Yesterday Governor Snyder spoke at the Educational Summit in
East Lansing (I wasn’t invited, were you?) about the “Skunk Works”. This is a group that was working on a
proposal for educational reform in an under-the-radar way……in total secrecy. They were working on a proposal for a “Value”
education that would include $5000 vouchers to parents and lots of private
companies offering online classes, among other things. It was reported last Friday that state
workers who were involved in these meetings were told to use their private
emails so they were not subject to FOIA requests. No educators were included in the group. And guess who was running the group? Lansing attorney Richard McLellan, organizer
of the Oxford proposal that was immensely unpopular with schools, and he was
formerly part of the Mackinaw Center.
State Board of Education President John Austin has said that
he has a problem with this group. He
feels it is the wrong way to talk about change and how education is
funded. He is troubled by the secretive
nature of the group, as all of us should be.
What did Governor Snyder have to say about this group? He told the news that, “it wasn’t a good
choice”, and said his involvement was minimal.
Is this beginning to sound like his comments about Right-to-work
legislation? It is to me. He denies involvement or interest and then
signs the bill into law. Yesterday he
also said that, “Their choice of names wasn’t a good choice. And I don’t know how often the met or how
they handled it, but as a practical matter I don’t want to be in the business
of saying people shouldn’t bring me ideas.”
We should all be alarmed!
Walled Lake currently receives $8600 per student….if the state doesn’t
cut their allocation to schools as it has in the past. Imagine parents getting a voucher for
$5000. Even if they decided to send
their children to the public school, the loss of revenue would be tremendous……$3600
per student. Remember what $470 per
student loss of revenue meant to our schools?
This kind of loss is not sustainable.
If you have not already read my re-print of an article yesterday about
the Traverse City schools, please READ IT. (It is in the blog post below this one!)
This is all a total effort on the part of private companies
and their legislative cronies to put public schools out of business and give for-profit companies the state
monies formally used for public schools.
PUBLIC TAX dollars will go to PRIVATE CORPORATIONS to run schools. I don’t know about others, but I personally
do not pay my taxes to enrich the Koch brothers or Bill Gates, do you?
We can not stay silent.
WRITE THE GOVERNOR NOW! Tell him
you do not want YOUR HARD EARNED MONEY that you pay for TAXES to go to private
companies. My salary paid in taxes should
not be used to make the CEO’s richer.
Most importantly, if this plan goes forward, I may not have
a salary to pay for taxes…….
To contact the governor, click on this link:
And then click on: “Share Your Opinion”
I wrote Governor Snyder and heard back within 2 hours!!!!
