Who You Should NOT Vote For In August for School Board and State Legislature

The Gates Foundation reporter, Jane Roberts, has a puff piece in today's Commercial Appeal about Stand for Children's (SfC) picks in the upcoming local and state elections.  In case you don't know what SfC is, take a few minutes to view the video posted here.  

Long story, short--vote for anyone that SfC does NOT support.

Among SCS board candidates, the group supports incumbent Chris Caldwell in District 1; Teddy King and Stephanie Love in District 3; Scott McCormick in District 5; incumbent Shante Avant in District 6; Miska Clay Bibbs in District 7; and Roshun Austin in District 9.

In the Democractic primary race for legislative Dist. 29, Stand for Children endorsed Lee Harris against incumbent Ophelia Ford. Other Democrats in the race are Ricky Dixon and Herman Sawyer. Republican candidates are Jim Finney and Anthony Herron Jr.

The election is Aug. 7.

Hopson Urging Mandatory of Use of Cameras in the Classroom Without Parental Permission

Published earlier today at Schools Matter.

With Bill Gates's yesman, Dorsey Hopson, renewed for another term as non-educator-in-charge of Shelby County Schools, the pressure is on to expand the use of Microsoft's cloud-based technology to every aspect of schooling, from administering high stakes tests to video capture of children and teachers for teacher evaluation. 

Hopson is urging mandatory use of cameras in the classroom, even though there is no protocol in place and none planned to gain teacher or parent permission for these intrusive and insecure video captures, which will be uploaded to third party corporate servers with no guarantee of how the video will be used.

Superintendent Dorsey Hopson II said he thought that teachers ranked 1 or 2 on the district’s evaluation system—the lowest scores on a scale of 1 to 5—should be required to use Teachscape to improve their teaching practice. Mandating that the videos be required would require a change in board policy, Hopson said.

“We’ve been doing this from 2009,” Hopson said. “I think it was a good tool to introduce. But we have to be more strategic.”

Meanwhile, the Shelby County Schools will pay the Gates-connected corporation, Teachscape, $415,000 this year to advance the program across the district. With no informed consent procedures in place for parents, parents have little recourse but to sue to make sure their children's images in information are not recorded and archived by third-party corporations.

  Some propaganda from the Teachscape sight:

Tools for Video Capture and Sharing

With Teachscape's camera kits and apps for video capture and upload, educators can easily set up for and capture their own videos from the classroom.

Designed for easy video capture of small-group work, meetings, or the classroom, the optional Mini Tablet Kit and Mini Camera Kit pair with educators' own Apple devices (sold separately).

Capture and upload apps are included with Teachscape Learn and Teachscape Reflect so educators can transfer their videos to a secure platform to share, comment on, score, and create clips of videos to build their own libraries of best practices. 

School Board Gets 360 Percent Raise and Indigent Juvenile Defense Lawyers Get New Furniture

From the Daily News:
And an ordinance that would raise the pay of Shelby County Schools board members from $4,200 a year to $15,000 a year, with $16,000 a year for the chairman, is on Monday’s agenda for third and final reading.  . . . Another resolution includes $190,258 in funding for furniture and installation for the new Public Defender Juvenile Defense Unit at 600 Adams Ave.

Shelby County to Launch Classroom Camera Project to Collect and Share Video of Kindergarten Students

The Gates Foundation reporter of record, Jane Roberts, has a celebratory piece on how video capture will be used to evaluate kindergarten teachers in 26 Shelby County Schools.  Will they call this ill-advised excuse for more surveillance, "Cameras for Kindergartners?"

The State Department of Education should have learned by now that parents and teachers will not allow this kind of third party collection of data on children.  There is nothing in the story that describes who will collect or store the data, only that it will be uploaded.  Who will have access?

See this link for the a four part piece on the first time the State and Gates tried this.

SCS Board Members To Receive 500% Raise or 300% Raise?

Firing hundreds of teachers and staff members presents no problem for County Commission.  At least they are taking care of the Gates Foundation stooges on the school board.  From the Daily News:

. . . .And commissioners approved on the second of three readings an amended pay raise for Shelby County Schools board members.

The original measure by Ritz was to boost board members from their current $4,200 a year to $25,000 with the chairman of the board going from $4,500 a year to $26,000 a year.

That failed on second reading and Mulroy amended it to be a raise to $15,000 for board members with $16,000 for the board chairman.

The measure will need nine votes to pass on third and final reading. . . .