Racial justice public schools should be our new normal
OPINON: As we turn the page on this pandemic, the Black community must fight to ensure that federal, state and local investments end up in our students classrooms (Photo: The Montgomerty Police Department)
Classrooms look different these days. Some are in person. Some are virtual. Some are hybrid. All in all, this is a new normal.
Our neighborhood public schools should be well-resourced places that are rich with well-equipped educators, manageable class sizes, and wraparound services to meet our students’ emotional, social and health needs. They should also be modernized structures that ensure safety and science are the standard, not a luxury.
Jacobin endorses deadly school reopening plan reached by Los Angeles teachers union
Throughout February and March, the pseudo-left Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) and its affiliated
Jacobin magazine maintained radio silence on the drive to reopen Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD), which rapidly escalated and was pushed through by the United Teachers Los Angeles (UTLA) on March 21. Two weeks later, on April 4,
Jacobin published an unqualified endorsement of the union’s deadly deal to reopen the second largest district in the US, a week before elementary schools are set to begin reopening on April 12.
The article, “LA Teachers Won a Safe Schools Reopening by Organizing,” states, “Despite the obstacles of opening school buildings in a pandemic, UTLA members are preparing to return to school sites in a far safer way than in any other major urban school district in America. This is a result of our social-justice-focused union leadership and school site organ
I have a very pointed response here for Jews making this argument.
American Jews are now part of the ownership class. Jews were immigrants from somewhere else. And they needed the right to have public education. And they needed power to have enough income and wealth for their families that they could put their kids through college and their kids could do better than they have done. Both economic opportunity through the labor movement and an educational opportunity through public education were key for Jews to go from the working class to the ownership class.
What I hear when I hear that question is that those who are in the ownership class now want to take that ladder of opportunity away from those who do not have it. Am I saying that everything we do is right? No. Are people in Los Angeles fearful? Yes.
Credit: Allison Shelley for American Education
April 7, 2021
A Los Angeles parent group filed a lawsuit Wednesday against the Los Angeles Unified School District and district Superintendent Austin Beutner, calling for a return to full-time, in-person instruction to the extent possible.
The group, California Students United, wants the school district to eliminate requirements that students stay 6 feet apart and that they be tested for Covid-19.
Currently, a district agreement calls for testing of all students and staff seven days prior to schools reopening and every two weeks while Los Angeles County is in the red tier of the state’s color-coded Covid-19 tracking system. The red tier indicates there is substantial spread of Covid-19 in the community.
Print
A group of parents who say their children have been illegally shortchanged by Los Angeles Unified School District’s return-to-school plan is seeking a court order to force the district to reopen “to the greatest extent possible” within seven days.
The lawsuit, filed late Wednesday, asks the court to prohibit L.A. Unified from using a six-foot distancing standard in classrooms because it effectively prevents the school district “from providing in-person instruction to the greatest extent possible.” It also seeks to prohibit the district from requiring students to take regular coronavirus tests as a condition for returning to campus.