Fed Up, These Parents Sue Baltimore Public Schools

As in so many other places around the country, the public education system in Baltimore is failing the city’s children. Public schools have been failing American students for decades, but the issue is pronounced in Maryland’s biggest city.

Stories abound of Baltimore’s momentous failures to teach its kids. One report details how a student graduated from high school without the ability to read; another reveals that 41% of the city’s high school students have a GPA under 1.0.

To Jovani Patterson and his wife Shawnda, both city residents, that’s unacceptable.

The couple announced Jan. 27 that they are suing the city and Baltimore City Public Schools over what they view as an abject failure to educate children—as well as a massive waste of taxpayer funds.

The lawsuit is still in its early stages. The Pattersons, as the plaintiffs, are waiting to hear back on whether the city and its schools will file a motion to dismiss their suit.

In an interview with The Daily Signal, the Pattersons said they thought the lawsuit was the only way to have their voices heard.

“There’s really no other recourse a citizen in Baltimore could take,” Jovani said. “We don’t elect our school board, so there’s no way we could both be appointed members of the school board. There’s nothing that people can really do outside of a lawsuit to effect change or request access into the inner workings of what’s going on in Baltimore.”

Unfortunately, the issues with Baltimore’s school system are nothing new. And they aren’t uniquely tied to this one city.

Across the nation, kids are trapped in failing public schools. Like the Pattersons, many American parents are pitching money that could be used to give their child a better education into a vortex of government incompetence.

The Pattersons say that vortex of incompetence has affected Baltimore’s children for generations.

“We’ve heard for decades about some of the failures to educate and things like social promotion, lack of resources,” Jovani said, adding: “And year after year, time after time, all we hear is, ‘Well, this is the way it’s always been. This is the way it’s always going to be.’”

Jovani and Shawnda have first-hand experience with those failures in public schools. Their fourth-grade daughter has been in the system since she began her formal education. Jovani, 35, ran unsuccessfully for City Council president as a Republican in 2020. Shawnda, 39, worked as a public school teacher in the city for nearly 10 years.

Shawnda places the blame squarely at the feet of bureaucrats and administrators, not teachers who are trying their best to make a difference in children’s lives.

“I don’t think it’s mostly the teachers; it’s just the way that the system is run,” she said.

As an example of the problems she faced as a teacher, Shawnda detailed the number of students she was expected to teach without an assistant.

“Most of the time, my class size was pushing 40 kids with no assistant. To effectively teach 40 children, that is a challenging task,” she said.

But the Pattersons refused to accept that Baltimore’s schools should be consigned to failure. They hope their lawsuit will serve as a wake-up call to the city and school system. They want officials to know this kind of catastrophic incompetence no longer will be tolerated.

“The idea is to raise expectations and have the school board assess if the city actually follows their own practices and rules. Being a good steward of finances, for example,” Jovani told The Daily Signal. “We want to make sure the schools have some type of oversight within the schools [of] where the money goes, how well we’re performing.”

The Pattersons’ story highlights the need for strong reform in public education. Baltimore’s children would be better off if they were allowed to flourish in schools that aren’t part of a broken system.

The solution is school choice.

Jude Schwalbach, a former research associate at The Heritage Foundation, argued in a commentary for The Daily Signal, the think tank’s news outlet:

Students participating in school choice programs are significantly more likely to graduate from high school. For instance, students participating in the D.C. Opportunity Scholarship Program, which helps low-income students attend private schools of their choice, experienced a 21-percentage-point increase in graduation rates. …

School choice creates direct accountability to parents. It gives schools a strong incentive to meet the needs of their students since unsatisfied parents can take their children and education dollars elsewhere.

Jovani and Shawnda Patterson say they are fighting to make their local schools better.

But the fight for better outcomes for America’s students starts with school choice.

If Baltimore can’t provide a decent public education, its children deserve a chance to learn somewhere else.

https://www.dailysignal.com/2022/03/30/why-this-baltimore-couple-is-suing-the-city-and-its-schools/

*******************************************

Parents suing Albemarle County Public Schools

What would your reaction be if you found out your child had learned in her middle school art class that she would never succeed in life—because of her ethnicity?

You’d be shocked—and rightfully so. But that situation is not just a hypothetical. It’s a reality in Albemarle County, Virginia, and it’s a direct consequence of the so-called “Anti-Racism Policy” that Albemarle County Public Schools passed in 2019.

The county’s policy, rooted in critical race theory ideology, teaches children to view themselves and their classmates through the lens of race, putting people into boxes like privileged vs. unprivileged, oppressors vs. oppressed, victimizers vs. victims, haves vs. have nots—all based entirely on their race. Not only is this damaging to children; it’s also a violation of their civil rights.

Thankfully, parents are standing up.

Alliance Defending Freedom is representing a religiously and ethnically diverse group of five families to challenge the racially discriminatory policies and practices of Albemarle County Public Schools. While these families come from a wide range of racial and religious backgrounds, they are united in opposing racial discrimination and ensuring the rights of parents to protect their children from harmful ideologies infiltrating the educational system.

These families believe the schools should discuss race and racism, and they should teach the history of racism in the United States. But they should also treat every child as an individual endowed with innate human dignity and value, entitled to equal treatment. They should never treat any child differently based solely on their race, or view children only through the lens of race.

https://adflegal.org/blog/one-school-board-fighting-racism-more-racism

************************************************

The CDC and Teachers Unions Colluded

The American Federation of Teachers (AFT), headed by the infamous Randi Weingarten, has long been suspected of wielding undue influence over the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and COVID policy. It is well documented that the AFT gives handsomely to Democrat political campaigns. Weingarten herself even said in the lead-up to the 2020 elections that it “will be a vitally important cycle, and that’s why the AFT moved earlier than usual, mindful of the challenges posed by the pandemic, to ensure our long-term allies could establish a footprint.” They certainly have left their footprints — right on the necks of our school children. And under the presidency of Democrat Joe Biden, the AFT has been pulling the puppet strings.

A watchdog group called Americans for Public Trust obtained requested emails through the Freedom of Information Act that are undeniable proof of the CDC and the AFT working together to create back-to-school policy. The emails were between CDC Director Dr. Rochelle Walensky, AFT top advisers and union officials, and the Biden administration. These emails prove that Randi Weingarten got to tweak the wording on some of the CDC documents regarding going back to school. The two points in particular where the AFT’s wording was adopted verbatim were on the issues of in-person learning and the rights of teachers who were high risk or had a family member who was considered high risk. In other words, the tweaks by the AFT were union protected and teacher focused and not at all about the welfare of the children.

The document in question was released in February 2021 and, to the rest of the world, it looked like the CDC was ignoring the science behind COVID — at the time there was ample evidence that schools were not superspreaders — and slow-walking a return to school.

It had long been suspected that there was some collusion between the AFT and the CDC on various COVID policy decisions. The CDC even admitted using the teachers union’s expertise but brushed off the undue influence accusation by convincing the public that this was normal practice. In fact, Walensky intentionally downplayed the role that the AFT played in the February guidance.

Dr. Walensky was not the only one intentionally hiding information from the public. In a congressional investigation into this matter, Biden administration lawyers saw to it that key CDC scientists were prevented from giving testimonies about this CDC-AFT collusion. The lawyers wanted “to ensure the Biden Administration was shielded from legitimate oversight.”

We now know the disastrous results of the AFT’s meddling in COVID policymaking. Between its position on masking and keeping schools closed, the AFT had made it abundantly clear that its priorities were never the children. Our public school students have lost years in academic gains that they may never be able to get back. And the CDC in cahoots with the AFT exacerbated the problem. Both organizations should not wonder why the public, especially the parents of these children, hold them in utter disgust.

https://patriotpost.us/articles/87316-the-cdc-and-teachers-unions-colluded-2022-03-31

***********************************

My other blogs: Main ones below

http://dissectleft.blogspot.com (DISSECTING LEFTISM)

http://antigreen.blogspot.com (GREENIE WATCH)

http://pcwatch.blogspot.com (POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH)

http://australian-politics.blogspot.com/ (AUSTRALIAN POLITICS)

http://snorphty.blogspot.com/ (TONGUE-TIED)

*******************************