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The destruction of America's public education system


Captainant

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2 hours ago, F250 said:

Fine. @atomheartbevo is a major asshole that hates Houston because it fucked his girlfriend back in the 80's.

The only thing I hate about Houston is Bud Adams and he’s dead.  Thankfully he died alone in Houston and hopefully it took a while and he had hours or days of agony.

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Posted (edited)
3 hours ago, F250 said:

I meant nobody is blaming Harris county. You are insisting that this is about shaming Harris or something which is a weird take.

3 hours ago, SydneyCarton said:

As you pointed out, the guy has repeatedly shown up in threads saying "Well, if the people of harris county just voted, this wouldn't happen." Here's one from just Sunday.

It's not about blaming/shaming Harris County, it's that right now, the "attacks" or whatever you want to call what Abbott and Paxton are doing, are focused on Harris County (richest target and a good test bed for fuckery elsewhere). Unfortunately in Texas, when it comes to things like voting and public schools and local political issues, the rest of the state generally doesn't give too much of a shit about any other part of the state until it affects them directly.   Austin came close to having the state take over its schools, but it didn't, and Austin-area voters barely keep up with what's going on in AISD and the other area ISDs, let alone districts three hours away.

Based on the conflicts of interest with Miles and others (including TEA members), and based on Abbott pushing vouchers because a Pennsylvania billionaire tossed millions at him and made him spin around, and based on how Abbott/Paxton/the Legislature seem to be working to eventually take over the voting of Dallas/Travis/Bexar counties (and the school districts), this shitshow is going to come to the next 3-4 largest counties.

The only light at the end of the tunnel might be things like abortion bans increasing turnout in general.

In the meantime, the people of Harris County cannot count on the folks in Travis, Bexar, and Dallas counties to ride to the rescue.  

Edited by atomheartbevo
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11 hours ago, Nice Guy Eddie said:

Texas tax dollars are funding charter schools in Colorado? It never occurred to me that these charter schools are part of companies that go across borders and it’s only an accounting function to move money around.

it should be a criminal act of their leaders to steal tax dollars in that manner.

Hoo boy. Brett Shipp is the last person you want investigating you. This will be the end of Mike Miles and his charter grift by the time Shipp and his team are done. If I had a grave pissing tour like some of you do, well, Miles would be at the top of the list once he becomes worm food.

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47 minutes ago, HenryJames said:

The first wave of passionate revolutionists are often tossed aside by the second wave.

I recall in my Russian history class at UT how the Soviet purges often jailed/killed the original Bolsheviks because they finally had their eyes opened to the truth of their leaders as frauds. Not that I will care but time will prove how even MTG will get thrown to the wolves by her current supporters.

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Posted (edited)

@HenryJames great link from the Texas Tribune. I encourage others to read it if only to reinforce what you already know about the far right extremists.

People threatening school board members with weapons in public meetings? These people just don't want books taken out of the library, they want a Christian dictatorship.

Related article, also from the Tribune. The same reformed school board member claims how the west Texas billionaires are funding candidates, like her former self, to further the voucher debate. https://www.texastribune.org/2024/05/15/texas-tim-dunn-wilks-brothers-vouchers-courtney-gore/

Which makes sense. Their rhetoric and extremist school board members erode faith in public schools on both sides of the aisle. And they can't have one of their candidates say the emperor has no clothes. 

Edited by Nice Guy Eddie
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42 minutes ago, Nice Guy Eddie said:

@HenryJames great link from the Texas Tribune. I encourage others to read it if only to reinforce what you already know about the far right extremists.

People threatening school board members with weapons in public meetings? These people just don't want books taken out of the library, they want a Christian dictatorship.

Related article, also from the Tribune. The same reformed school board member claims how the west Texas billionaires are funding candidates, like her former self, to further the voucher debate. https://www.texastribune.org/2024/05/15/texas-tim-dunn-wilks-brothers-vouchers-courtney-gore/

Which makes sense. Their rhetoric and extremist school board members erode faith in public schools on both sides of the aisle. And they can't have one of their candidates say the emperor has no clothes. 

It was a great article. It was nice to see someone who'd drank the kool-aid actually about face when confronted with facts and data and take a hard, public stand. 

Sure, she's probably going to be burned as a witch. But good for her. 

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13 minutes ago, SydneyCarton said:

Yeah, it was a great read when it was posted 2 hours ago and several other folks have posted thoughts on the article.

/ducks

Who fucked you in the ass this morning?

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2 hours ago, Nice Guy Eddie said:

@HenryJames great link from the Texas Tribune. I encourage others to read it if only to reinforce what you already know about the far right extremists.

People threatening school board members with weapons in public meetings? These people just don't want books taken out of the library, they want a Christian dictatorship.

Related article, also from the Tribune. The same reformed school board member claims how the west Texas billionaires are funding candidates, like her former self, to further the voucher debate. https://www.texastribune.org/2024/05/15/texas-tim-dunn-wilks-brothers-vouchers-courtney-gore/

Which makes sense. Their rhetoric and extremist school board members erode faith in public schools on both sides of the aisle. And they can't have one of their candidates say the emperor has no clothes. 

When in doubt as to why these folks are doing this remember it is ALWAYS about money. They have zero shame in profiting off of your children’s education or now lack thereof. The charter school spigot turned on another government revenue stream and it will only grow much larger going forward in Texas. Even here in New York they want permission to increase the amount of charter schools in the state. Greed does not know state boundaries.

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Miles came out defending his old charter school system. He says that the Texas schools only transferred funds to pay for the corporate services, and that the HQ was in Colorado. Everything according to him is legal. 

It wouldn't surprise me if the laws are grey when it comes to charter school (mis)management. It's very possible that they are allowed to transfer reasonable funds to an out of state corporate office and that our representatives purposefully let reasonable be undefined.

Weirdly Miles is standing on fact that he hadn't worked for the charter school as an exec/employee in over a year. Of course he's been a consultant with them since he's had the HISD top job.

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6 minutes ago, Nice Guy Eddie said:

Miles came out defending his old charter school system. He says that the Texas schools only transferred funds to pay for the corporate services, and that the HQ was in Colorado. Everything according to him is legal. 

It wouldn't surprise me if the laws are grey when it comes to charter school (mis)management. It's very possible that they are allowed to transfer reasonable funds to an out of state corporate office and that our representatives purposefully let reasonable be undefined.

Weirdly Miles is standing on fact that he hadn't worked for the charter school as an exec/employee in over a year. Of course he's been a consultant with them since he's had the HISD top job.

This.  All the loopholes are written in their intentionally.

Which is very important with respect to my plans for Brisketexan's FreedomEagleGunLibertyJesus Academy for Patriotic Children.  If I just so happen to make millions of of this scheme plan, why do you hate free enterprise and capitalism?

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The hits keep coming. Cy-Fair, Texas' 3rd largest school district just banned teachers from teaching that vaccines have saved lives from smallpox, polio and COVID. Climate change is forbidden to be spoken.

https://www.houstonchronicle.com/business/columnists/tomlinson/article/school-board-christian-nationalist-purge-19450783.php

How I think of myself in Texas.

 

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2 minutes ago, Nice Guy Eddie said:

The hits keep coming. Cy-Fair, Texas' 3rd largest school district just banned teachers from teaching that vaccines have saved lives from smallpox, polio and COVID. Climate change is forbidden to be spoken.

https://www.houstonchronicle.com/business/columnists/tomlinson/article/school-board-christian-nationalist-purge-19450783.php

How I think of myself in Texas.

 

Yup, this is my district, and it's quite the learning experience I'm going through right now. The measure to remove chapters of science books that cover vaccines, climate change, diversity and other topics came towards the end of a 5 hour board meeting. This was after parents were allowed to talk (1 minute each), budget discussions, awards, staff changes, announcements, etc, it was not on the published agenda. There was no expert testimony about it, there wasn't much discussion at all, just the opinions of several board members that don't have any background in these subjects. The board voted 6-1 to exclude those topics and that was it, it took less than 30 minutes. Really a shame that my kids are going to have to go through this dumb culture war over topics that these people don't understand, but here we are. My first kid is going to kindergarten in the Fall, so it won't hurt him much right now, but in a few years those topics should be covered. 

In the meantime, we are facing a $138m deficit in Cyfair. We are losing 2/3 of our librarians, and the ones that are retained will be assigned to multiple campuses. Other staff like janitors, teachers, summer classes, etc are being cut as well. A lot of it is due to being underfunded by the state, who is currently withholding tax dollars to public schools because Abbot will not sign any increases until vouchers are passed in some form.  That amounts to ~$1100 a student across the state, and about 20% less funding overall.  That's significant, and I certainly don't know any family or business that wouldn't be severely impacted by being forced to live off their 2019 budgets today, so it's pretty sad to see Abbott trying to blame it on the ISDs for not being better money managers.  

If yall are in Texas, and whether you have kids in school or not, please look into your local school board elections and vote. It really does matter, I know a couple of our board members won by slim margins. They were all within 2-3k votes of the normal people who care about education. 3 of the dumbasses that voted for this will be up for re-election in 2025, and I hope we can dump them if we can raise awareness and get out the vote. 

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1 hour ago, Nice Guy Eddie said:

Miles came out defending his old charter school system. He says that the Texas schools only transferred funds to pay for the corporate services, and that the HQ was in Colorado. Everything according to him is legal. 

It wouldn't surprise me if the laws are grey when it comes to charter school (mis)management. It's very possible that they are allowed to transfer reasonable funds to an out of state corporate office and that our representatives purposefully let reasonable be undefined.

Weirdly Miles is standing on fact that he hadn't worked for the charter school as an exec/employee in over a year. Of course he's been a consultant with them since he's had the HISD top job.

I call bullshit. These charter schools receive public funds so they should be subject to the Public Information Act. Even the ones in Colorado if part of the Texas chain of schools. Keep digging. Even as shady as his explanation is, it's probably false and Texas dollars are flowing to those schools themselves and directed to the "administration" (i.e., the pockets of Miles and whoever he decides). Cool fact is, the PIA is administered by .... Paxton's office.  

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47 minutes ago, Dutchrudder said:

Yup, this is my district, and it's quite the learning experience I'm going through right now. The measure to remove chapters of science books that cover vaccines, climate change, diversity and other topics came towards the end of a 5 hour board meeting. This was after parents were allowed to talk (1 minute each), budget discussions, awards, staff changes, announcements, etc, it was not on the published agenda.

I've looked at the agenda for the May 6th meeting.  https://meetings.boardbook.org/Public/Agenda/668?meeting=634325

I would agree that nothing on there would put the public on notice that they were considering this action (there's this item: "7.B. The Board will consider approving the district instructional material recommendations for the 2024-2025 school year," but that does not put anyone on notice that the board might be modifying or setting new material policies at the meeting.  It does not pass the Texas Open Meetings Act standard.).

Sec. 551.041. NOTICE OF MEETING REQUIRED. A governmental body shall give written notice of the date, hour, place, and subject of each meeting held by the governmental body.

And from the Texas AG's open meetings handbook:

B. Sufficiency The notice must be sufficient to apprise the general public of the subjects to be considered during the meeting.

 

That's a legal test, depends on the verbiage, but looks like the public has a pretty good argument that no notice was given of that contemplated action.  The action of the board taken in violation of the law is voidable:

Section 551.142 of the Act provides as follows: (a) An interested person, including a member of the news media, may bring an action by mandamus or injunction to stop, prevent, or reverse a violation or threatened violation of this chapter by members of a governmental body. (b) The court may assess costs of litigation and reasonable attorney fees incurred by a plaintiff or defendant who substantially prevails in an action under Subsection (a). In exercising its discretion, the court shall consider whether the action was brought in good faith and whether the conduct of the governmental body had a reasonable basis in law.

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26 minutes ago, ChuckNorrisActionJeans said:

I call bullshit. These charter schools receive public funds so they should be subject to the Public Information Act. Even the ones in Colorado if part of the Texas chain of schools. Keep digging. Even as shady as his explanation is, it's probably false and Texas dollars are flowing to those schools themselves and directed to the "administration" (i.e., the pockets of Miles and whoever he decides). Cool fact is, the PIA is administered by .... Paxton's office.  

I’m sure Paxton will be helpful in assisting the media in obtaining those records. I can’t see a valid reason that any Texas school tax funds are flowing to an out of state school/headquarters. 

stories like this will be child’s play if Abbott has his way with vouchers. Millions if not billions will flow into private investors. Our kids will graduate high school thinking the earth is 4,000 years old, and Jesus grew up with a pet dinosaur.

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9 minutes ago, Nice Guy Eddie said:

Our kids will graduate high school thinking the earth is 4,000 years old, and Jesus grew up with a pet dinosaur.

Which is exactly what they want.  Christo-fascism my friend.

learn-it-know-it-live-it.gif

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12 minutes ago, Nice Guy Eddie said:

I’m sure Paxton will be helpful in assisting the media in obtaining those records. I can’t see a valid reason that any Texas school tax funds are flowing to an out of state school/headquarters. 

stories like this will be child’s play if Abbott has his way with vouchers. Millions if not billions will flow into private investors. Our kids will graduate high school thinking the earth is 4,000 years old, and Jesus grew up with a pet dinosaur.

Yeah Third Futures Schools put out a press release saying media has it all wrong and "We take our commitment to financial transparency very seriously. All of our budgets, audits, and board documents can be found HERE."  Here being a link to this page:  https://thirdfuture.org/financial-transparency/ 

If you go to it you quickly realize they are full of shit.  Latest year is 2022 and majority of the documents listed don't have anything attached to it.  Most of their 11 schools have nothing attached for any year they list.

 

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11 minutes ago, MonkeyDoughnut said:

Yeah Third Futures Schools put out a press release saying media has it all wrong and "We take our commitment to financial transparency very seriously. All of our budgets, audits, and board documents can be found HERE."  Here being a link to this page:  https://thirdfuture.org/financial-transparency/ 

If you go to it you quickly realize they are full of shit.  Latest year is 2022 and majority of the documents listed don't have anything attached to it.  Most of their 11 schools have nothing attached for any year they list.

 

It's not meant to stand up to scrutiny - only be a link for useful idiots that think Twitter videos are objective reality and lack the criticality to click through for themselves 

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Well lookie there
 
Fuck this ditch pig. She has no place in education. Every word of that curriculum was available to the public before she thought about running for office. For me, it's not about a mistaken person learning her errors... it's about an incompetent person refusing to do the work to inform herself.
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1 hour ago, ChuckNorrisActionJeans said:

I call bullshit. These charter schools receive public funds so they should be subject to the Public Information Act. Even the ones in Colorado if part of the Texas chain of schools. Keep digging. Even as shady as his explanation is, it's probably false and Texas dollars are flowing to those schools themselves and directed to the "administration" (i.e., the pockets of Miles and whoever he decides). Cool fact is, the PIA is administered by .... Paxton's office.  

Miles is a criminal and it would be nice to see our justice department investigate him for being one. @YGIFS get out your Batphone and make some fun calls to Miles office and then to some people that can ruin him professional and financially for this. 

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25 minutes ago, UpperWestside said:

Miles is a criminal and it would be nice to see our justice department investigate him for being one. @YGIFS get out your Batphone and make some fun calls to Miles office and then to some people that can ruin him professional and financially for this. 

Um, this is Texas and Miles is a Republican soooooo ...

See Ken Paxton for an example..

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Hot Wheels: "It's not my fault schools are fucked. Schools fucked themselves."
https://www.chron.com/news/article/greg-abbott-schools-budget-hisd-19454906.php
 
When you have 5 school districts that can't pay the bills... it means you got 5 poorly run districts. When 80%* of your school districts can't pay the bills... it means you got a poorly run state.

*80% was the number of districts with significant budget short falls. It was shared at a staff meeting.
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1 hour ago, Brisketexan said:

I've looked at the agenda for the May 6th meeting.  https://meetings.boardbook.org/Public/Agenda/668?meeting=634325

I would agree that nothing on there would put the public on notice that they were considering this action (there's this item: "7.B. The Board will consider approving the district instructional material recommendations for the 2024-2025 school year," but that does not put anyone on notice that the board might be modifying or setting new material policies at the meeting.  It does not pass the Texas Open Meetings Act standard.).

Sec. 551.041. NOTICE OF MEETING REQUIRED. A governmental body shall give written notice of the date, hour, place, and subject of each meeting held by the governmental body.

And from the Texas AG's open meetings handbook:

B. Sufficiency The notice must be sufficient to apprise the general public of the subjects to be considered during the meeting.

 

That's a legal test, depends on the verbiage, but looks like the public has a pretty good argument that no notice was given of that contemplated action.  The action of the board taken in violation of the law is voidable:

Section 551.142 of the Act provides as follows: (a) An interested person, including a member of the news media, may bring an action by mandamus or injunction to stop, prevent, or reverse a violation or threatened violation of this chapter by members of a governmental body. (b) The court may assess costs of litigation and reasonable attorney fees incurred by a plaintiff or defendant who substantially prevails in an action under Subsection (a). In exercising its discretion, the court shall consider whether the action was brought in good faith and whether the conduct of the governmental body had a reasonable basis in law.

Thanks for the insight, I wasn't aware of that rule. I'm in a couple local groups that are trying to organize to combat this kind of stuff, but it's in the infant stages. I can raise the issue and see what they say, but we would likely need a legal organization to help litigate these types of issues. Do you have any suggestions on who to contact? Is there an ACLU type org that would help?

Honestly, I have no idea how to proceed with this stuff, it's all new to me. Any guidance is much appreciated.

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We like to think that shady dealings and unethical behavior is in Congress. Nah. The worst of the worst are with politicians who only need a few hundred or a few thousand to win their seat. I can’t imagine that any govt level breaks more rules and laws than school boards. They often have the least amount of media coverage as well to keep them somewhat honest.

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Posted (edited)
38 minutes ago, Dutchrudder said:

Thanks for the insight, I wasn't aware of that rule. I'm in a couple local groups that are trying to organize to combat this kind of stuff, but it's in the infant stages. I can raise the issue and see what they say, but we would likely need a legal organization to help litigate these types of issues. Do you have any suggestions on who to contact? Is there an ACLU type org that would help?

Honestly, I have no idea how to proceed with this stuff, it's all new to me. Any guidance is much appreciated.

I would say start with creating a Facebook group, but only if you have a burner account.  And you will be infiltrated by the religious nuts, so just build that into the equation.

You could also build up an email list of parents you directly know/trust as well.

It's not hard to do in this day and age, but the fucking nutters are going to fight you.

Edit: During COVID, we had people calling into Austin ISD school board meetings and reading from the same fucking script, and calling it "ASID" (which meant they probably weren't even from Texas).

Edited by atomheartbevo
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3 hours ago, kevwun said:

The polio vaccine is fake news now?  Fucking morons.

There's no help for these people.  I have anti-vaxxers among friends/family who actually knew a friend's parents, one of whom had polio as a kid, and had to wear braces on her legs her whole life, and is now in a wheel chair, and they still deny that vaccines are helpful.  Pointing it out to them doesn't matter, they pull the "well humanity made it through polio without the so-called vaccines just fine".

1 hour ago, tchookem said:

Fuck this ditch pig. She has no place in education. Every word of that curriculum was available to the public before she thought about running for office. For me, it's not about a mistaken person learning her errors... it's about an incompetent person refusing to do the work to inform herself.

None of these people like to do the research, even though it's easy as hell to do.  Doesn't matter whether it's bullshit school conspiracy theories like that lady believed, or the earth is flat or Apollo 11 was staged.  If some libtard claims something, they automatically take a stance against it.

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4 hours ago, Nice Guy Eddie said:

The hits keep coming. Cy-Fair, Texas' 3rd largest school district just banned teachers from teaching that vaccines have saved lives from smallpox, polio and COVID. Climate change is forbidden to be spoken.

https://www.houstonchronicle.com/business/columnists/tomlinson/article/school-board-christian-nationalist-purge-19450783.php

How I think of myself in Texas.

 

 

 

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None of these people like to do the research, even though it's easy as hell to do.  Doesn't matter whether it's bullshit school conspiracy theories like that lady believed, or the earth is flat or Apollo 11 was staged.  If some libtard claims something, they automatically take a stance against it.
That's one of the main things that led to my political shift. Republicans want the title, or they want the credit, but they don't want to do the work. Implementing policy is difficult. I may not have liked Obamacare, but at least the Dems in his administration were willing and earnest about doing the work. With Republicans it's either a gift for an easy cash grab or a half-assed product based on ill-conceived policy and conspiracy theories.
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I just learned that in my hometown, Big Spring, there's a group pushing to establish a charter school for junior high and high school students. Man, the school district there is getting hollowed out.

Already, a large share of students transfer to two districts anchored in tiny towns just outside Big Spring. From my understanding, about 15% of the student population transfers out, which translates into the high school dropping from 1,300 students to 1,100. This is all white flight shit that started back in the 1990s.

The group behind this proposed charter school presented its plans to the TEA last week. They stated their goal would be about 50 kids from each grade, which would mean another 200 kids lost from the high school. The address for their proposed charter school is at a church literally two blocks from the high school.

So, the high school would be then down to 900, having lost 30% of its students. I can't imagine how many millions in education dollars are being stripped away from the remaining students who are likely the most in need of education spending while they'll be stuck attending classes in a 70-year-old high school that desperately needs to be replaced.

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Wait, what the fuck did I miss?  Who the fuck is Miles?  And they can't teach about how we nearly eradicated polio?  

What in the fucking fuck? Polio?  I get the Covid vaccine thing.  I don't agree, but yeah it was done rather quickly and there are obviously some side-effects.  But fucking polio?  What in the hell is happening?  Even the leftover Nazis were like, "Yeah, that Salk Jew Doctor is a pretty good guy actually."  But not in Texas?  What the fuck anymore?  

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I just learned that in my hometown, Big Spring, there's a group pushing to establish a charter school for junior high and high school students. Man, the school district there is getting hollowed out.
Already, a large share of students transfer to two districts anchored in tiny towns just outside Big Spring. From my understanding, about 15% of the student population transfers out, which translates into the high school dropping from 1,300 students to 1,100. This is all white flight shit that started back in the 1990s.
The group behind this proposed charter school presented its plans to the TEA last week. They stated their goal would be about 50 kids from each grade, which would mean another 200 kids lost from the high school. The address for their proposed charter school is at a church literally two blocks from the high school.
So, the high school would be then down to 900, having lost 30% of its students. I can't imagine how many millions in education dollars are being stripped away from the remaining students who are likely the most in need of education spending while they'll be stuck attending classes in a 70-year-old high school that desperately needs to be replaced.
I have yet to hear someone explain how vouchers help public education. The governor is the caretaker of public education. It's a temporary gig for a permanent position. Public education will continue regardless of the individual who occupies the office. The pendulum will swing, and eventuallyTexas will do right by public education. What I don't understand is why a governor wouldn't want to be THE public education governor. Oh yeah, because solving problems is hard, and Greg Abbott doesn't do hard (at least not since the tree fell on him).
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