"Entitlement" Education comes to Sweet Home Alabama

 

Again, I have to hand it to Alabama republicans, they are a....cunning bunch with steel gonads.  The red, republican, dominated State Legislature, enabled by the media,  created a weapon of mass distraction introducing a so-called School Flexibility Bill, that was supposed to let school district seek waivers from some policies.

 The House and Senate education committees will take up today a fight over who will control the state's K-12 curriculum and whether Alabama should continue using national curriculum standards known as the common core.

So while the public debate was focused on Common Core, the red republican dominated Alabama legislators were scheming in the back room... then BAM!  Here come Shock and Awe!

MONTGOMERY, Alabama --Republicans in the Alabama Legislature added a sweeping income tax credit and school choice plan to a school flexibility bill in conference committee today.
The surprise move caused a shouting match in the Senate and accusations by Democrats that Republicans were not dealing in good faith on a bill that had been debated for weeks.

In order to....justify this surprise attack on public education Alabama republicans, bless their hearts, claim this bill will provide a viable alternative to families with children stuck in underperforming schools.  Yeah right.

So instead of finding out why the public schools are failing students and taxpayers (funding), and maybe correcting the problem (equity funding), the solution for the Alabama GOP is to abandon them, and take our tax dollars with them.

Families with students in a failing school could receive state income tax credits to offset the cost of transferring to a private or non-failing public school. The credit would be equal to 80 percent of the average annual state cost of attendance for a public K-12 student.

If the red, republican dominated legislators think there are enough private, or non-failing public schools in this state to accommodate all the students who would, if they could transfer, I have a bridge in Selma to sell them.  But that's the point, they know there aren't enough schools to accommodate all students, so they are making it easier for the entitled few to have access to a quality education at the expense of the entitlement crowd.

 There is a common belief among conservatives that welfare programs by their very nature lead to the kind of so-called breakdown of democracy that Scalia finds objectionable in the Voting Rights Act case. Indeed, the most famous articulation of this view was Mitt Romney’s 47 percent remark: “those that are dependent on government and those that think government’s job is to redistribute — I’m not going to get them.” In essence, Romney warned that as the government creates welfare programs, this transforms welfare recipients into a constituency for those programs. And eventually that constituency becomes so large that it is impossible for a lawmaker to repeal those programs, or for people who oppose those programs to get elected.

Welcome to Sweet Home Alabama, where the republican dominated state legislature cares more about what students read instead of if they can read.

YeeHaw!

Republicans say there is "something fishy" in Perry County because black folks showed up and voted on election day

Something smells fishy in Perry County all right.

My favorite right wing talk show host/blogger  is using a report by Montgomery based  reporter Dana Beryl, published in The Gadsden Times regarding voter turnout in Perry Couny as proof black voter fraud is alive and well, and justification for Voter Suppression Laws.

Sigh..

According to Beryl's headline and lead paragraph, the United States Justice Department should have sent Federal Election Monitors to Uniontown Alabama, which happens to be majority black, because they had more registered voters than people on election day, with an 55% turnout, representing 80.6% of the towns 2010 population.  Key words 2010 population.

The chairwoman o the  Perry County Board of registrars is quoted in the article saying 279 of the 2576 voters were "removable" because they were either dead or having been convicted of felonies.  So,  why didn't the board of registers "remove" them" prior to election?  Is there proof the dead and ex felons cast votes in the mayoral election? If so, produce it.

An unnamed election official is quoted in the article saying there were 650 absentee ballots cast (not to be confused with counted) in the Uniontown election. Beryl then  notes an absentee ballot is to given only to voters who say they will be out of town on election day.  Which naturally  leads republicans to conclude the high number of absentee ballots invite fraud.

Perry County Commissioner Albert Turner, Jr. said high voter turnout was the due to voters showing their appreciation to the Mayor and the City Council for the4.8 million dollar grant Uniontown received from the United States Department of Agriculture to repair and expand it's water treatment system, hopefully fixing decades of sewer problems.  

You think?

Education for Profit or for Pay?

These are all our children, we will profit by or or pay for whatever they be become."~James Baldwin

Due to republican/corporate control of the public education system not only in Huntsville, Alabama but around the country, the prospects for black/brown/poor children are dim.

 Conservatives don't believe every child, regardless of their race, gender or income should have access to a quality education. Education is a privilege and not a right (pun intended) in their eyes. They believe corporations should run the school system to profit the rich and the rest.....well they are just tough out of luck due to life's unfortunate circumstances.

Instead of hiring instructional leaders who will implement programs with proven results, School boards hire instructional leaders who will rubber stamp the corporate agenda and balance budgets on the backs of the very children they are supposed to serve.

“I’d say we’re successful because we don’t make excuses,” said John Heard, superintendent of Perry County Schools. “Once you make excuses for not getting the job done, you don’t look for solutions. At that point, it’s someone else’s fault and you don’t try to even look for solutions.”

Even poor black children can learn with the right (pun intended) approach

Ask the Perry County Alabama School system. And guess what...they fashioned a winning formula without a high priced Superintendent, budget cuts, and dozens of clueless consultants. You see, this is is what happens when professional educators do what they are trained to do...educate regardless of race, gender, or income. Big H/T to Tuscaloosa News staff writer Jarmon Smith

MARION | In this area of the state’s Black Belt region where dirt roads, farmland and dilapidated buildings are a common sight, and poverty and unemployment are high, a school system — Perry County Schools — has managed to do the opposite of the trend that the area’s demographics would suggest: provide top-tier education.

According to the U.S. Census, more than 30 percent of Perry County’s 10,591 residents live below the poverty line and more than 20 percent are unemployed.

In the Perry County School System, all of the system’s 1,800 students participate in the free and reduced lunch program, and 99.9 percent of the students are black.

In general, such demographics — black students and those on free and reduced lunch programs — perform worse academically than any other groups except students in special education. Schools across the nation that have large numbers of students in those groups generally fail to make Adequate Yearly Progress, minimum state academic standards.
Yet for four straight years, all of Perry County’s four public schools — two elementary and two high schools — have met continuously rising AYP standards when no other school system in West Alabama has been able to do so.

That's right, instead of whining about parental involvement (or the lack there of), balancing the budget on the backs of students, lynching public education, laying off teachers and support personnel, closing schools, and keeping students from hearing President Obama's annual Back to School speech,and other sad, sorry, excuses they get the job done.

Perry County Schools also boast a 97 percent system-wide graduation rate with a higher than 75 percent college placement rate. Its schools were given the Healthy Schools Program National Recognition Silver Award for its healthy school lunch menus from the Alliance for a Healthier Generation, a nonprofit organization that seeks to reduce the rate of childhood obesity by 2015, and the 2010 U.S. News & World Report on best high schools named Perry County’s Robert C. Hatch High School a “bronze school,” putting it among the top 6.3 percent of high schools in the nation.

What John Heard, superintendent of Perry County Schools said!

“I’d say we’re successful because we don’t make excuses,” said John Heard, superintendent of Perry County Schools. “Once you make excuses for not getting the job done, you don’t look for solutions. At that point, it’s someone else’s fault and you don’t try to even look for solutions.”

Now that is the kind of philosophy I wish the Huntsville City Schools had instead of the one they have.

Perhaps the reason that Dr. Robinson isn’t concerned about it taking two months to get a comparison between the FY 2011 and FY 2012 budgets is that she’s convinced that the system is meeting the requirements of the IEPs. In a brief conversation that I had with her after Thursday’s board meeting, she said that she knew that the system was meeting the requirements of the IEPs because the system isn’t being sued.
Let’s let that settle in for a moment.
Our board knows that our children are being educated because they’re not currently being sued for failing to do so. (I am aware of a number of lawsuit that are currently in process. The legal process takes time, as Dr. Robinson should know.)

It's the curriculum stupid!

Heard said Perry County’s students begin school already at a disadvantage economically and socially.

Students enroll in school knowing far less words than they should, typically 1,000 fewer words than their fellow students in more affluent school districts.

“It’s not that they don’t have the capability, it’s that they’re not exposed,” Heard said. “So we immediately attack this by exposing them to a language-rich environment.”

“We put them in a research-based structured reading program from kindergarten through third grade,” he said. “All students go through this program. It’s mandatory. We set aside a block of time each morning just to do this.”

It's about working together to break the vicious chains of poverty for future generations and beyond.

Heard said students know their ticket out of poverty is education. That’s something that every administrator, teacher and even maintenance personnel in the school system stresses to them on a regular basis.

“College is the only option these kids have because there’s nothing else here for them to do,” Heard said. “The only opportunity they have to be successful is to be educated.”

A major reason that so many students in Perry County graduate and go to college is the system’s dual enrollment program.

Heard said that Perry County Schools partner with every organization and business they possibly can, especially four-year and community colleges, which allow them opportunities to offer students a plethora of career exposure and training options.

Caring, certified, professional teachers, administrators and support personnel make the all the difference. This is what happens when the Superintendent works with teachers and support personnel instead of being at war with them.

Helping Perry County’s students succeed is a total team effort, said Marcia Smiley, Perry County Schools’ assistant superintendent.

Teachers are the driving forces behind the system’s success, but their success occurs at a high level because they’re heavily supported.

“Mr. Heard allows buy in from everyone,” Smiley said. “Everyone has support. We’ll bring the community in, the janitors, everyone.

“Everyone’s involved because when you have buy in from everyone you have everyone’s support.”

Heard said that Perry County’s elementary schools have good parent involvement through the PTAs, but parent support drops off at the high school level.

That doesn’t mean that education still doesn’t get accomplished, Heard said.

“Programs are just tools,” Heard said. “We have committed people who believe our kids can achieve. Once you have that, they’ll find a way to make things happen.”

The Perry County school system should be a model for the state and the nation because it is living proof that every child can learn with the right approach. It's not about the money, it's about the people who put students first for real.

Education is the HOPE of the republic.

RedEye on Alabama's Congress Critters

It's official. Congress Critter Mo Brooks joined the ranks of Make Alabama Ashamed in the halls of Congress this week. For some reason he thought it appropriate to call his Democratic Congress colleagues Socialist. Yes Mo. They are laughing at you, but they are really laughing at us for sending you to Washington D.C in the first place.

What Dragontide said

The floor in Washington is a long way from a right-wing talk show studio in the Tennessee Valley, isn't it? The floor in Washington is not a drunken Tea rally, is it?
The man sees Socialists in his sleep. He challenges overwhelming climate science. He beclowns himself even more than Sessions & Shelby. He just might be the most ignorant politician in the history of our state. I hope somebody on Saturday Night Live is working on an impersonation of him. It would be as big as Tina Fey portraying Sarah Palin.

What gets me is Mo had to be forced to withdraw the word Socialist from his remarks and said,

"For whatever reason I am permitted not to use one word."

I'm surprised someone from side of town that's supposed to have a higher IQ than those living on the other side of town doesn't understand why name calling doesn't have a place in civil discourse.

H/T Bessemer Opinions for the best report on CD 7 Congress Critter Terri Sewell.

Terri Sewell voted in favor of HR 910, the so called Energy Tax Prevention Act (which mentions "tax" zero times in the bill, by the way) which could have been called any number of things more accurately.

In lay mans terms this is what Sewell voted for;

Anyway, the bill's purpose is "To amend the Clean Air Act to prohibit the Administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency from promulgating any regulation concerning, taking action relating to, or taking into consideration the emission of a greenhouse gas to address climate change, and for other purposes.

The bill goes on to name water vapor, carbon dioxide, methane, nitrous oxide and several other gases as "greenhouse gases."

In other words, the bill prohibits the administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency from protecting the environment.

Check out the *ahem* double speak from Sewell office

I spoke with someone in Ms. Sewell's office at length about the bill. He told me they had spoken to people in the scientific community and the manufacturing community before deciding how to vote. I asked him to name the scientists, but as it turns out there weren't any, just the "science committee members." (Terri sits on the "Science, Space and Technology Committee, by the way). The committee, like all committees in the house, is chaired by and controlled by Republicans.

So what does little Miss Sewell do to redeem herself after all of this? She pledges to miss a couple of meals after voting for the budget compromise. Woo hoo!

Around America and around the world, many people are hungry because they have no food. Now others are choosing to be hungry to draw attention to the plight of those less fortunate. Fourteen Democratic Congresswomen are joining tens of thousands of Americans in fasting to protest attempts to balance the budget on the backs of those who are most in need and and have the least political power.

The majority of the voters in the 7th district fast every day because they have no JOBS. As a matter of fact, the voters in Perry County have to decide to starve or die. Again I have to ask, what did the voters in the 7th district do to deserve this?

I don't live, work, or most importantly vote in Alabama's 7th congressional district, but I know a lot of people who do. I know a lot of people who don't have indoor plumbing, don't have access to health care, send their students to under achieving public schools and have toxic coal ash waste dumped on them. The 7th congressional district is historically and culturally important to me because thanks to the work of Dr. Joe L. Reed, it is the only African American district in Congress.

Alabama's 7th congressional district is in the heart of the black belt and the cradle of the civil rights movement in Alabama. It was the only Alabama district President Obama won in 2008. For the past 8 years the 7th district has been represented by Artur Davis, who sold them out for his own blind ambition. They deserve competent, committed, effective, courageous, experienced leadership in congress. The stakes are just too high.

Buyers remorse? Naaah. That would be too much like right (pun intended).

A redEYE Look Around Reddest of the Red States

The Bingo War is heating up. It's the Greene County Alabama Sherriff vs. Governor Bob Riley. The Greene County Sherriff says he won't allow Gov. Riley's task force to raid Greentrack. Stay tuned.

Alabama SenatorRichard "Dick" Shelby (r.) is living up to his nick name for blocking every one of the president’s nominees over spending disputes involving his state. Shock and Shame.

Meanwhile the University of Alabama won't cover PACT's tuition gap. You know the gap caused by State Treasurer and republican gubernatorial candidate Cowgirl Kay.

Mobile, Alabama says NO to toxic waste treatment! They are going to stop accepting shipments of wastewater runoff from the Perry County landfill because it's laced with arsenic, mercury, lead, uranium and other heavy metals and toxic substances. Can't say that I blame them.

Can we please have our data back please? Pretty please with sugar on top. Yes, democrats are still begging Parker Griffith to return their date he took with him when he defected to the republican party. Good luck with getting it back.

Real progressive Mitchell Howie is considering running for Congress in the 5th district of Alabama. He's a real progressive which is why he probably doesn't stand a snowmans chance in hell of chance of winning the democratic nomination. Isn't that ironic?

Congressman Artur Davis(DINO) is a strong advocate of Charter Schools, I wonder if he is aware of the data that shows the racial divide grows with Charter Schools? What's that saying about finding out who is driving the wagon before you jump on?

That's what's happening in the reddest of the red states.

Peace Out.