Governor Deal is at it again! First, it was war on bus drivers and lunchroom workers. Now he is waging war on teachers and making
a power grab for our education system.
He represents the party whose mantra is “smaller government” and “more
local control.” Yet this week Governor
Deal announced he would be creating a new government agency. This education agency would have NO local
control. After all the po-mouthin about the state budget, the Governor must
have found the money to pay for more bureaucrats.
This week Governor Deal announced his intentions to “take
over” certain schools in Georgia labeled as “failing.” These certain schools
happen to consist of poor and mostly minority students. He offered little detail other than he was
creating a new Agency with a School Superintendent appointed by the
Governor. Deal calls it “The
Opportunity School District Plan.”
These schools will be autonomous from local school board control. He would have the power to hire and fire
teachers and principals at these schools.
Teachers will no longer have a strong voice or the protections of
teacher unity organizations. The
Governor and his handpicked Superintendent will have the power to convert these
schools to Charter Schools, and I have no doubt the end-game is vouchers for
private schools for the not so poor and the not so minority.
After twelve years of Republican reign in Georgia, the
education budget has been cut eight billion dollars. There are nine thousand fewer teachers today
than twelve years ago. Think of all the new schools that you have seen built in
the past twelve years. Nine thousand
fewer teachers? Does it make any
sense to a reasonable minded person that spending and personnel went down in
the last twelve years? We experience
daily the effects of the soaring cost of living, from the cost of a loaf of
bread, a gallon of gasoline, and the cost of heating and cooling our
homes. It is obvious! Our students and teachers are NOT
failing….our State government is failing THEM!
And this lame-brained, poor thought-out scheme is not the answer.
By the way, the ideas put forth this week by Democrats in
the Legislature were not much brighter.
We are not in the business of providing for all the needs of the
children in the school children.
It is fortunate that these radical prescribed changes to our
education system by Governor Deal have to be approved by WE THE PEOPLE by
voting on an Amendment to our State Constitution in 2016. That gives us time to come up with an
alternate plan, one that doesn’t seem like punishment to our students and
teachers. This is not just a change in
the way students are taught. The
Governor’s plan involves altering the entire structure of our education
system. The system we have now is
working for Monroe County Schools. Why
would we want our forward progress halted by a “new” way of doing everything?
To stop this irrational act, we have to move quickly. Shortly, the Koch Brothers will be flooding
our State with propaganda in support of the Governor’s takeover of education in
Georgia. After all, anti-public
education is the centerpiece of the Koch Brothers’ agenda.
You’re familiar with good ole Charlie and David Koch, aka
The Koch Brothers; the John Birchers operating under new names; the
beyond-billionaire brothers who have already pledged a day’s pay to the 2016
Republican Presidential candidate of their choice. For these brothers, a day’s pay is nine hundred million
dollars! There’s no limit to how much
the Koch Brothers will spend to uphold their interests. They do not want students to be taught the
science of climate change. They want students to be taught from history books
that have been re-written to fit their lily-white narrative.
Governor Deal is following in the path of other states on a
backward spiral, like Wisconsin, North Carolina, Kansas and Louisiana. He is following the path dictated by the
Koch Brothers and their many affiliated organizations. So, too, are most all Georgia
Legislators. Follow the money.
At the risk of sounding like one of those wing-nut jobs that
I complain about all the time, follow the money and you will see that Governor
Nathan Deal is handing the minds of our children over to the Koch Brothers on a
silver platter!
Marilyn Langford
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