Florida teachers' unions, Hillsborough County schools join Walmart foundation for vouchers... [View All]

[madfloridian]

for poor students to private religious schools. These vouchers are paid for with public tax money. My money is going to private religious schools.

Two are mentioned in the article...Bible Truth Ministries in Tampa and Tampa Bay Christian Academy.

This article was written by Tom Marshall, and it makes the partnership between Hillsborough public schools and the Sam Walton Foundation seem like a dream come true. It is what one would call propaganda because it only presents one side.

Taking public tax money and giving it to private religious schools is breaking down important barriers between religion and state...and the writer of this article is praising it.

Hillsborough schools and teachers' union join hands with Florida voucher advocates to train private school teachers

In a move that experts are calling nearly unprecedented, the Hillsborough County schools and teachers' union have joined forces with a nonprofit Florida voucher group to help train private school teachers.

Step Up for Students — which runs the state's tax credit voucher program — plans to spend at least $100,000 on classes for teachers who serve its scholarship students, among the county's most economically disadvantaged children. The school district and union will provide space in the jointly developed Center for Technology and Education.

"Bottom line is these are our children, they are disadvantaged children, and they often return to our public schools," said Jean Clements, president of the Hillsborough Classroom Teachers' Association. "I want them to get the best possible education, wherever they get it."

Most of the children, who receive up to $3,950 a year in tuition under the Florida Tax Credit

I have a question...why not give them that education in public schools? Or is the power of the millions poured into the anti-public school campaign by Walmart and other corporations.

I knew that Walmart had been investing 50 million a year for a charter school crusade, but now I realize they are into vouchers as well.

The Waltons specialize in giving money to opponents of public education.

The Walton Family Foundation of Wal-Mart is the single biggest investor in charter schools in the United States, giving $50 million a year to support them. The Waltons specialize in giving money to opponents of public education. “Empowering parents to choose among competing schools,” said John Walton, son of Wal-Mart’s founder, “will catalyze improvement across the entire K–12 education system.”

According to a National Committee for Responsive Philanthropy (NCRP) report, “Some critics argue that it is the beginning of the ‘Wal-Martization’ of education, and a move to for-profit schooling, from which the family could potentially financially benefit. John Walton owned 240,000 shares of Tesseract Group Inc. (formerly known as Education Alternatives Inc.), which is a for-profit company that develops/manages charter and private schools as well as public schools.”23 Wal-Mart is a notorious union-busting firm, famous for keeping its health-care costs down by discouraging unhealthy people from working at its stores, paying extremely low wages with poor benefits, and violating child labor laws. The company has reportedly looted more than $1 billion in economic development subsidies from state and local governments.24 Its so-called philanthropy seems also to be geared to the looting of public treasuries.

As for a coordinated effort, the private incursion into public schools is being pushed by a band of jackals grouped around Bill Gates and the $2 billion that his Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation have sunk into the education “reform” movement. The foundation funded a 2006 study by the New Commission on the Skills of the American Workforce called Tough Choices or Tough Times, “signed by a bipartisan collection of prominent politicians, businesspeople, and urban school superintendents,” which "called for a series of measures including: (a) replacing public schools with what the report called “contract schools,” which would be charter schools writ large; (b) eliminating nearly all the powers of local school boards—their role would be to write and sign the authorizing agreements for the contract schools; (c) eliminating teacher pensions and slashing health benefits; and (d) forcing all 10th graders to take a high school exit examination based on 12th grade skills, and terminating the education of those who failed (i.e., throwing millions of students out into the streets as they turn 16)"

Take money away from public schools. Use it for forming other types of schools that don't have to adhere to the same standards as public schools have traditionally done.

Take money from public schools and give it out in the form of vouchers. Another way to break the back of the public education which began to be undermined under the Reagan administration.

I am a retired teacher, a parent of children who went through the public school system. I see the religious private schools starting to grow in our area. I was about to use the word "bloom", but I can't use that word to describe schools that teach that women must be submissive. I can't use that word to describe schools that teach discrimination and hate against gays.

I don't want my tax money being used that way. But it is being done anyway with the blessing of the Hillsborough County schools and their teachers' unions.