Washington State Charter Schools Initiative Bankrolled By Tech Millionaires
Coming to the Washington state ballot in November is a measure, Initiative 1240, asking voters to allocate public tax revenues to alternative schools. These “charter schools” are exempt from some government rules and regulations and have greater flexibility in curriculum and teaching methods.
Actually, we should say coming again to the ballot.
Washington state voted down charter school ballot measures in 1996, 2000, and 2004. But a handful of wealthy individuals, committed to charter schools, are funding I-1240.
Of the $2.3 million raised by the “Yes on I-1240″ campaign as of the July 6 signature filing deadline to get the initiative on the ballot, the state’s Public Disclosure Commission reports $1.6 million came from seven families tied to Microsoft. Add one Amazon family to this tech millionaires club, and the total is $2.1 million.
Microsoft executives Bill Gates and Paul Allen have been major supporters of this family of ballot measures to the tune of more than $5 million.
Other heavy hitters have joined the cause since the filing deadline.
Specifically, Alice Walton of the Walmart family donated $600,000 while Seattle philanthropists Bruce and Jolene McCaw ponied up $100,000. The Secretary of State’s office certified the initiative for the November ballot Wednesday, by which time the total raised was $3.2 million.
Read more at Seattle Times Election Eye.
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I hope the voters will have the COMMON SENSE to make SURE that all the poor of their school system know about these new charters and have equal access, that all materials about how to go to the new schools is by law required to be given to low income people. Here, they have become the playgrounds of the rich only. It is shameful how some break the covenant of education for all by not educating ALL parents about access, how to, when to, where to, why to, what to, why to. Otherwise here, we see the same old behinds crowding through the doorways to advantages others are not informed about. Churches need to step up too and educate parents who are poor and perhaps poorly educated as well… in addition to government. The days of oh let’s do this great thing and leave out the poor is over. Thanks Kathy. Important art.
Hey! We spend billions of tax payer dollars on subsidizing big oil, pharma and big agri-business, all NGO based entities, so why should there be a problem with subsidizing ‘private’ schools (which Charter Schools actually are)? Sheesh! We bankroll the Federal Reserve to manage our own printed dollars for a hefty fee and interest rate return without a second thought, and they’re a privately owned corporation.
Of course I’m being somewhat tongue-in-cheek here, but there is nevertheless a serious underlying point to what I’m saying… namely that while we have drawn back on public/social welfare, corporate welfare, all paid for by taxpayer dollars in its many forms (non-bid contract, subsidies, bail-outs, funding conversion (which is what’s being asked of for public education funding), easy-to-get loan guarantees, etc.) is what is being imposed on the American taxpayer, even funding, via the Federal Reserve, the American taxpayers underwriting of foreign debt bailouts.
It’s become an insidious form of American Facism that like a frog in cold water slowly increasing in heat to boil, results in the frogs death without it really realizing, until its too late, that it has been in a death situation from the start. So it has been with the slow and insidious turning of America’s free enterprise system into a State capitalist driven corporatist free markets system hell bent on doing business at the taxpayers expense to the total advantage of their exclusive stock holders interest.
Some might consider my diatribe that of a Socialist. For those who do so, they missed the point that I did say ‘Free Enterprise System,’ which is the antithesis of Socialism. I’m just saying that out-of-control without accountability ‘Free Markets Driven Systems’ are also the antithesis of a Free Enterprise System.
Don’t believe me? Then ask yourself the question of why do corporatist ‘To-Big-To-Fail’ businesses and big business operate from a set of rules, regulations and State corporatist driven agendas that are not available to the small business community or entrepreneur? Free enterprise is based on a level playing field for ALL participants. Free Markets approach is based on exclusionary posturing and benefitting from State corporatism funded by the taxpayer.
And so it goes…..
All I can tell you is that my adopted son was “taught” by his mother in one of these “alternative” schools. It was set up by her and somehow, I have no idea how, was accepted as a legitimate school for her children – who were the only students. She called it a school for the gifted.
When my son came to live with us, I was shocked by the things he didn’t know. To this day, he cannot write cursive, and writes all his letters in block capitals because he learned how to write from comic books.
The textbook at his “school” was the bible. When he came to us he believed in a young Earth where the planet is only 6000 yrs old and all the dinosaurs died in the Great Flood. He believed evolution and carbon dating were false, and tried to convince my father-in-law who is a PhD Mechanical Engineer who knows Steven Hawking, that Steven Hawking’s theory of red shift is full of $h*t. You can guess how well that went.
I know some of these “schools” are using textbooks like these:
http://www.heraldscotland.com/news/education/how-american-fundamentalist-schools-are-using-nessie-to-disprove-evolution.17918511
Now, if you want your child to believe that the earth is 6,000 years old, all the dinosaurs died in the flood, the earth is flat, the moon’s made of green cheese, and Nessie is “proof” that evolution is a fallacy, you are more than welcome to it. Just don’t expect taxpayer money to pay for it.