Protesting parents bring NYC school board meeting to a halt: NYC test scores

[Hannah Bell]

As soon as the Monday evening meeting at Murry Bergtraum High School began, members of the Coalition for Educational Justice — a organization of parents and activists who largely oppose Mayor Bloomberg’s education policies — demanded to speak. Told they would have to wait until the public comment period at the end of the meeting, parents being yelling, drowning out panel members who left their seats and retreated backstage.

“You dumbed down the tests and the fact is, our kids are not being prepared for college and the world of work,” Ocynthia Williams, one of the coalition’s parent leaders, said into a bull horn. The protest reach its peak when a child climbed onto the stage and was escorted off by a security guard, angering an already-emotional crowd. While parents yelled at the guard, the child burst into tears.

An hour after the meeting officially began, panel members called it off. By then the protestors had begun marching around the auditorium’s perimeter and calling for the panel members to reappear.

City officials blamed the coalition for disrupting the meeting. “Their shouting and screaming proved too disruptive for the panel to continue meeting, and rather than be heard, these individuals sabotaged their chance to speak and derailed important public business,” said Department of Education spokeswoman Natalie Ravitz in an emailed statement.

http://gothamschools.org/2010/08/16/protesting-parents-bring-school-board-meeting-to-a-halt/


"important public business" = closing schools, firing teachers, forcing kids to take more phoney tests: read the comments

yes we did derail it and we will continue to. the voices of parents have been ignored for far too long, this mayor and chancellor feel they can manipulate and PR their way through their destructive reforms… well, we have had enough! there will be changes or their will be growing civil disobediance, this is only the beginning.

And if this is what happened in during a Summer evening, when schools are off, it can be considered the small droplets of what will become a major downpour of protests and civic activism that will take place this Fall…. as the Supreme Leader and the Great Leader attempt to ram destruction of Public Schools to its peak, through the crumbling facade of achievement that they themselves pushed…

It really serves cocky Supreme Leader for life, that the underclass and the ignored are slowly awakening to the Kool Aid that they have been forced to drink for the past 6-8 years, and once the effects of these Kool Aid propaganda wear off, their side effects will be massive protests.

etc. ("supreme leader for life" = bloomberg)

more: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/17/nyregion/17test.html?_r=1

video tomorrow...

[midnight]

1. "You dumbed down the tests." Another reason not to make

our education about the test. The no. can be played with.

[Hannah Bell]

2. k

[Hannah Bell]

3. k