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School Choice Hits Home

By: Kristina Ribali (Diary)  |  February 18th, 2011 at 04:42 PM  | 

RESIZE: AAA

With the release of movies like “Waiting for Superman”, “The Lottery”, and “The Cartel”, more and more Americans are beginning to realize that they must engage in the battle for the very future of our children. These movies are a visual wake-up call and and indictment against the status quo. For our family, the awakening came a few years ago.

Like most parents, when your child is succeeding in public school, you don’t worry too much about what other choices are available to you.  I figured since I pay property taxes, business taxes, income taxes…etc that I would continue to send my children to the local zoned school in my district. That is until we realized just how far behind our son really was.

I’m not a disconnected parent.  In fact, I was in constant contact with my son’s school and his teacher.  For years I had concerns, and at every teacher’s conference or meeting I was told that my son was doing fine and “not to worry.”  At the end of the fourth grade year, my son had not passed a single state mandated test.  I was NEVER informed of his struggles and at that point we realized that my son was over two years behind in reading and at least three years behind in math.

After weeks of meeting with education specialists, private schools, tutors, bureaucrats, school superintendents etc, we finally found a solution that we felt was right for our family.  The choice we made was an online public school offered by Connections Academy.   No sooner did we settle into the new reality of semi-homeschool, did our battle to educate our son begin.

Within days of enrolling our son, we were notified by a state legislator that these online public charter schools were being targeted by the local teacher’s unions.  The bill the unions and state democrat representatives were supporting would eventually completely shut down these schools by requiring a 50% in district registration requirement. The bill passed down straight party lines.

I was shocked to find out that the Oregon Education Association’s number one legislative priority was shutting down these public schools, simply because the teachers at these schools are not unionized.  Over fifty percent of the children that attend these online public charter schools are below federal poverty levels. What other choices did these families have?  Who was speaking on behalf of the thousands of children on waiting lists to attend these charter schools?  It was on that day that we fully engaged in the fight for school choice and education reform.

Fast forward to today:

  • Most importantly my son is succeeding with A’s and B’s in advanced classes.
  • This legislative session, there are several “fix-it” bills to try to reduce the damage caused to education reform last session.
  • Several legislators are working to bring Florida style education reform to Oregon.
  • Oregon lawmakers are working directly with parent advocates as they work to reform Oregon’s abysmal education system.

Oregon children have a brighter future with a balanced house and pro-reform legislators, but we can’t back down. For the last three and a half years I have worked nearly every waking moment to change the political landscape in our state. I’ve worked to educate and empower parents to get involved and make a difference in the battles that are important to them. It is working, albeit slower than I’d like, but it’s working.

What I hope our story does is encourage EVERY parent to get involved in school reform in your state.  One person can make a difference, and thousands can change the lives of millions of children trapped in a failing education system.

To find out more about our story and the battles we face, read more about “A Mother’s Plea for School Choice”.

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  • http://www.laborunionreport.com LaborUnionReport

    The only woman I know licensed to carry in 49 out of 50 states.

    Note to RS readers: If you’re not following @ORLibertygal, you need to. She’s doing more to fight for the kids in Oregon than anyone out there.

    • itrytobenice

      I support your efforts 100%.

      It never ceases to amaze me the people who will blindly endorse our current gov’t run schools when the system is obviously nonsensical given any level of scrutiny.

      We take a group of children, who have nothing in common but geographical location, bunch them all up, buy them a book and expect to educate them. Some of them are brighter; some are slower; some learn tactically; some learn visually; some are from disastrous home situations; some have all the help they need; some are socially adept; some are fearful. None of them learn the same way or need the same things on any given day.

      Less than 50% of the children entering gov’t run schools graduate with a successful education, which is clearly a failing grade even if we use gov’t school standards, yet nothing ever changes.

      It concerns me. If Americans are so lethargic about the successful education of our children, which I think we all agree is important to most of us, how in the world can we hope to succeed against the threatening circumstances our country is facing?

      But thank you for getting involved and protecting your son’s education. He’s a very fortunate kid.

      And thanks for a good diary.

      • lineholder

        I noticed that the Connections Academy has satellites in SC. I’ve called both my daughter and son who live in that state. They’ve promised to check it out.

      • Flagstaff

        Not that I don’t think it should be eliminated, but if it isn’t, its direction should be changed.

        There is only one legitimate use for the D of E’s efforts–help charter schools and private schools achieve equal footing (level the playing field) with public schools. The Department should be out there in force whenever a city or county is trying to pass a school voucher system but finds itself stymied by the resources of the NEA.

        There is no reason the D of E should be a mouthpiece for the public school system. What it SHOULD be is a champion for school excellence, and that would mean an immediate switch to support of charter schools, private schools, and school vouchers. Also, it should be helping any state that wants to take teachers out of the hands of a union shop, even if it means de-certifying the NEA.

        • acat

          expecting top-down reform of social security…
          expecting top-down reform of food stamps…
          expecting top-down reform of campaign finance…

          Once our duly elected morons in D.C. (with apologies for the rare few whose representatives are stand-up guys… beware, they too have expiration dates…) cannot figure out how to do “reform” without letting it get mucked up in horse-trading and deal-making and getting lobbied…

          Reform has to be driven by those of us who demand it, and a smaller government makes that much simpler.

          Mew

          (who has his own set of experience with the public “education” system…)

          • http://www.nighttwister.com NightTwister

            Get rid of the rest of the regulation and all of the subsidies. Encourage school choice and charter schools and private school vouchers for children stuck in school districts without these choices. This gives the opportunity for education success without guaranteeing it.

          • acat

            should be primarily minimal *nationwide* standards. If the Texas school board wants to require an additional class on Texas state history to graduate, that’s fine – as long as the minimums are met.

            There may also be a need for the Fed to sometimes provide extra resources – administration-wise – to districts that are routinely failing to meet these standards, but that should take place only after the State resources fail to bring the schools up to standard, and in both cases there need to be clear rules on turning the district back over to local control.

            Mew

          • http://www.nighttwister.com NightTwister

            it should be turned over the parents and students, via a Charter school, or vouchers given to allow them to send their children to private schools. If the government can’t do it right, then they shouldn’t be involved at all. Bringing in another government body to take over when the current one has failed is what we have now, and it’s not working.

          • acat

            Simple law that, in the event a school fails to meet standards, then every student gets vouchers, paid for by the state… the faculty and administration are fired or reassigned, the building goes up for sale, and the parents have a choice to make….

            Use the voucher money to set up a charter school…
            Send their kids to private schools…
            Transfer their kids to other public schools and forfeit the voucher funds…

            Yeah. That could work very well, actually.

            Mew

        • Bill S

          why those things DON’T happen. The Wisconsin situation should be enough evidence for anyone to see that the NEA and their ilk are prime reasons why the education system is in such bad shape. Teachers’ unions are evil. Tenure is a disease. Until those things go away, nothing will change.

          • acat

            Tenure was originally intended to protect professors from the whims of a colleges’ major donors or local civic leadership who may, for personal or local-political reasons, may want a given “touchy” topic to be ignored.

            If a professor ended up offending a major donor, or violating a local standard, tenure could be invoked, meaning the whole college would share the pain if the donor pulled out or the civic leaders clamped down…. and this unified front did help to preserve academic freedoms.

            Of course, like most words, the union leaders have just grabbed the “can’t fire this teacher” part… leaving aside that teachers in government-funded public schools don’t need to worry about their source of funding getting cut off, and barely need to pay attention to school boards as membership often changes as kids age and their involved parents move on.

            It’s past time to get rid of this solution in search of a problem.

            Mew

          • http://www.nighttwister.com NightTwister

            …consider how it will be implemented in the worst way.

            Because eventually, it will be.

          • acat

            That is, or ought to be, the political equivalent of “First, do no harm”.

            Mew

          • Flagstaff

            At least, not the ones with touchy-feely orders to “go and do good.”

            The theory behind national standards is laudable–make all schools equally good. The reality is that they all end up being equally bad. Schools have been ordered to do way too many “good” things beyond educating young skulls full of mush. Some of those orders are in conflict with each other.

            Rather than having national standards, I say it would be better to just get the federal government out of the whole business and let the communities and states fend for themselves.

            I may have the dates and proportions wrong here, but I recently heard that since about 1983, spending on public education has doubled IN REAL DOLLARS, while our educational results have simply continued to slide. This tells me that money is not the problem, what we are doing with it is.

            Thomas Sowell wrote a book about US education about 15 years ago (Inside American Education). I haven’t read it, but reviews at the time claimed that he supported complete replacement of the current public education system with a new one; that it can’t be “fixed.”

            http://search.barnesandnoble.com/Inside-American-Education/Thomas-Sowell/e/9780029303306/?itm=6

            Or, as someone asked yesterday, why have we given the government the job of providing education for our children? We don’t expect it to feed, clothe, or house us. If we see Obamacare as an example of government overreach, wasn’t the first slide on the slippery slope the nationalization of public education?

            The first step on the road to recovery is taking place right now, in Wisconsin. Reduce the power of public unions and the size of government will start to shrink, and local school districts will have more flexibility.

            National standards already are not working. I’d rather we had thousands of bad schools around the country (which we do) if those schools have the mechanisms and incentives to improve, rather than today’s incentives, which are to maintain the status quo.

          • http://www.nighttwister.com NightTwister

            here

            Flexibility is important. Choice is essential.

            The federal minimum standard isn’t the cure. It should just be there to prevent widespread illiteracy. All you have to do is take a look around the world at nations that suffer from that to realize how it prevents a free and moral society.

            The task of educating should be left to each local community, working with families to create relevant curriculum that meets the needs of the students AND meets the federal minimum standard., That can only be done if real choices are available.

          • acat

            when I say “national standards”, I do *not* jump to “make all schools equally good”. That’s just stupid on the face of it – statistically, if 50% of the schools are above average … then 50% are below. No way around the math, eh?

            My point with national standards is to provide a metric for when a school is failing. What is the *minimum* standard that a kid needs to know to graduate 3rd grade, 5th grade, 8th grade, high school? Nothing further.

            If a State wants to have higher standards, great. If a local school district wants even higher standards, even more great. But. It’s up to them to make it happen…..

            As for school budgets doubling, I definitely believe it – a lot of it is in make-work administrative positions where the Fed say “to receive these federal dollars, district will compile this information monthly”, where the Fed dollars are enough to hire a person to complie the numbers, plus a little extra to the general fund…

            Repeat that enough times and, yeah, the budget per student has doubled, but all the extras are going to unionized school administrators, not into the classroom.

            Mew

          • Flagstaff

            But as soon as the federal government gets involved, a minimum goal becomes the maximum goal, or perhaps I should say, the goal becomes to meet the criteria, not to develop the skills that the goal is supposed to measure. We “teach to the test.”

            I wouldn’t be so cynical if I didn’t know it was true.

            Arizona has discussed having two kinds of high school diplomas–one for those who can read, and one for those who can’t, or something like that.

            I think we’d be better off with one diploma and encouragement for those who can’t read to take those jobs that “Americans won’t do.” (Only slight sarcasm there.)

            I submit that the label “failing school” is meaningless as long as parents have no feasible alternative. The charter schools and magnet schools and private schools should be there whether the local public schools are failing or not.

            I still stumble over how we could produce such a smart and well-educated group as our founding fathers from such a small population and without any “public” education. Are we wasting our time trying to educate everybody, when we should be concentrating on educating those who want to learn?

          • acat

            Our culture currently prizes winning at any cost, short-term gain over long-term gain, genetically gifted individuals (sports, singers, actors) over thinkers, and education is well below who you know as the way to get ahead…

            This does not bode well for us… and the problem isn’t one that can be solved by a quick-fix President’s Seal or National Standards. All national standards would do is to prevent – or at least *shame* districts that don’t routinely produce literate students. Sort of a brake on going fully backwards to illiteracy rates like .. the early Americas.

            One thing to keep in mind about the Founding Fathers – they did import the British class system, to an extent. While it was possibe to pull onesself up by the bootstraps, there were definitely glass ceilings, points beyond which one couldn’t rise without benefit of birth.

            That’s part of why the electoral college looks the way it does – they expected the Congress to elect the President, and if that didn’t work, then the representatives would be, if not the congress, then at least the “best and brightest” of their cities or towns or territories.

            I really don’t want to depress you, but .. look closely at the 1920s.

            Mew

          • lineholder

            The education program that Florida has been working on, that incorporates private business sector with state efforts re: education….could something like the Connection Academy be incorporated into that in a way that would facilitate this cultural change you’re talking about? State by state choice, not federal.

          • acat

            I’m here mostly for the conversation – if I wanted news I’d go to Drudge. (grin)

            I wasn’t familiar with Connectons Academy (I assume you mean http://www.connectionsacademy.com/ ) so I looked at it and I see one potential problem … their program depends on heavy parental involvement.

            For a school district with a high percentage of single parents or situations where both parents work, this would present a challenge. The kids still need someone to help guide them to the computer, to make sure they’re eating lunch, etc. etc. That said, I do see a lot of potential value in tele-teaching… especially as telecommuting catches on even more…

            As for how to change culture, the reason I mentioned the 1920s above is because I see some parallels between the “roaring 20s” and today… and the financial collapse that ended the ’20s took until WWII to go away, due to Democrat populism and mismanagement. Those hard times, though, rewrote the culture to put hard work and family back at the center.

            Mew

          • lineholder

            because it was also in the 1920′s that the earliest progressive legislation influencing our schools was enacted. Even back then, it existed.

            I’d like to see us pull away from that, if we can, but it is going to hard to do. Even for parents who despise the current education system and want to see it changed for the sake of their children’s future….we’ve become primarily a two-parent-both-working society. It’s almost necessary in a lot of cases in order to survive financially.

            I was trying to “dig” for options, I suppose, and wondering if there was a way to expand on the foundation that Connections Academy has built.

          • acat

            I can’t name names or locations, but …

            I’m aware of a small, private school in the midwest that has taken on half a dozen kids who the public schools had utterly failed. They’re all special-needs, mostly two-working-parents homes, and in at least some of the cases, the public school system is paying for something akin to the Connections Academy curriculum and online program, but are also paying this private school for “facilitation”.

            I think that’s one potential future model. Separating the role of “teacher” into “giver of knowledge” and “classroom monitor” – with the latter maybe filled by parents, maybe not… and the former filled by trained professionals who may or may not be physically in the same space with the students.

            That’s the key – to most Americans, “teacher” means doing both roles, but .. does it need to?

            The school I mentioned above gets great results because the facilitator is very good with special needs kids, she’s also smart enough to limit the size of her class. She’s also not made a dime yet.. and if it weren’t for the generosity of the building her school is in and her husbands’ good paycheck, she wouldn’t be helping anyone…

            Mew

          • lineholder

            The concepts and tools are already out there. All we have to do is to find them and play a little “connect the dots”. And I think the anecdotal, just like the story you’ve related above, could be where we’ve been missing a lot of opportunities.

            Yeah, you can throw anecdotal at me any day.

            BTW, Detroit Public School…have you heard about their fiasco?

            http://detnews.com/article/20110207/SCHOOLS/102070387

            http://detnews.com/article/20110211/SCHOOLS/102110363

            http://detnews.com/article/20110221/SCHOOLS/102210355/1409/Michigan-orders-DPS-to-make-huge

            They’ve lost over 80,000 kids in the past decade, acat. That’s a 50% decrease in enrollment. The article above identifies their present course of action. If you read the articles, in one of them it states that they are buying each child a laptop. They’re increasing class size to 60.

            Hey, with so many kids, wouldn’t this be a great opportunity to give an outside organization a shot at the curriculum and have “teachers” be overseers for a while???

            Just a thought.

          • acat

            would be an opportunity to dump the entire old series of job descriptions and pay scales and start a new one. Just pay for facilitation… and contract for the teachers remotely through Connections Academy or similar…

            Mew

          • lineholder

            I think it is slowly moving in that direction. With a little encouragement, especially if it can be proven to be financially advantageous….

            We don’t have the “think tanks” that the left has. There’s no such thing as a Conservative Teachers Union. (That would be useless).

            But we could have Conservative Teachers Associations, if we wanted to, with teachers that took a common sense approach to education, who could provide a tremendous asset in bringing about this kind of change.

            There are options we haven’t considered out there. I just hope we start finding them.

          • mom2oneson

            Acat I totally agree with your. We live in a literate society. There is no need for a teacher to spoon feed everything face to face when we have access to books, computers and other types of media. That is what I was trying to express with the DC voucher thread, even if the mom is illiterate her child can still learn and get a much better education that what the DC schools are providing. I dont understand why there is so much resistance on RS to the idea that the “expert” does NOT has to be physically present in front of the student for a kid to learn. The internet is amazing but even without a computer or $ to buy books there are libraries. Used books are very inexpensive too.

            CA is still a public school. A parent or guardian that could make a Connections Academy situation work – undermost circumstances they could also homeschool the child.

            The virtual public schools are given funds and alot of freedom initially but they are still public schools. Same thing with charter and magent schools – they are all public schools. It’s not just about teacher union dues. The public school administrators dont want the virtual schools because it’s less $ for their district. In FL every kid that isn’t warming a chair on the day they count the kids for $ means less $ for them.

          • mom2oneson
          • Flagstaff

            I don’t expect any of them to happen, I was just expressing the thought that not only is the D of E a worthless manure pile, it didn’t even have its priorities right. Or maybe that if it had the right priorities, it would have support from somebody other than the NEA and wouldn’t be quite so worthless.

          • Bill S

            But the sad thing about the D of Ed is that it would be political suicide to try to kill it off, as was discussed in a recent diary. It’s a worthless organization that does nothing but generate DC jobs. But there are precious few voters out there who realize that it’s really not “for the children”. And they would raise a stink of monumental proportions if the GOP tried to whack it.

          • Flagstaff

            it sounds like a job for the next conservative President. He can direct it to change its priorities from ‘whatever’ to ‘facilitate education in response to community needs,’ or even ‘help promote school vouchers and charter schools.’

            An interesting thing for a new Sec. of Ed. to ask his top civil servant would be, “What are you working on that can’t wait 6 months to complete?” If the answer is “nothing,” he’d know that nothing of importance was being accomplished.

    • http://erickbrockway.wordpress.com/ Erick Brockway

      Thanks for pointing that out

  • pacificrk

    The corruption and misdirected priorities that exist in our public school system is unconscionable. The status quo as portrayed so factually and shockingly in the trend of documentaries referred to by LibertyGal, is a serious wake up call for all Americans. I personally feel every household should have a copy of “The Cartel” to share with friends and family.

    Awareness, not money, is the first step to curing the cancer that has become our public school system today. It does not take more money, but rather less money, to teach our kids more effectively. The more people are exposed to the harsh realities of how their children, and how their dollars are being treated, the greater the pressure will become to influence choice and discipline in our education system.

    Thank you LibertyGal for tirelessly taking on this mission, and for turning your personal struggle into an alarm for others.

    • http://beaglescout.wordpress.com Beaglescout

      Nobody realizes exactly how corrupt the public school system is until they have a child (usually a boy) who is failing because of poor instruction. I’ve seen school districts where every pupil in some schools is on ADHD medications. I’ve seen others where every boy who acts like a boy is on ADHD medications. I’ve seen others where boys are treated like second class citizens because they don’t socialize the same way the teacher does. I’ve seen kindergartners given hours of homework per week, and children who could memorize the material on first reading being forced to read it again and fill out homework sheets to prove they had “synthesized” the material. I have seen 2nd through 6th graders taught how to estimate answers instead of being made to memorize the multiplication and addition tables (Shirley Math, the worst math system in the world). I’ve seen kids being forced to use the most obscure and strange forms of diagramming sentences imaginable. And in all these schools the teachers and staff insist it is the fault of the children for not performing up to parental expectations.

      Why is it that there are fashions in education? Is it because the old ways of education that produced Americans who could invent the Apollo rocket weren’t good enough? No, it is because educational theorists are not serious about educating. They want status with other educators, not success with students. From the theoretical fashionistas to the union representatives, the educational system is controlled by people who don’t give a damn about actual teaching.

      If school were really set up to learn we would graduate students when they had learned enough facts and were ready to put some of that knowledge to work in the world. Instead, we confine children in school until they reach some magical age, as if they were imprisoned.

      Setting the kids free by homeschooling them not only is the moral thing to do. It is also the best way for them to learn. For example, look at the finalists in the National Spelling Bee. For the past five or six years all the finalists have been homeschoolers. This is not because the smartest kids of the smartest parents go into homeschooling. It’s because the public schools don’t teach spelling worth a toot. But home schools do, as well as teaching them manners, religion, handwriting, basic arithmetic, the classics, the scientific method, and other things that aren’t fashionable these days in the dangerous wasteland of public education.

      • itrytobenice
      • http://www.nighttwister.com NightTwister

        There are several online schools, alternative schools, charter schools, and most districts allow school choice. Unsurprisingly, BVSD does not allow charter schools, and spent nearly half a million dollars fighting against them being available in other districts in the state.

        Fortunately they lost that battle. Unfortunately, that’s half a million dollars that could’ve been spent on classroom education that can’t be used there now. That’s espeically important this year as our Democrat governor has proposed cutting $375 million from K-12 schools this year to deal with the budget deficit.

        That doesn’t mean we shouldn’t continue the fight for more. Teachers are still required to pay union dues, and only have a short window to ask for a refund for the political amounts. Colorado is not a right-to-work state, so government employees are required to pay dues.

        Keep up the good work in Oregon. Poor schooling is a primary reason for a good portion of society’s current problems.

  • JadedByPolitics

    necessary and it something I am very much interested in. I do not know this ORlibertygal but I like the cut of her jib, I will probably be recco’ing in the future. I suggest everyone take a look at this well thought out and delivered diary. ORLibertygal you have hit this out of the ball park. WE MUST take the children away from the propaganda of the unionized school teachers across America! It is the only salvation for the future.

    • http://www.kristinaribali.com orlibertygal

      Thank you for your kind words. One at at time Americans are waking up!

  • marshmom

    Good for you for taking matters into your own hands and for being so proactive. My 4 yo is in a PK class at a private school and they’re already learning to read and write. They know all of their states and they’re now learning all 44 Presidents of the United States.

    When I went to public school, I can remember barely learning to write in Kindergarten and I think it was mainly 1st grade. Public schools are VASTLY behind private or home schools. My husband recently had a discussion with a Kindergarten teacher at our city schools and she told him that one of her Kindergartner’s told her “F you”.

    I would be absolutely horrified if I knew my child was at school with these children. Our public schools here though are known statewide for being substandard and very dangerous. Matter of fact, the Mayor once told a friend of mine in confidence that if he were to work at our city schools, he should be armed.

    Very sad and depressing to know that these kids aren’t getting the education they deserve, but it also goes back to parenting, which they have none of either.

    Keep fighting the good fight, ORlibertygal!!

  • runner12

    is a well-written insight into the mess that is the public school system. Thankfully, people are waking up around the country, largely in part to the popularity of the documentaries the diarist so correctly mentioned.

    The light is being shone on how the teacher’s unions are ruining our school systems and the people are not going to stand for it. Keep up the good work in Oregon!

  • Kenny Solomon

    Hi orlibertygal, welcome to RedState.

    Absolutely fantastic diary.

    To emphasize your message, here’s a bit of news from the home of Government Motors.

    If you have friends and family in Detroitistan, best get hold of them, because le merde is about to encounter le venitlateur like an anvil.

    About a month ago, Detroit was standing at the school lunch counter, pockets inside-out, hands held open, sad eyes, pouting expression, saying “Please Sir, Can I Have Some More ?”

    The answer came today: “More ?!?…… You Want More ?!?…… NO !!!

    State education officials have ordered a financial restructuring plan that balances the district’s books by closing half of its schools.

    Hey union folks, how’s that hope and change workin’ for ya now ?

    A city that was already on double-secret-life-support-probation is about to undergo some emergency surgery without anesthesia or doctors who scrubbed pre-procedure.

    • acat

      After Katrina, the New Orleans schools were in a seriously bad place…. and part of the way they recovered was by throwing out the old rules and starting over. They’ve done *very* well since.

      Detroit is experiencing a different disaster – but the same fix *would* work.

      Throw out the rules, put every kid in front of a good teacher – via the internet – with facilitators – who don’t have to have a degree, just pass a criminal background check and be good with kids.

      Mew

      • acat
    • lineholder

      along the same track this evening

      Just read 3 articles this evening about DPS and their current plan of action. You can see them above in a comment to acat.

      We, meaning conservatives, may have an opportunity in this one, if we approach it the right way.

      Did you also see the article where the state is transferring resposibility of janitorial and maintenance duties to Sodexco? (I hope I spelled that right)

      • Kenny Solomon

        I’ve never seen that done before anywhere ever. [/snark] ;)

        Sodexo.

        They’re a French corporation.

        Wikipedia on them http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sodexo Scroll through to the “controversy” section.

        Lovely.

        But one thing did stand out:

        “…so far none of the Sodexo accounts targeted by the SEIU have unionized or even requested an election vote.”

        Heh.

        Here’s an article from The Morning Sun (Central Michigan):

        Detroit schools to privatize maintenance workers.

        The Detroit Public Schools’ chief says he plans to cut 823 union jobs and save the cash-strapped district $75 million by privatizing maintenance and engineering services. Emergency Financial Manager Robert Bobb said Thursday the district signed a five-year contract with Sodexo School Services and seven minority-owned businesses to perform the work starting Feb. 21.

        Bobb says the contract provides that all current district employees will get priority in hiring and those who transfer will receive their current wage rate if they’re doing identical jobs. The district already has privatized student transportation and security.

        I’m honestly surprised Meeeeechigan didn’t blow up before Wisconsin.

  • polemos

    Thanks for posting on this site I enjoyed reading your input.
    My wife spots you from time to time commenting that

    • http://www.kristinaribali.com orlibertygal

      Thank you for your kind words. I don’t know if we’ve met personally, but if not I hope you’l introduce yourself next time you see me. Thanks again for your kind words.

      Send me a twitter or facebook message if we’re already friends! (I sometimes hate the online mystery world)

  • http://www.kristinaribali.com orlibertygal

    Thank you to all of you for your encouragement and your kind words. This is just the beginning of our journey as I suspect it will take thousands more like me to make any real change.

    I hope I’ve inspired you to get involved. You’ve inspired me to keep at it! Thanks again for the humbling remarks and most of all for reading our story. I’ll be blogging on this site as often as I can.

    Blessings of Liberty to you all!