PrintOhio students become advocates for school funding
School finance is not a topic that typically sparks much enthusiasm among teenagers. For a group of high school students in Van Wert, Ohio, however, the fine details of how public education is funded in their state and how it affects local schools produced an engaging yearlong project.
Tracey Smith's sociology students at Van Wert High School joined 19 other schools throughout the state this past school year in a project titled "Our Schools, Our Voices," which was designed to educate students—and in turn the entire community—about school funding issues. After what she called an "amazing" success last year, Smith is continuing the project this school year (including some returning students), with a specific focus on rural schools.
"They learned an awful lot," says Smith, a member of the AFT-affiliated Van Wert City Education Association. The project's timing was ideal because the district had a funding levy up before the voters last fall. At first, Smith says, "about half my kids were skeptical about what the district was asking for because of [the negative things] they had heard from their parents." But once they studied the issue and the financial needs of their school and others in the district and state, the students became advocates for the levy and spread the word to their parents and others in the community. The Van Wert levy, which passed with a 53 percent vote, was one of few in the area that got a thumbs up from voters.
Ohio Federation of Teachers president Tom Mooney is pleased that Smith and other OFT members in the state are participating in the project. "Providing students an opportunity to share their view on school funding is not only good citizenship but excellent training for future civic engagement," says Mooney, who is also an AFT vice president.
In addition to looking at hard numbers related to funding, Smith's students surveyed a variety of groups to get their views on the issue, invited outside speakers to meet with them (including a state representative and state senator), wrote essays on the subject and traveled to the state capital in Columbus to share their findings with legislators.
"The students really learned the importance of public perception from this project," Smith says. "The importance of community involvement and support for schools also became evident." The students benefited from having to develop arguments to counter the notion that schools have plenty of money and just need to spend what they have more efficiently, Smith adds.
Some of her own students will be old enough to vote in November, and Smith hopes they will take advantage of that opportunity. "I will encourage them to vote, but I won't tell them how to vote," she says.
AFT Disaster Relief Fund
AFT members and affiliates across the country are urged to extend a helping hand to their union colleagues in Florida who have been left without shelter or have lost many of their possessions in the wake of Tropical Storm Bonnie and Hurricanes Charley and Frances.
The AFT Disaster Relief Fund is collecting money to provide small grants for individual members who have suffered losses as a result of the devastating storms. "We want to let these members know they are not alone and that they can count on the AFT and their fellow union members across the United States," says AFT secretary-treasurer Nat LaCour. Donations to the AFT Disaster Relief Fund will aid Florida members in the cleanup and rebuilding efforts they now face.
The United Teachers of Dade in Miami already has collected a truckload of school supplies donated by UTD members to help colleagues affected by the storms.
Contributions should be sent to the AFT Disaster Relief Fund, 555 New Jersey Ave. N.W., Washington, DC 20001-2079.
Let freedom ring
AFT volunteers established ‘freedom schools' after county defied Brown decision
In spring 1963, a team from the United Federation of Teachers (UFT) in New York City, led by then-AFT vice president Richard Parrish, traveled to Prince Edward County, Va., to survey education conditions there. In 1959, the county had opted to shut down its public schools rather than integrate them—a move made in defiance of the 1954 Brown v. Board of Education U.S Supreme Court decision, which declared segregation in public schools unconstitutional.
The UFT team returned to New York with many concerns; chief among them was what could be done to help more than 1,600 black students in Prince Edward County who had gone without public schooling for nearly four years. In the summer of '63, Parrish and others returned to Virginia with a plan in hand.
Parrish led an integrated teaching corps of 60 volunteers from the UFT and Queens College, in Flushing, N.Y., back to Prince Edward County to set up schools, later known as "freedom schools," for the black children.
The goal was to provide remedial education in reading and math for the students as well as to "show by example that all Americans can work and live together amicably," Parrish said at the time.
Eight schools were set up in churches and community centers. The program ran for seven weeks that July and August, enrolling nearly 600 children ages 6 to 16, some of whom had never attended school. Although the program was designed to help the black children of Prince Edward County, it was open to all. Some poor white children, who had been shut out of the county's private all-white academies, attended the freedom schools.
Norma Becker, one of the UFT teachers who traveled to Prince Edward County that summer, describes the experience as "life transforming." Becker had been active in the union's human relations committee and had sent financial contributions to civil rights groups in the '60s.
"I thought, ‘I can't just give money. I have to get involved.' That summer, I went from being an observer to being a participant," says Becker, who went on to serve as a teacher volunteer in a Mississippi freedom school in the summer of 1964. Becker retired from teaching social studies in 1990.
The AFT wanted the UFT effort to draw attention to the plight of the county's children and, ultimately, it did. Union volunteers staffed the schools until the U.S. Supreme Court ordered Prince Edward County to reopen its public schools in 1964. The AFT expanded its freedom schools program throughout the South, ending in 1969.
Although that program ended, the concept lives on. This summer, 4,700 children attended freedom schools, sponsored by the Children's Defense Fund, in 30 cities and 20 states around the country. With the help of volunteers, the CDF has operated these schools every summer since 1992.
Education International to fight globalization
The world's largest global teacher organization met in Porto Alegre, Brazil, this summer and took up the topics of the international "Education for All" campaign: education quality, the rights of women and girls, fights against child labor, the prevention of HIV/AIDS, and the defense of human and trade union rights of educators and support personnel.
The Education International (EI) meeting attracted nearly 1,500 delegates and guests who gathered July 22-26 away from tourist attractions and focused on worldwide challenges to education professionals.
One of the most significant outcomes of the meeting was passage of a higher education "instrument," a tool to fight the negative effects of globalization and commercialization. "The continued internationalization of higher education should be based on cooperation and exchange rather than competition and commerce," according to EI.
The new instrument specifically targets recent developments in trade, such as the General Agreement on Trade in Services, and opposes the inclusion of education within trade agreements: "The application of trade principles to education and the deepening of trade liberalization are radically altering the international environment for higher education institutions, staff and students."
The instrument recognizes the values that groups within EI hold dear—that education is a public good and right, that educators and support personnel have academic and employment rights and freedoms, and that governments should support exchange even as they protect their indigenous systems of higher education.
EI was founded in 1993 and represents 29 million teachers through their organizations in 150 countries. Its first president, former National Education Association president Mary Hatwood Futrell, stepped down at this meeting and Thulas Nxesi, general secretary of the South African Democratic Teachers Union, was elected to take her place.
Nxesi vowed to continue to strengthen teacher unionism globally and advocate for quality public education in partnership with parents, communities, elected leaders, education departments and others to reverse education budget cuts and privatization. He also said he would make the eradication of HIV/AIDS a priority.
In an effort to combat the spread of AIDS, the AFT-Africa AIDS Campaign has trained more than 12,000 African teachers as AIDS educators.
AFT president emeritus Sandra Feldman was re-elected as a vice president of the EI executive board. AFT's delegation of 15 included AFT secretary-treasurer Nat LaCour and vice presidents Paul Cole, James F. Dougherty, Thomas Y. Hobart Jr., Richard Iannuzzi, Tom Mooney, Maria Portalatin, Laura Rico and retiring vice president Norman Swenson, as well as staff. Portalatin and Rico played a major role in shaping the agenda of the EI Women's Caucus.
Kindergarten-Plus bill signed in Louisiana
Louisiana recently became the second state in the nation to establish a Kindergarten-Plus program. In July, Louisiana Gov. Kathleen Blanco signed into law a bill sponsored by the Louisiana Federation of Teachers to create a pilot program at one school in each of the state’s eight service districts. At-risk students at the pilot schools will begin Kindergarten-Plus classes two months before the start of the regular school year. The program will be implemented in 2005-06. Kindergarten-Plus is the brainchild of AFT president emeritus Sandra Feldman. Last year, New Mexico became the first state to create a Kindergarten-Plus program. From left are state Sen. Melvin “Kip” Holden, author of the bill, Gov. Blanco and LFT president Steve Monaghan.
