Breaking News! Another meeting of the joint committee of the House Appropriations and the Senate Finance Committees has been scheduled for 8:30 am, this Friday, November 9. At least two dissenting members of the Appropriations committee have been replaced by Jindal's puppet House Speaker. (Click here for the Monroe NewsStar article) The intent is to ram through the privatization of the Office of Group Benefits just as was done to public education last Spring. I am urging all members of the Group Benefits plan to call or email members of those committees and ask that they oppose privatization again. This move by Jindal is his most anti-democratic move yet!
Educators (teachers,
principals, and school board members) have the power to reverse or
correct most of the Jindal damage to public education and the
teaching profession! That's the lesson we can take from the decisive
defeat suffered by Governor
Jindal last Thursday on his effort to privatize the Group Benefits insurance program. The political lesson to be
learned and utilized by educators is that when a large group of
voters is adversely affected by a government action and they choose
to put maximum pressure on their representatives in government, they
win!
The action last week was
supposed to be a simple rubber stamping by hand picked legislative
committee members of the Governor's decision to turn over our
successful, cost effective group benefits program to the Governor's
friends at Blue Cross. But this time the educators, state workers and
particularly the retired educators and retired state workers decided
they had had enough of Jindal's bullying. The word spread quickly
that the joint committee composed of the Senate Finance and House
Appropriations Committees had the power to stop the Governor's latest
power play. The Retired Teacher's Association and other interested
groups sent out an urgent message to their members listing the
members of these legislative committees and their contact information
(phone numbers and email addresses). The email urged members to simply tell their legislators on those committees how they felt about
this move. One of my readers sent me the LRTA email, and I forwarded
it to my Defenders of Public Education data base with the same call
to action. The result was overwhelming! Within a matter of hours the
Governor's control of the House Appropriations Committee was totally
lost. Legislators reported receiving hundreds of phone calls and
emails opposing the privatization with not a single constituent in support of the Governor's
plan even though his “experts” had predicted that the
privatization would save money and result in better service.
The result was a chaotic
joint committee meeting with our hero, Rep. Katrina Jackson running
parliamentary procedure circles around the Governor's cronies to force a “no”
vote on the proposal. By the time the dust settled the vote was going
to be firmly 16 against and only 7 in favor of the Governor's
privatization plan. The Governor's Commissioner of Administration was
allowed to withdraw the plan from the committees' agenda before a
final vote could be taken. Senate Finance Committee members were greatly relieved to avoid voting on this losing proposition. This is what happens when the voters are
willing to speak forcefully to their elected representatives. Of
course the Jindal administration moved quickly to punish two key
legislators by removing them from the Appropriations committee. I
urge my readers to send an email to Rep Joe Harrison, Rep. Cameron
Henry, and especially Rep. Katrina Jackson thanking them for their
courage. This fight is not over, but I predict that even if the
governor eventually wins this battle by sheer intimidation he will
eventually lose the war and his ability to control the legislature.
There is no question in my
mind that the education community can do the same thing to dismantle
the worst parts of the Governor's ALEC dictated education “deform”
blueprint. That's because the average voters never really cared about
this plan for vouchers, school takeovers, teacher bashing, VAM
evaluations, the stripping of teacher qualifications and dignity, and
all the forms of privatization promoted in the Governor's plan. The
dozens of legislators whose allegiance was
bought by
the big money from the privatization and testing interests have realized
by now that the “emperor has no clothes”. The educators who work
in the trenches and the school board members who have been humiliated
and blamed for imaginary failings of our schools who really care
about public education now have an opportunity to fight back and win.
The only thing that makes me
just a little skeptical is that I wonder how many teachers and maybe
even school leaders have never worked up the courage to sit down and
talk face to face with their legislator about these critical matters.
If many educators have only sent one or two emails and then given up
and concluded that they have no power against the forces of the
Governor and John White, then I really fear that we are doomed. But
those educators were wrong! It is not too late. Why should we let
these guys who voted to destroy public education, and who probably
know they voted wrong, off the hook? Look. . .
both of my
legislators were new in their office this year and voted
wrong on the education reforms, because they were overwhelmed by the
Governor's initial push. But now educators are meeting with them
regularly and calling their offices when an important education issue
comes up. We are educating them about what is really important in
education.
Even more importantly they also know that we
won't forget their support or lack of support at election time. You and your fellow educators
can do the same.
If you really care about public education,
here is what you need to do now!
-
Make a short list of
the gut issues you care most about in education that you want to
communicate to your legislators about and plan to meet with them to
discuss those issues. You can see my personal list of important
education issues at the bottom of this post.
Use social media and
emails to get educators to follow our louisianaeducator blog so all
educators can be informed and prepared to deal with attacks on
educators and public schools.
Form a committee of
educators in your area or school who will meet regularly with local
legislators and proceed to educate them about the need to reverse
the destructive Jindal reforms. Start small and grow your educator
activist group with time and effort. Have faculty meetings to plan
strategy and send emails and make phone calls to legislators. Get to
know the legislator's legislative aide at his/her home office and
get the aide to relay your messages to your legislator.
Join your professional
organization/union or administrator group and get active at the
local and state levels.
Join our Defenders of
Public Education data base today! It is free and you remain in total
control of your communications with your legislators. I pledge to
work directly with the Louisiana Coalition for Public Education to
keep you informed and communicating effectively with your
legislators. To join, all you have to do is send me an email at
louisianaeducator@gmail.com.
Tell me you want to be part of the “Defenders” data base and
either give me the name or district numbers of your state
representative and state senator or give me your home address so I
can look it up and place you in the correct contact group. Then when
an important vote comes up you will get an email about contacting
your legislator before the vote happens.
We can and will make
a difference!
Here is my list of key
reform issues that should be reversed if we are to save public
education in Louisiana:
-
Stop the vouchers now.
Most of the vouchers violate the concept of separation of church and
state and needlessly drain critical MFP dollars from our school
board budgets. Greedy creationist preachers and rip off artists are
making Louisiana education a laughing stock.
Freeze the approval of
new charter schools and close down the many destructive charters
that are paying huge salaries to their administrators without
taxpayer supervision and who use any means possible to fake success
and continue to raid our public school funds.
Stop the out-of-state
for-profit virtual schools. They are education failures everywhere
in this country, but they are making a few people very rich using
taxpayer money.
Stop the Course Choice
program before it starts. It is impossible to have real
accountability in this program. It will rob our MFP and it will do a
poor job of educating students.
Stop the VAM and
COMPASS now. This system is not accurate and will demoralize and
divide the teaching profession in Louisiana. It will turn many
professional educators into mindless “test teachers” and
cheaters.
Stop using standardized
testing to rate our schools and teachers. This ill advised system
narrows our curriculum that turns professional educators into “test
teachers”.
Stop the failed
takeover of schools by the incompetent administrators of the RSD.
Instead put extra resources, and provide incentives for our
strongest principals to serve in our high poverty schools and for
our most effective teachers to teach in our most challenging
schools. Work with the community to encourage positive parental
involvement in our poorest neighborhoods.
Here is my best advice: Stop
complaining and use your skills as an educator and an organizer to
win back control of our public schools. This is a fight we must win
for our profession and our students!
Rep. James Armes
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