by David Safier Another day, another charter school story. This time it's Discovery Community School in Glendale, which is having some financial troubles and hasn't been paying its teachers. [The owner, Banipal] Bejamin, showed 3TV a letter to his staff asking them to wait until August for their April paycheck. The former principal who helped … Read more
by David Safier Eli Broad comes from the "I have more money than you, so I know more about everything than you do" school of thought. He's one of the gazillionaires funding the conservative/neoliberal "education reform" movement with his Broad Foundation. Broad has a commentary in Ed Week (subscription only) where he makes an ass … Read more
by David Safier I've written two posts about the staff turnover at Imagine Prep at Superstition in Apache Junction — 10 or 11 of the 14 teachers either let go or quitting. (Here's the most recent post and the original. You'll find interesting and revealing comments from students and parents on both posts.) Since then, … Read more
by David Safier
Based on the comments and emails I've received from students and [former] teachers from Imagine Prep at Superstition in Apache Junction, there's lots more to the story about two-thirds of the school's teachers being fired. The Republic covered the story and I posted about it Friday.
I received an email with a few pictures from the student protest. A commenter on the earlier post, apparently a student, posted a long comment which I'm reproducing here in full.
According to the person who sent the photos, this shows students who walked out of the school when they learned about teachers being fired. The police are there, according to the source, because the administration called them, and the police threatened the students with arrest.
This photo shows school uniforms the students ripped up and hung on the fence outside of the school to protest the firings.
Below is a comment on my last post from a student. I've included the entire comment, though you'll have to continue below the fold to read the whole thing. There are a few misspellings and minor errors which I haven't corrected — certainly no more than in the average comment. I thank the student for taking the time and effort to explain what happened. It's a clear, well written, valuable timeline of the events. Others should feel free to comment on it, add to it, or correct anything they believe is an incorrect statement. You may either comment on this post or send me an email: safier@schooltales.net. I keep all correspondence confidential.
Okay, so just to clear things up, this is why/what happened at Imagine Prep Friday morning. Its kind of long, but please read!
The events that occurred were because of an on going struggle between student/teacher and administration/regional receiving and distributing respect. (Regional, for those that do not know, is like the head of the district)
Over this past year, many issues have been handled in shocking ways. It seemed that the only form of punishment was suspension and being aloud to speak on your behalf was out of the question. The lack of respect given to the students was extremely low, and each day the bar was dropping. Many students turned to their teachers to seek comfort or to just simply vent. But once we found out that over half of our teachers were not asked to come back next year, because of their "lack" of commitment for the students, we as a student body knew we must do something.
by David Safier Generally during economic downturns, more men turn to teaching as a profession. You might not make lots of money, but it beats unemployment or asking, "Do you want fries with that burger?" Not this time, though. As bad as the employment situation is for college educated men, they're not turning to teaching. … Read more