No, I am not here to argue the merits of
the Affordable Care Act. I will argue
that the same lack of transparency has invaded the discussion to reform DallasISD.
I am told over and over I should sign a
petition started by a group that thinks we need school reform. This new group
would reform the Dallas "Independent" School System to a system
managed by unelected School Board members.
I am ready for reform, but I am not ready for fixes that don't fix. Are you?
A few problems exist here with Mayor
Rawlings and his crony capitalism friends who are pushing reform. At public meetings, no one from the Support
Our Public Schools coalition can describe what a new governing structure would
solve that our current school board can not.
For instance, do you support ending
counseling in schools or vocational education programs? If so,
you should sign onto the petition.
Do you believe that low student to
teacher ratios are a thing of the past? Maybe five year old children don't need
individualized attention? If you sign
onto the SOPS petition, you can get higher ratios. Maybe we can warehouse forty kindergarteners
into a room per teacher until we warehouse them in prison. That is a reform option if we move away from
state standards. That's right. This group seems to think that state
standards on student to teacher ratios is inappropriate.
I note with interest that this is called
a home rule effort. Home rule meaning no
state standards, but not real home rule.
An option should this come to the ballot
is the removal of elected school board members.
Has Crimea come to Dallas? Where
in the world are people crying out take away my ability to vote? According to Rawlings and Co. only in Dallas.
Who out there thinks they don't need to
elect their representative to the school board?
I know Mike Morath thinks not electing school board members is a good
idea. This is the same school board
member who was invited to give a commencement address. He then invited a group of the students toauthorize him to sit down and skip an address.
This type sophomoric behavior is exactly the problem with those
promoting "education reform."
Morath had no suggestions for graduating seniors. His SOPS colleagues have no
suggestions on reforming DISD. He wasn't
trying to guide the students to success, just smile for the cameras like a Ken
doll.
Instead he and Mayor Rawlings suggest
voters are unnecessary for the selection of a school board. Maybe they have a short memory, but how long
ago was it this city and state were disenfranchising voters based on the color
of their skin?
That's right. Our collective history is not all that
impressive when it comes to who gets to vote.
History repeats and now it appears a group of white, upper class folks
in the nice part of town want to choose who gets to pick the school board.
Well this is one program for which I
don't need to see a rerun. The school
reform effort will be better off when the SOPS supporters realize that most of
Dallas does not want to turn back the clock.
We want a program that is about us and not them. Then we can start a real discussion of school
reform.
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