The Billionaires Boys Club's Hands in Our Schools -- REAL Doom!

After reading the article first linked above, the one about the LRSD being taken over by the state, I had more questions than anything. I did a little search to uncover what the hell is going on in Arkansas, and I came up with 10 other articles that I thought relevant enough to include here. In order of date, most recent to least recent (small snippets included; emphasis mine):

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1)
Lies, damn lies, statistics and Little Rock schools
Posted By Max Brantley on Wed, Jan 28, 2015 at 9:24 AM
Who's to blame? The critics want to fire the School Board. Yet principals are the first line of defense against poor teachers. The superintendent is in charge of principal selection. The superintendent's administration is in charge of strategies for school improvement. What has the School Board blocked Suggs from doing? There have been principled disagreements on how to reshape Hall High (an objective ALL agree is necessary), but resistance to Suggs' ideas is a charge easier to level than support. (Even he didn't cite any specific obstruction when asked directly about it this morning; he merely said he feared continuing board cooperation in the years ahead.) The critics also hate the teachers union. Yes, there is a state fair dismissal law. If supervisors are too lazy or stupid to identify and either improve or remove poor teachers, it's not the union's fault. It's not the union's fault that the administration has allowed overreliance on long-term substitutes and uncertified teachers in some places. Also, great teachers with difficult students sometimes "fail," if test scores are your God. Terrible teachers with brilliant students generally "succeed," if test scores are your God.
[link to www.arktimes.com]

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2)
Over 150 turn out for community forum against state takeover of LRSD
Posted By Benjamin Hardy on Mon, Jan 26, 2015 at 7:49 PM
The most extensive remarks tonight came from board member Jim Ross, who told the crowd that takeover advocates are correct when the say the district has failed many students. “It doesn’t take a brain surgeon to see that the Little Rock School District is broken. That’s why I decided to run for this board,” he said. But, ‘the data shows we’re doing a pretty good job of educating gifted and talented kids … most white kids … middle class black children, middle class Latino and Asian children.

“So who are we failing? Poor kids,” said Ross. He ticked off multiple problems behind that failure: a “horrific crisis” in literacy, widespread poverty, limited early childhood education opportunities and an inconsistent curriculum. Perhaps most importantly, the existing system has evolved to concentrate poor kids into “segregated academies” that tend to lack highly qualified teachers and administrators, creating "dysfunctional learning environments."
[link to www.arktimes.com]

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3)
The case for the Little Rock School District
Posted By Max Brantley on Fri, Jan 23, 2015 at 9:09 AM
She charted today facts about the six schools in academic distress that are the wedge by which the entire district may be taken over.

Their student bodies are impoverished — 85 to 92 percent qualify for free and reduced-price lunches. Three of the schools have at least 20 percent of the student body who don't speak English as their first language. Baseline Elementary has a 52 percent non-English student body. Roughly one in seven students at these schools are in special education. The chart doesn't mention it, but they are all minority majority schools. Either all back or black and Latino. It is not racist to say that, nationally, black students lag behind white students. So low scores in Little Rock shouldn't be looked at in a vacuum. When any school district in America is overwhelmingly black and poor it would be unusual for it to score high on standardized tests.
[link to www.arktimes.com]

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4)
Another letter from a Little Rock School Board member — this time, VP Joy Springer
Posted By Benjamin Hardy on Tue, Jan 6, 2015 at 11:27 PM
However, Springer says that the district isn't unusual in cycling through superintendents. "Review of educational periodicals ... indicates that the average tenure of a superintendent in urban districts is approximately 3 years," she writes. She also points out that it's unfair to blame the current board for what's happened with supers in years past. "My review of the data indicates that the LRSD has had 9 superintendents between the period of 1985 to 2004. During these years, the majority board was Caucasian. During the 2006-2007 school year, the Board became majority (black). There have been four superintendents including Dr. Suggs."

As for teachers, Springer indicates that the reason so few have been fired is because the union advises its members to resign if they're facing termination due to poor performance. "The LREA [Little Rock Education Association] has communicated to me that over 25 teachers voluntarily resigned because of poor job performance during that time," she says.
[link to www.arktimes.com]
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5)
Former senator and LR school board member John Riggs thinks state takeover a solution for schools
Posted By Max Brantley on Wed, Jun 18, 2014 at 2:37 PM
The notes — and they are not a speech — provide a number of specifics on familiar topics, including low-performing schools and a failure to move more aggressively to reduce costs with the coming loss of state desegregation support. By Riggs' figuring, the district may eventually have to pare some 500 jobs, but so far has increased expenses.
Riggs says a millage is needed for construction, a hard pull though not necessarily impossible.
Can a millage pass? Yes, look to NLRSD. Record rise in millage rates, highest in state. It takes a great superintendent, engaged school board that is respected, community institutions behind the schools. NLRSD promised new schools but a more efficient system (consolidated schools). New millage passed by a large majority.
What's to blame?
Failure of governance. When as the last time we had anything but a 4-3 vote on anything of substance? Lack of support for Superintendent by board. Failure of citizens to be engaged. No righteous indignation, no anger no demand for change within school community. A large part of our populations is used to poor performance and has come to expect it. School board elections need to be moved to November to get more people involved.
[link to www.arktimes.com]

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6)
LR School Board president responds with note of hope on district situation
Posted By Max Brantley on Tue, Jun 17, 2014 at 6:37 AM
I wrote a pessimistic column this week about the Little Rock School District. With the end of state desegregation support, division on the school board, schools in academic distress and a community full of enemies, I've found reason to contemplate even such measures as a state takeover.
[link to www.arktimes.com]
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7)
June 12, 2014
Drastic measures for Little Rock schools
By Max Brantley
This brings us to Little Rock. It has a new superintendent, Dexter Suggs, who has been saying the right sorts of things. But he's been unable to form a consensus on the school board.

The sad paradox is as obvious as skin color. Suggs, a black man, overcame a difficult youth to become a top school administrator. Where we fail in schools today, we fail black males first. But Suggs can rarely muster support from the entirety of the four-person black majority on the seven-member board.

He must cut administrative and other expenditures to prepare for loss of deseg money. The black majority hasn't liked his ideas.
[link to www.arktimes.com]

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8)
Little Rock School Board politicking begins
Posted By Max Brantley on Tue, Jun 10, 2014 at 7:19 AM
The board is currently struggling, in part because of a division that seems to often pit the three white members against the four black, or at least against a lack of the necessary majority votes to decide issues. The split is most evident in regard whether to back decisions of Superintendent Dexter Suggs.
[link to www.arktimes.com]

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9)
UPDATE: School desegregation settlement proposed; John Walker not on board
Posted By Max Brantley on Thu, Nov 14, 2013 at 5:26 PM
While the state and the three school districts (Pulaski is currently under state Education Department control) can agree to end litigation, it seems doubtful that they can settle the pending question of whether the Pulaski district has yet cured deficiencies related to discrimination in discipline and special education and facilities. Indeed, the proposed settlement, with a fourth year of the payout dedicated to facilities only, is anticipated to help address the woeful state of some Pulaski schools, particularly in the heavily black southeastern part of the county.
[link to www.arktimes.com]

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10)
Little Rock School District begins FOI page that happens to spotlight John Walker
Posted By Max Brantley on Wed, Oct 2, 2013 at 10:48 AM
Interesting. Little Rock School Superintendent Dexter Suggs announces here a new Freedom of Information Act page.

Says Suggs:

At the click of a button, the core features of this impressive webpage will:

· Increase the user’s knowledge regarding State law that governs compliance with FOIA requests

· Provide answers to frequently asked questions about the FOIA

· Provide access to specific public requests


I call B.S. on the grandiose verbiage.

The page contains three things: 1) a link to the FOIA; 2) a link to a booklet compiled by the attorney general, governor and various media groups with a Q&A on the FOIA, and 3) a searchable list of all FOI requests made to the district.since April 24. Nos. 1 and 2 are readily available all over the web. No. 3 is, I think, the real point of the exercise.

I'd submit this page is a pretext to showcase how much work attorney and state Rep. John Walker creates for the School District with FOI requests, some of them requiring extensive research.
[link to www.arktimes.com]

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I say thank you for this post!

I hope a mod will pin it. In the past, I have pinned similar posts of mine using karma, but malcontents always amass enough unpin requests to unpin them. One told me "Death to YT". Being blonde and green-eyed, I take that as a death threat.

Yes. Thanks, OP, for the thread. Amazing that this isn't Red Pinned already. Even more amazing that a Simpsons Episode is actually taking place in real life. You know that one Simpson's episode where a corporation took over the school. "Can you count to potato?" shall be a new benchmark in the totally collapsed and crushed U.S. Education System. The end is no longer near... This is Giga-Doom for the U.S. Educational System! The end is HERE! I feel really sorry for everyone who has kids at the Little Rock, AR school system now. Good luck to everyone there and abroad. We need to keep an eye on this developing and ever worsening situation as it spells out the worst case scenario concerning the U.S. Educational System. Five Stars for you, OP!

schoolish events have so many repercussions.

bump to follow what happens.

I don't know which mods are on duty today. I did send GM a PM, asking that he pin it, and telling him why (the malcontents).

I've never been big on TV. I was wondering where that "count to potato" line came from. Thanks!

It's good to see that you and others can see what I see from this development: that this is an important doom event for us all, and for future generations. GLP has a wide reach--Hopefully this thread will stay alive here, and spread!

Last Edited by SilverKwest on 01/29/2015 03:46 PM

Thanks, and help spread the genuine, not elitist faked/MSM, doom.

Last Edited by SilverKwest on 01/29/2015 03:48 PM

I guess I don't understand the animosity toward those that are successful taking over the dreadful Little Rock school system. It's Clinton's and Obama's policies compounded to the worst they could be that has gotten it to where it is. Let the billionaires turn it around.

The billionaires that enslave are the solution to enslavement?

Yeah, once your Green Pin wears off or expires hopefully your thread gets Red Pinned soon thereafter, OP. It's truly these things that get swept under the rug while so many others would much rather pay attention to sports, porn, and play video games... ok, technically most sports these days are borderline hardcore porn. Not sure if that's a bad example. The "count to potato" line just came to me abruptly, OP. I'm a mystery even to myself. So yay about that!

Yep, if the corporations of the world can take full control of a public school system that isn't the Government's BS then that's the ultimate doom for the U.S. Educational System. Corporations already own and operate the veterinarians' line of business by completely owning and operating EVERY school to learn how to doctor our various animal brethren. Many of us already understand just how terrible the vets' businesses can be too... Looks like the movie Idiocracy is breaking the forth wall now and breaking into real life. A part of me wants to sob uncontrollably while overall I just don't care since I've graduated my local high school without going on a killing spree nor killing myself. Not wanting to deal with that crap again. Very much good luck to everyone who wants to fight the billionares and corporations are now making vicious pushes into the U.S. Education System.

Just to think the Texas Edjemucation bit used to be a great redneck joke. Looks like the Texas Edjemucation System will be the most intelligent Education System in the U.S. by the end of this decade.

Not only that, so billionaires and even millionaires are the way to go to solve that pesky and critical public school system, AC, to you? Looks like you're an excellent canidate for them! Go to your Masters, AC! Go! Run like the broken wind you are to your new Masters!!

They don't have enough power yet. Give 'em more!

for more comments!

How to solve this problem:
1) Let's be honest, most Black children either cannot or will not learn. It is criminal to force the kids that want to learn to be around them. Either boot them out of school or put them in special facilities, preferably surrounded by concertina wire, to keep them out of the way.
2) 52% non-English speaking? Deport them and their parents, birthplace be damned.
Problem solved.

:racist5:

Well, some disgruntled hoodlums with a sense of entitlement unpinned me, again, amounting to a waste of my karma spent, again. losers.

If you like this thread, be sure to fight back by recommending it be pinned!

Last Edited by SilverKwest on 01/30/2015 08:48 AM

Oh, no, those things can't happen. The offenders' behavior must be rewarded, and must result in the punishment of white people. How else can white society be broken beyond repair?

(English, please.)

Hmmm, Waltons, Rockefellers and such. They plan to implement some form of hardcore indoctrination using this district as a pilot program?

home schooling perhaps ?

alls you need is a computer and internet connection

Everybody in central Arkansas has known for decades that the LRSD is a failure. White flight has made out lying cities rich. Those who remain in LR send their kids to Pulaski Academy or another private school.

LR and NLR are shit holes.

If they do well for these children, they have done a good thing, after desegregation, they deliberately started lowering the curriculum. I will tell, any smart mouth saying well black people can't learn, and I say you are like the ones that cause this mess.

The kids, which are teens down here anyway, blacks the first time, were scared, no reason for it during desegregation. They were smart kids and smarter than a lot of the white kids. They were made to come, they did not want to, but their parents worked for the government, only a few came. Then they saw it was no problem more came. The year after they the Gov. lowered the curriculum, guess which party.

Anyway as I told this black professor and his teacher wife, they are dumming down the children, because they well be easier to lead. I do believe it has come to fruition.

I did tell them to teach the children anyway they could. Do the stupid test first and get to extra work with the children. The professor it was about not getting any points one computer programing, or even how to run them. I told him to get book and teach himself and let the students learn to.

He said he was going to, so hope he did, maybe they were saved from the dumming down. So, I was around when it started, we all black and white were taught the same things but in different schools and they were not happy their community schools which were in the neighborhood was closed.
Sending them twenty five miles away, when their was a good school and it was, right within a mile or less. We already had to go that far.

These student were smart well taught, they had good teachers, with ethics, sadly missing in this country today.

They would have fewer failing schools to fix if they didn't bus the blacks from one side of the district to the other.

Poverty and esl both have some role in it I'm sure but I have a hard time believing they're the only, or even the major, contributors. You talk about the high rate of free and reduced lunches but that's not extraordinary in arkansas. Outside of the Rogers/ft smith/and maybe jonesboro metro areas numbers like that fairly common.

So you got dirt poor rural schools with white kids that don't perform as poorly.

I'll scrub Rogers because it's a wealthier area but schools like Danville have a huge esl student body. I think you have to know spanish to teach there. It's still a nice district that meets performance standards. The difference is the other 39% not struggling with english are white instead of black.

You're not familiar with the demographics of Little Rock are you?

Serious question, no offense intended.

Last Edited by Ag47 on 01/29/2015 11:35 PM

They have their nasty fingers in every pie, and either this is a precedent, or another school district was one. I, personally, haven't heard complaint of anything similar in another place, but it's possible that people are so accustomed to being powerless and dominated that they don't see it, or care, anymore. If you notice, there are only a handful of GLPers who have responded that this spells doom, and GLPers should be more attuned to the game than your average Joe & Jane. Why there are not many seeing it and responding, I have no clue, but I am thankful for the few, including you, who did.