a nationwide moratorium on school closings

Helen Moore
school activist in Detroit

As homeschoolers have worked, often outside the law, to gain the right to homeschool their children and leave a system that dominates families to the extent that even homeschooling your own child can be considered a crime. Parents and communities are now working to take charge of their local schools and to be involved in the educational decisions that affect their schools and their own kids.

Schools are not a way to make jobs for distant quants and administrative personnel prone to corporate lobbying. Schools are a social service that we provide for ourselves; families and kids should be getting the services they need and want.  We do not need a race somewhere that creates losers as well as winners; we do not need schools with better numbers on a report on some desk: we need schools that are easier to access, far more flexible, far more supportive, local as well as networked for wider participation, schools that provide all children and families with the educational services they need and want, schools where families are able to choose and control participation to better shape their lives.

First report on Journey for Justice 2 hearing in D.C. | Parents Across America: “We don’t just have failing schools; we have a failing system of epidemic proportions. Community and parent voices have been removed from the process and the privatization has removed all checks and balances so that the system is no longer accountable to the public,” said Karran Harper-Royal, parent with Parents Across America, New Orleans. “The answer is not charter schools, the answer is fortifying traditional public schools through a community-driven process. ...

"Students, parents and advocacy representatives from 18 major United States cities testified today at a community hearing before Arne Duncan and the U.S. Department of Education in Washington, D.C. on the devastating impact and civil rights violations resulting from the unchecked closings and turnarounds of schools serving predominantly low-income, students of color."

Parents and Students Demand Nationwide Moratorium on School Closings: Watch the full multi-part series at the link.

"Parents and Students Demand Nationwide Moratorium 
on School Closings"

Journey to Justice, September 2012

Feds launch probe of DPS school closings, statewide school district | The Detroit News | detroitnews.com: "The group, in one complaint, opposed the closure of a number of Detroit Public Schools buildings and the transition of 15 schools and 10,000 students to the state's new Education Achievement Authority, a statewide school district for low-performing schools." 

Urban Education Activists Take Complaints To Obama Administration (VIDEO) | Progress Illinois: "Plaintiffs from Boston, Chicago, Detroit, New York, Washington, D.C. as well as Wichita, Kansas and Eureka, Mississippi announced that they plan to file seven separate complaints with the U.S. Department of Education stating that their respective city’s education policies violate the Civil Rights Act." 

DPS CAUGHT IN DEVIL’S TRIANGLE | VOICE OF DETROIT: The city's independent newspaper, unbossed and unbought: "“But Detroit also has a robust charter school industry with a student enrollment of 54,000 kids. That’s right, Detroit’s charter school enrollment is set to outpace its public school enrollment. That alone is so mindbending that it eclipses the fact that when the charter school population and public school population of Detroit is combined, Detroit’s pre-K through 12 student population has actually increased in recent years.” "

make public schools truly public
the social value of shared resources
community organizing: laying a foundation
our educational commons
theft of education crimes
side effects of the literacy factory model
what's wrong with the schools?
understanding school funding