Privatizers in Peril

I hate being sick.

Or PaladiNO in Peril.

Or something catchy.

That being said, the push to privatize Buffalo's Public Schools sits in peril, much to the Buffalo News' dismay.

The former 5-4 majority, run by residential loud mouth and publicly subsidized capitalist Carl PaladiNO suffered a major setback when the forces of privatization with the loss of 2 seats. PaladiNO nearly lost his seat to a Hutch Tech senior who has the right idea (students should have a representative on the board. Can you say “consent of the governed?”)

Now the privatizers have only 3 seats on the School Board, which gives those of us that want to see public schools run for the public and by the public a brief breathing period. School Board seats are up every 2 years and this means another fight in2 years. Laurels are not meant to be rested upon. (If you are resting upon your laurels, they are on the wrong end of your body.)

So between now and the start of the new fiscal year (July if my memory serves me correctly) we have to fight to make sure that the current 5 seat majority doesn't “slip us a mickey” with rules, changes, and policies that make it possible for them to continue their push to take our schools away from us.

One key thing that I noticed in all these arguments over the schools is that we can do what needs to be done without privatization.

Hire more teachers so that we can have smaller class sizes for our students? Easily done.

Create community schools so that students aren't spending an hour (one way) going to school? We had that back in the 1970's. Granted the schools were segregated and that was a real problem. Also the uneven funding of schools was a problem. Did we need to ship students all over blazes to integrate the schools? Or were there simple changes in the lines that the schools served needed? And equitable funding is best addressed at the Board Office and is a problem of the Board Office. Better oversight would have addressed that.

There is now a stronger possibility that the teachers' contract will be settled. Good. That will make it much more possible to attract new teachers to the district. No teacher likes to work in a district that had an ongoing contract dispute. How many teachers left because of the contract dispute? How did that hurt the ever precious test scores?

Oh yeah – that's right. This is all about the test scores and how the students in Buffalo aren't measuring up and can't perform.

The district can only hire reading and other specialists to address that problem.

The real solution is out in the business world. It's called creating good paying jobs (with benefits) for the working class. Then parents can afford housing, food, clothes and other amenities for their children. Then they (the parents) don't have to move around and destabilize their (and their children's' lives) with all the chaos that goes with moving.

Then again, the 1% don't want to do any of that because it means cutting into the profits that they need to make for Wall Street so that they can have a meaningless good looking stock rating.

Hint – Wall Street doesn't matter.

The children do.

It's time for Carl PaladiNO and co to start doing for the people of Buffalo, Eric County, and NY what they claim that they can do.

And that's not going to happen if they are wasting time trying to privatize schools.

Time to get to work.

Socialist Demand:

1. Solving the teacher's contract and sealing the deal so that the teachers get a fair contract.

2. Hiring more teachers and specialists to provide for smaller class sizes and better instructional support.

3. Equitable funding for schools in poorer neighborhoods and better support for the students,

4. Community schools that provide for the needs of the students in that community.

When?

Starting now.