News for Educational Workers

Student Rights

The Safe Schools Improvement Act, a federal anti-bullying bill that would protect students based on their sexuality or gender identity/expression, was introduced into the U.S. Senate in August 2010. The Act would call on schools and districts that receive federal funding to adopt codes of conduct that specifically prohibit bullying or harassment on the basis of race, color, religion, national origin, sex, disability, sexual orientation and perceived or actual gender identity. Most importantly, the Act would mandate that states catalog and report data on bullying and harassment to the Department of Education (www.care2.com, August 9, 2010).

After the American Civil Liberties Union brought and won an unprecedented lawsuit against the Intawamba County School District in Aberdeen, Mississippi, for canceling a prom rather than allowing a female graduating student from bringing her girlfriend, school officials agreed to implement a policy banning discrimination or harassment on the basis of sexual orientation or gender identity, the first policy to do so at a public school in Mississippi (www.aclu.org, July 20, 2010).

Catholic schools are rejecting the children of LGBT parents. In May of 2010, a Boston’s third-grader’s admission to a Catholic school was rescinded, solely because his parents are lesbians. Several months earlier, elementary school in Chicago expelled two preschoolers for the same reason (www.hrc.org, May 15, 2010).

New York University’s Graduate School Organizing Committee (GSOC) has again filed a petition with the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) for a union election, with the hopes that an Obama majority on the NLRB will be more sympathetic to the union cause than the previous Bush administration (The Nation, May 31, 2010 and www.inthesetimes, May 4, 2010).

Education Cutbacks

For histories of the nearly four-decade long effort to restructure public education along Neo-Liberal guidelines, which has accelerated since President Obama took office, see articles by Henry Giroux in truthout (www.truthout.org, April 14, 2010) and George Wright and Carl Bloice in Black Commentator (May 1 and May 27, 2010 respectively).

For more specific examples of cutback severities, see http://colorlines.com, July 26, 2010, where civil rights groups criticize President Obama’s education reforms; www.inthesetimes, July 23, 2010, which describes how up to 1,500 Chicago school teachers may be laid off; The Washington Post, May 6, 2010, which explains how the Indiana and Arizona legislatures have eliminated free all-day kindergarten; and The New York Times, April 27, 2020, which describes how 18,000 Newark, New Jersey, high school and college students organized a protest at City Hall against budget cuts through an invitation posted on Facebook.

Charter Schools

Juan Gonzalez, in The New York Daily News, May 7, 2020, exposes how big banks make a gigantic profit on the building of charter schools: “Wealthy investors and major banks have been making windfall profits by using a little-known federal tax break to finance new charter-school construction. . . . The program, the New Markets Tax Credit, is so lucrative that a lender who uses it can almost double his money in seven years.”

Israel Boycott

On June 27, 2010, Palestinian Queers for Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) against Israel called for all queer groups, organizations and individuals around the world to boycott the state of Israel (http://pqbds.wordpress.com, June 28, 2010).

In The Nation of June 28, 2010, the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions Movement is described as “a key battleground in the struggle over the future of Israel/Palestine.”

The latest issue of Middle East Report surveys the history of the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions Movement in the United States over the past decade, with a focus on the University of California at Berkeley’s attempts at divestment (http://www.merip.org/mer/mer255/erakat.html).

On June 3, 2010, Jewish Voices for Peace congratulated the students at Evergreen State College in Olympia, Washington, the alma mater of Rachel Corrie, the Evergreen State student who was crushed by an Israeli military vehicle as she tried to protect a Palestinian home from being bulldozed, for their overwhelming vote to divest from companies that profit...