as public schools have traditionally done.

Take money from public schools and give it out in the form of vouchers. Another way to break the back of the public education which began to be undermined under the Reagan administration.

I am a retired teacher, a parent of children who went through the public school system. I see the religious private schools starting to grow in our area. I was about to use the word "bloom", but I can't use that word to describe schools that teach that women must be submissive. I can't use that word to describe schools that teach discrimination and hate against gays.

I don't want my tax money being used that way. But it is being done anyway with the blessing of the Hillsborough County schools and their teachers' unions.

[madfloridian]

1. In the comments section several question how it can be done.

I question it also. The courts have never fully addressed all the issues about FL vouchers, and the religious right keeps pushing for the vouchers with money from corporations.

I question the constitutionality and legality of giving public money to private religious schools, in fact to private schools at all.

[onethatcares]

2. take money from the public schools, declare

public schools a failure, show huge dropout rates while not talking about teachers being laid off and substitutes being used more often.

Tell students that go to semi private religious schools how lucky they are to be there. There begins the class war.

Can an atheist school or agnostic school get voucher money too?

[madfloridian]

3. ha ha "Can an atheist school or agnostic school get voucher money too? "

Sorry about that.

:evilgrin:

Take money from schools, say they don't work.

[madfloridian]

6. BTW

thanks for the response. I notice most folks are not at all concerned about corporations getting profit from schools now, and they don't even mind giving public money to private religious schools.

I guess we are so far down the road now that most just accept it. :shrug:

Take money from public schools, put down the teachers, make them sound like failures, as you say imply private schools are better....a recipe for corporatization of schools.

How ironic...public school teachers and unions joining to train private school teachers who are taking away money from them.

[imdjh]

10. Yes, atheist/agnostic schools can take vouchers.

[madfloridian]

4. More on their corporate donors

http://www.heartland.org/policybot/results/22680/Florida_Lawmakers_Applaud_Donors_to_Step_Up_for_Students_Program.html

[madfloridian]

5. Here are the funders of the Thomas B Fordham Institute which is pushing this.

and who is mentioned in the article.

http://www.edexcellence.net/index.cfm/our-funders

The benefits are great for everyone involved except for those who support America's public education system.

[Amos Moses]

7. K&R

[Riley18]

8. I belong to a teacher's union in Florida and would drop them if they pulled this stunt.

It is a shame that a corporation like WalMart has been able to extract a profit by pretending to want to educate our children. Public schools do not receive enough funding and these vouchers are just the beginning. The reality is that these charter schools have been created in order to end free public schools. It saddens me that the people being conned into putting their children in charter schools do not stop and ask themselves why all of a sudden big business "cares" about them.

[madfloridian]

9. It's a real shock to see public schools and unions cave to vouchers.

I was really surprised to read it. I wonder if they took a vote of teachers?

[Riley18]

11. That is a good question. I know what my vote would be.

I believe strongly in unions, but they do not have much power in Florida. It kills me that teachers can work without belonging to the union. When I was growing up in Philly they were called scabs. Nobody uses that term anymore. Oooh the good old days:) Anyway, now it is the opposite with the non-union teachers kicking us around and demanding their "right" to the use of a room at school even if we want to use it for a union meeting. I pay almost a thousand dollars a year to help with negotiating salary and working conditions for all teachers regardless of whether they belong to the union or not.

Today the morning shows had Al Sharpton and Newt Gingrich all buddy buddy about charter schools. Who would have ever thought those two would ever have been so close. Sick

[madfloridian]

12. All Democrats will have to be for charter schools now.

Since they are the goal of our Secretary of Education. It will happen.

I have not been trustful of Sharpton since he had Roger Stone financing his 04 campaign.

[Jakes Progress]

13. They are breaking out the champagne

at the neocon headquarters. gomer norquist is in orgiastic bliss. They are winning.

Yeah. We won the election. But the neocon takeover of American life is growing more complete each day.

While we wave pom-poms and boast about killing the republican party, the goals of those who are against everything progressive keep getting every single thing they want.

[DonCoquixote]

14. Let us not forget why religion wants to ruin public education

Because if the control education, they will control who in the society gets positions of leadership. This is then plan in Dixie, and in Saudi Arabia, whether the God of Abraham is worshiped, and where stupidity is considered a form of grace.