Sunday, June 12, 2011

PUBLIC SCHOOLS FOR SALE

The "closed door" meeting, absent John King with the list of players in the Buffalo Public Schools heist was not interesting. More smoke and mirrors. Behind those closed doors, Hoyt's vision of a hundred charter schools & ReformEd comes to life. I wonder why Sam Hoyt was not at that special, private meeting since he has the largest voice for privatization? He was sounding the siren and pushing state takeover, even though he couldn't answer any questions about what that means, exactly. He was yelling from the rooftops about chaos and disorder, and how we needed to act now. More Shock Doctrine at work. Hoyt's once "when rich people donate money to public schools, it is good" line is remedial and dismissive. At least he was as far as any real discussion on the matter... I'm hoping he was referring to the New Market Tax Credit, like good for them, new snake oil salesmen, not for kids. It is good for the wealthy. A 39% return on your money is great in this economy. Seems as if he and the Mayor could finally agree on something and take Buffalo to the cleaners one more time, hand in hand.
Talking about public things behind closed doors always makes me a little nervous. After realizing the new State Education Commissioner said goodbye to his partner who has been hand picked to run ReformEd I have become especially suspicious. Both King & Hoyt, Inc were suspiciously absent. I guess Mayor Brown making the meeting on that particular day was no mistake after all. It would have smelled funny to have our Commissioner present at a closed door meeting where they are deciding to pay his old pals millions of dollars to "turnaround" (takeover) schools. Failure trains stop at Recuse Station and keep going. Instead of pushing to make his friends more wealthy, Hoyt may want to look at some new legislation preventing the State Commissioner from profiteering on the failure of our public schools. ReformEd is starting to look like a pass-through agency for Uncommon Schools, where John King was Executive Director. This is starting to sound a little like the Haliburton stories from Iraq. Cheney went from $1M to net worth of $70 M in one year. Let's watch King closely here...Watch for what contracts are awarded and to whom, then the "why" will be answered once dots are connected like decimal points on a bank statement. Time for teachers to have their own closed door meetings. Mr. Rumore?

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