Racist School Closings Are The Fruit Of Pentagon Greed

Infographic by Katie Falkenberg, CODEPINK Denver

Do school closings disproportionately affect children in African American communities?

Activists who filed three civil rights complaints with the federal government think so. 

Lyndsey Layton reporting on May 13, 2014 for the Washington Post wrote:

...complaints, sent to the Education Department’s Office for Civil Rights and the Justice Department, charge that students of color from Newark, Chicago and New Orleans have been disproportionately affected by school closures and charter-school expansions. Title VI of the Civil Rights Act prohibits discrimination in the use of federal funds by schools and other institutions [emphasis mine].

In Newark, 13 public schools have closed since 2009. In Chicago, 111 schools have closed since 2001. In New Orleans, all the traditional public schools except five have shut down since 2003. The District of Columbia has closed 39 traditional public schools since 2008. Those shuttered schools have been replaced by public charter schools, which are funded by taxpayers but are privately operated.

Since the federal government continues to squander more than half of its annual allowance from taxpayers on the Pentagon budget, subsidies to states and municipalities continue to decline. Rich communities make up the shortfall in their local school budget with local property tax revenues. Poor communities cannot do the same. 

The fact that U.S. schools and neighborhoods continue to be segregated along color lines, while the income gap between people of color and whites is growing not shrinking, is another problem. So is the fact that charter schools are essentially union busting with a pretty face.

We need to close these failing schools which are disempowering students forced to attend them, say neoliberal Obama administration officials and city bosses like Rahm Emmanuel of Chicago. That's the essence of the No Child Left Behind Act which is often credited to George W. Bush but passed Congress with major bipartisan support.

But that claim is an enormous lie, around $600.7 billion worth of falsehood if the Fiscal Year 2015 National "Defense" Authorization Act passes the Senate as handily as it passed the House.

In order to enact Title VI we need to defund the Pentagon and its parasites, and use the money to adequately fund schools in EVERY neighborhood.

Our continued failure to do so in the U.S. contains within it the seeds of our demise as a society.

Other wealthy countries have zoomed ahead of us for years in adequately feeding, housing and educating their youth. They can afford to do so because they do not overspend their tax revenues on "defense" contracts for super wealthy weapons manufacturers and surveillance corporations.

Fiscal Year 2012 data Source: Arms Control Center.org

Bring our war dollars home to provide every child in the U.S. with A+ access to education right in their neighborhood schools. Because segregated access to education isn't just illegal -- it's disgusting.

The Boy(s) Who Cried Emergency

Once upon a time there was a boy whose job was to cry emergency. People believed that the security of a very large flock depended on his doing the job loudly and at the right times.

There was a problem, though. The boy had a hard time pronouncing long words like emergency. If there had been, for instance, a nuclear emergency during the time he had the job, the results might have been comical rather than alarming. So his bosses came up with a code word -- actually, a number -- that was short, easy to pronounce, and easy to remember. They also came up with color codes that could be used to describe the precise shade of emergency on any given day.

Eventually the boy outgrew his job and a new boy was found to sound the alarm. The new boy had no trouble pronouncing long words and was actually quite good at it. He still used the code number and colors from time to time, too, just for variety.

This was all very well, but the real wolves were not one bit scared away by the constant bleating of alarming words. As the flock listened contentedly to the song of emergency, the wolves were circling around, picking off weaker prey and devouring them. At first no one noticed much, because who cared about the weak ones? But over time the pack of wolves grew fatter, stronger and bolder on a steady diet.

Meanwhile bridges were crumbling, schools were closing, jobs were evaporating, and people had no health care. Their ears filled with the cry "emergency," they struggled to find non-existent public transportation to take them to the unemployment office. Their children graduated from college with six figure loans to pay back, but no jobs on the horizon. The grown children wanted to move back home but alas, the homes had been foreclosed on by the banks -- banks which had grown fat while everyone was listening to the emergency song.

Where had all the money gone? $1 trillion had been spent to make everyone safer in the long, long emergency. So in the end, the song of the boys came true. It really was an emergency, and no one needed to be reminded about it anymore. All they had to do was look around.

Hannah Kreitzer & the wolf, from last year's Draw-a-thon. Join in the fun this year at Draw-a-thon II at Space Gallery in Portland on Vet's Day (11/11). Kenny Cole's show on drones "The Hellfire Story" will be on display, and artists will respond with their ideas of what bringing our war dollars home could look like. More info here: http://mainedrawathon.blogspot.com/

Youth librarian calls us to march with her

School closed June, 2010

Just when I was reeling from this "value added" chart for a teacher, showing what scores his students received on standardized tests last year, and published in the LA Times with the teacher's name and his amazing rant, I got this righteous clarion call for literacy and our children. Check it out -- my PINK sister Des lays down why we would want to be in Wash DC on Oct 2 demanding equal education for all.

Politicians, public schools and public libraries
by Desiree Fairooz, Youth Services Librarian in Arlington, VA

As state after state chips away at our nation's public school programs and public libraries, especially those in communities already underserved I wonder what the future holds for our children. Do a simple google search for school or kindergarten funding cuts, and you'll see just how drastically our public education system is suffering. The National Institute for Early Education Research at Rutgers University reports that across the country state pre-k programs are being cut by up to 50% this year (in Arizona). Libraries fare little better, and officials in the city of Camden, NJ, are talking about closing their entire library system altogether due to lack of funds. (http://www.npr.org/blogs/thetwo-way/2010/08/06/129037510/camden-nj-to-close-libraries-citing-money-woes)

Politicians love to kiss babies, hug their mothers while on the campaign trail, bellowing pro-education and pro-library rhetoric. Yet back in their offices and on the Capitol floor our representatives quietly fasttrack those same communities' tax dollars to the bank executives in the form of bailouts and to the war profiteers in no-bid contracts. For example, Senator Jack Reed (D-RI) recently spoke at an ALA rally in DC and admitted to me right after his speech at the library rally that he indeed voted for the last war supplemental. Politicians know that once in office the public does not pay attention to their voting record.

I challenge teachers, librarians and other advocates for children to organize, mobilize and join us on October 2 in the One Nation rally and march in Washington, DC. On Saturday, October 2 we will come together with labor unions, peace advocates, students, civil rights leaders, and concerned Americans from all corners of the country to rally for jobs, education, and peace. There will also be a special march Saturday morning specifically for funding for education. Arrive by Friday or stay until Monday or Tuesday and march into your Senator's and Congresspeople's offices demanding an end to war funding, the bloated Pentagon budget, billionaire tax breaks, and demand our money back from those bank bailouts who gave their execs bonuses. Take off one day for kids and STAND UP AND SPEAK OUT while schools and libraries are still PUBLIC.

You can find out more about One Nation at www.onenationworkingtogether.org and sign up to join me at www.codepink.org/onenation.

Desiree Fairooz is a Youth Services Librarian in Arlington, VA.

STATE PRE-K PROGRAM CUTS FY10 & PROPOSED CUTS FY11 Arizona 50% ($6,119,959) 100% ($6,119,959) California 0.40% ($1,755,600) Colorado 2.3% ($950,391) 3.5% ($2,565,500) Connecticut 5.8% ($4,187,275) Florida 1% ($3,672,000) Illinois 10% ($32,702,446) 15.9% ($48,431,400) Kansas (At-Risk Program) 6.8% ($1,356,767) 5.2% ($1,716,000) Kentucky 2% ($1,502,000) Louisiana (LA4) 7% ($5,499,000) 0.8% ($797,600) Massachusetts 27% ($17,474,398) Michigan 7.3% ($7,537,250) New Mexico 3% ($549,400) 10.4% ($2,007,200) New York 8% ($30,014,097) 3.5% ($14,493,500) North Carolina 3% ($5,114,157) 3% ($5,000,000) Ohio 33% ECE ($11,473,552) 100% ELI ($116,874,161) Pennsylvania (Pre-K Counts & state HdSt investments) 0.9% ($1,300,500) South Carolina (4K and CDEPP) 16% ($6,542,810) Washington 3% ($1,678,289) 19% ($10,431,000) Wisconsin (HdSt supplement) 3.5% ($252,438) National Institute for Early Education Research, Rutgers University, 2010

Additional related sites:
http://homebuyingguide.co.cc/planned-cuts-to-schools-stir-fears.htm

http://www.freep.com/article/20100902/NEWS02/9020455/1001/News/District-slices-1.7M-more-from-budget-kids-to-feel-the-cuts

http://www.pennlive.com/midstate/index.ssf/2010/09/harrisburg_school_district_adm.html#postComment

http://oregon.statebudgetwatch.org/2010/08/19/oregon-can-no-longer-dodge-the-budget-axe/
--
Desiree Fairooz

Building WMDs: bad jobs program

source: The U.S. Employment Effects of Military
and Domestic Spending Priorities
(Garrett-Peltier & Pollin, UMass Amherst, Oct 2007).

This Thursday I am invited to participate in a forum in Brunswick called "Where Do Our Dollars Go?" As a public school employee I'll comment on the effects of budget cuts to education, and how this plays out in the actual schools in our communities. Many people have viewed the slideshow that my husband Mark Roman and I created this summer using photographs we took at several closed primary and elementary schools in Maine.

Brunswick is a special case because its school district lost thousands of students, and thousand of dollars in subsidies, when the naval air base closed and military families moved out of the area. This also caused a local toy store to go out of business, and probably many others I don't know about.

In the U.S. we are trained to think that military = prosperity. The Congress has carefully spread funding for weapons manufacturing and installations like military air bases in every state of the nation. That way everyone's ox is gored when military expenditures are cut. As Rep. Chellie Pingree explained this to me last year, "They say 'Do you want to put three thousand people out of work your first term in office?" She was referring to the workforce at Bath Iron Works and a question from me about cutting military spending and converting that industrial capacity to building wind turbines, as an enlightened group of workers at BIW has been calling for.

As you can see from the chart above, conversion would generate far more jobs at BIW than building Aegis destroyers does. Weapons manufacturing generates fewer full time jobs with benefits than does a similar investment. This model by economists at UMass Amherst crunches the numbers to find out what a $1 billion investiment in various sectors of the economy generates in terms of jobs. The model is based on actual data from past investments.

Building components for a light rail system -- one that could be used to provide low carbon transport for Americans, such as citizens of all the developed countries except ours enjoy -- generates more than twice as many jobs as building weapons. Putting the $1 billion into education generates a bit more than twice as many jobs. Investing in either health care or construction of components to make energy efficient housing would generate thousands more jobs than military contracting.

Even just giving money away in the form of tax cuts to you and me has stimulated the economy to generate more jobs than building weapons does. Of course, this model used data from more robust times, before the Great Recession. With just released census data for 2009 showing one in seven now living in poverty (make that one in five children), a tax break nowadays might mean getting caught up on the rent, or saving your house from foreclosure, rather than consumer behavior that generates jobs.

People used to ridicule teachers for being paid so poorly vis a vis others with their level of education. But being a school teacher in central Maine is a solid job these days -- unless you get laid off when they cut teaching positions due to budget cuts, as happened to a French teacher, several elementary teachers, and half a math teacher at my high school. (How can you cut workers in half? The math teacher found a full time position elsewhere and resigned.) My sister in California told me a junior high school math teacher she knows has 44 students in one class this year. Somebody who used to teach 22 of those kids is on the unemployment line today.

Well, how much math does a kid need to know to operate a joystick and kill people by remote control?

CLOSED a photo essay

Mark and I went around documenting elementary schools that had been closed at the end of last school year due to budget cuts. We also photographed some closed businesses that failed recently.

Bring Our War $$ Home!

View more presentations from lsavage.

$1 Trillion and counting -- what didn't get funded?

From the former school’s website. "Burnham Village School houses four sessions of kindergarten. This small building offers a unique experience for students. It is a Kindergarten Center with all programs centered on the developmental needs of the five-year-old child."

The tally for combined price tags of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan reached $1 trillion this year (if you can stand it, check the madly running counter here and note that we've added $38 billion to that figure already). It's such a large number, it's hard to relate to it.

Mark and I decided to come at it from a different direction by documenting some of the things that did not get funded while borrowing for more war spending raged on. We drove around photographing elementary schools closed for lack of funds at the end of the '09-10 school year.

On our travels we spent the night at some of Maine's state park campgrounds, where newish facilities to shower and wash dishes had signs thanking the state's voters for approving a bond issue that made the construction possible. This represents borrowed $ to be paid back by state taxes that increase rather than decrease quality of life.

We also drove over an astonishing number of re-paved roads, several of which boasted signs stating that the project represented federal recovery act $$ at work. People in Maine joke that we have only two seasons: winter, and construction. I imagine many of these road improvement projects were "shovel ready" and had been put off for lack of funds. There were so many of them, including Interstate 95, state highways, and just plain county roads, it was hard not to get the feeling that projects that stimulate demand for petroleum products (and even use a lot of petroleum in the asphalt) were a big priority for allocation of recovery funds.

Palmyra Consolidated School was closed this year for an estimated savings of $448,292. That's equal to the cost of about 10 minutes of the war in Afghanistan.


Mark in front of the former Monson (Maine) Elementary School, closed June 2010. Isaac Crabtree turned up as our park ranger that night. He lives across from the school, which is now a community center for the town of Monson. When asked his opinion he said, "I just think it's a shame for Kindergarteners to have to ride the bus for 45 minutes each way."

Our own local school district closed Embden Elementary, which had the best test scores in reading in math of all the schools in our district. Estimated savings: $200,000.
The community school that got us started on our photo essay project. It closed its doors in June. Some small family members of ours and grandchildren of our friends were heartbroken.

Bring our war $$ home!