Protests Against School Closures Continue

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Memphis Parents Urge SCS School to Stop Closing Community Schools and to Start Supporting Them

April 28, 2015

Memphis, TN—Parents, students, teachers, and community members will rally April 28 at 160 South Hollywood at 4:30 PM to demand support for community schools and to oppose SCS Board plans to turn over community schools to the IZone and to charter school companies chosen by the State’s Achievement School District.  The protest rally is sponsored by OurStudentsMatterNow, and all citizens who care about keeping public schools public in Memphis are urged to come out and support this effort.

OurStudentsMatterNow demands and end to the use of high stakes tests to target schools in urban communities for closure and turnover, and the organization is urging the Shelby County School Board to commit the financial support required to improve the quality of historically underfunded public schools in economically-disadvantaged neighborhoods of Memphis.

This protest rally represents the first of many public efforts by OurStudentsMatterNow to generate support for quality public schools for all Shelby County children.  OurStudentsMatterNow has established a legal defense fund to take their case into the courts, and they are planning for public demonstrations and organizing events this Spring and into the next school year. 

  

Those wanting to contribute to the effort to save community schools in Memphis may do so by coming out to rally with OurStudentsMatterNow and by giving generously at the GoFundMe site here:  http://www.gofundme.com/ourstudentsmatter

For further information, contact
ourstudentsmatternow@gmail.com or memphis.teachers@mail.com

Press Release for Today's Public Protest Rally at SCS School Board

Press Release

Memphis Parents Urge SCS School to Stop Closing Community Schools and to Start Supporting Them

April 21, 2015

Memphis, TN—Parents, students, teachers, and community members will rally April 21 at 160 South Hollywood at 4:30 PM to demand support for community schools and to oppose SCS Board plans to turn over community schools to the IZone and to charter school companies chosen by the State’s Achievement School District.  The protest rally is sponsored by OurStudentsMatterNow, and all citizens who care about keeping public schools public in Memphis are urged to come out and support this effort.

OurStudentsMatterNow demands and end to the use of high stakes tests to target schools in urban communities for closure and turnover, and the organization is urging the Shelby County School Board to commit the financial support required to improve the quality of historically underfunded public schools in economically-disadvantaged neighborhoods of Memphis.

This protest rally represents the first of many public efforts by OurStudentsMatterNow to generate support for quality public schools for all Shelby County children.  OurStudentsMatterNow has established a legal defense fund to take their case into the courts, and they are planning for public demonstrations and organizing events this Spring and into the next school year.

  

Those wanting to contribute to the effort to save community schools in Memphis may do so by coming out to rally with OurStudentsMatterNow and by giving generously at the GoFundMe site here:  http://www.gofundme.com/ourstudentsmatter

For further information, contact
ourstudentsmatternow@gmail.com or memphis.teachers@mail.com

Join Us Today for Peaceful Rally at Shelby County School Board

Parents, students, and teachers will rally this afternoon at 4:30 at SCS Board building at 160 S. Hollywood in Memphis.  

The message:  

Stop Closing Community Schools, & Start Supporting Them!

Let politicians know that Memphis will NOT be another New Orleans.

South Memphis Group Goes On Offense to Save Their Community Schools

Over the past several months, I have had the opportunity to get to know and to work with a core group of dedicated teachers and parents in South Memphis who are smart, savvy, committed, unrelenting, and fearless in doing what is necessary to beat back the privatizers and profiteers who now think they call the shots for Memphis schools.  

These new friends and colleagues have attended school board meetings, where they heated up the microphones, and they have gone on TV and radio to get the message out on the ASD corporate charter handout organization and its homegrown equivalent, the IZone.  They are determined to keep their community schools open.

This group, OurStudents MatterNow, has plans save South Side Middle School from being shut down and turned over the charter industry, which is waiting to swoop in to score another big real estate deal and to devastate another community that loves its school.  

They need your help. OurStudents MatterNow has started a legal defense fund to take their case into the courts, and they are planning for public demonstrations and organizing events this Spring.  

If you want to put your money at Ground Zero of the effort to save community schools and make them better, please help these dedicated citizens.  Their GoFundMe site is here:  http://www.gofundme.com/ourstudentsmatter

Their other contact information is
ourstudentsmatternow@gmail.com or memphis.teachers@mail.com

Hamilton High Won't Be a Charter

The Commercial Appeal reports that parents and alumni have stopped the corporate welfare charter scheme that had been developed by Curtis Weather and his philanthropic puppet masters. 

My comment posted at the CA website:

Test scores provide a family wealth index that has been used for generations to label, sort, segregate and punish the poor. Charter schools operationalize that process while offering huge financial rewards for their CEOs, once known as school principals.

Weathers is another hard-fisted ex-jock who was placed in a position of misleadership by another non-educator, Dorsey Hopson, who remains clueless about education issues. Unfortunately, he has marginalized or fired the educators on his staff and surrounded himself with corporate know-nothings who acquired their present levels of ignorance during a stint with Teach for America.

Parents in Memphis don't need or want lawyers and football players making decisions about their schools. At some point, the tar will be heated and the feathers plucked and gathered.

If Weathers needs budget autonomy, I suggest he start his own business and invest his own money, rather than using education dollars to pursue a corporate welfare charter scheme to make himself wealthy.